Search for relatives of Sunderland children who died on WW2 ship
It has been taking place every five years since 2000.The ship was carrying 90 child evacuees to Canada, and 77 of them died. The sinking of the ship put a stop to the short-lived policy of overseas evacuation.Eleanor Wright and Billy Short were the only Sunderland children to survive the tragedy.Mr Short, who was about nine years old at the time, had been attending every memorial service until his death in 2016.
"Now that Billy's not here, as long as we can, we will continue marking the anniversary every five years," Mrs Roberts said. Mr Short's younger brother Peter, five, was also on board, but did not survive. "It's important the modern-day youngsters know what happened during the war and how children died and what a difficult time it was for the parents," Mrs Roberts said. "I think they should be remembered so in future wars the same thing doesn't happen again."
Mrs Roberts said one of the Sunderland children lost his life while rescuing another child.Geoffrey Crawford, 13, had made it safely into a lifeboat when he reached over to help another boy. The boy survived, but Geoffrey lost his balance and fell in the water, she said.The other Sunderland children who lost their lives wereMaureen Dixon, aged 10Derek Leigh, aged 11Edith and Irene Smith, aged 13 and 10Thomas William, aged 9Ann Jordeson Watson, aged 6Dorothy Wood, aged 6The SVLB is now calling for their relatives to share their stories, so they can be included in the memorial service.It will take place on 21 September at 15:00 BST.
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