HMHS Llandovery Castle

HMHS Llandovery Castle
HM Hospital Ship Llandovery Castle
History
United Kingdom
NameRMS Llandovery Castle
NamesakeLlandovery Castle
Operator Union-Castle Line
BuilderBarclay Curle, Glasgow
Yard number504
Launched3 September 1913
CompletedJanuary 1914
FateRequisitioned, 1916
Canada
NameLlandovery Castle
Commissioned26 July 1916
FateSunk by SM U-86, 27 June 1918
General characteristics
TypeOcean liner / Hospital ship
Tonnage10,639 GRT
Length500 ft 1 in (152.43 m)
Beam63 ft 3 in (19.28 m)
Propulsion
Speed15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph)
Capacity
  • As ocean liner:
  • 429 passengers (213 1st class, 116 2nd class, and 100 3rd class)
  • As hospital ship:
  • 622 beds and 102 medical staff
Complement258
Major Thomas Lyon, surgeon with the Canadian Army Medical Corps, was a survivor of the Llandovery Castle bombing and massacre on June 27, 1918. Photo Credit: LAC

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. Twenty five people are known to have survived. 24 were the occupants on a single life-raft. 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.