Features / World War I
Bristol’s War: The war crime of the U.86
On the evening of June 27, 1918 the hospital ship Llandovery Castle was crossing the Atlantic, returning to Britain after taking wounded Canadian troops home.
There were no injured aboard her but there were 258 and crew and medical staff. About 100 of the crew were from Bristol.
Though she was showing bright lights and was clearly a hospital ship and therefore should have been immune from attack under the normal rules of war, the German U-Boat U.86 commanded by Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Patzig torpedoed her.
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The German captain then tried to cover up a war crime by deliberately ramming the lifeboats and machine-gunning survivors in the water. Only 24 people escaped on a single lifeboat. We are not sure how many Bristolians survived; it may just have been two.
At the war’s end, when the German fleet was surrendered, the crew of U.86 did not talk about what they had done. It was a few years before any attempt was made to bring them to justice.
In the meantime, some of the captive U-Boats were toured around the country by Royal Navy crews. Two were brought to Bristol in December 1918; one of them was U.86.
They were moored in front of the Hippodrome (the area was still part of the Floating Harbour and would only be covered later) and Bristolians eagerly queued up to go aboard and look around the U-Boats, with their entry fees going to charity.
And at that point, nobody knew that the ship they were eagerly looking over had been responsible for killing more than 90 Bristol men in cold blood.
Oberleutnant Patzig escaped justice, and again worked for the German U-Boat service in World War II. He died in his bed at the age of 96.
This is one of over 100 tales of Bristol in the First World War written by Eugene Byrne for Bristol 2014 and available on a free smartphone app, Great War Stories. Details and downloads at www.bristol2014.com/great-war-stories-map-and-app.html
Picture: Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Patzig
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