Built for Robinson Rowland of Whitby the freighter Robina was launched at Joseph L. Thompson's shipyard in North Shields on Oct. 13, 1883. The 260' long ship was used in the Baltic and the Med by the company until 1893 when she was sold. After several owners and name changes she ended up at De Chanaud & Cié of Le Havre, France in 1913 under the name Lyndiane. Sailing independently from Kaolack to Fécamp her career came to an end on July 16, 1918 in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of San Sebastián, Spain.

According to survivors, at 2145 that evening a torpedo exploded aft on the port side of the ship, there had been no warning, no shot across the bow, no attempt made to stop the ship and inspect her. This is what is meant by "unrestricted submarine warfare" which was the practice of the Kaiserliche Marine at this stage of the war. Captain Laborie had the engines stopped and gave the order to abandon the ship.

As the lifeboats were being lowered (there were only 2 and 1 raft) a second torpedo hit the ship, this caused one of the lifeboats to become dislodged and luckily it landed upright in the sea. The other lifeboat and the raft were lowered without incident, Captain Laborie being the last person to disembark the ship. Four men were found to be missing and presumably killed by the torpedoes, but the other thirty-four survivors, including a number of passengers and a 23 year old woman, were safely away in the boats.

What happened next shocked the survivors, Kapitänleutnant Paul Hundius and SMS UB-103 broke the surface and immediately rammed one of the lifeboats cutting it in half. Shocked at such bad seamanship the survivors began to help those in the water. However it was not bad seamanship, but a deliberate attack against the survivors for Hundius came around and rammed the other lifeboat, killing the female passenger and Captain Laborie along with several others.

Hundius then drove through the remains of the first lifeboat in a second attempt to kill the survivors. His next victim was the raft, but it was given a glancing blow and it survived the attack. One of the men on the raft decided to swim back to the Lyndiane, which was still afloat, but, according to one of the survivors, the U-boat came around and cut him to pieces with the propeller.

The submarine moved off and fired several shells into the Lyndiane and she finally sank, but Hundius was not finished with the survivors. He turned around and rammed the raft once again, but again only caused some damage. There was now, reportedly, a verbal exchange between the survivors on the raft and the men on the U-boat. One of the survivors apparently yelled something at the submarine in French, which the Germans may or may not have understood, the Germans yelled back, in German, which the French may or may not have understood, but it was reported that the Germans "jeered" and "laughed" at the survivors (it is difficult to judge if this was true or just anti-German propaganda), then the U-boat made one more attempt to sink the raft, this time they were successful. After this UB-103 sailed off leaving the few survivors to their doom.

Hundius failed (as was usually the case) to dispose of all of the survivors, and eight were picked up by a Spanish destroyer and several fishing vessels the next day. It is only due to them that we know what happened on that day because Hundius, his men UB-103 did not survive the war.

Hundius had sunk almost 100,000 tons of shipping (69 ships), but in mid August of 1918 he sailed from Zeebrugge, Belgium in UB-103 and never returned. Exactly what caused the loss of the boat is still unknown.