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. The sinking was the deadliest Canadian naval disaster of the war. 234 doctors, nurses, members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, soldiers and seamen died in the sinking and subsequent machine-gunning of lifeboats. Only 24 people, the occupants on a single life-raft, survived. The incident became infamous internationally and was considered, after the Armenian Genocide, as one of the war’s worst atrocities. After the war, the case of Llandovery Castle was one of six alleged German war crimes prosecuted at the Leipzig trials.
Service history
Llandovery Castle was one of pair of ships 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.
Sinking
Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Howard MacDonald of Nova Scotia, HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine 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, including nurses, took to the lifeboats, U-86 surfaced, ran down all but one of the lifeboats and machine-gunned many of the survivors. Only 24 people in one surviving lifeboat survived. They were rescued shortly afterwards by the destroyer and testified as to what had happened. Only 6 of the 97 hospital personnel survived. Among those lost were fourteen nursing sisters from Canada, including the Matron Margaret Marjory Fraser, formerly of Nova Scotia. Sergeant Arthur Knight was on board lifeboat #5 with the nurses. He reported: Afterward, steamed through the wreckage. Captain Kenneth Cummins recalled the horror of coming across the nurses' floating corpses;
War crimes trial
After the war, three officers from U-86, Kapitänleutnant Helmut Brümmer-Patzig, and Oberleutnants Ludwig Dithmar and John Boldt, were charged with war crimes committed on the high seas. On 21 July 1921, Dithmar and Boldt were found guilty in one of the Leipzig War Crimes Trials and were both sentenced to four years in prison. Even though the Imperial German Government had accused the Royal Navy of war crimes for similarly shooting the unarmed survivors of U-27 and for ramming a lifeboat containing the survivors of U-41 during the Baralong incidents, the sentences of Dithmar and Boldt were later overturned on appeal. The grounds were that they only followed orders and that their commanding officer alone was responsible. Helmut Brümmer-Patzig, however, had fled to the Free City of Danzig and was never prosecuted. Outside of the Weimar Republic, the trials were seen as a travesty of justice because of the small number of cases tried and the perceived leniency of the court. According to Alfred de Zayas, however, "Generally speaking, the German population took exception to these trials, especially because the Allies were not similarly bringing their own soldiers to justice."
Legacy
The Canadian reaction was typified by Brigadier George Tuxford, former homesteader from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and commanding officer of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division: "Amongst those murdered were two Moose Jaw nurses, Sister Fraser and Sister Gallagher. I gave instructions to the Brigade that the battle cry on the 8th of August should be "Llandovery Castle," and that that cry should be the last to ring in the ears of the Hun as the bayonet was driven home." There is a memorial plaque to Matron Margaret Fraser and the 13 other Canadian nurses sponsored by Lady Dufferin was placed at the Nurses House of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in London, England. There are also memorial plaques to the ship at the Stadacona Hospital, CFB Halifax, Nova Scotia, Montreal General Hospital and the Children's Hospital in Halifax, the latter two monuments unveiled by Margaret C. MacDonald. An opera based on the sinking of the ship premiered in Toronto on the 100th anniversary of the sinking in June 2018. The opera is composed by Stephanie Martin with a libretto by Paul Ciufo, and according to one reviewer "breaks the story down into nine scenes set on the ship and, at the end, in the lifeboats, before the chorus steps out of time to reflect on what we have seen and heard."
