Anyway this thread caught my eye but it was a bit back from the front page and it's very long.
The thread is over a long period of time too, it was started in December 2008 and there were still posts on the thread until last October 2015.
I had never heard or read of this ship sinking until coming across the thread last week.
Essentially an ex-naval guy posted this thread asking anyone on the forum living in Gibraltar if they knew of a plaque or some form of official acknowledgement there in relation to this disaster from 1963.
The guy, apparently, was a seventeen year old serving on an aircraft carrier, H.M.S Centaur, the ship was en-route to North Africa, I think, when it was diverted to Gibraltar to assist the sinking ship and pick up survivors.
The guys on the Centaur pulled 78 bodies out the sea out from the 128 passengers and crew who perished that night on the 22nd of Dec 1963.
The Lakonia was a Greek cruise ship and had been used as a troopship during WW2, in December 1963 the ship left Southampton en-route to Madeira with mainly Irish and British passengers and also there were some German and American passengers and other nationalities too.
The Lakonia caught fire in the Med about two weeks into the journey apparently the fire was an electrical fire started in the hairdressers, the hairdresser was a young 21yr old Italian man who survived.
One of the other survivors was the eldest son of the manager of Reid's hotel on Madeira, the Greek owners paid for Reid's hotel to put up the survivors who were taken by rescue ships to Madeira.
The dead included the ship's doctor, an Irishman who gave his life jacket to an elderly woman passenger and then subsequently drowned, the doctor also went down into the burning ship to assist an elderly priest who had difficulty walking, the priest survived.
Also amongst the dead were two young brothers aged six & eight who died locked in their cabin when their parents went to dinner.
It's quite a long read guys but it's well worth sticking with it, personally I had tears running down my face reading this and I honestly don't know how some of those guys on the Centaur and the other rescue ships managed to do what they had to do that night but there for the grace of God an all that.
Tony
PS, TSMS stands fro twin screw merchant ship.
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TSMS Lakonia Disaster 1963
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