Mr Henry “Harry” Meadows was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, England on 22 October 18821 and baptised in St Peter’s Church on 4 December that year.
He was the son of labourer Richard Meadows and the former Emma Bibby, about who little is known. Next to nothing is known about Meadows’ early life.
Meadows went to sea at age 20 and sailed to many ports all over the world; in April 1912 he was serving as a trimmer aboard the eastward-bound voyage of the Carpathia when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic. Years later Meadows described that in the early hours of 15 April he had just finished his watch and had turned in for the evening; he was unlacing his shoes when the chief engineer burst into his quarters, telling the men that Carpathia had received a distress call from Titanic and that they were turning around to assist her. After all hands had assembled, he recalled scouring the ocean for any signs of life and reported that after a few hours spotted the light of a lifeboat in the distance.
In June 1914 Henry emigrated to the USA, later becoming a US citizen. He worked on the New York tugboats before working on the building of the Holland Tunnel and other New York subways before taking up work as a fireman in a factory.
He had begun a relationship with Mary Krause, née Pinnington (b. 1876)2, a married woman with six children who apparently abandoned her family in Liverpool to be with Meadows. Although there is no record of their marriage, Harry and Mary shortly had two daughters together, Emma and Lillian. Meadows remained in Queens, New York where he became a widower in 1946. He later married his wife’s younger widowed sister, Lilian Shank, née Pinnington (b. 1892).
Harry Meadows died on 28 March 1968 and was buried in Saint Michael’s Cemetery in Elmhurst, Queens. His widow Lilian died in 1980.
