page_title: Hospital ship
section_title: World Wars
hierarchical_section_title: Hospital ship / History / World Wars
caption_attribution_description: English: His Majesty’s Hospital Ship Aquitania during World War I. Deutsch: Die Aquitania als Lazarettschiff während des Ersten Weltkriegs
context_page_description: A hospital ship is a ship designated for primary function as a floating medical treatment facility or hospital. Most are operated by the military forces of various countries, as they are intended to be used in or near war zones. In the nineteenth century redundant warships were used as moored hospitals for seamen.
  The Second Geneva Convention prohibits military attacks on hospital ships, though belligerent forces do have rights of inspection and may take injured enemy patients as prisoners of war.
context_section_description: During World War I and World War II, hospital ships were first used on a massive scale. Many passenger liners were converted for use as hospital ships. RMS Aquitania and HMHS Britannic were two famous examples of ships serving in this capacity. By the end of the First World War, The British Royal Navy had 77 such ships in service. During the Gallipoli Campaign, hospital ships were used to evacuate over 100,000 wounded personnel to Egypt.
  Canada operated hospital ships in both world wars. In World War I these included SS Letitia (I) and HMHS Llandovery Castle which was deliberately sunk by a German U-boat with great loss of life, despite the hospital ship's clearly marked status. In World War II, Canada operated the hospital ship RMS Lady Nelson and SS Letitia (II).
  The first purposely built hospital ship in the U.S. Navy was USS Relief which was commissioned in 1921. During World War II both the United States Navy and Army operated hospital ships though with different purposes. Naval hospital ships were fully equipped hospitals designed to receive casualties direct from the battlefield and also supplied to provide logistical support to front line medical teams ashore. Army hospital ships were essentially hospital transports intended and equipped to evacuate patients from forward area Army hospitals to rear area hospitals or from those to the United States and were not equipped or staffed to handle large numbers of direct battle casualties. Three of the Navy hospital ships, USS Comfort, USS Hope, and USS Mercy, were less elaborately equipped than other Navy hospital ships, medically staffed by Army medical personnel and similar in purpose to the Army model.
  The last British royal yacht, the post World War II HMY Britannia, was ostensibly constructed in a way as to be easily convertible to a hospital ship in wartime. After her decommissioning, Peter Hennessey discovered that this was a cover story: her actual role would have been as Queen Elizabeth II's refuge from nuclear weapons, hiding amidst the lochs (fjords) of western Scotland.
  A development of the Lun-class ekranoplan was planned for use as a mobile field hospital for rapid deployment to any ocean or coastal location at a speed of 297 knots (550 km/h, 341.8 mph). Work was 90% complete on this model, Spasatel, but Soviet military funding ceased and it was never completed.
  Some hospital ships, such as USS Hope and Esperanza del Mar, belong to civilian agencies, and as such are not part of any navy. Mercy Ships, an international charity, do not belong to any government.
caption: HMHS Aquitania in World War I service as a hospital ship.
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