HMHS Llandovery Castle

HMHS Llandovery Castle

HM Hospital Ship Llandovery Castle
History
United Kingdom
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
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	Quadruple expansion steam engines 6,500 ihp (4,800 kW) Twin propellers
Speed	15 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
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. 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.