On a voyage from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Liverpool, England, the ship was torpedoed off southern Ireland on 27 June 1918.

234 doctors, nurses, members of the Canadian Army Medical Corps, soldiers and seamen died in the sinking and subsequent machine-gunning of lifeboats.

[2] She was commissioned as a hospital ship on 26 July 1916, and assigned to the Canadian Forces, equipped with 622 beds and a medical staff of 102.

While under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Howard MacDonald of Nova Scotia, HMHS Llandovery Castle was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine SM U-86 on 27 June 1918.

Among those lost were fourteen nursing sisters from Canada, including Rena McLean[4] and the Matron Margaret Marjory (Pearl) Fraser, formerly of Nova Scotia (daughter of Duncan Cameron Fraser who served as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia, 1906-1910 ).

It was doubtful if any of them came to the surface again, although I myself sank and came up three times, finally clinging to a piece of wreckage and being eventually picked up by the captain's boat.

The Germans had sunk a British hospital ship, the Llandovery Castle, and we were sailing through floating bodies.

On 21 July 1921, Dithmar and Boldt were found guilty in one of the Leipzig War Crimes Trials and were both sentenced to four years in prison.

[10] According to American historian Alfred de Zayas, however, "generally speaking, the German population took exception to these trials, especially because the Allies were not similarly bringing their own soldiers to justice.

The Canadian reaction was typified by Brigadier George Tuxford, former homesteader from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and commanding officer of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, 1st Canadian Division: "Amongst those murdered were two Moose Jaw nurses, Sister Fraser and Sister Gallagher.

[15] The opera is composed by Stephanie Martin with a libretto by Paul Ciufo,[16] and according to one reviewer "breaks the story down into nine scenes set on the ship and, at the end, in the lifeboats, before the chorus steps out of time to reflect on what we have seen and heard.