A BENTHAM woman who survived the sinking of a ship loaded with children bound for Canada during World War Two has written the foreword to a book about the incident published this week.

Beth Williams, now 77, set sail from Liverpool on Friday September 13 1940 on the City of Benares. The Glaswegian ocean liner was carrying 90 children evacuated from the bombed cities of Britain; 77 of them were to perish in the North Atlantic. Mrs Williams was one of the 13 survivors.

"We should have sailed on the Thursday but the journey was postponed because of mines in the Mersey," said Mrs Williams.

"We set off on Friday the 13th escorted by a destroyer and two naval sloops who left us once we were out of the so-called 'warzone'. We were hit by a U-boat 600 miles from land in the Atlantic. I was 14 years old," she said.

She survived by hanging onto a rope on a capsized lifeboat for 19 hours.

"The City of Benares went down in half an hour. Once our lifeboat capsized that was frightening. But we were too busy hanging on to be frightened.

"All the lifeboats were waterlogged. The weather was atrocious, there was hail and snow. I don't think we'd have lived were it not for a rope to hang on to, the boat was flung around so much."

The evacuation programme was a government scheme between education authorities and foster parents in Canada.

"It was all very secretive. You couldn't tell your friends where you were going. Even by 1943 convoy ships were still sailing. You'd wave them off and if they were unlucky they'd come back shipwrecked. If they didn't come back you'd never know whether they made it or not."

Mrs Williams is keen not to over-dramatise her story. "There were all sorts of problems going on during the war and stories that people can tell. This is just one of them.

"Some people prefer to keep them to themselves. There was no counselling in those days, you just got on with things."

Mrs Williams and the 12 other survivors from the shipwreck never made it to Canada. She moved from Liverpool to High Bentham in 1989, having visited the area on holidays in the past when she grew to like the countryside. She has been to sea since the tragedy, but doesn't like flying.

The author of the book, Ralph Barker, has written several war histories since the publication of his first book "Ship Busters" in 1957.

"On the whole it gives a very good account. He did a lot of research and a lot of the information wasn't common knowledge for years," Mrs Williams said.

Children of the Benares is published by Avid Publications in Liverpool.