On the evening of June 27, 1918, the Llandovery Castle was heading to England to pick up wounded servicemen and transport them to Canada for a long recuperation. As it neared Ireland, the ship was deliberately torpedoed by U-boat 86, a German submarine. Postcard: The Union Castle Steam Ship Line, HMS Llandovery Castle.Supplied
Nate Hendley is a Toronto author whose latest book, Atrocity on the Atlantic, describes the Llandovery Castle’s sinking and aftermath.
This Remembrance Day, spare a thought for the men and women who were attacked while on the Canadian hospital ship, Llandovery Castle.
On the evening of June 27, 1918, the unarmed, clearly marked ship was heading to England to pick up wounded servicemen and transport them to Canada for a long recuperation. As it neared Ireland, the ship was deliberately torpedoed by U-boat 86, a German submarine.
While the Llandovery Castle wasn’t carrying any patients, there were 258 people on board – a British crew and 94 members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC). The latter included 14 female nurses, or nursing sisters, as they were called at the time.
Two weeks prior, nursing sister Gladys Irene Sare had written a letter to her sister.
“I suppose mother will be worried, but I do wish she wouldn’t. I did not solicit the job or try for it in any way, in fact do not want it, but they sent me so here I am … I hate to appear a quitter by sitting high + safe in England + Atlantic travel is active service of the most active kind,” wrote Sare.
Now, Sare found herself in Lifeboat No. 5 with her fellow nurses and a few men. The lifeboat became caught in the suction of the sinking hospital ship.
“I estimate we were together in the boat about eight minutes. In that whole time, I did not hear a complaint or a murmur from one of the sisters. There was not a cry for help or any outward evidence of fear,” recalled Canadian Army Medical Corps Acting Sergeant Arthur Knight.
The lifeboat tipped, the nurses drowned, and Sergeant Knight nearly died. He was rescued by Lifeboat No. 4, containing five medical corps staff and 18 British crewmen. The lifeboat fled as the submarine shelled other survivors with its deck gun.
Sinking hospital ships violated the Hague Conventions – pre-war treaties that tried to regulate combat. Under the same treaties, hospital ships had to be painted white, display red crosses, and be brightly lit. U-86 commander Helmut Patzig knew from its lights that the Llandovery Castle was a hospital ship, his own crew later testified.
Lifeboat No. 4 was eventually rescued by a British destroyer. News of the attack, based on survivor testimony, sparked global outrage. The notion of a submarine shelling lifeboats and 14 nurses dying appalled the world, even at this late stage of a brutal war.
The Llandovery Castle case was adjudicated by the German Supreme Court at the Leipzig war-crimes trials, the little-known judicial proceedings that followed the Great War.
Patzig was in Danzig, a “free city” under the Treaty of Versailles, which put him out of jurisdictional reach, claimed German authorities. Two lieutenants who helped shell the lifeboats were arrested instead.
“I obeyed my commander. His orders were law. I am not guilty,” stated one of the defiant officers at trial.
On July 16, 1921, the lieutenants were convicted for taking part in the attempted murder of survivors. The justices declared that war crimes should be judged by international standards and obeying orders was not a defence for committing illegal acts in wartime.
“The firing on the boats was an offence against the law of nations … in war at sea, the killing of shipwrecked people who have taken refuge in lifeboats is forbidden,” stated the court.
“A subordinate obeying [an] order is liable to punishment if it was known to him that the order of the superior involved the infringement of civil or military law,” added the justices.
Despite these tough words, the lieutenants received light sentences and soon escaped from jail with the help of supporters. The Leipzig trials were soon forgotten, as was the Llandovery Castle.
Prosecutors in the 1940s, however, began citing the Llandovery Castle precedent to rebut claims by accused Nazi war criminals that they were just following orders.
Soldiers don’t have to obey “palpably criminal” orders, a principle “concisely set forth in the decision of the Supreme Court at Leipzig in the Llandovery Castle case,” stated the prosecutor, U.S. Brigadier General Telford Taylor, at the 1947 Einsatzgruppen trial.
British and Soviet prosecutors also cited the Leipzig verdict, which helped shape the legal foundation of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Empowered to prosecute war criminals worldwide since 2002, the ICC doesn’t accept superior orders as a defence.
While atrocities still occur today during armed conflicts, the Llandovery Castle case established a framework for establishing culpability for war crimes that has guided prosecutors for decades.
That’s a legacy worth remembering, along with the sacrifice of the crew and medical staff on hospital ship Llandovery Castle.