My sister sent me a packet
of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The
Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. I took it from there.
My maternal grandfather, Irish
immigrant Martin Hett, boarded the S.S. Cameronia on a late May afternoon,
1915. He was 15. The ship was five years old. Spiffy little vessel, the Anchor
Line, flew the British flag, built in Glasgow. 10,963 gross tons, 515 feet long,
62 feet wide. Top speed 17 knots. Two masts and two funnels, steel hull with
four decks. Carried 1,700 passengers, 250 in first class, 450 in second class,
and 1,000 with Grandfather in third class. Port of departure: Liverpool. Port
of arrival: New York City. Arrived with all hands June 7, 1915.
RMS Lusitania: First
British four-funneled ocean liner, called an “ocean greyhound” by the Cunard
Line, six passenger decks carried 2,198 including almost 600 in sumptuous first-class
compartments, Launched June 7, 1906; sunk on its voyage from New York by Germany’s SM U-20 on May 7, 1915
with loss of 1,197 souls, some bodies found floating, some washed up on Irish
beaches, some just disappeared into The Deeps. A Vanderbilt was among the dead.
Grandfather was originally
booked on the Lusitania along with more than 1,000 other third-class passengers. Now
shipless, Grandfather had to hang around the Liverpool docks looking for an
alternate booking. Apocryphal family stories have him booking steerage on
another ship that is also torpedoed and sunk. We like this because we can tell
listeners that our teenage Grandfather tempted fate during the war but made it
to America after all. Grand tale, no?
I don’t know why I keep
calling him grandfather. As a precocious American toddler, a future English
major and writer, I called him Baba so everyone else did. My cousins called him
Gramps. My father, his son-in-law, called him Mart. Mom called him Dad.
Not sure what Liverpool
looked like in spring 1915. My guess is that it looked a lot like the post-war
city of 1919-1920 in the first episodes of “Peaky Blinders.” The Great European
War was wrapping up its first year with hellish fights in France and Belgium
and the Battle of Gallipoli in far-off Turkey. The war in what we now call the
Middle East doesn’t get much movie time except for “Gallipoli” and “Lawrence of
Arabia” but it was crucial to what came after and the fate of The Good Ship
Cameronia.
Baba made his way from Ellis Island to
Chicago and in 1917 worked on the El with his brother.
In 1919, David W. Bone’s book
“Merchantmen-At-Arms: The British Merchants’ Service in the War” was published.
An experienced merchant seaman and author, Bone explores in great detail the
war at sea. He relives the April 15, 1917, sinking of the troopship Cameronia in
Chapter XII: 'THE MAN-O'-WAR 'S 'ER 'USBAND'. The ship carries almost 3,000
troops to Egypt. You can read the full text at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31953/31953-h/31953-h.htm#.
It features drawings by Muirhead Bone, an etcher and watercolorist who was a war
artist in the First and Second World Wars. Here are excerpts:
An alarmed cry from
aloft—a half-uttered order to the steersman—an explosion, low down in the
bowels of the ship, that sets her reeling in her stride!
The upthrow comes swiftly
on the moment of impact. Hatches, coal, shattered debris, a huge column of
solid water go skyward in a hurtling mass to fall in torrent on the bridge.
Part of a human body strikes the awning spars and hangs—watch-keepers are borne
to the deck by the weight of water—the steersman falls limply over the wheel
with blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. . . . Then
silence for a stunned half-minute, with only the thrust of the engines marking
the heart-beats of the stricken ship.
*****
Uproar! Most of our men
are young recruits: they have been but two days on the sea. The torpedo has
gone hard home at the very weakest hour of our calculated drill. The troops are
at their evening meal when the blow comes, the explosion killing many outright.
*****
Many of the life-boats
reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the
tackles—far beyond their working load—is too great for all to stand to it. Two
boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently to the water,
where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A third dangles from the
after fall, having shot her manning out at parting of the forward tackle.
Lowered by the stern, she rights, disengages, and drifts aft with the men
clinging to the life-lines. We can make no attempt to reach the men in the
water.
*****
It is when the most of the
life-boats are gone we realize fully the gallant service of the destroyers.
*****
We are little more than
clear of the settling fore-end when the last buoyant breath of Cameronia is
overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to the debarking of the last man. There is
no further life in her. Evenly, steadily, as we had seen her leave the
launching ways at Meadowside, she goes down.
Many of the troops were
rescued by destroyers Nemesis and Rifleman.
Baba loved his ice cream. The Thin Man died at 90.
P.S.: There was another
S.S. Cameronia built by the Anchor Line that sailed on its maiden voyage in
1921. It too was requisitioned as a troopship at the outbreak of World War 2
and took part in the 1942 invasion of North Africa, was torpedoed and towed to
Algiers for repairs. She was the largest troopship to participate in Operation
Overlord on June 6, 1944. She carried passengers to Palestine in 1948. Scrapped
in 1957.
