The Little Ships

In May 1940, many countries in Europe were at war with Nazi Germany. Half a million British and French soldiers were trapped on three sides in northern France by German troops and tanks. The only escape for the Allied army was the sea. An incredible armada of over 800 craft, including Royal Navy ships and a flotilla of small river and coastal boats, thereafter known as "the little ships", was assembled on the south-eastern coast of England. They sailed across the English Channel to Dunkirk in France to rescue the beseiged troops. The wide Dunkirk beach was covered with men who were hungry and thirsty, with horses running loose from their French riders, with dozens of barking dogs, with trucks and equipment - the disarray of an army on the run. In her vivid and deeply moving text, Louise Borden tells the story of one small fishing craft from Deal that was part of the armada. It is told from the point of view of a young girl who donned her brother's old clothes and sailed with her father on the family boat, the Lucy. The story of that incredible venture is part truth, part fiction. It could have happened. Michael Foreman, who as a boy during World War II lived in a small fishing town on the English coast, has created remarkable pictures that, together with Louise Borden's spare and dramatic text and an interesting introductory note by Christopher Dreyer, who commanded the Royal Navy ship MTB 102 in the armada, bring vividly alive this historic rescue in which over 300,000 men were saved.