Cecelia “Cissie” Owens, of Ellwood City Pennsylvania, boarded the Lusitania on May 1 1915, with her sons Reginald, 10 and Ronald, 6, her brother Alfred Smith, sister- in- law Elizabeth Jones Smith, and nieces Helen and Elizabeth “Bessie” Smith. The extended Smith family had immigrated to the United States from Swansea, Wales, piecemeal over the prior ten years. They settled first in Yonkers, New York and later in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, and that May two branches of the family were returning to the United Kingdom. It would later be said that the Alfred Smith family had grown disillusioned with American life and were permanently resettling in Wales: the reason for Cecelia Owens’ voyage is less clear, but since her husband, Hubert, remained behind in Ellwood City is it possible that she and her sons were simply returning to her ancestral home for a visit. The afternoon of May 7^th found Cecelia Owens minding Bessie Smith in her cabin, while Reginald and Ronald Owens played on deck with their cousin Helen. Shortly after two, the boys appeared at the door to request an extension of their play time. Cecelia would later recall their last words as being  “ we are playing on deck and we are enjoying ourselves. Helen is with us, and it is such fun!” and so she granted them permission for another half hour of play.

Cecelia interpreted the initial blast as being the ship running aground or perhaps striking a rock, but there was no mistaking the second stronger explosion for anything other than what it was. Joining a crowd of ‘scampering’ passengers, and carrying Bessie Smith, she climbed upward to the open second class decks hoping to find her sons. She encountered, instead, her brother and sister in law who were searching for their missing daughters. Cecelia returned Bessie to them, and then the Smith family and Mrs. Owens parted, each setting off separately to find the missing children. Cecelia moved around the deck calling for her boys and Helen. At some point a stranger stopped her and affixed a lifebelt, and after that Mrs. Owens was tossed into a lifeboat. It capsized, and she was thrown into the ocean along with the other occupants. Cecelia swam with two men to a swamped collapsible, from which she was rescued some hours later by a fishing trawler.

Reginald and Ronald Owens died in the disaster, as did Alfred and Elizabeth Smith and their daughter Bessie. None of the bodies were ever recovered or, if recovered, identified, and for Cecelia the only consolation came when she was reunited with Helen Smith at her hotel in Queenstown: Helen had seen her at a distance and called out “why, here is auntie!”

Mrs Owens traveled on to Swansea, where she was described as being in a very nervous, “shocked” state. She composed a letter to Arthur Smith, back in Yonkers, in which she said:

Cecelia Mildred Owens did not return to Pennsylvania. In a letter written in late 1915 she mentioned that she was still depressed and unable to concentrate. Her husband, Hubert, eventually joined her in Swansea, where she died of complications of cancer on July 20 1966 at the age of 87

The photograph of Cecelia Owens’ niece, Helen Smith, 6, wearing her white hat and holding her doll remains one of the most frequently reprinted, and best known, of the Lusitania disaster images. In its day, the photo charmed royalty, and induced a substantial number of adoption attempts in the weeks following its initial publication: 90 years later it retains much of its original power to charm and elicit sympathy for the young orphan.

Alfred and Elizabeth Smith likely remained aboard the Lusitania to the last. It is reasonable to assume that after parting company with Cecelia Owens they continued to search for their missing daughter until time- and escape options- ran out. They died not knowing that Helen had been rescued, with relative ease, in one of only six lifeboats successfully lowered.

It is difficult to imagine what Helen Smith must have experienced that afternoon. Alone on deck, awaiting the return of her cousins, she would have heard, and possibly seen, the explosions forward on the starboard side. She would have felt the ship beginning its first roll to starboard, and may have witnessed the first lifeboat to upend and eject its passengers.  She would definitely have seen the waves of passengers coming up from below, many orderly, others beginning to show the signs of panic and demoralization described by some survivors. What she did not see in the mass of people, was any sign of her parents or extended family.  Fate interceded, and Helen’s life was saved by the appearance of Toronto newsman Ernest Cowper:

Survivor Elizabeth Hampshire recalled being with Helen in the lifeboat. “I had a little girl on my knee in the lifeboat. She told me she was called Helen Smith.” As they waited for rescue, Helen turned to Elizabeth and her foster sister, Florence Whitehead, and said, “If I can’t find my Mamma and Daddy, I’ll go with you ladies.”

It seems that Ernest Cowper served as Helen’s unofficial guardian in Queenstown. A photograph of him holding the child was printed in papers across the UK, Canada, and US. He was mentioned, and quoted, frequently in newspaper columns and through him it is possible to document much of Helen’s immediate post-sinking experience:

Though the Royal Invitation story seems, at first glance, to be a newspaper fabrication, a letter from Queen Dowager Alexandra inquiring about Helen survives in the Smith file in the Cunard Archive.

There was at least one Helen Smith newsreel produced during the week after the sinking.

Helen was claimed by her grandfather, Captain Smith, and returned with him to Swansea, where she was allowed to fade from the limelight and lead as normal a life as possible under the circumstances.  A clipping from the 1920s quoted Ernest Cowper as saying that he kept in touch with Miss Smith and that he was proud that she had received an award for academic excellence.  A 1925 anniversary article revealed that Helen was living with another family, presumably after the death of her grandfather, and was doing well in school.

A bizarre footnote to Helen’s tale appeared in the early 1930s. A female “Lusitania orphan” close in age to Helen, had been murdered and cemented under a garden pool by her adoptive father, who committed suicide by jumping from a ferry the day the bodies of the girl and her mother were uncovered. Whether the girl truly was a Lusitania orphan as early press accounts claimed, and what her true identity was remains to be discovered. However, it can be said with assurance that she was not Helen Smith. Helen had married John Henry Thomas, a wholesale department manager, in Swansea in late 1931. They had at least one child- a daughter- and continued to live in peace and comfortable obscurity for the remainder of their lives. She was interviewed by Hickey and Smith (credited as Helen Thomas) for their book, and survived more than a decade beyond that, dying in Swansea (where she had been born in October 1908) on April 8, 1993.

Mrs. Walter Tijou, of Bromley, spent the latter half of Friday May 7 anxiously awaiting word of her husband, Walter, and son, Howard both of who were returning from the United States aboard the Lusitania.

Howard Tijou had enjoyed an adventurous, and fortunate, life until that afternoon. The previous summer, while away at school in Europe, he had been trapped by the outbreak of war and, according to his mother’s account, escaped aboard the last train after his father went behind enemy lines to recover him. A few years prior to that, while accompanying his father on a business trip, he had been caught in Mexico during Pancho Villa’s revolution. He had made eleven transatlantic crossings.  Now, returning from another business trip with his father, Howard’s luck ran out.

Walter Tijou returned, alone, to Bromley, his 43^rd crossing at a tragic end.  Sick from his experience, and full of regret at not finding his son before the ship sank, he spoke to the press through his wife:

The Tijous would learn that their son had been playing on deck with some other boys when the ship was torpedoed. His body was never identified. Walter was awarded $5,000 for his injuries and $500 for lost possessions. He was advised by doctors to move to a “warm and dry climate”, so on November 19, 1919 he moved to the United States. Walter Edgar Tijou passed away in Van Nuys, California on July 21, 1941.

Joseph Frankum walked ashore “a broken man.”  He had seen his wife and three children swept away when the Lusitania went down. He was wet, and he wore only a pair of pants, a slipper and one sock. In his pocket, he had his money, papers and a water stained watch stopped at 2:22. “I thought I had lost my whole family.” He was “billeted” in a private home, but instead of sleeping, immediately began his search and examined body after body as they were brought ashore, with no success. The next morning he began again and “met some people who told me they thought my boy was at the Rob Roy Hotel... I came across my oldest boy, seven years of age, in the hotel.” Joseph was overjoyed and immediately woke his son. “How did you come here Dad,” a bleary-eyed Francis asked. At first, the father was “too full to answer,” but finding his voice he said, “You see Francis, I told you God would take care of you, and He has- hasn’t He?” The boy replied, “Yes Dad, He has.”

Shortly thereafter, Joseph and his brother met. They made their way first to Liverpool to inquire about Joseph’s missing family and then to Aston, Birmingham where their mother lived. It was a sad reunion for there was no word about his wife Annie or their two children, Frederick and Winifred. Reporters soon made their way to 55 Webster Street to interview Joseph. He was somewhat reluctant at first. “The whole story, I will tell voluntarily, but not now.” He had left England and initially lived in Canada where his wife gave birth to Frederick and from there they relocated to Detroit, Michigan, where Winifred was born. “You know, in America my wife and I were Sunday school teachers.” Believing that moving back to England would be good for the family, they booked third class passage on the Lusitania. On the day of the disaster, “We were all having a cup of tea for’ard, just after getting our baggage ready for shore… something went bang. I knew what it was immediately. The vessel at once heeled over to starboard, and my little boy turned and said, ‘What’s that, Daddy?’ I didn’t answer him… As soon as the explosion occurred, I gripped my two boys while my wife took charge of the little girl… I wouldn’t wait to get lifebelts, as I was afraid we should get trapped below.”

He said they made their way aft, hurrying three-parts length of the ship. “In the hurry, I dropped my little boy who fell about six feet, but I picked him up again and we made our way towards one of the boats… I pushed the wife and kiddies into a boat and said, ‘You stay there while I try and get a lifebelt… I shall be alright.’ Then I made for the second cabin saloon and got a couple of the lifebelts.” As he made his way back on deck, he met a man who had no lifebelt and thrust it into his hands. “Remembering that my people were already in the boat, I said, ‘Here, old man, take this.’ When I got back to the deck, I found the missus and the children had got out of the boat.” They stood on deck deciding what to do. “The steamer had got a heavy list, but just then she steadied a bit and I thought she might right herself… She started to heel over again. I said to my wife “Oh my God, it’s all over. Get back into the lifeboat again.” The lifeboat they were in was on the portside and due to the starboard list, the boat did not get away. Joseph held onto his family as the water came closer. “I hoped that as she sank the lifeboat might rise in her chocks, but whether it did or not I don’t know, for the next instant I was wrenched from my hold and hurled into the water… I stuck to my wife and children as long as I could, but as we sank, we were separated… I was sucked down very deep but came to the surface again.  I could find no traces of my wife nor any of the children.”

Swimming around he came across an overturned boat. He climbed aboard the keel and helped pull others aboard. “A young gentleman who was on the boat tried to comfort me for the loss of my family, and while he was so engaged a man’s body floated alongside us. The young gentleman picked up an oar and lifted the head of the dead man. ‘Good God,’ he cried, ‘It’s my own father.’ And then I had to comfort him.”

They were picked up by a torpedo boat, which Frankum claimed was seeking out the submarine when it heard that the Lusitania had sunk, and went to search for survivors. He said that a woman died on the torpedo boat before they landed. Francis was also interviewed, briefly, and said that as the ship sank, their lifeboat capsized. He clung to an upturned boat and managed to hold on until he was rescued.

A few years later, Joseph and his son moved to Scotland and in 1920, he married Jessie Elizabeth Mitchell in Kelvin, Lanark. They later moved to Dunoon, Argyll where Jessie died in 1952 and Joseph died the following year in 1953. 

Francis married and also worked closely with the Church of Scotland, St John's Dunoon
as a clerk. He died in 1985.

The ladies of The English Ivy Lodge, Daughters of St. George held a Bon Voyage Reception for club officer Lydia Grandidge on April 27^th 1915 at the Richard Armistead residence on Cedar Street in Yonkers New York. Lydia and her three year old daughter, Eva Mary, were to depart aboard the Lusitania on May 1^st for an extended visit to the United Kingdom, and the party was of enough social significance in the Yonkers English community to be covered by the city press.

Lydia and her husband Arthur had emigrated from Leeds, Yorkshire, England to Yonkers in June 1912 aboard the Caronia (Lydia entering the United States under the name of “Nancie” Grandidge- perhaps Lydia was a nickname by which she preferred to be addressed?) where she joined her father, Nathan May, and her sisters, Mrs. Richard Armistead and Mrs. Samuel Dawson.

Arthur Grandidge, although a coachman by profession, found work as a janitor in the Weller Building in Yonkers, and as jack-of-all-trades in their neighborhood. Their home was at 8 Highland Avenue, at the corner of Broadway, in what was then a solidly working class and predominantly English section of Yonkers.

Lydia’s sister Mrs. Elizabeth Stead of Leeds had visited with her extended family in New York during the winter of 1914/1915, returning to the United Kingdom “in poor health” aboard the Lusitania on her February crossing. Lydia, with Eva Mary, was travelling to Leeds that May to pay a nursing visit to Mrs. Stead. They were to return to Yonkers in September. Neither survived the voyage and, as far as we can determine, no one who did survive left any record of how Lydia and Eva spent their final week. What remains from that time is a sympathetic record in the Yonkers press of Arthur Grandidge’s efforts to learn anything of his family’s fate.

On May 8^th, the shaken Mr. Grandidge informed the press that neither he nor Lydia had seen the German warning. On the 9^th it was reported in Yonkers that Mrs. Grandidge had been saved, but on the 10^th it was revealed that friends of the Grandidges had read the name “Mrs Candlish” on the list of survivors and had been struck by the (admittedly slight) similarity between the two names, raising the hope that she was still alive. Arthur Grandidge and Nathan May continued to inquire at the Cunard offices throughout the month, but no trace of Lydia was ever found.  Eva Mary’s body was eventually identified, after having been buried in the mass grave in Queenstown, and her personal effects were shipped back to her father via the Carpathia in July 1915.

Sarah Lund, of Chicago, her husband, Charley Lund, and father, William Mounsey, were aboard the Lusitania on a mission that they hoped would reunite their family.

The previous year, William Mounsey’s wife, Fanny had set out aboard the Empress of Ireland to visit relatives in Keswick, England whom she had not seen in more than thirty years. She was aboard what proved to be the fatal voyage and was lost.  Her body was not recovered and her family was left to grieve and to wonder.

In 1915, a woman by the name of Kate Fitzgerald surfaced in an almshouse in Ormeskirk, England.  She had an intense fear of water and kept muttering the name “Mounsey.” Word of Miss Fitzgerald reached the Lunds and Mr. Mounsey in the United States, and so they booked passage aboard the Lusitania hoping that, perhaps, after a year of mourning a happy resolution to their family tragedy might be possible. It is known that they received at least one warning, from a Doctor Roberg, which pointed out that given the danger of a wartime crossing it might be better to solve the mystery by letters and photographs, but the group departed as scheduled.

Sarah and her acquaintance Eunice Kinch were on the starboard side of the Lusitania when the explosions came: “We were sitting facing where it struck, and the minute it struck we were covered with water.” She ran to the lounge in time to meet her father, and Mrs. Kinch’s son William Mustoe, coming up the stairs, but there was no sign of Charley Lund in the crowd. The group went to the port side boat deck where they entered, and were ordered out of, a lifeboat by crewmen who said the Lusitania would not sink. Sarah turned despairingly to her father and said, “Pa, I know it will sink.”   Robert Timmis, standing nearby, heard the order, and encountered Mr. Mounsey and Mrs. Lund after they evacuated the boat.  Sarah pleaded “Sir, I’ve no lifebelt” and Timmis removed his and strapped it on her.

Sarah and her father spent their last minutes together struggling to climb a staircase, as she recalled, or perhaps a ladder between the boat deck and the deck surrounding the funnels:

Sarah clung to a board for what seemed like hours before being pulled into a lifeboat.  There she met Robert Timmis who had surrendered his lifebelt to her, and he bent down to shake her hand as she lay cold and exhausted in the bottom of the boat. Timmis later described Sarah’s rescue:

Neither William Mounsey nor Charley Lund survived the disaster. Their shipboard friends Eunice Kinch and William Mustoe were lost as well.  Only Charley Lund’s body was recovered. Sarah completed her trip alone and, to compound the futility of her experience, Kate Fitzgerald proved not be her mother.

Sarah returned to the United States where in October, she initiated a lawsuit against Cunard due to a 'conspiracy' between Dudley Field Malone and Captain Turner. She alleged that there was a large cargo of explosives illegally in the hold. She sued for $40,000 and said that she was deceived by Cunard by making statements that it was fully provided with safety devices. In August 1916, she married George Hornberger whose job was to investigate Lusitania claimants.  She was awarded $5000.00 in 1925 for the loss of her husband and personal injury, and an additional $288 for lost property. Although she had no children of her own, she proved to be a favorite aunt within her extended family and is still fondly remembered. She died at the age of 92 on April 2nd 1978 in Niles, Illinois.

Angela Pappadopoulo, of Athens, remains one of the best-remembered Lusitania survivors. She was a striking woman, and a number of different photos of her taken in Queenstown ran in newspapers across the UK and US.  This letter, written just over a week after the sinking is the best surviving account of Mrs. Pappadopoulo’s experiences, and provides a touch of gallows humor as well:

The gallows humor comes, of course, from the time frame in which the events in the letter took place: Angela Pappadopoulo’s breakdown, hospitalization, recovery and anticipated train-and-ship journey back to Greece, took place between her arrival in London on May 9^th and the dictating of this letter on the 15^th. Reading between the lines, it does not seem that she was spoiled with excessive sympathy.

Belle Saunders Naish, of Kansas City, personified several aspects of the emerging ‘new woman’ of 1915. Although neither a suffragette nor a businesswoman, Belle was about as far from the Victorian “Cult of the Female Invalid” as it was possible to get.  She had waited until well past 40 to marry, itself hardly common at a time where the average female life expectancy was less than 65 years and to be unmarried at 30 put one perilously close to the title of Old Maid. Her husband, Theodore Naish, (55 when they married in 1911, and ten years her senior) was a civil engineer of comfortable income, who had done well in real estate and who shared with his wife a love of the outdoors and physical activity. In an era where many women still carried smelling salts, 49 year old Mrs Naish was able to accompany her husband on ten mile hikes without flagging, and their lifestyle was described as “remarkably wholesome.”

May 1^st found the Naishes aboard the Lusitania, booked in Second Class.  Friends had accompanied them to the ship, and one left with them a copy of a newspaper in which the German Embassy’s warning had been run. Mr. Naish declared to his wife:

Despite his robust physical state, Mr Naish fell victim to mal-de-mer and was cabin bound for much of the voyage. Belle would later write that she spent most of her waking hours tending to her husband and therefore, except for at meals, did little mingling on board. He did walk on deck with Mrs Naish on the morning of May 7^th. Both noticed the slow speed at which the Lusitania was travelling, with Theodore Naish commenting “I do not like this; it is too much like calling for trouble.”  When the fog burned off later in the morning both observed a British War vessel and assumed that it was an escort sent out to meet Lusitania: “We had all been told that we were protected all the way by warships, wireless and that submarine destroyers would escort us in the channel. A lovelier day could not be imagined.”  Evidence suggests that Mr Naish returned to his bed, and that he and Belle managed to make it to open deck quickly after the torpedoing:

The Naishes remained with the Lusitania until the end:

Later that evening, it was Belle Naish who observed some small sign of life in the form of Theodate Pope as she lay, presumably among the dead, on the deck of the trawler Julia.  By Miss Pope’s own account, it took nearly two hours of artificial respiration to fully restore her.  It is not known in how close or constant contact the women remained after the disaster; however, Theodate demonstrated her life long gratitude by providing for Mrs. Naish in her will.

In Queenstown, Belle shared a hotel room with Robert Kay, a little boy sick with measles who had seen his heavily pregnant mother swept away as the Lusitania sank beneath them.  She praised him for his bravery, for he only cried for his mother once, and was grateful to him for ‘sustaining’ her during the early days of her mourning, Theodore Naish having been lost.

Mrs. Naish was awarded $12,500.00, for the loss her of husband, by the Mixed Claims Commission in 1924.  She continued to live in the Kansas City area until her death at age 84, on August 25^th 1950. Camp Theodore Naish, a Boy Scout Camp named in honor of her husband and endowed by Mrs. Naish still exists outside of Kansas City.

Mrs. Phoebe Amory of Toronto booked herself aboard the Lusitania at the last minute.  In her published 1917 account, she claimed that her five sons were in military service – two in training, three already in service overseas – and that on April 27^th she made up her mind to visit them “probably for the last time on earth.” She decisively booked passage on the May 1^st sailing for an extended vacation in England.  Here she stretched the point a bit: one son, in fact, was neither in training nor in service, and she had planned on going over a bit earlier to care for her mother but received a cable informing her of her mother’s death.  She was to have been accompanied on board by her daughter, Beatrice, who changed her mind and did not book passage.  Mrs. Amory was descended from a long line of sailors, and although she knew the general risk of a wartime passage, and knew specifically of the German warning, she would later declare that “…it is only natural, and not to be attributed to a desire to boast, that I should have made the voyage warning or no warning.”

Phoebe’s cabin mates in her Second Class room were Mary Higginbottom  (sometimes listed as Higginbotham) of Fall River, Massachusetts, “ A handsome girl, with beautiful fair hair. When I first saw her she was wearing a perfect fitting dress of black velvet, and I was so impressed with her beauty and her frank, straightforward manner of introducing herself to me, that I felt I had indeed been fortunate in having such a charming young lady for a voyage companion” and Martha Whyatt (whom Phoebe referred to as Mrs. Whiret) who until recently had been nursing a relative in the United States “This uncle left her considerable property and she was returning to her native land to spend the remainder of her life among relatives and friends. I believe I have never known a more kindly woman, nor one who seemed to be more ready in a case of emergency to lend a helping hand.” Mrs. Amory was here confused: Mrs. Whyatt had lost her husband, Aaron, not an uncle. Miss Higginbottom and Mrs. Amory dined together on the first night, and Mrs. Amory was particularly impressed with the dining saloon:

In her long account, Mrs. Amory spoke only briefly about her seven days aboard the ship. Miss Higginbottom disappeared from the account after the first evening, but Phoebe mentioned, in passing, that Mrs. Whyatt carried with her a large supply of medicine, which she dispensed among those suffering from seasickness. Phoebe sold programmes for the Charitable Concert, and was allowed access to first class in order to do so. One man paid for his programme with a Five Dollar bill after claiming to have already purchased one (“he could not resist my good natured smile”) and allowed her to keep the change: she would later claim that the generous purchaser was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. “I met with similar success in nearly all of the cabins and on the decks and soon had realized well on my programmes.”

May 7^th found Mrs. Whyatt ill. She had been indisposed the night before and was still nauseous that morning. Phoebe prevailed upon her to dress and go out on deck for fresh air: Martha Whyatt found herself in an ideal position to escape and was, in fact, saved, but the younger Mary Higginbottom was never seen again. Phoebe had arranged for a bath, planning on attending lunch immediately afterward, and so was in the dining saloon in the unusual outfit of negligee and raincoat when the Lusitania was torpedoed.

Mrs. Amory emerged on deck and later described, at length, a demoralized mob “The screams of the women and children were terrible to hear…women were fainting and falling to the deck, only to be carried overboard by their own weight.”   But a hero appeared just as Phoebe began to despair: a young man said “Here, mother, take this belt” and helped her into a lifebelt. “I did not see him among the survivors, I believe he was lost and never will forget his brave deed, for I feel certain he gave his life to save mine.”

Phoebe, like so many others, was placed into a lifeboat, only to be thrown out as it capsized.  “We were brought up against the side of the ship with an awful crash and were thrown into the water. Fortunately we were nearly down when the accident occurred and had not far to fall, but the confusion was great. Those who did not have lifebelts sank almost immediately. On every hand were floating bodies, their upturned faces showing white and ghastly.”   She was pulled into a second lifeboat, where she hung for a time with her upper body over the boat’s edge and her legs and lower body still in the water; eventually space was found and she was dragged all the way in. That evening her boat was picked up by a fishing vessel:

Although she had lost all but the clothing in which she was rescued, and her lifebelt, Phoebe Amory considered herself lucky. She had lost no one, other than cabin mate Mary Higginbottom, in the sinking, and she was uninjured  (a claim she made in 1917, contradicted by her later case against Germany) and able to resume her journey to England after a short rest in Queenstown.

Mrs. Amory’s 1917 account ends with a long, chest beating, call to arms:

The last lines of which seems both painfully naïve and sad when one reads of what a Man of the Army of the British did to Mrs. Amory:

One wonders if she slipped into “Lost Generation” cynicism afterwards.

Seeking reparations at the close of the war, Mrs. Amory filed a claim for $12,720. Only $1,660 of that was for loss of personal possessions. She claimed that her left side “has been almost paralyzed since then” and that she suffered a rupture in her right lower abdomen. The court decided $6,650 was fair compensation. Despite such injuries, Phoebe lived to be 92 and died on April 17, 1942 in Welland, Ontario.

Phoebe Amory, like many educated women of her generation, dabbled in poetry, and we shall end her segment with her Lusitania memorial poem.

THE DEATH OF THE LUSITANIA

O LUSITANIA, Empress of the Sea
Art thou dead and buried in the deep.
With all thy freight of human souls,
Victim of the Huns ’most Hellish darts.

Come nations! Rise, avenge this hideous crime.
Avenge the cries of English hope,
now lying cold and dead in ocean deep.
Come nations! Rise and crush

This hideous foe: this vampire of the world, who
is no man
but just a beast of prey respecting nothing.
Laying waste to works of centuries.
Breaking hearts and homes on every side.

Come quickly, come, o’er England’s blood
Be shed in vain, her noble sons all dead
And lying on the plains. Come, nations,
Crush this vampire into dust; come quickly, come.

O Lusitania, my tears are falling for thee
Fair village of palaces, gone for evermore
Beneath the cold blue waters.

Katherine Gleason of Chicago was returning to Ireland that May to visit her family in Killmallock, County Limerick. She wrote to her extended family in Yonkers, New York that “I’m sure you’ll want to come to the pier to see me off.”  None came: Kate Gleason accidentally addressed the letter to Mrs. Johanna Murphy of 48 Yonkers Avenue, New York City, and by the time the letter was forwarded to the proper address the Lusitania had already sailed. Miss Gleason died never knowing that it was by accident and not intent that her family did not accept her invitation.

The Mainman family, of Edmonton, Canada, was on a journey described by the press as being “associated with a great deal of romance.”

Alfred Reid Mainman, aged 55, received word in early 1915 that his parents, John and Mary, had passed away in Exeter, England. He was their only child and he inherited their considerable estate. The press reported that his parent’s solicitors had found over $10,000 in cash in the house. He realized that with the cash on hand, money in the bank, and the sale of the estate, it would be to his family’s advantage to relocate to England. He resigned from his job with the City of Edmonton’s Treasurer’s Office, and made arrangements to dispose of any household items from their Jasper Street home not needed in England. There were formalities of course, and his employers forwarded a sworn photograph of Mr. Mainman to the solicitors to assist in identification.  The Mainmans were used to moving. As a young man, Alfred Mainman had settled in Victoria, Australia, in 1882. He married Elizabeth Sarah Dowsett in 1893. She gave birth to her first three children in Victoria; John, ‘Jack,’ 1894; Alfred Shaw, ‘Alf’, 1895; and Mary Frances, ‘Molly’, born September 1, 1898. The young family then immigrated to Canada and first settled in Fort Saskatchewan before establishing their permanent home in Edmonton. Elizabeth gave birth to twins on October 4, 1907; Edwin Richard, ‘Teddy,’ and Elizabeth Sarah, ‘Betty’. The family of seven booked second class passage on the Lusitania’s May 1^st voyage...

 There is little mention of the family’s shipboard activities. Herbert Ehrhardt talked about a girl of 16 with a large family who helped him keep a group of children entertained during the voyage. Based on his description of the girl’s family, he may have been describing Molly Mainman. He recalled encountering the girl’s family on deck, at which time one of her brothers was missing. Molly gave brief account in which she said that she and the twins were able to get in a starboard lifeboat. She was handed an infant about three months old just as the boat was lowering, and she held on to it until they reached Queenstown. Commander Chaytor of the HMS Ariadneand his wife then took charge of the three. An acquaintance who visited them said, “nothing can equal the love and tender care which this worthy couple are bestowing upon these bereaved children who are now most comfortably housed and clad and I am sure that the little ones appreciate, in their own way, the great kindness of their new friends.” Molly had the responsibility of searching the temporary morgue in Queenstown for her family, where she found only her brother Jack.

He was buried in Queenstown on May 13^th. The rest of the family was not recovered.

When the Mainman children arrived in England, they were housed with Mr. and Mrs. Ellison of Liverpool.  John Mainman’s personal effects were forwarded to Mr. Ellison who returned them to the family. They also received a 25 pound grant from the Lusitania Relief Fund. Their final destination was the home of Mrs. Clarence Merrett, a relative, who lived at Montrose, St. Thomas’s Hill, Canterbury.  Mr. Brown, the family solicitor from Exeter, oversaw their inheritance. Molly Mainman was now the matriarch of the decimated family. She saw to the care of her siblings, and never married, dying in late 1973, at age 75. Elizabeth and Edwin settled in the Liverpool area. Elizabeth was wed to John Kennedy in 1936 and Edwin to Doris Holmes in 1937. The twins lived long lives. Edwin Mainman passed away in January 1976 in Beccles, Suffolk and Elizabeth Mainman Kennedy died in late 1983 in Lancaster.

In contrast to the Mainman family who set out for England with bright prospects, Annie Williams and her six children boarded the Lusitania in defeat, facing an uncertain future.

John and Annie Millman Williams were married in Manchester, England in 1896. They emigrated to the US in April 1904, settling in New Jersey. The record of the William's suit against Germany claimed that their infant, David, was their ninth child, but only six are named in the case; Edith; John Edward; George Albert; Ethel; Florence and David.  John Williams was employed as a groom until early 1915, when he entered service for Cunard as a steward and departed NYC aboard the Lusitania's final completed eastbound crossing.  Edith, in later years, said in interview that he was deserting the family; Wiliams, in his testimony, claimed only to be traveling on ahead to set up a home for his family in England.  According to Adolph Hoehling, Annie Williams’ financial situation was such that her neighbors in Plainfield, New Jersey, “passed the hat” to raise funds to return her, and her children, to her paternal home in England.

Edith later recalled taking a walk with her mother the evening before the disaster. The following day, Edith would remain aboard the ship until the last and would be swept from a ladder connecting the boat deck to the funnel deck as the ship sank under her. She held on to her sister Florence until the suction described by many other survivors pulled the child away.

She was rescued by passenger Rose Howley, whose detailed account follows.  Edith and her brother John were the only members of the Williams family to survive. Neither Annie, nor any of her other children, were recovered or identified.

Later, an attempt was made to engineer a reunion between Edith and Mrs. Howley, but Rose said that she had only done her duty as a Christian, was not a hero, did not see the need for such a get together, and would not participate

Edith and John were taken back to the US by their father briefly in 1916, and settled once again in New Jersey, but soon returned to the United Kingdom.  An account in Dunsmore’s book claims that Edith ran away upon her father’s initial reappearance in England which, if true, would suggest that this move was not a happy interlude for Miss Williams.

John Willliams filed suit in the United States, requesting from Germany $40,000.00 for the loss of his wife and four children, and $250.00 for the loss of their personal effects. His suit was dismissed, for as a UK national he was not entitled to make his claim in the US courts.

Edith and John Edward Williams' suits in the US and UK both failed on the same grounds: pain and suffering caused by the loss of a loved one was not, by 1925 standards, cause for a financial settlement. Neither child could prove direct financial support provided by Annie, and their father who was suing in the same court system would not have been likely to admit desertion at the possible cost of his $40,000.00

It seems that a grant of 5 pounds John Williams received from the Lusitania Relief Fund was the extent of their financial settlement.

Edith Williams completed 15 years of schooling. She eventually married and divorced, and she retained her married surname, "Wachtel," for the rest of her life. She lived in Carmichael, CA, and worked as a registered nurse for 49 years.  She died of cardio-respiratory arrest on May 12, 1992, and was cremated, with her ashes scattered at sea near San Francisco.

Rose Howley, Edith’s rescuer, had been visiting her niece, Mrs. Leary, in New Rochelle, New York in the weeks before the disaster. Concerned with the German threat, she made inquiries and was assured that the ship would not have any trouble with submarines.  Her hometown paper gave this detailed account worth quoting in whole:

Rose Howley is remembered by her family as a stern, but loving, woman, who would bless each room in her house with Holy Water during thunderstorms.  She died on December 23, 1945 in Yorkshire, England, at age 79.

The Gardner family embarked on the Lusitania as the first stage of a trip that would bring them most of the way around the world. James Andrew and Annie Gardner and their three sons had lived in North America for several years, and were returning to Nelson, New Zealand, where they planned on establishing a market garden. Their eldest son, Leonard, had traveled to New Zealand in advance, and James, Annie, Eric Clarence and William Gerard, sailed aboard the Lusitania to join him.

The Gardner Family.
Courtesy of Alison Glenie

James and Annie Gardner died on May 7^th.  According to Eric Gardner, Annie fainted when the ship was torpedoed and could not be revived, and she and her husband were pulled down with the Lusitania when it sank. Annie may well have been the fainting woman whom Archie Donald helped carry from the second class dining saloon. Eric and William survived, with Eric swimming to an upturned lifeboat across the bottom of which he found his father, dead.

The brothers stayed in a hotel near Euston Station London, before resuming their journey to New Zealand. Eric enlisted in the army during the summer of 1916, joining the New Zealand Expeditionary Force 3^rd Battalion, and was shot through the head and killed in the Paeschendale Offensive on October 15^th, 1917. He is buried in the Nine Elms Cemetery in Flanders.  William suffered from epilepsy after the disaster and was institutionalized for 40 years. When he was properly diagnosed and advances in treatment were made, he returned to live with his older brother in the Nelson area. Willie went on to live a productive, normal life and passed away on December 20, 1984.

Cyril and Mary Anita Pells, traveling with their infant son John from Canada to England where Mr. Pells was to join his regiment, despaired of ever leaving the ship safely. They sat together on chairs, presumably on the port side, to wait for the end. When it came, they were pulled down deep with the ship, and in the torrent John was wrenched out of his father’s arms and lost. Cyril and Mary surfaced and were able to pull themselves atop a swamped lifeboat or collapsible. Cyril Pells joined his regiment as originally planned, following a period of recovery in London, but after receiving a brief note telling of his safe arrival in France, Mary Anita never heard from him again and he is documented as having been killed in action on May 27^th 1918.

Another passenger who survived the Lusitania only to be killed in action was Cyril J.G. Wallace, 20.

Cyril, from “The Barracks, Alnwick, Scotland,” had immigrated to the United States at the age of 16 aboard the Furnessia settling with an uncle in Boston. He, like many other male passengers in second class, was returning to the United Kingdom for military service

Cyril was in his cabin, C-28, when the ship was torpedoed. He was indulging in a "sing song." with Robert Duncan Gray and just finished "Eileen Aiannah" when they heard a slight explosion. Gray said,"That is

a torpedo." He had time to grab his lifebelt and run up to the boat deck. He assisted in the lowering of the boats, and surrendered his lifebelt to 66 year old Jeanie Fyfe of Glasgow. Mrs. Fyfe fell to her knees and said she was a grandmother and implored him to give her his lifebelt He swam clear of the Lusitania before she sank, and was able to witness her end from a distance of thirty yards. He managed to climb atop an upturned lifeboat, allegedly the same boat as Belle Naish, and from there was rescued.

In August 1915 he contacted Jeanie Fyfe, who had been aboard the Lusitania returning from a visit with her son, The Reverend James Fyfe of Bath, New Hampshire.  She had gone down with the ship but survived thanks to his lifebelt.  He sent a friendly letter in which he inquired about her well being and stated that his only regret was the loss of his money and wardrobe. Despite his evident concern for her, as of March 20 1916 Mrs. Fyfe had left his letter unanswered -on that date she forwarded it to the mother of victim Richard Prichard. In her letter, she said that she knew that she was being ungrateful, and that Cyril was a very nice young man but she was still too disturbed by the disaster to contact him. She lived for at least another year, dying in Johnstone, Elderslie, Scotland in 1917.

Lieutenant Cyril J.G. Wallace was lost in while military service on September 9, 1918.

When Gerda Welsh was pronounced dead on June 2, 1961, it was a sad end to a sad life. Gerda was born in Norway, circa 1885, as the youngest child of Thomas Neilsen, a seaman. His wife died soon after Gerda’s birth, leaving him to raise her, and her older sister Thomasine, by himself. The Neilsen family relocated to South Shields, England, from where Gerda, a skilled dressmaker, emigrated to the United States in 1910. She had visited the United States once in 1908, and upon the death of her father it might have occurred to her that she could earn a good living there. She contacted a friend, Mrs. Gabrielson, who lived in Brooklyn at 95 Bedford Avenue, who agreed to house her when she arrived. She set sail on the Mauretania, which arrived in New York on October 7, 1910.  The following four and a half years of her life are difficult to document, other than that she continued working in New York City, and that she booked passage aboard the May 1^st crossing of the Lusitania, to visit her sister Thomasine who still resided in South Shields.

John Welsh had traversed the country in order to take the Lusitania. He had been working in Honolulu, Hawaii as a mechanic with the Marconi Wireless Telegraphic Company. He was returning to Groton, near Manchester with several thousand dollars that he had earned over the years. He had not been on the ship long when he noticed Gerda. She stood about 5’6, had fair hair and blue eyes. She noticed him as well and they soon struck up a conversation. “We took a strong fancy to one another,” he declared. According to the book, ‘Seven Days to Disaster’, during the course of the voyage, John and Gerda became acquainted with the Hook family and shared their table at meal times. One of the main topics of conversation was the threat of being torpedoed. “If the worst should come,” John said, “we made up our minds to sink or swim together.” Towards the end of the voyage, “we became engaged, arranging to be married on arrival.”

“When the ship was struck, I was with my young lady, and we stuck to one another till the vessel sank.” said John Welsh. Placing a lifebelt on Gerda, he escorted her to one of the last lifeboats. Unfortunately, the boat upended and he jumped into the sea to rescue her. “In the water, she was braver than any man I’ve ever met. She encouraged me whilst I swam… I supported her in the water for half an hour till we reached a lifeboat. The people in the boat did not want take her in, but relented.”  To Gerda’s horror, the men who lifted her into the boat wanted to leave John behind, for they claimed the craft was crowded. “She pleaded with them, and finally they pulled me up.” He claimed that he, “sustained some slight injury to my leg and arms.” The lifeboat was rescued by a tugboat and landed that night in Queenstown. Talking to a reporter from the Irish Times, he said, “Here we are together safe and sound, and the wedding bells will soon be ringing.”

They took the ferry to England and in less than a week, made their way to the All Saints’ Registry Office to be married. The ceremony took place on Thursday, May 13, 1915. The couple settled in at his home, 31 Carlton Terrace, Gorton. Their happiness slowly unraveled, as they were unable to conceive any children. The memory of the Lusitania constantly played over in her mind and she slowly went insane. Finally, John saw no other choice but to commit her to a mental hospital. Although there was hope that she might come out of it, she never seemed to improve. The years went on and John moved away to find work. He eventually died in 1941 in Bromsgrove. If Gerda was notified of his death, it may not have registered. Her mind was trapped aboard the Lusitania, but on June 2, 1961, she was finally at peace.

Allan Beattie, 18, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada was aboard the Lusitania with his mother, Grace.  They were bound for Scotland where they planned to visit Beattie’s father, who was a Captain and the Chaplain of the 79^th Cameron Highlanders of Winnipeg.  Neither found their way to a lifeboat, and when the ship sank they were pulled down with it, tangled in a mass of rope. Beattie freed himself and managed to surface, his mother ‘though wearing a lifebelt did not.  Like Gerda Welsh, he had a hard time escaping from the shadow of the Lusitania. He was rejected by the Armed Forces due to poor eyesight, and passed through a succession of jobs before having a breakdown in 1920. A second breakdown followed in 1921, and reference was made to a third and fourth having been suffered prior to 1926. For a time he worked as a reporter for the Winnipeg Tribune.  His father remarried, to a woman with whom Allan could not get along, so a distance grew between father and son. He drifted between several cities in Western Canada, never managing to settle down or hold a job for any appreciable period of time.  Commissioner Pugsley, offering his decision regarding Beattie’s claim against Germany stated:

Allan Beattie was still living in Canada at the time of his father’s death in the 1930s. There is some evidence that he may have decided to live in Scotland with relatives, and that he may have died in Provan in 1943, age 47.

Beatrice “Trixie” Witherbee, of New York City and London was another survivor who found coping with the memories of May 7^th 1915 too much to bear. However, unlike Gerda Welsh and Allan Beattie, she was able to pull herself out of the downward spiral and lived to experience a happy ending.

Beatrice arrived in NYC aboard the last completed voyage of the Lusitania in April 1915. She had travelled to London, in advance of her family, to join her husband A.S. Witherbee and establish her new household in The Savoy to her liking, and on the May 1^st voyage was escorting her mother, Mary Cummins Brown and her son Alfred Scott Witherbee Junior to their new home. Her brother in-law Sidney Witherbee attempted to persuade Beatrice to switch her booking to the New York while visiting with her at the Biltmore the evening before departure, but to no avail — a second attempt on the morning of May 1^st proved equally futile.

Several passengers and crew were charmed by Mrs Witherbee’s attachment to her son and left written accounts of their day-to-day life during the voyage, but no record survives to tell of what became of the small family group after the ship was torpedoed.    Beatrice alone survived, and joined her husband at the Savoy, but soon seems to have slipped into a deep depression.  The means by which it was initially treated were quite lavish:

However, Witherbee began to run short of funds. The following letter reveals a great deal about Beatrice’s collapse, the demise of her marriage and the unfortunate character of her husband:

This missive was written on letterhead from the New Willard which, in 1916, was Washington's most elegant - and costly - hotel. Despite his claims of abject poverty, Mr. Witherbee evidently was not one to cut back.

It is not clear how long Beatrice remained in the London nursing facility, but from there she moved in to the Jolivet family mansion in Kew where she remained for over a year.  She divorced Alfred Witherbee in Philadelphia in 1919 on the grounds of desertion, and then married Alfred Jolivet, Rita’s brother, late in the year and gave birth to her second child, Lawrence, in 1920.

Lawrence would tell us, over 80 years later, of how his mother flat out refused to speak of her Lusitania experiences.  She was a cheerful woman, and kept whatever memories tormented her in 1915-1919 well in the past. “Awww, you don’t want to hear about that” was the extent to which she was willing to discuss the disaster, and she never once deviated from that course.  We uncovered a cache of correspondence between Beatrice’s lawyers discussing her claim against Germany and, amusing from the perspective of 2004, they spoke of how frustrating a client she was. As early as 1923 they suspected by her (sometimes hysterical) refusal to answer even the simplest questions that she was not physically capable of recalling the events of May 7^th.   Over the years, she developed inner contentment and that was all that mattered to her. Her son recalled that she had a “beautiful voice” and was always humming. She even traveled aboard the ship, Annie Johnson, on the anniversary of the Lusitania, but according to Lawrence, it most likely didn’t register with her as she had put the disaster so far out of her mind. She died on December 16, 1977 without ever having told her family what happened aboard the Lusitania. Only one small clue remains: Pauline Jolivet, her mother in law, once revealed that Beatrice had confided to her that she had tried to hold onto Alfred Scott Witherbee Jr. in the water.

It was clear from the day Maude Robinson was born, October 25, 1882, that she would be afforded many opportunities in life. Her parents, Franklin and Ella (nee West) Robinson, were affluent residents of Long Branch, New Jersey. She was also descended from Martin Kalbfleish, who was twice elected Mayor of Brooklyn. Maude believed in being assertive, even penning an article on the problems of sensitive girls and how they may overcome their handicaps. “Pity the sensitive girl… give me the jolly girl who is perfectly natural and who takes on the world as she finds it and the people as she finds them, too, without worrying over the impression she is making.”

It is not clear how and when Maude Robinson met Elbridge Blish Thompson, but they decided to marry in 1904, the same year he graduated from Yale University. The ceremony took place on March 31^st. ‘Blish’ was born on October 2, 1882 in Seymour, Indiana. His family owned the prosperous Blish Milling. He was a student at Andover and Lake Forest, and when he arrived at Yale, he took up course studies in Metallurgy.  Shortly after their marriage, the couple moved to Colorado where Blish was

interested in developing a mining property. A year later, they moved back to Indiana where he was elected secretary of Blish Milling. They were also active in politics and Blish was described as a ‘leader’ in the Republican county organization. He and ‘Maudie,’ as he affectionately called her, took part in community affairs such as ‘The Festival.’ He drove his roadster, uniquely decorated as a battleship, while his wife good-naturedly rode by his side.

The Thompsons began planning a trip, combining business and pleasure, on which they would tour England, Scotland and Ireland for three months. They booked passage on the Lusitania and were assigned cabin, A-21. A few days later they upgraded to a suite with a private bath, B-68, for which they paid $500. It originally had a separate parlor next door, but it was booked by Elbert and Alice Hubbard

Maude and Blish enjoyed their vacation, spending time with other couples like Harry and Mary Keser. They also befriended families with children; the Hodges and the Lucks. It turned out to be a wonderful voyage for them, comparable to a second honeymoon. Feeling in a romantic turn of mind, they made plans to awaken early to watch the sun come up. “About 4:30 or 5:00 A.M., the day of the disaster, (my) husband and myself had dressed and were standing on ‘A’ deck to watch the sun rise. At that time, we saw a battleship off on (the) port side and traveling in the same direction as the Lusitania. The latter was moving very fast at this time. The battleship was close enough so that we could see the whole vessel and its lines distinctly. ” A short time after their stroll along the boat deck, the Lusitania was enshrouded in fog.

The entire dining room began rushing for the staircase. Maude noticed an officer standing in the companionway telling people, “ to take our time and keep calm. “ She later commented, “that was the only time we saw any of the ship’s stewards or officers.” Her friends, the Hodges, were having trouble getting up the stairs so Blish and Maude, “ helped Mr. and Mrs. Hodges and their two small boys. “ Parting from the family when they reached ‘B’ deck,” Mr. Thompson went to his cabin, B-68, to get lifebelts. He returned with two life belts, also coats and sweaters, which we put on. After a moment he went back again to his cabin for his passports and money. After rejoining me, we went up on the ‘A’ deck… The ship had listed to starboard to such an extent that it had been difficult to walk up the stairs…  We saw the Keser family of Philadelphia, and also Mrs. Luck and her two small sons.”

Blish Thompson saw that Charlotte Luck did not have a lifebelt and gave her his. A crewman went past them saying, “the ship is perfectly safe. You are all righ t” Maude also heard someone calling from the bridge, “ lower no more boats.”  They waited for ten minutes, but were surprised that, “there were no officers or member of the crew on the ‘A’ deck.”  Suddenly, the Lusitania began to sink rapidly, “ without preliminary warning.”   Blish clasped his wife and tried to reassure her. “ Let us take what offers, and take it without a fuss.”  Describing the final moments aboard the liner, she said that, “when the ship plunged it stood up almost perpendicular and thereby swept everyone overboard in a mass, and we were swept half the length of the ship…I was holding tightly to his hand, but was torn away. I had on a polo coat and part of the belt was ripped off. I believe that was when Mr. Thompson was forced from me by the force of the suction.”

Reaching the surface, she soon found a small raft, “on which there were 50 others. Was pulled about the raft by Guy Cockburn. (I) was identified as a first class passenger by some member of the ship’s crew by reason of the kind of the lifebelt (I) was wearing. The ship’s engineer was on board the raft and directed the handing of the same, and it was due to him that many were picked up out of the water and the raft kept stable… We were three hours on the raft and were being carried out to sea when the party was picked up by the tramp steamer Katrina.”

The survivors were eventually brought to Queenstown and Kinsale. Maude was brought to the Admiralty House with Amy Pearl and Rita Jolivet. Rita claimed to have taken the two women down to the Queens Hotel to care for them and Lady Allan. There was no sign of Blish, so she sent a telegram that read, ‘Maudie safe.’ Unfortunately, it was transcribed incorrectly saying, ‘Maude safe I also.’ The following day, she sent another saying, ‘ I am safe waiting news from Blish.’ The family questioned the telegraph operator from Mays, Indiana and learned that a mistake had been made. Maude searched the town, but could not find any sign of her husband. She sent another telegram asking for advice as to what to do. Finally, she decided to proceed to London to the house of her friend Mr. Raikes to await any further developments and to convalesce. She was ready to come home as of June. There had been no word on her husband for about a month so there was no sense in remaining overseas any longer. She booked passage on the St. Paul, which was to arrive in New York on June 13, 1915. Her sister and some Thompson relatives met her. The St. Paul carried home many Lusitania survivors; James Leary, Charles Sturdy, Herbert Colebrook, Doris and Joseph Charles, Percy Rogers, Ogden Hammond and Virginia Loney (accidentally listed as Virginia Sedgwick). Also aboard were two Titanic survivors, Robert and Eloise Daniel. The memorial service was held on June 18^th at the First Presbyterian Church in Seymour. It was conducted by Reverend Lewis Brown who delivered a short address on “Immortality.” People from all walks of life attended the service including workers from Blish Milling to Blish’s roommates from Yale. Soon after, she endowed Yale with a scholarship of $600 annually in the Sheffield Scientific School and was to be awarded to graduates of Shields High School, Seymour, Indiana.

Blish’s two cars sat in the garage of the Thompson home. Maude decided that she would have the National roadster rebuilt to be used as a scout car. She took the other National, a touring car, to France herself and turned it over to the Red Cross. She decided to stay and work with the humanitarian organization throughout the war. While there, she met Count Jean de Gennes, a French fighter pilot. He was twelve years her junior, but despite their age difference, they fell in love. The two married on November 17, 1917 at Paris. She gave birth to a son, Jean, on December 20, 1919 at the age of 37. When the child was a year old, she and the Count took him to visit with Thompson relatives. Maude still had an active interest in the company as well, occasionally returning for board meetings, but considered France to be her new home.

Maude’s marriage was a happy one, but once again, tragedy struck. Her husband Jean, a pilot for Compagnie Aeropostale, was killed in a plane crash in 1929. She was left with a nine-year-old son to raise. Although she may have considered moving back to the United States to be near her family, she opted to stay in France. A few years later, she may have regretted her decision, when the war broke out. It is unclear whether she stayed in France or if she traveled to a neutral country for the duration of the war, but by 1946 the Countess de Gennes moved back to the United States permanently, residing in New York. She spent the remainder of her days in Sunnyside Queens, passing away on May 17, 1951. Her final wish was to be buried in France.

Charlotte Luck, to whom Blish Thompson surrendered his lifebelt did not survive, nor did her sons Elbridge, 12, and Kenneth, 8. Although their home was in Worcester, Massachusetts, Charlotte and her children had stayed in San Francisco with her mother, Mrs. Field, during Arthur Courtland Luck’s extended business trips abroad. None of the bodies were recovered, and Mr. Luck was eventually awarded $20,000.00 for the loss of his family. Frances Lapham Field, Charlotte’s mother, was awarded $5000.00 for the loss of her daughter’s financial support.

William Sterling Hodges, who along with his wife and children, was another acquaintance of the Thompson’s had made the final westbound crossing of the Lusitania in April 1915. A 16 year employee of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, he had been appointed manager of their Paris offices and had journeyed there in advance of his family to get established in his new position and to begin the process of setting up a home. Sarah Hodges and her two boys, William Junior, 8, and Dean, 5, traveled from their former residence in Philadelphia to New York City where they joined Mr. Hodges and prepared for their crossing. On the morning of April 30th. William Hodges had his will amended to take into account the possibility that he and Sarah might die simultaneously-perhaps it was a loose end he simply intended on tying up before departing for Europe, or perhaps (and, given the timing, more likely) he was taking the German threats very seriously. The final recorded sighting of the Hodges family together was of them struggling on the staircase. Wallace Banta Phillips was the last known survivor to have seen Mr. Hodges, on A Deck: “I then re-entered the saloon, and going down one of the passageways met William S. Hodges, of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Mr. Hodges was just going out of his cabin (the Hodges occupied A-16 and  A-18 ) with several life preservers, and I asked him if he had enough for his wife and two children and himself. He said yes, and that they were all together.”  They were lost, and only the bodies of Sarah and William Junior were recovered, Sarah being buried in Queenstown and William Junior being returned to Philadelphia.

Josephine Mary Brandell was a Rumanian immigrant. She was born November 26, 1891 in Bucharest. Her family came to America in 1900 and settled in New York. Like Maude, she had ambitions- she wanted to be an actress. This aspiration was temporarily put on hold when she married Dr. Bernard Black Brandeis, also a native Rumanian, on February 15, 1907 when she was only fifteen. The marriage was short lived and the couple divorced in September 1910.

Following her divorce, Josephine again became involved in the theatre. She was soon cast in Night Birds, a comic opera by Johann Strauss, which toured Europe and America. A newspaper compared Brandell to the star, Fritzi Scheff, saying that she was ‘commensurate with Miss Scheff’s prestige.’ By 1914, Josephine was starring in the London Opera House’s production of Come Over Here, which showcased her operatic abilities. The same year, she took a voyage to New York on the Lusitania on which William Crichton, the husband of her friend Mabel, escorted her. She frequently crossed the Atlantic to fulfill engagements. She took the Lusitania again, in February of 1915. She arranged to travel back to England on the Lusitania’s May 1^st crossing and was assigned cabin, D-30 for which she paid $142.50. Her friend, Mabel Crichton was also crossing on the Lusitania and throughout the voyage was a source of comfort for the young actress. Josephine Brandell, however, did not feel confident that the ship could outrace a submarine and as she put it, was “in a state,” for a good part of the journey.

She and Mabel became acquainted with their tablemates; Max Schwarcz and Francis Bertram Jenkins. Despite pleasant company, she could not get over her feeling of dread. “I was nervous during the whole trip; so much so that I kept worrying my friends about fearing the submarines.”  Jenkins did not alleviate her anxiety by pointing out the lack of lifebelts. “ I had previously observed that no lifebelts were on the deck at all. I had spoken about it to several friends on board.”  The actress disagreed with him saying,

“There were plenty of lifebelts on board.”  Her feelings of anxiety became unbearable on the night of the 6^th. “Thursday night I was in such a state I could not sleep in my own cabin. ” She spent so much time tossing and turning that she decided to seek comfort from a friend.  Josephine left her cabin and climbed the stairs to ‘A’ deck. She walked along the corridor to #19 and knocked on the door. “I asked Mrs. Crichton if I could sleep in her cabin. Poor soul, she was only too happy to be of any assistance to me and did all she could during the whole night to quiet my nerves.”

“The next morning, ” stated Josephine, “I heard the hooting of the horn as it was foggy.” Feeling better, the actress went to her cabin to change for lunch. She thought that the orchestra had done a fine job this voyage and decided to take up a collection for them. Maude Thompson looked up at the ship’s clock. “in order to set my watch, and I remember it was just 2:05 P.M. ” Josephine, “ finished making a collection for the musicians and sat down where Mrs. Crichton, Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Schwarcz were sitting.R