MEG HEPHER is moved by a musical reminder of a maritime tragedy

On 24 March 2025, I headed to St Giles’ Cripplegate, for a concert by the Lloyd’s Choir and Cohen Ensemble under the baton of the Choir’s Musical Director, Jacques Cohen. I had no idea of the emotionally charged evening that lay ahead.

The medieval stone Church of St Giles’ was built just outside London’s City Wall and is now a tranquil centrepiece of the bustling, brutalist Barbican estate. The gothic architecture provided a space that was both intimate and reverent, creating the perfect ambiance for the themes of the evening. There were three works in the programme: Mendelssohn’s setting of Psalm 114, ‘When Israel went out of Egypt;’ the premiere of ‘Lancastria’, by Jacques Cohen, and Rossini’s Stabat Mater. As the evening progressed, I felt the powerful emotional thread connecting the three pieces.

Jacques Cohen, Music Director of the Lloyd’s Choir, wrote ‘Lancastria’ to commemorate the sinking of HMT Lancastria in the early part of the Second World War, and a painting of the ship was hung on a pillar at the front of the Church for the concert.

In June 1940, HMT Lancastria received orders to sail from Liverpool to the west coast of France to repatriate British servicemen and civilians who had been left in France after the evacuation of Dunkirk. On the morning of 17 June 1940, the Lancastria was anchored three miles off St. Nazaire as British servicemen, and a small number of British, French and Belgian civilians, poured from the French coast to the ship on destroyers, tugs, fishing boats and small boats.

Shortly after the ship had embarked for Britain with almost 9,000 people crammed into every space, German bombers hit her with several bombs and she sank within 20 minutes. The loss of life is estimated at between 7,000 and 9,000, more lives lost than the tragedies of the Titanic and the Lusitania combined.

Before the concert began, I found myself in conversation with Roger C. H. Round, former Chairman of the Lancastria Association, whose uncle was among the servicemen who lost their lives on that day. Roger has spoken to a number of survivors. He described how, against the backdrop of fears of U-boats lurking in the deep, there was nevertheless a sense of relief and expectation among the troops, full of hope that they were embarking on their journey homewards.

The performance opened with a powerful and moving rendition of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 144, ‘When Israel came out of Egypt.’ The parallel between the troops “leaving the foreigners’ land” for the sanctuary of their homeland, and the Israelites leaving Egypt for the sanctuary of Judah, was striking. The choir and orchestra were perfectly balanced, capturing with sensitivity both the human vulnerability, and the strength found in faith, that are expressed in the Psalm. The concluding sections were uplifting, resonating with a sense of hope and assurance that was to prove ironic as the central work of the evening unfolded.

Jacques Cohen as the conductor of the evening ensured that the orchestra and choir brought to the fore every nuance of his powerful composition, Lancastria. The full work premiered this evening was written for choir and orchestra, a musical setting of Tennyson’s poem, ‘Crossing The Bar.’ The poem is a metaphorical meditation on death, comparing dying to gently crossing the sandbar between the coast and the wider sea.

As the bombs struck the ship, bells, alarms and whistles sounded, and the screams of people aboard the ship filled the air. The noise, the chaos, were all captured in Cohen’s music, which gave a heart-rending musical illustration of the tragedy.

Cohen wove subtle hints of the tune of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ through the piece, with the tune finally emerging fully, played on the bagpipes by an unseen piper, combining with the choral melody of the work. Cohen thereby masterfully not only referenced the ship’s Scottish origins, but also introduced into the music the theme of the Scottish folk song: the grief of the women and children for their menfolk killed in battle, “the Flowers of the Forest are a’ wede away”. A portent of the grief to come in the concert’s second half.

At the end of the piece, there was a long period of silence and stillness, powerful and moving, before the conductor lowered his arms and the audience broke into enthusiastic applause.

After the interval, the heavy silence that had ended ‘Lancastria’ was broken by the opening notes of Rossini’s Stabat Mater. The impact of the first words was almost unbearable, “Stands the wretched mother weeping,” reflecting the flood of heart-rending grief experienced by families receiving the news of the loss of their loved ones on the Lancastria. The four soloists, Susanna Davis, Beatriz Volante, Andrew Henley and Daniel Barrett were outstanding in their interpretations of the music, giving full expression to the rich and varied emotions of the work: the pain, passion, and compassion. The choir sang the penultimate movement, with its acceptance of death and the yearning for God’s love in the Paradise to come, with a soothing tenderness before filling the whole Church with their glorious and uplifting final movement. After the choir’s final rousing “amen” had died away, the audience did not want to let the conductor, the lead violinist, the soloists, the choir or the orchestra leave.

Although not a memorial service, the concert was a moving and fitting tribute to the Lancastria – to all those whose lives were lost on her, and to all those who mourn for them.

The Lloyd’s Choir is based at St Katharine Cree Church, in the centre of the historic shipping industry of the City of London. The Choir takes part in a memorial service for the loss of the Lancastria held at the Church around the date of the anniversary each year. This year’s service will be held 1pm on Thursday 12 June, and will feature a shorter a cappella version of Cohen’s ‘Lancastria’ created especially to be performed at the memorial service.