Post by KG on Dec 27, 2017 17:55:02 GMT
'Merry Christmas, from America to unfortunate Britain': How in 1914 a U.S. Navy 'Santa Claus ship' sailed to England with 5MILLION Christmas presents for children whose fathers died in WWI.
For Christmas 1914, Alice Bailey, a seven-year-old from Kent, England, got a pair of stockings and a toy farm animal. Daisy Andrews, her two-year-old neighbor, was given a length of ribbon.
It may not seem much, but, with their fathers hundreds of miles away, fighting the bloody battles that would come to be known as the First World War, it was more than either of them had hoped for.
Their humble presents, listed alongside the names in hundred-year-old records and letters of thanks, were gifts from the United States, which had sailed thousands of miles from New York on a vessel dubbed The Santa Claus Ship.
LINK
For Christmas 1914, Alice Bailey, a seven-year-old from Kent, England, got a pair of stockings and a toy farm animal. Daisy Andrews, her two-year-old neighbor, was given a length of ribbon.
It may not seem much, but, with their fathers hundreds of miles away, fighting the bloody battles that would come to be known as the First World War, it was more than either of them had hoped for.
Their humble presents, listed alongside the names in hundred-year-old records and letters of thanks, were gifts from the United States, which had sailed thousands of miles from New York on a vessel dubbed The Santa Claus Ship.
LINK