Lifeboat (based on a true story)
Catherine Wheels Theatre Company
(Edinburgh, Scotland)

TICKET SUBSIDY FORM

Grades: 6-8
Running-time is approximately 1 hour.

Lifeboat is the extraordinary true story of Bess Walder and Beth Cummings. Set in World War II, it is a story of courage, survival and enduring friendship.

On Friday, September 13, 1940, a ship called The City of Benares set sail from Liverpool for Canada. On board were 90 evacuees–children escaping the relentless bombing and dangers of war-torn Britain. Four days into the crossing, the ship was torpedoed and sank. Only eleven of the evacuees survived.

Two 15-year-old girls, Bess Walder and Beth Cumming, spent 19 terrifying hours in the water on an upturned lifeboat, willing each other to survive. Performed by just two actors, who play Bess and Beth and all the other characters the girls meet along the way, Lifeboat is a powerful and life-affirming drama told with lightness and humor.

Related books:
Children of the Doomed Voyage by Janet Menzies
Miracles on the Water: The Heroic Survivors of a World War II U-Boat Attack by Tom Nagorski

Read more about Bess and Beth here.

View Lifeboat video on YouTube

Made possible with funding from the NYS Council on the Arts, TD Bank Foundation, The Beechwood Group of Wells Fargo Advisors, Millman Harris Romano Foundation, Target, Stewarts Shops, plus from the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley; Ann and Abe Effron Fund, Ed & Barbara Joba Fund for the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Community Response Fund – Ulster County, Charlie Carroll Music Enrichment Fund, Robert R. Chapman Fund. Additional support from Louis Greenspan Charitable Trust, Klock Foundation, Rhinebeck Bank, James J. McCann Charitable Trust, Jane W. Nuhn Charitable Trust, George A. Strba Charitable Trust, Ulster Savings Charitable Foundation, Macys, Second Hand Rose, Price Chopper’s Golub Foundation, Mid Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union and thank you to all the donors who contributed to the Field Trip Fund.