RMSP Asturias — Hospital Ship of the Great War

RMSP Asturias - Hospital Ship of the Great War depicts the Asturias, originally a passenger liner of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which was converted to a hospital ship during World War I and performed the task of repatriating wounded and sick soldiers from the battlefields of France and Flanders to England.

The painting shows the Asturias in Royal Mail service departing the Solent as evening closes in, her silhouette against the cloudy sky. Seagulls and Oyster Catchers wander the shoreline in the foreground. The atmosphere is quiet and contemplative.

This ship has an unexpected link to literary history. Among the thousands of wounded soldiers the Asturias carried was a young officer named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. In 1916, Tolkien was serving with the Lancashire Fusiliers on the Somme when he contracted trench fever. Tolkien was evacuated and transported on a hospital ship, likely the Asturias, back to England for recovery. While convalescing, he would begin writing the stories that would eventually become The Lord of the Rings.

The Asturias was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat in 1917, but the crew beached the ship and she was raised, later to have another career as the cruise ship Arcadian.