On a cold dark night in the North Atlantic a great hospital ship journeyed towards Ireland.
Passengers were either preparing for bed or already asleep.
She was only 200 kilometres from her destination but outside… A German U- Boat was lurking… hunting for what the captain believed the ship was hiding.
Ammunition and troops.
Rather than stopping to search the ship the captain did what Han Solo was known for…shoot first and ask questions later.
With a word, he ordered his crew to launch a torpedo.
It hit the sleeping vessel and ripped a hole in her side.
As the cold water of the Atlantic rushed in, the ship was underwater within 10 minutes.
She disappeared beneath the waves as passengers struggled to escape on lifeboats.
24 survived only to have the U-boat open fire on them.
It was considered a war crime, and the incident had far reached consequences.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx.
Today, travel back to the First World War as I share the terrible tragedy of the HHMS Llandovery Castle.
The Union Castle Line was a British shipping line that operated passenger and cargo fleets between Europe and Africa from 1900 to 1977.
It acquired the Royal Mail Line in 1912 and began work on two new ships which would be named in honour of the company’s South Wales heritage.
The first was the SS Llanstephan Castle.
Named after the castle built around 1100 CE by the Normans which sits on a much older Iron Age promontory fort, meaning the area has been inhabited for several millennia.
The castle built during the invasion of Wales still stands today.
The second ship, SS Llandovery Castle, which is why we’re here today, was named after a great castle built 900 years ago by the Normans.
Only a few parts of it still survive as ruins because in 1532 the castle was destroyed and never rebuilt.
The SS Llandovery Castle launched on Sept. 3, 1913, from Glasgow, Scotland where she was built and she was officially completed by January 1914.
She was an impressive vessel.
She was 152 metres long and had 6,500 horsepower steam engines that were capable of propelling the ship at a speed of 15 knots, or 28 kilometres per hour.
Originally planned as an ocean liner, she could carry 429 passengers in three classes.
She didn’t get much of a chance to work as an ocean liner because by July 1914 the First World War broke out.
That’s when she became a mail ship and initially, she sailed between London and East Africa, then from August 1914 she sailed on routes between London and West Africa.
Then she was commissioned to become a hospital ship on 26 July 1916 and was assigned to the Canadian Forces. She was retrofitted with 622 hospital beds and could carry 102 medical staff which would work in the interior surgical facilities, doctors’ offices and more.
Her life as a hospital ship would be short lived because in the waters of the North Atlantic, U-Boats lurked.
The First World War changed how wars were fought forever.
There was the advent of tanks and airplanes, and along with them, early submarines entered the theatre of war.
Prior to the First World War submarines existed but were largely ineffective in battle.
During the American Civil War, the Confederate Navy’s H.L. Hunley became the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel when she sunk the USS Housatonic using a gunpowder-filled keg on a spar as a torpedo.
Unfortunately, the shock wave from the explosion killed most of the submarine’s crew and destroyed both vessels. Two years later in 1866, Sub Marine Explorer became the first submarine to dive, cruise underwater and resurface under the control of the crew.
Slowly, progress was made and by the First World War, these war vessels were ready for their time in the spotlight.
At the outbreak of the war, Germany had 20 submarines, while the British Royal Navy had 74.
The British may have had more, but the Germans were far superior.
Known as U-Boats, which came from the anglicized German word U-Boot. for Unterseeboot, or under-sea boats, they soon began attacking Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
On Nov. 7, 1916, Germany launched U-86 into the North Sea and six months later, she sank her first British ship, the Queensborough.
It would be the first of many in her career of terror as she inflicted pain on the Allies.
From March 1917 to June 1918, she was responsible for the carnage of sinking 31 ships and killing hundreds.
In January 1918, Helmet Patzig took over her command.
He had risen through the ranks quite quickly after he joined the Germany Navy in 1910 as a 19-year-old cadet.
In 1917, he was awarded the Iron Cross – First Class for his service as a submarine watch officer.
By 1918 he was in command of U-86, and the submarine was assigned to patrol the area west of Ireland in the North Atlantic.
At the time, Germany had declared unrestricted submarine warfare against Great Britain.
This meant that instead of giving enemy crews notice U-Boat captains were told to sink them on sight.
The command was brutal but there were still rules to war, and that included how submarines dealt with hospital ships.
The water around Great Britain and Ireland were an active war zone, but on Feb. 4, 1915, German Navy commanders were notified to spare hospital ships.
They were only to attack if it was obvious they were transporting troops.
To ensure that hospital ships would not be a threat, vessels were designed to be very visible.
They were painted white, with a green band from stem to stern and a large Red Cross in the mid-ship.
At night, a row of red and green lights circled the ship.
Hospital ships were now in much greater danger and from March 20, 1917, to Feb. 26, 1918 seven British hospital ships were sunk by German U-Boats.
But those attacks would pale in comparison to what would happen on the night of June 27, 1918.
When Rena McLean finished delivering wounded soldiers to Halifax ten days earlier, she had no idea she would be boarding the Llandovery Castle for the last time.
Rena had always wanted to be a nurse.
She was born in Prince Edward Island on June 14, 1879, and had completed her training as a nurse by 1908.
At the outbreak of the First World War, she signed up to serve in the Canadian Army Medical Corps by November 1914, she was in France helping the first of many Canadians that would be wounded in the trenches.
Over the next three years she served in France, the United Kingdom and Greece which was especially difficult, and left her with PTSD.
To help her recover, she was placed on the Llandovery Castle, so she could be far from the horrors of the front lines.
She had been given many chances to return home to Canada, but she refused each time.
She wanted to go back to France where she could help the most people.
Joining her on the ship was Pearl Fraser, another Canadian nurse who gave up a life of luxury to serve others.
She was born in New Glasgow, on March 20, 1885, to Duncan Cameron Fraser, the future Lt. Governor of Nova Scotia and Bessie Grant.
On Sept. 28, 1914, shortly after she completed her nurse training, she enlisted with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
For the next four years, she served on hospital ships and helped wounded Canadians on their return home.
Neither Rena nor Pearl knew they would soon be casualties in a maritime war crime
By late-June 1918, HHMS Llandovery Castle was on her fifth voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Halifax.
She had delivered 3,223 wounded men to Canada and as she returned to Europe there were no patients onboard only 164 crew members, 80 officers and enlisted men and 14 nurses.
John Eaton was serving with the Canadian Army Medical Corps.
He had spent 28 months on the front lines before poisonous gas sent him home and now, he was on his way back to Europe.
Just prior to boarding t, he sent a letter to his parents in Vancouver.
By the time it reached them, the Llandovery Castle would be under water.
That’s because on the evening of June 27, 1918, just as HHMS Llandovery Castle was nearing the Irish coast to pick up more wounded for transport a U-Boat appeared.
Despite being clearly marked as a hospital ship with all her lights on, Capt. Helmut-Patzig believed that it was carrying troops and supplies.
He didn’t stop the ship.
He didn’t inspect it.
Instead, he fired a torpedo directly at it.
Rena McLean, Pearl Fraser, and John Eaton were all either sleeping or getting ready for bed.
Within seconds, their blissful evening was shattered and their lives turned into a nightmare as the Llandovery Castle shook from the great explosion.
Newspapers across Canada reported days later.
Quote,
“No one on board saw the wake of the torpedo. The first intimation of the presence of a submarine was a jar and the roar of an explosion from aft. Then the lights went out.”
End quote.
In the wireless cabin, the Marconi radio operator attempted to send out the ship’s position to any friendly forces in the vicinity but with no power, no message could get out.
On the bridge, Capt. Edward Sylvester sent a message to the engine room but received no reply. Most of the crew was dead.
With the ship doomed, people ran for the lifeboats but getting them in the water was easier said than done.
Two smashed against the ship as it rocked lifeless in the ocean, while others became overwhelmed by the Atlantic’s crushing waves.
Survivors reported that there were an eerily quiet no panic or cries for help could be heard as the ship sank.
When Capt. Sylvester was notified that survivors were lifeboats; he finally left the bridge with ten of his crew.
Sgt. Arthur King, who was in lifeboat #5 with the nurses, said later,
“Our boat was quickly loaded and lowered to the surface of the water. Then the crew of eight men and myself faced the difficulty of getting free from the ropes holding us to the ship’s side. I broke two axes trying to cut ourselves away but was unsuccessful.”
Lifeboat #5 struggled as it smashed into the side of the ship and survivors used the oars to push themselves away from the hull.
They made it to the water level but drifted back towards the ship when the poop-deck suddenly broke away and sank and sucked them in.
They flipped into the water.
The survivors had only lasted in the lifeboat 8 minutes.
Sgt. King said,
“In that whole time, I did not hear a complaint or murmur from one of the sisters. There was not a cry for help or any outward evidence of fear.”
From the water, Pearl Fraser asked if there was any hope for them Sgt. King didn’t sugarcoat it when he replied with a simple no.
As the ship sank it created a whirlpool sucking everyone inn
Sgt. King was pulled down three times but luckily grabbed a piece of the wreckage and was pulled to safety by the captain’s boat.
Others not as lucky.
King said,
“The last I saw of the nursing sisters was as they were thrown over the side of the boat. All were wearing lifebelts, and of the fourteen two were in their nightdress, the others in uniform.”
None of the nurses, including Pearl Fraser and Rena McLean, survived.
At their memorial service in Toronto in July 1918, Reverend J.W. MacMillan said,
“It is commonly stated that this war is going to give woman her true position in this world. Be careful that you aren’t just given a banner and kept within the gates as before. See that this war wins a world victory for women.”
Meanwhile, on the day of the wreckage, Capt. Sylvester and his crew began a rescue effort and managed to pull about a dozen men out of the water.
But just as they did the German U-Boat responsible for the disaster, resurfaced and suddenly appeared next to the lifeboat and asked the survivors to come closer.
The tragedy appeared to be far from over.
As the lifeboat and submarine floated side by side a survivor let the U-Boat know that they were picking up survivors.
In response the German fired his revolver in the air.
The 24 survivors in the lifeboat were warned if they did not get closer, they would be fired upon by the sub’s big guns.
Cannons were meant for battleships. It would have turned the lifeboat into cinders.
Capt. Sylvester had no choice but surrender.
He stepped onto the submarine deck, and he was asked to identify his vessel.
When he did, he was accused of transporting eight American flight officers.
Sylvester immediately denied the accusation. “I beg your pardon; we are not. We have seven Canadian medical officers on board, and the ship is chartered by the Canadian government to carry sick and wounded men from England to Halifax.”
The German officer again accused him of carrying Americans to Europe, which Sylvester continued to deny.
Ten minutes later the captain was back in the lifeboat as Major Thomas Lyon, a medical officer, went onto the sub.
When a German sailor grabbed him, Lyon fell and broke his ankle.
Then he was accused of being an American flight officer, which he naturally denied.
He said quote.
“I dread to think what would have happened to an American flying officer had he been in my shoes.”
End quote.
Lyon was released after his interrogation and made his way back to the lifeboat, just as a German officer whispered in his ear that he needed to get the lifeboat clear of the sub. Lyon relayed the message to Capt. Sylvester, who said he had received the same warning.
While it may have appeared as a threat, the German officer was really trying to save their lives.
Captain Helmut Patzig had devious plans for the survivors of the Llandovery Castle.
As the survivors scrambled to distance themselves from the sub, Capt. Patzig, Lt. Ludwig Dithmar, Lt. John Boldt and another man named Meissner, watched from the deck of U-86.
Then…they fired.
Not from a revolver… but from the sub’s cannon with each shot, explosions rippled across the ocean.
Where survivors once huddled in lifeboats, only wood and flesh remained.
The only lifeboat to escape the carnage was the one containing Capt. Sylvester and Major Lyon.
It was clear Capt. Patzig was trying to eliminate witnesses to his war crimes, but they managed to escape the onslaught and drifted for the next 36 hours until HMS Lysander saw them.
But their long ordeal was over.
And soon the world would learn what had happened that night.
Of the 234 crew members of the Llandovery Castle, only 24 survived and they were all on Capt. Sylvester’s lifeboat.
For days afterwards, other ships looked for survivors but only found carnage on the water.
Kenneth Cummins, a midshipman on his first voyage out, was on HMS Morea He wrote,
“It was quite horrific, and my reaction was to vomit over the edge. It was something we could never have imagined, particularly the nurses: seeing these bodies of women and nurses, floating in the ocean, having been there some time. Huge aprons and skirts in billows, which looked almost like sails because they dried in the hot sun.”
Meanwhile, U-86, would go on to attack and sink an American troop ship.
But the sub wouldn’t live to see the end of the war because on its way to home base it hit a sea mine.
As news of the attack on the Llandovery Castle reached Canada it was met with outrage.
Brigadier George Tuxford, who commanded the Third Infantry Brigade of the First Canadian Division, said the ambush was a rallying cry. Quote
“I gave instructions to the Brigade that the battle cry on the eighth 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.”
End quote.
One of the most famous Canadian posters from the First World War featured a soldier holding a nursing sister in the Atlantic Ocean amid the wreckage of the Llandovery Castle. While he holds the woman with one hand, he is shaking his first at the German U-Boat.
In bold letters it said,
“Remember the Llandovery Castle”
Used for propaganda and to sell Victory Bonds, and it was highly effective.
Allied nations were angry by the assault on a humanitarian vessel and in Germany, blame was shifted to the British and the crew instead of the U-Boat.
In 1921, Capt. Helmut Patzig, along with Lieutenants Ludwig Dithmar and John Boldt, appeared the Leipzig War Crimes Trial before the German Supreme Court.
The trials were mandated under the Treaty of Versailles, and nine war crimes were tried, including the one relating to the Llandovery Castle attack.
For their part, Lieutenants Ludwig Dithmar and John Boldt claimed innocence and Boldt even testified that he was just obeying his commander officer. He said,
“His orders were law. I am not guilty.”
On 16 July 1921, the Imperial Court of Justice convicted the Lieutenants Ludwig Dithmar and John Boldt to 4 years imprisonment for having assisted with firing at lifeboats.
The Court found that it was perfectly clear to the accused that their act was against the law, and that they should have refused to obey.
The Court noted that the Commander of the U-Boat was primarily responsible for these acts. However, his whereabouts were unknown.
That’s because Captain Patzig had escaped to Danzig, an independent city in Poland, outside German jurisdiction.
He survived until the Second World War, where he took on various roles in the Germany Navy including instruction and training.
From 1941 to 1943, Captain Patzig was a torpedo attack instructor for the 25th U-Boat Flotilla in the Baltic Sea.
From 1943 to the end of the war, he was given command of the 26th U-Boat Flotilla, another group of submarines-in-training.
For his service in the war, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class and the War Merit Cross.
He died in West Germany on March 11, 1984.
However, the war crime trial he escaped from had far reaching consequences.
[TRANSITION]
After the lax trials after WWI, the world took a much different approach after atrocities of the Second World War.
Most notably the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, were established by the Allied powers to prosecute high-ranking political and military officials from the Axis powers for crimes committed during the war.
These trials would go on to prosecute major figures from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, thereby establishing the legal principle of holding national leaders accountable for crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Its charters included the principle that obeying orders did not mean one was immune to war crime prosecution. Because… as they had done during the Leipzig trials a quarter century earlier, many used the argument that they were just following orders.
However,
Soviet, British and American prosecutors cited the Llandovery Castle ruling in three different trials from 1943 to 1947 and in each case, they got a conviction.
.
In 2002, the International Criminal Court was created to prosecute war criminals.
It followed that same principle inspired decades earlier by the Llandovery Castle case.
The court to this day does not allow superior’s orders as a defence and is only considered in terms of sentencing.
And that is how a Canadian tragedy has influenced how the world prosecutes war crimes to this day.
