The Secretary of the Admiralty last night made the following announcement: His Majesty’s hospital ship Dover Castle was torpedoed without warning at 6pm on the 26th inst in the Mediterranean. At 8.30pm she was again torpedoed, and subsequently sank. The whole of the hospital patients and hospital staff were safely transferred to other ships, and the crew were also saved, with the exception of six men missing and feared killed by the explosions.
His Majesty’s armed mercantile cruiser Hilary (Acting Captain F W Dean, RN) has been torpedoed and sunk in the North Sea. There were four men killed by the explosion. The next-of-kin in each case have been informed.
One of his Majesty’s torpedo-boat destroyers has been in collision and sunk. There were no casualties.
The following is the official list of the casualties in HMS Hilary: Killed: McGrievy, Peter, Senior Reserve Attendant (RNAS BR), Shenton, Edwin Harrison Boy 1st Class.
Specially entered mercantile crew: Robb, Frank, Shipwright. Trimble, William, Assistant Storekeeper.
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The Dover Castle in peace was a Union Castle liner. She was a twin-screw vessel of 8,271 tons gross, built by Barclay, Curle, and Co. (Limited), at Glasgow, in 1904, and had a speed of l4 knots.
The Hilary was originally a twin-screw Booth liner of 6,329 tons gross, with a speed of 14 knots, and was built by the Caledon Company at Dundee in 1908.
PREVIOUS ATTACKS ON HOSPITAL SHIPS.
The Dover Castle is the fifth British hospital ship to have been torpedoed without warning since the night of March 20, when the Asturias was attacked and 31 of the medical services and crew were killed, 12, including a female staff nurse and a stewardess, were missing, and 39 were injured. The Asturias had been attacked off Havre on February 1, 1915, when, fortunately, the torpedo missed its mark.
On the night of March 30-31 last the hospital ship Gloucester Castle was torpedoed, and in the evening of April 17 the Donegal and Lanfranc were sunk. Of the wounded in the Donegal 23 were drowned. In the case of Lanfranc, 13 wounded officers and men, one of the RAMC men, and five of the crew were lost.
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Two German wounded officers and 13 wounded German other ranks were drowned, while 152 wounded German prisoners were rescued by British patrol vessels at the imminent risk of being themselves torpedoed.
It is also reasonable to suppose that the hospital ships Braemar Castle and Britannic were also torpedoed in November, 1916, although the evidence at the time was not considered conclusive as to whether their loss was caused by mines or torpedo. On March 30, 1916, a deliberate attack was made on the Franco-Russian hospital ship Portugal near Of, in Eastern Anatolia, and the vessel sank in less than a minute, over 100, including many women, being killed.
WAR ON THE RED CROSS.
According to a Reuter message from Amsterdam dated May 26, a Berlin semi-official telegram had been received there in the course of which it was stated that “the German Government will in future prevent all traffic by hospital ships in the entire barred zone and in the Mediterranean, including the route left open for Greece, and will regard enemy hospital ships appearing there as vessels of war, and attack them immediately.”