HOSPITAL SHIP SUNK BY GERMAN SUBMARINE.
A new and horrible act of piracy has been added to the growing catalogue of Germany’s crimes. On the night of June 27, when 116 miles south-west of the Fastnet, the hospital ship Llandovery Castle was torpedoed by an enemy submarine, and sank in ten minutes. The Llandovery Castle, with Captain E. Sylvester in command, had no sick or wounded on board, as she was homeward bound from Canada; her crew numbered 164 officers and men, and she carried besides fourteen nursing sisters and eighty members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. Of this total of 258 only twenty-four survivors have so far reached port.
All the details of the crime suggest that the perpetrators not only knew what they were doing, but gloried in the opportunity afforded them of doing wanton injury, and committing deliberate murder against innocent persons. Huge quantities of wreckage were floating on the surface of the sea, and amongst them men were calling out for help.
The captain’s boat was busy in picking up all that could be rescued from the wreckage, when suddenly the submarine itself became visible, and an order was given to the captain’s boat to come alongside. He was asked what his ship was, and on his replying that it was a hospital ship, the commander of the submarine at once charged him with carrying eight American flight officers. The captain of the Llandovery Castle immediately made an indignant reply in the negative, but the charge was repeated, even after a Canadian medical officer, who was examined, had stated the facts of the case with the utmost clearness. We may remark in passing that this Canadian officer, Major T. Lyon, was so roughly handled in dragging him on board the submarine, that he had a small bone in his foot broken. Even when the captain’s boat was allowed to leave, obvious efforts were made to sink it; the submarine circled round the wreckage at full speed; and subsequently fire was opened at a target unseen.
Throughout the whole narrative we have every evidence of calculated cruelty. The various charges made by the German officer, such as the carrying of American flight officers and the possession of a store of munitions, were the flimsiest of excuses, and the shelling of survivors only repeated incidents which have been observed in numberless cases under the same conditions. We naturally ask how it is possible for any of us to enter into any parley with an enemy who thus violates the first instincts of humanity? Acts like these only serve to harden our resolution, and bring us once more to the inevitable conclusion that only when the Germans have discovered that piracy and brutality do not pay, and show some signs of penitence for past misdeeds, can we ever enter into negotiations, or discuss offers, however plausible, of peace.
telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive