Winner! TMA/Barclays Equity Award for Best Show for Children and Young People 2002. Tuesday 17 September 1940: two fifteen-year-old child evacuees, Bess Walder and Beth Cummings, are fast asleep on board a steam passage ship, The City of Benares, sailing away from World War Two torn Britain and relentless German bombing. Just before midnight they are violently awoken when the ship is hit by a German torpedo and starts to sink. Bess and Beth join the stampede to the lifeboats. Then begins their desperate battle to survive, clinging on to an upturned lifeboat for a night and a day, in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Out of ninety children on board The City of Benares, Bess and Beth were among only a few who survived. Based on an extraordinary true story, Lifeboat is a tale of courage in the face of overwhelming danger, lifelong friendship and the will to survive.