HMHS Llandovery Castle — historic photograph

Union-Castle Line

HMHS Llandovery Castle

Canadian hospital ship (sunk 1918)

1914 Barclay Curle, Glasgow 10,639 GRT 500 ft Shipwreck
10,639GRT
Tonnage
500ft
Length
63ft
Beam
15knots
Speed
429passengers
Passengers
258crew
Crew

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 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 war crimes trials.

Text: Wikipedia — HMHS Llandovery Castle, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tonnage
10,639 GRT
Length
500 ft 1 in
Beam
63 ft 3 in
Speed
15 knots
Passengers
429 passengers (213 1st class, 116 2nd class, and 100 3rd class)
Crew
258
Builder
Barclay Curle, Glasgow
Yard number
504
Launched
3 September 1913
Propulsion
Quadruple expansion steam engines
Fate
Sunk by SM U-86, 27 June 1918
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