Figure 1.--British children were primarily evacuated by train, but buses and trams were also used and in a few instances ships. This wire service photograph was captioned, "British Children Evacuated as War Starts: British children jam the deck of this steamer leaving Southampton for the Isle of Wight as London evacuation of children and other special classes of people started early this morning. This picture was transmitted from London to New York by radio today, Sept. 1st, as guns roared in Poland and that country invoked its mutual assistance pact with Great Britain."

Britain and other European countries had large highly efficient rail systems and Britain had one of the best. But even Britain's rail system was hard put to move more than a million school children and other protected classes out of the cities in a few days. In addition to buses, some ships were also used. This may strike some as strange because the trains are generally seen as moving north, but this was not always the case. The idea was to get the children out of the city. For London this generally meant north and west, but the industrial Midlands in cities such as Manchester and Birmingham , this could be small towns and villages in all directions. But we notice ships going south to the Isle of Wight. We believe this was mostly evacuees from Southampton, perhaps Portsmouth, but some London children may have also been involved. There may have been other ships used, but this is the one we are familiar with at this time. Later after the fall of France there would be more limited evacuations by ocean liners, mostly to Canada and America. And as far as we know this was mostly ferries and coastal steamers with short routes because they did not want to expose the children to U-boats. This meant an evacuation south to the Isle of Wight, the large island just a few miles off the southern (Channel) coast. This of course placed the evacuees closet to possible bombing,especially after the fall of France (June 1940). British authorities assumed that the evacuees would be safe as long as they were away from the coast or military installations. A British reader tells us, "Nothing much for the Luftwaffe to bomb on the Isle of Wight!"

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