The German submarine U-48 torpedoed SS City of Benares in the North Atlantic in September 1940. The liner was carrying British children being evacuated to Canada through the Children's Overseas Reception Board scheme. Seventy-seven of the ninety child evacuees died, leading the government to halt overseas evacuation voyages.

The children's deaths inspired elegies, memoir poems and later works examining separation, fear and the moral reach of submarine warfare. City of Benares became a particularly painful poetic symbol because the voyage intended to protect children instead carried them into danger.