The other Lusitania

[Adam Went]

Hey all,

I'm doing a bit of research which relates to the S.S. Lusitania, but i've been struggling to find much info out about the ship. At this stage, basically all I know is that it entered service in 1871, at one stage travelled the England-Australia route, was wrecked off Newfoundland in 1901 (no loss of life), and just what else is mentioned about it in the newspaper article linked below.

The article about its wrecking can be seen here:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=940CEED81139EF32A25754C2A9609C946097D6CF

And a painting of the ship can be seen here:

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4987383

Naturally, any combination of searches which include the word "Lusitania" come up with mountains of info about its more infamous namesake but very little about the one i'm looking for.

So, does anybody know of any websites, books, etc which might have more of a complete biography of the "other" Lusitania?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Adam, this is the first I've ever heard of this particular ship, though I can't say as her existance is much of a surprise. With only so many to go around, they tend to get used and reused.

Shucks, I've even seen the Titanic underway, only this Titanic wasn't a liner or a yacht. She was a medium sized tanker which I saw in the Persian Gulf.

If that painting is any indication, the other Lusitania was a very handsome ship. Too bad she came to such a rotten end. The wonder of is that there was no loss of life. (If the article is completely accurate about the general panic.)

 

[Mark Baber]

A trade card of this Lusitania is on Great Ships:

http://www.greatships.net/lusitania1.html

 

[Jim Kalafus]

Orient Line

She was in Elder Dempster service. You can find a lot about her online, by using either ORIENT or ELDER DEMPSTER as keywords.

Lusitania was the Roman name for Portugal. As such, you find a HUGE amount of material being sold as memorabilia from the ship that is actually Portuguese souvenir material.

What sort of research material are you seeking?

 

[Adam Went]

Thanks for the info so far guys, much appreciated.

Michael:
Yes you're right, although IIRC there's a third ship which was round during that era also called the Lusitania, though I know absolutely nothing about it.

Is that tanker still afloat? ;-)

Jim:
Long story short, it relates back to my work in the Jack the Ripper field. There was a Dr. Lionel Druitt, cousin of Montague John Druitt, a well known JTR suspect, who came out to Australia on board the S.S. Lusitania in 1886, and continued his practice both in Victoria and from 1891-96 in Swansea, Tasmania. That's how I became aware of the existence of this Lusitania, when I stumbled across the shipping records of his arrival....

If anybody's interested, my research into Lionel Druitt so far, including a transcription of the shipping column as mentioned, can see it here:

Tasmanian Connection - JTRForums.com - THE place to be for All Things Ripper

Tasmanian Connection M.J. Druitt

web.archive.org

Anyway, thanks again, and hopefully there's still much more info out there to be found....

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Is that tanker still afloat? ;-)<<

'Fraid not. Last I saw anything on it, she ended up on the beaches of Alang.

 

[Adam Went]

Hmmm....Unfortunate, but hardly surprising with a name like that...

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Hmmm....Unfortunate, but hardly surprising with a name like that...<<

I don't know that the owners gave it a lot of thought. (Some can be real space cadets about that sort of thing.) Since the ship was underway when I saw her, they obviously had few problems recruiting a crew. These people would very likely have been a mixed bag of Middle Eastern and Asian, and this culture doesn't care much about western nation's shipwrecks.

In any event, the ship was already nearly twenty years old at the time so she nearing the end of her service life.

 

[Mark Baber]

1901: The Wreck of the Lusitania

Mark Bulik looks at the first mentions of “The Lusitania” in The New York Times. It turns out, there were other ships with the same name that appeared in the paper long before the one famously sunk by Germany.

web.archive.org

 

[Adam Went]

Thanks Mark, I'd forgotten about this!

Cheers,
Adam.