In one of these transportations a tragedy occurred: the sinking of the ocean liner on 2 July 1940 resulted in the loss of over 700 lives, including 446 British-Italians being deported as undesirable. Italians comprised almost half of the ship's 1564 passengers; the rest were British soldiers, and Jewish refugees. Sailing for Canada from Liverpool, the unescorted "Arandora Star" was torpedoed by the and sank within 30 minutes. One historian describes it as the "most tragic event in the history of the Italian community... no other Italian community in the world has suffered such a blow." On 19 July the Home Secretary, wrote a letter to Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, in which he made it clear that he realised mistakes had been made in selecting Italians for the Arandora Star. Lord Snell was charged with conducting a government inquiry into the tragedy. He recognised that the method of selecting "dangerous" Italians was not satisfactory and the result was that among those earmarked for deportation were a number of non-fascists and people whose sympathies lay with Britain.