Unofficial Lusitania Survivors

[Daniel Stern]

Good day, all.

I read with some interest about three people who have, over the years, claimed to be survivors of the sinking of the Lusitania (i.e., Rosalie Altamore Bonsignore, Victor Hiertsford, and Deej Dot Maan) though they are not listed on the passenger list. What effort, if any, has been put out to either confirm or deny they are telling the truth?

Thanks,

ph0ebus

 

[Mike Poirier]

It's fairly easy to see they are frauds.
1. They are not on the official Cunard report
2. They are not shown re-entering the US

 

[Michael H. Standart]

About the only way to be an "unofficial passenger" is to be a stowaway and I'm not aware of any having been found on the Lusitania. Records keeping was something that they were quite meticulous about because the customs and immigration authorities on both sides of the pond tended to get real cranky about if things weren't in order.

 

[Daniel Stern]

Point taken...However, I find it interesting that at least one of them, Rosalie Altamore Bonsignore, is not only still living (in the US), but is still claiming she was on board the Lusinatia, even today:

History Comes Alive at Carey: Lusitania Survivor Visits School

March 31, 2006 Three Village Times: Lusitania Survivor Visits School -- Elmont, Franklin Square, West Hempstead, New York, US. Three Village Times, an Anton Community Newspaper, covers news, sports, opinion and events in the local community.

web.archive.org

You would think if she were not telling the truth, she would have given up by now...and not told the same tale to her children and grandchildren. Maybe not...who is to say. Given Michael's point number two, she at least came back to the US at some point.

I should add two points to this discussion:
(1) Coming from a background of having done a fair amount of genealogical research, ship's manifests do sometimes have errors. Just in my own family's case, they got at least two or three key pieces of info wrong on the Manifest when they emigrated from the UK to her in the early 1900's.
(2) Official Records can be wrong as well. Have you read Shadow Divers? That is just one case, but I have come across a multitude of errors in 'official' government reports I have read over the years. I am doing some research on a particular u-boat at present, and in that case too, the official record (of the Royal Navy) is dead wrong.

Which brings us back to my original question: has anyone bothered to dig a little deeper, beyond the 'official' paper to try and sort out these stories? If you read the article in the link I included above, Rosalie claims to have been is close correspondance with the 'German fellow' who saved her during the sinking. Do we know who he is, and if he was on board? Has anyone bothered to ask him if he can prove she was on the ship?

-ph0ebus

 

[Mike Poirier]

It's pretty clear that Rosalie Altamore lifted some of Barbara McDermott's story and used it as her own. There were a few German first class male passengers who survived, but to my knowledge, none claimed to have saved her.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>You would think if she were not telling the truth, she would have given up by now...<<

The same could be said of the Anna Anderson, who insisted that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and she held to that story to the day she died. Just goes to show that just because somebody sticks to the story up to the time that rigor mortis sets in doesn't make it true.

That doesn't mean that there were absolutely, positively, no undocumented passengers aboard the ship, but I would want to see evidence far more compelling then the claimant just saying so.

 

[Geoff Whitfield]

Hello Michael,

There were undocumented passengers aboard alright - especially in third class. Mike Poirier and I discussed this a long while back. I have/had a copy of the third class entertainments programme printed onboard on 6th May 1915 and several of the listed "Performers" do not appear on any Cunard manifest. If I recall correctly, it came from the Veals family, having been carried of the ship in a coat pocket. Unfortunately it's one of those items that simply disappears into a "Black Hole"(Alas, like my photograph of Stella Sage!) but hopefully it will turn up one day. I've never seen any real evidence of the presence of first or second class passengers though - other than the mistakes in the contemporary press.

Geoff

 

[Jim Kalafus]

>You would think if she were not telling the truth, she would have given up by now...

What might be happening here, to be charitible, is that the former Miss Altamore may well have been brought up believing that she WAS, in fact, a Lusitania survivor. In which case she would have no reason to give anything up. But, the similarities between her story and that of Barbara McDermott are, as Mike pointed out, disturbing.

It is just within the realm of the possible that she slipped through the cracks in 1915. One rather interesting case that highlights how....harried....things were, post disaster, is that of a passenger who Cunard classified as "Dead." A rumor reached them, a few months after the disaster that he was, in fact, alive and in Italy. But, inquiries in Paris and Queenstown showed no record of his having travelled to one from the other, and after exhaustive correspondence between various constabularies, embassies, and Cunard Queenstown, Liverpool, and NY, he was declared, ca. December 1915 as unquestionably dead. Then, from Cunard's office in Antofagosta came seemingly irrefutable evidence that the dead passenger was truly alive and well in Italy. At that point, someone at Cunard Liverpool came up with the brilliant and previously unexplored tactic of writing to the passenger's wife, who lived in the U.K. Within days it was confirmed that this man HAD survived and managed to travel from Queenstown to England, and then on to Italy via Paris without registering with a single authority and leaving not a trace- other than an extended newspaper interview that Cunard apparently never saw- that he survived. And so as late as January 1916 the matter of who lived and died on May 7th was still not entirely resolved.

That said, it is so far from probable that an entire family could slip through the cracks and leave no trace, that it is hardly worth mentioning. I suppose, if one wanted to be efficient, one could check the State census from June 1915 (They are held in mid-decade and not as easily accessible as the national ones) to see if the Altamore family was still settled in the US at that point.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>I have/had a copy of the third class entertainments programme printed onboard on 6th May 1915 and several of the listed "Performers" do not appear on any Cunard manifest.<<

Now that's interesting. Was Cunard in the habit of allowing this sort of thing or were these people in some sort of grey area like the musicians on the Titanic were?

 

[Geoff Whitfield]

Michael,

Cunard promoted such gatherings, probably because it not only kept the third class passengers out of trouble, but generated a healthy cash flow into the bar tills!
Crew members performed at many of the third class concerts as well as passengers.

Geoff

 

[Brian Ahern]

What gives this bizarre story an even eerier angle for me is that this woman is here on my own native Long Island. Anton News owns most of the small, local papers around here, none of which are known for great reporting.

I agree - not completely out of the realm of possibility that she's a survivor, but very, very, very, very unlikely. My theory - this woman's got herself believing it. It is true that she could have been fed misinformation about her own early life, but she mentions specific firsthand memories. The twisted thing is she's even got her offspring believing it, and is allowing them to risk embarrassing themselves by spreading it. My guess would be that some of the details of this woman's birth and background aren't so nice, causing explanations for severed family ties to be searched for, either in her own mind or by those bringing her up.

 

[Mike Poirier]

For the past few years- they've been selling her signature on Ebay. When I sent some evidence that she was not on the Lusy- they sent snippy responses saying her interviews in the current newspapers were all they needed.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>Cunard promoted such gatherings, probably because it not only kept the third class passengers out of trouble, but generated a healthy cash flow into the bar tills!<<

Ahhhhhh....the money talks then! What I'm wondering is how they managed to get away with it. The immigration authorities couldn't have been all that sympathetic to this sort of thing.

>>When I sent some evidence that she was not on the Lusy- they sent snippy responses saying her interviews in the current newspapers were all they needed.<<

(shrug) That's eBay for you!

 

[Peter Kelly]

Hi all,

It is possible that some, or all of these claimants were on earlier Lusitania voyages, but I am very sceptical about their claims to have been on the final voyage.

It is possible that an individual adult might have slipped through undocumented, but a group, family, or lone child would have been almost impossible.

If they had been survivors, would they not have made claims, either through the Lusitania Relief Fund, or the U.S. Mixed Claims, Canadian Claims, or through the Cunard Company itself. I have trawled through the Cunard Records in Liverpool, and many other sources, and failed to find any mention of them.

I feel that there is only a very small chance that any of the afore-mentioned claimants were on board the final voyage, but maybe a search of records such as Ellis Island, or other records dealing with ship's passenger lists, immigration records, social security records, and so on might someday prove or disprove the claims of these people.

Regards,

Peter

 

[Michael H. Standart]

>>If they had been survivors, would they not have made claims...<<

Not if they had been aboard the ship illegally or had some other reason to want to hide their presence aboard. Stowaways are not exactly anxious to advertise the fact that they're about. They're even less eager to do so if they want to enter a country illegally since the immigration authorities would take an unpleasant interest in them.