She
was a British cargo and passenger ship en-route to Liverpool from New York. She
left New York
on May 1st 1915 and when she was off the Old Head of Kinsale she was
torpedoed by U20. The ship sank within
twenty minutes of being hit. According
to the official analysis of the Cunard Steamship Company on 1st
March 1916, 1,195 passengers and crew were missing. Of the
22 lifeboats, six reached land and only 200 bodies were recovered. 764 were saved by those vessels responding to
the ship’s SOS and of those saved 290 were crew members. This meant that 404
crew members lost their lives.
Several
members of the crew who perished were from the Newry and Mourne and Dundalk area including:
Patrick
Loughran ,Queen Street,
(trimmer),
Michael
McGuigan, Monaghan Row, (trimmer)
Patrick
Campbell (fireman)
Bernard
Cassidy (fireman)
Michael
Corboy.
From
Warrenpoint:
Frank
McAteer (trimmer)
Edward
Ryan (fireman, Burren) served as Edward Rice.
Among
the survivors from the Newry area were:
Andrew
McKindrey and
Patrick
McKenna (Mary Street)
(both firemen).
It
was reported that Andrew Mc Kindrey when asked how he survived replied that he
did not know but
‘I owe my life to learning how to swim on ‘the track line’ in Newry when I
was a boy’.
He
went on to say that the saddest part was going through the various morgues
looking for a friend of his who had been his shipmate on the outward and
homeward voyages but he could not find him and assumed that he had perished.
Patrick
Loughran from Queen Street
was a very young boy when he died. No
age is given but it can be assumed that he was a teenager.
From
the Dundalk area those who died were:
Patrick
Markey (trimmer), a well known footballer in Dundalk
James
Hoey (trimmer)
Bernard
McKenna (trimmer)
Owen
McCann (trimmer)
James
Larkin (greaser) and
Owen
O’Hare (engineer/engineer’s helper).
He
is interred at Cobh, body no 193 common grave
A.
Among
those saved were:
O.
Slevin who, because of serious injury, had to have an arm amputated
Peter
Donnelly
John
Farrell, and
John
McEvoy ( Jonesbourough).
Mr
McEvoy was asleep in his cabin when he was awoken by the explosion of the
torpedo hitting the ship. A sailor
called Griffith
(he was one of the missing) rushed into the cabin and gave him a lifebelt. He got dressed and went up on deck and rushed
to the starboard side. The lifeboats
were swung out but could not be lowered because of the list of the ship. He then ran to the portside but the ship sank
and he was dragged down with it. He
thought he was going to drown but he saw a light through the water and the next
thing he found himself floating to the surface. He found a plank of wood which he and a young
American girl held on to for two and a half hours until they were rescued. On being congratulated on being rescued he
said that he could only thank Almighty God for being one of the survivors.
Another
Dundalk man who was returning to his home
after being away for thirty years was among those who perished. Captain Dow, who was the captain of the Lusitania, was a
Warrenpoint man and was on home leave at the time of the sinking. Another
Warrenpoint man had a lucky escape. He
was William O’Hagan who resided in Liverpool and was chief bedroom steward of
the Lusitania
since she was launched. His wife pleaded with him not to go as she had this
premonition that the ship would sink and so he did not go on the last voyage. She probably saved his life.
The
sinking of the Lusitania
was condemned internationally and the Kaiser ordered U-boats captains to
refrain from surprise attacks on merchant ships and passenger liners.
In
1917 all ships were ‘fair game’ again. It
must be remembered that at this time Britain
was blockading Germany
by sea. In fact so bad was it that in
1916 over 121,000 Germans died of starvation-related diseases.
Although
it made a great impact on American public opinion, the sinking of the Lusitania did not bring America into the war.
It
would be two years before that would happen.
History 
