HMHS Llandovery Castle

1918

Hospital ship, the machine guns on the boats Location: Atlantic Ocean, off southern Ireland · Coordinates: 51.00°N 10.75°W · Casualties: 234 · Survivors: 24 · Depth: abyssal · not located · Cause: submarine torpedo · war crime — Torpedoed by the German submarine SM U-86 (Helmut Patzig, commanding) off southern Ireland at 21:30 on 27 June 1918 despite her unmistakable hospital ship markings. Sank in ten minutes. Patzig then surfaced and ran down the lifeboats, machine-gunning survivors in the water to eliminate witnesses to the attack on a marked vessel. · Fate: abyssal Atlantic · Type: hospital ship · Union-Castle liner · Tonnage: 11,423 tons · Crew: 164 · Flag: Canada · United Kingdom · Launched: 1913 Canadian hospital ship, returning from Halifax with medical personnel. Torpedoed by U-86 off southern Ireland on the night of 27 June 1918 despite her unmistakable markings; Kapitänleutnant Helmut Patzig then surfaced and opened machine-gun fire on the lifeboats to eliminate witnesses. 234 of 258 dead. Patzig was named at the Leipzig war crimes trials in 1921 but evaded prosecution by escaping to Danzig. The Vessel HMHS Llandovery Castle was a British hospital ship, formerly a Union-Castle Line mail steamer operating between Southampton and the Cape of Good Hope. She was 152 metres long, 11,423 tons, built in 1914 at Barclay Curle on the Clyde. At the outbreak of the First World War she had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty; in December 1916 she was transferred to the Canadian Naval Service and converted at Halifax to a hospital ship in Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps service. Her hospital ship conversion included the conventional Hague Convention markings of white hull paint, prominent red crosses on her sides and top, a green line along her hull at the waterline, and specific identification floodlights that were to be illuminated at night. She carried a Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps ship's surgeon, approximately 80 nurses and medical orderlies, and approximately 40 ship's crew. Her patient capacity was 622 beds distributed across the former passenger decks. Her service between December 1916 and June 1918 was the standard Western Front casualty-clearing run: she loaded wounded Canadian and British soldiers at Le Havre or Portsmouth and carried them to Halifax for onward transport to hospitals in Canada. She made 11 successful round trips between January 1917 and June 1918 without incident. The Disaster The torpedo struck Llandovery Castle on her port side. She sank in ten minutes, at 21:40 on 27 June 1918. In the ten minutes between the first strike and the sinking, the ship's crew and the medical personnel succeeded in launching six lifeboats with approximately 164 people aboard, out of the 258 total aboard the ship. The remaining 94 people either died in the initial strike or were unable to reach the boats. What followed was the single most documented war crime committed by a German submarine in the First World War. Patzig surfaced U-86 at 21:50 and approached the lifeboats at close range. He demanded to know whether Canadian Army flying officers, whom he apparently believed had been aboard, had been in the lifeboats. The medical officer Major Thomas Lyon replied that the ship had carried only Canadian Army Medical Corps personnel and Merchant Navy crew. Patzig did not accept the reply. U-86 then rammed and sank five of the six lifeboats in succession, firing her deck gun at the occupants of the lifeboats who had been thrown into the water. The attack continued for approximately 30 minutes, during which the U-boat's crew fired 75 machine-gun rounds at the survivors in the water. One lifeboat, the first one into the water, had already cleared the attack area and its 24 occupants survived. The five other lifeboats were destroyed with all 140 of their occupants. 234 of the 258 aboard Llandovery Castle died on the night of 27-28 June 1918. Of the 164 Canadian Army Medical Cor