Atrocity on the Atlantic
Attack on a Hospital Ship During the Great War
How a German submarine sank a Canadian military hospital ship during the First World War and sparked outrage.
On the evening of June 27, 1918, the Llandovery Castle — an unarmed, clearly marked hospital ship used by the Canadian military — was torpedoed off the Irish Coast by U-Boat 86, a German submarine.
Sinking a hospital ship violated international law. To conceal his actions, the U-86 commander had a submarine deck gun fire on survivors. One lifeboat escaped with witnesses to the atrocity. Global outrage over the attack ensued.
The incident became a pivotal case at the Leipzig War Crimes Trials, an attempt to establish justice after the Great War ended. The Llandovery Castle trial resulted in a historic legal precedent that guided subsequent war crimes prosecutions at Nuremberg and elsewhere.
Atrocity on the Atlantic explores the ship’s sinking, the people impacted by the attack, and the reasons why this wartime atrocity was largely forgotten.
Nate Hendley is a journalist and author of several books, primarily on crime-related subjects. His book The Beatle Bandit (about a murderous 1964 bank heist) won the Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Non-Fiction in 2022. He lives in Toronto.
