Nate Hendley is a Toronto-based journalist and author. He has written a number of true-crime books including his most recent one from Dundurn Press, Atrocity on the Atlantic, which features the story of the Llandovery Castle, an unarmed, marked Canadian military during the First World War, which was “torpedoed off the Irish coast by U-Boat 86, a German submarine.”

“Sinking hospital ships violated international law. To conceal his actions, the U-86 commander had the submarine deck guns fire on survivors. One lifeboat escaped with witnesses to the atrocity. Global outrage over the attack ensued.”


“The sinking of the Llandovery Castle was adjudicated at the Leipzig War Crimes Trials, an attempt to establish justice after hostilities ceased. The Llandovery Castle case resulted in a historic legal precedent that guided subsequent war crime prosecutions, including the Nuremberg Trials.”


I interview Nate about how he found the “largely forgotten” piece of Canadian history.

How did you first hear about this story?

I write articles for TVO.org (the website of TVOntario). Most of my articles deal with historic topics. I was poking around the Internet, looking for story ideas, when I came across a reference to the Leipzig War Crimes Trials.

Everyone knows there were war crime trials after World War 2, but I didn’t realize there were similar trials after World War 1 (and I’m pretty well versed in history).  

Surprise turned to amazement when I discovered that the pivotal case at the Leipzig trials concerned a Canadian hospital ship called the Llandovery Castle. The ship was deliberately sunk by a German U-boat, or submarine, in violation of international prewar treaties.

Then, the sub commander tried to murder survivors by shelling the lifeboats. An incredible, horrible, story with which I was totally unfamiliar.

Why did you decide you needed to write Atrocity on the Atlantic and tell the story?

I felt there was a need for Canadians to know about this tragedy, which was largely forgotten in the decades after it happened. The story is so complex and far-reaching. It’s more than just a case of a hospital ship being torpedoed by a submarine. There’s also the issue of 14 female nurses on board the Llandovery Castle who died in the attack, and the subsequent war crimes trials.

The justices at the Leipzig War Crimes Trials issued two epochal precedents in the Llandovery Castle case. They said war crimes should be judged by international standards and that obeying orders was not a defense for committing illegal acts in wartime. These principles became central to the prosecution of Nazi-era war criminals in the 1940s and remain integral to our understanding of war crimes today.

There are some excellent books about the nurses on board and detailed, academic examinations of the Leipzig Trials. I wanted to write a book that recounted the entire story from the sinking of the ship to the trials, and the long aftermath.

I love that “no imagined conversations” were shared in this book, instead you found witness accounts, newspaper articles, letters and more. How did you find these sources? What was the most significant piece of information you found that pulled this story together?

My first step involved gathering and reading every available book and newspaper article about the Llandovery Castle and Leipzig Trials that I could find. Fortunately, I live in Toronto so I could access some pretty obscure books at the Toronto Reference Library that related to the story. The website www.newspapers.com was very helpful for sourcing old news stories.

I also visited Ottawa to view documents at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). I found all manner of material, from survivor interviews to descriptions of day-to-day life on board the Llandovery Castle. While the Llandovery Castle was a hospital ship, it was in the service of the Canadian military. As such, there are a huge number of documents, reports, and memos, about the ship, its patients, and medical personnel, from army and navy officials.

The LAC files also included handwritten letters to various authorities written by friends and family of people serving on the Llandovery Castle. Heartbreaking queries, asking if a son or brother was still alive. It was sad and poignant to read these pleas, and to view the somewhat formulaic government responses.

While in Ottawa, I also went to the Canadian War Museum to examine personal items belonging to orderly William Pilot, one of six Canadian survivors of the sinking. Pilot compiled a diary after he was rescued in which he described the attack on the ship in a detailed but matter-of-fact manner.

FYI: you have to make appointments in advance to view archival material at LAC and the War Museum.

I also tracked down diaries and letters from people who served on the Llandovery Castle and obtained permission to use them. Some of this material was in university archives while other material was gathered from websites. I also received a letter from a private collector that had been written by a Llandovery Castle nurse while she traveled on the ship.

I found plenty of other information online as well. I located a summary of the Leipzig War Crimes Trials, complete with translated court rulings, for example. I also sourced official summaries and books about World War 2-era war crime trials.  

There was no one single piece of information that pulled the story together, although the material from LAC and the Canadian War Museum was probably the most essential.

All the material I used are listed in the back of my book, along with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of main sources.

How long did it take to research and write Atrocity on the Atlantic?

About 1.5 years. Keep in mind, I work from Monday to Friday as a journalist, primarily writing trade and business magazine articles. So, this wasn’t 1.5 years solely focused on the book. I had to squeeze in research and writing time when I could.

I loved learning about the victims of this sinking and that all these years later they are being remembered again. Were you able to find information about all of the victims of this sinking? 

It was relatively easy to find information about the medical staff on the Llandovery Castle (who were Canadian) and much more difficult to find information about the ship crew (who were British).  

Digitized personnel records of Canadians who served in World War can be downloaded from the Library and Archives website (including files from army doctors and nurses). Since these files are over a century old, they are now publicly available, for anyone to peruse. Some of these records are over 100 pages long and contain enormous amounts of information about every aspect of the service person’s military career.

British service records from World War 1 aren’t as easy to access.  

Canadian History has a reputation for being boring. This book, and others you have written, shows otherwise. Why do you think Canadian history is portrayed has a reputation for being less than exciting? Any ideas or suggestions you may have for teachers/educators who want to do more showcase the amazing stories in Canadian history?

It goes back to the national myth that Canada was all about “peace, order and good government,” which implies stability and stifling conformity.

Canada’s founding story (a negotiated settlement with Great Britain) is considerably duller than America’s founding story (violent revolution against Great Britain). Not counting the North-West Rebellion led by Louis Riel, Canada didn’t have a shattering civil war either.

That said, you don’t have to look too hard to find stories that don’t fit the mould of Canada being a safe, smug, and dull nation. Our treatment of First Nations people was abysmal, slavery also existed in Canada, hangings used to be held in public for all to see, and we locked up Ukrainian civilians in World War 1 and Japanese civilians in World War 2.

Kids might be more interested in history if it addressed these issues, and we didn’t pretend that Canada was a tidy, perfect nation where everyone got along.

You have written 13 books, six of which feature Canadian stories including several history books. Was the process (finding, researching, writing) for crafting Atrocity on the Atlantic similar to your previous works, or was this one somehow different

The overall process of putting Atrocity together was no different than with any other book I’ve done: develop the idea, develop a timeline and then develop a storyline that keeps the reader interested.

The research process, however, was far more intense than anything I’ve done before. I visited Library and Archives Canada and the War Museum for the first-time in-person to conduct research. Through these visits and other efforts, I ended up with a gigantic amount of primary and secondary material to sort through.

You are a journalist. What journalist skills are most useful to you as an author? Are there some journalistic tricks that are not applicable to writing a book? 

Some writers are shy about interviewing people. I am not. As a journalist, I do it all the time. So, I had no problem tracking down descendants of Llandovery Castle survivors and victims and arranging interviews.

As a journalist, you learn how to manage your time, take criticism and write to deadline and a specific word count.  

Journalists are also good at summarizing vast amounts of information. Atrocity on the Atlantic could have been twice as long, given the amount of material I had, but I wanted to present a digestible book that kept reader interest.   

What would be the ideal take away that you would hope readers have from reading Atrocity on the Atlantic?

I hope to refocus attention on a largely forgotten Canadian military wartime tragedy that hugely influenced how we perceive and prosecute war crimes. I want to remind readers of the sacrifice of the brave people on board on the Llandovery Castle when it was sunk.

Wartime heroism isn’t just for soldiers. The doctors, nurses, and crew members on the Llandovery Castle were as brave as any soldiers going “over the top” to attack enemy trenches in World War 1.  

Atrocity on the Atlantic is from Dundurn Press and retails for $24.99.