The Gillingham bus disaster occurred outside Chatham Dockyard, Kent[1] on the evening of 4 December 1951.

A double-decker bus ploughed into a company of fifty-two young members of the Royal Marines Volunteer Cadet Corps,[2] aged between nine and thirteen.

The column was about fifteen yards long and was marching three abreast on the left-hand side of the road.

At about 5.57 or 5.58 pm the column was marching down Dock Road, just past the gates of the Chatham Royal Naval Dockyard.

Thousands of local people stood outside the cathedral and lined the route of the funeral procession to Gillingham Cemetery.

Three of the boys who were Roman Catholics had a separate funeral at the Church of Our Lady, Gillingham, conducted by the Bishop of Southwark Cyril Cowderoy.

The parents of the boys who died received a total of £10,000 compensation (equivalent to £396,742 in 2023) from the bus company, which accepted liability under the tort of negligence.

An inquest was held on 14 December 1951 at the Royal Naval Hospital in Gillingham, where many of the injured were being treated, before the North-East Kent Coroner.

[4] The mayors of Gillingham, Rochester and Chatham set up a memorial fund, inviting public donations through the local and national press "to be devoted, among other things, to defraying the funeral expenses, caring for the boys who may be disabled, and then to such worthy cause or causes in memory of the boys who lost their lives, as the mayors may determine".

In the film Shadowlands, which is set in the 1950s, C. S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) refers to the Gillingham bus disaster in a lecture on theology as a conspicuous example of terrible and tragic events which happen in the world and which God "allows to happen", and then goes on to explain his opinion on why God behaves that way.