Churchill speaks to Ludovic Kennedy about Rawalpindi

Later in the war, Ludovic Kennedy was a junior officer in the Tribal-class destroyer HMS Tartar while she escorted HMS Prince of Wales carrying Winston Churchill. After Tartar took Churchill's party on the final stage of its journey, the prime minister spoke with Kennedy about Rawalpindi and said that armed merchant cruisers had suffered more than any other class of ship. Accounts differ over whether Churchill sought Kennedy out or had him called, but the meeting appears to have been deliberate. The exchange shows how Rawalpindi's destruction remained present in wartime leadership memory even amid many later losses. It also links public commemoration to a private conversation between the prime minister and the dead captain's son.