Torpedoing of the hospital ship Gloucester Castle

Ten days after the torpedoing of the Asturias, a German submarine attacked another British hospital ship. On the evening of 30 March 1917 the Gloucester Castle was crossing the English Channel from Le Havre to Southampton, carrying several hundred wounded and sick soldiers from the Western Front. She was sailing without escort, lit up like every hospital ship. According to the accounts of rescued soldiers, at about 11.45 p.m. a torpedo struck her without warning in the engine room and disabled all her engines. It happened in the area of the Isle of Wight, according to the British “Annual Register” in mid-Channel. Some lists, including uboat.net, give the date as 31 March, because the rescue lasted until morning.

The Gloucester Castle was a Union-Castle Line steamer of about 8,000 gross register tons, built in 1911 at the Fairfield yard in Glasgow. From August 1914 she carried troops of the British Expeditionary Force to France, and from the end of May 1915 she served as a hospital ship. She was attacked by UB-32, a small submarine of the Flanders flotilla commanded by Max Viebeg.

The ship did not sink. A warship answered her distress signals, and the wounded and the crew were transferred to boats and rescue vessels. According to the rescued soldiers, they waited in the boats for about an hour, and the rescue vessel stood by the Gloucester Castle until dawn, picking up the last survivors. On the morning of 31 March the survivors were landed at Southampton. Three people died during the transfer of the wounded and the crew, but all the wounded were taken off the ship, as the “Annual Register” emphasised. The damaged ship was then towed into port. She was repaired, survived the war and returned to merchant service.

Two hospital ships torpedoed within ten days showed that the Germans were taking seriously their January warning, according to which hospital ships would no longer be tolerated in the waters between England and France. On 2 April the government was asked in the House of Commons whether it intended to respond with reprisals. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, Thomas Macnamara, replied that he had nothing to announce on the matter. Two weeks later, on 14 April, British and French aircraft bombed Freiburg im Breisgau in broad daylight, and the Admiralty announced that this was a reprisal for the sinking of hospital ships. Some MPs criticised the raid, in which women and children suffered. The attacks continued: on 17 April the ambulance transports Lanfranc, which was also carrying wounded German prisoners, and Donegal were torpedoed and sunk in the Channel.