HMHS Llandovery Castle
"HM Hospital Ship, Llandovery Castle"
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | RMS Llandovery Castle |
| Namesake: | Llandovery Castle |
| Operator: | Union-Castle Line |
| Builder: | Barclay Curle, Glasgow |
| Yard number: | 504 |
| Launched: | 3 September 1913 |
| Completed: | January 1914 |
| Fate: | Requisitioned, 1916 |
 Canada
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| Name: | Llandovery Castle |
| Commissioned: | 26 July 1916 |
| Fate: | Sunk by SM U-86, 27 June 1918 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Ocean liner / Hospital ship |
| Tonnage: | 10,639 GRT |
| Length: | 500 ft 1 in (152.43 m) |
| Beam: | 63 ft 3 in (19.28 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) |
| Capacity: |
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| Complement: | 258 |
HMHS Llandovery Castle, built in 1914 in Glasgow as RMS Llandovery Castle for the Union-Castle Line, was one of five Canadian hospital ships that served in the First World War. On a voyage from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Liverpool, England, the ship was torpedoed off southern Ireland on 27 June 1918. Twenty-four people survived the sinking, while 234 doctors, nurses and patients were killed in the attack. In terms of the number of dead, the sinking was the most significant Canadian naval disaster of the war. The incident became renowned internationally as one of the war’s worst atrocities. After the war, the case of Llandovery Castle was one of six British cases presented at the Leipzig trials.
Llandovery Castle was one of pair of ships (her sister ship was SS Llanstephan Castle) built for the Union Castle Line, following the company's acquisition by the Royal Mail Line in 1912. The ship was built by Barclay, Curle & Co. in Glasgow, launched on 3 September 1913, and completed in January 1914. Initially sailing between London and East Africa, from August 1914 she sailed on routes between London and West Africa. She was commissioned as a hospital ship on 26 July 1916, and assigned to the Canadian Forces, equipped with 622 beds and a medical staff of 102.
Under the command of Lt.-Col. Thomas Howard MacDonald of Nova Scotia, HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine SM U-86 on 27 June 1918. Firing at a hospital ship was against international law and standing orders of the Imperial German Navy. The captain of U-86, Helmut Brümmer-Patzig, sought to destroy the evidence of torpedoing the ship. When the crew took to the lifeboats, U-86 surfaced, ran down all the lifeboats and machine-gunned the survivors remaining in the water and on the lifeboats. Only 24 people in one remaining lifeboat survived.
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