95 years ago today. The final numbers were in, so to speak. People who had not found their missing relatives alive, now knew that they were not unconscious in a hospital or ‘put up’ in an out-of-the-way hotel with no phone service or access to the telegraph.
Minnie Smith’s husband, back home in Canada, quit his job as a police officer and immediately enlisted, to avenge the death of his wife and their unborn child. Norman Stones told fellow survivor Phoebe Amory that he was enlisting, hoping to kill as many Germans as possible as payback for Hilda’s death. Cyril Pells enlisted. His wife, Anita, never heard from him again, but his hatred of Germans, and desire to kill them, remained such that he was later featured in a book which detailed the events of his death at the front. Charlotte Pye, who wrote Mrs. Prichard that her life seemed to have no meaning after the death of her daughter, Marjorie, found reason to go on after she joined the war effort~ a film of her leading a 1916 fund raising rally survives.
Arthur Scott, of North Adams, Massachusetts, had kept a vigil, with members of the press, as he awaited word of his wife, Alice, and son, Arthur junior. The first list of survivors to arrive contained the names SCOTT, MRS. A and SCOTT, ARTHUR. The relieved Mr. Scott teared up with joy, and there was much back-slapping and handshaking between him and the reporters. Alice had dreamed of the Lusitania being destroyed, the night before she and Arthur, Junior, had departed for New York. Her family had jokingly chided her, saying that perhaps she should cancel her passage. She had replied that she could only die once, and that she was going.
Alice Scott had, in fact, died. She had placed Arthur into a lifeboat, which was successfully lowered. The lifeboat she entered upended, and she never came to the surface.
The family of Martha King, of Illinois, had a similar experience. Mrs. King was among the twenty or so to be pulled from the water alive, only to die of shock before reaching shore. The first word to reach them was that Martha was alive, followed by a second notice saying that she wasn’t.
Allan Adams, of Canada, recalled a horrible struggle in the water. He recalled growing numb and disoriented. And, he recalled giving up, and ‘dying’ in the bottom of a swamped boat. He awoke, hours later, on a rescue craft.
Margaret Logan awoke on a rescue boat. She recalled her son being torn away from her by drowning people. And she remembered the creeping numbness and blacking out.
Architect Theodate Pope awoke aboard a rescue ship, with a final memory of growing groggy in the water, and passing out. Mrs. Naish saw her lying on deck, among the recovered bodies, and thought she saw signs of life. Crew members labored over Theodate, and eventually revived her. She remained friends, thereafter, with Belle Naish, and even provided for her in her will.
It would seem, from letters written immediately after the disaster, that perhaps two dozen “dead” survivors had enough life in them to revive, once pulled aboard lifeboats or rescue vessels. They all had similar stories, of growing disoriented and then blacking out, only to revive hours later. Jeanette Mitchell awoke. Her husband, Walter, never did. Martha King never awoke.
Beatrice Witherbee, who lost her son and her mother, is almost definitely the woman who confronted Captain Turner aboard the rescue vessel Bluebell. In a calm and dispassionate voice, she told him of how she had placed her son on a ‘raft’ at the urging of an officer. The raft, or boat, had overturned and she lost her child. The woman told Turner that she held him personally responsible for her son’s death. Only two mothers fit the bill~ Mrs. Witherbee, from first class, and a woman traveling in third. Mrs. Witherbee was a frequent traveler, and would have recognized Turner without his hat, and wrapped in a blanket. The other mother most likely would not have.
Teenager Allan Beattie awoke, to recall how he and his mother had been dragged down with the sinking ship. They held one another, but became snarled in ropes beneath the surface. Allan got free, but Geneva “Grace” Beattie did not.
Reverend Jas. Beattie and his wife, Margaret, were taken from the water, alive, by one of the British military ships. Margaret awoke, James died. Margaret was furious to discover that not only had her husband’s corpse been looted, but she had been as well. When her effects were returned to her, even the brass buttons had been cut from her coat. The captain of the vessel blamed the scoundrels in his crew for the looting. Mrs. Beattie, through her lawyer, tartly reminded him that he had PERSONALLY taken charge of her effects and James’ money. Her clothing had been taken from her. She had no place to hold her money and jewelry, or James’ effects. The captain had taken possession of it. Only her clothing was returned.
Elizabeth McKechan came ashore, with her infant son, Campbell. Her older boy, and sister in law, Mrs. Gill, were both dead. Campbell would die, too, and become the final official victim of the disaster.
Millie Docherty came ashore with her weeks-old infant. She, her son, and her friend from the voyage Jessie Murdoch, had escaped by lifeboat. Millie had been a maid in New York. She wrote to her former employee of how the women in Ireland loved her infant and “wanted to eat him up.” She wrote that she had lost everything she owned, but was grateful to have her child.
Eliza Booth was dead, but somehow, her 8 month old son, Nigel, was saved.
Betty Bretherton, whose mother had entrusted her to a man who refused to go below to rescue Mrs. Bretherton’s son, was recovered. She was buried in the nuns' cemetery at the convent where Norah Bretherton had been educated.
More than half of the Armenians, en route to ‘Persia’ to rescue their families, were dead. Those who survived arrived just in time to be caught up in the forced starvation marches that saw over four million Armenian Christians die before the summer of 1915 was over. Only two of the Lusitania’s Armenians are known to have returned to the U.S., and in neither case did they return with the family members they were attempting to save,
