The sinking of the Lusitania
Pottstown immigrant Mary Buchanan lost her life in tragedy
Mary Buchanan left her home in Scotland in July of 1914 and sailed west across the Atlantic to make a new life in America. Though she traveled alone, her older sister, Allison, was waiting for her in Pottstown where she was in charge of the dining room of The Merchants Hotel.
Very little of Buchanan’s background is known, but she must have had some training in the medical field as The Daily Ledger reported that she had been hired as a “trained nurse” to care for Herman Van Loan Meigs, a former bursar of The Hill School and the son of the school’s founder, So, while Allison probably had a room at the hotel in town, Mary lived nearby in the Meigs home, Hillside, near Laurel Locks in North Coventry Township, Chester County.
Buchanan barely had time to settle into her surroundings when the fates conspired to uproot her. In April 1915, a telegram arrived from Scotland, notifying the sisters of the death of their father, George. With their mother now a widow and probably in need of aid, perhaps the two discussed the idea of one of them returning home to help support her. Or perhaps it was a decision Mary made of her own volition. Either way, on May 1, 1915, she sailed from New York City, headed to Scotland with the apparent intention of remaining there permanently.
World War I made it a dangerous time to be a passenger on an ocean liner sailing to any port in Great Britain. The war, which pitted the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France, and Russia against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, had been going on since July 28, 1914, and had degenerated into a bloody stalemate in which hundreds of thousands of men had already been killed or wounded.
The mounting casualties and lack of progress goaded both sides into taking harsher measures. One of these was Great Britain’s naval blockade of German ports. Though Germany had developed into the strongest nation on the European continent, it couldn’t produce enough food to feed its people, and it lacked the natural resources to carry on manufacturing, especially in the area of war materials, forcing the country to rely on imports to make up the deficit. Because of the war, the only way for these goods to enter Germany was through its North Sea ports. Great Britain, with its powerful navy, was able to effectively blockade them, creating, among other things, a severe food shortage for German civilians.
In November of 1914, the British further tightened the screws by declaring the North Sea a war zone, which commercial ships, including freighters and ocean liners, entered at the risk of being attacked.
In February of 1915, Germany retaliated, announcing a naval blockade of all British ports, using its new weapon, the U-boat — or submarine — to enforce it, and threatening to destroy any vessel flying the British flag or the flags of its allies. On May 1, the day Mary Buchanan was to sail for Scotland, a notice from the German government appeared in many American newspapers, proclaiming the country’s intent and warning that “travelers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.”
There it was. Mary Buchanan would be sailing into a war zone on an ocean liner owned by a British company and flying the British flag. The Daily Ledger, in an article about Mary’s voyage, wrote that “Miss Buchanan shows substantial bravery at this time.”
Once again fate would intervene in Mary Buchanan’s life. She was scheduled to sail on the R.M.S. Cameronia, but at the last minute, the British admiralty commandeered it, so Buchanan, along with 41 other passengers and crew members, were transferred to the R.M.S. Lusitania. This last-minute change caused the ship to sail two-and-ahalf hours late, a factor that probably played a role in the outcome of the voyage.
The transfer to the Lusitania was certainly an upgrade for Buchanan. Built in Liverpool for the Cunard Line, the Lusitania was launched in 1906. Its first class accommodations were luxurious, but its second and third class accommodations were also a big improvement over those of ships owned by rival shipping lines.
Buchanan’s second class ticket got her a comfortable two- or fourberth cabin, meals in a Georgian dining room with a domed ceiling and balcony, and access to a large, richly decorated public room with mahogany paneling and mahogany tables, chairs and settees set on a rose carpet.
All of this was tucked into a ship that was 787 feet long, 87 feet wide, 60 feet high, and had nine passenger decks. An idea of its massive size can realized from the fact that the ship carried 7,000 tons of coal for a transatlantic voyage.
On May 7, the Lusitania was sailing south along the coast of Ireland, heading for the harbor at Liverpool when it was hit by a torpedo fired by a German submarine. The explosion it caused was quickly followed by a second larger explosion, this one coming from somewhere within the ship.
The torpedo’s impact tore a large gash in the liner’s starboard (right) side, allowing tons of water to rush in. The weight of that water immediately caused the ship’s starboard to tilt 18 degrees toward the sea and then, very quickly, even farther. This listing to the right caused the lifeboats on the Lusitania’s port (left) side to swing wildly inward over the deck, making them impossible to launch, while the lifeboats of the starboard side swung away from the ship, making it dangerously difficult for passengers to scramble into them.
All power was lost within three minutes, trapping some passengers on the elevators, dooming them. It seems as if no one, crew or passengers, had been trained in lifeboat drills, and because the passengers were not warned to have their life belts with them at all times, many did not. Of those that did have the belts, many didn’t know the correct way to wear them.
From the time the torpedo hit until the Lusitania completely sank beneath the sea just 18 minutes elapsed, so even the best drilled and equipped passengers and crew would have had trouble getting safely off the ship.
Only six lifeboats, all on the starboard side, were successfully launched, which meant that hundreds of passengers were forced into the ocean, floating in life belts or clinging to pieces of wreckage or capsized life boats
As the Lusitania finally went down, the whirlpool created by its four smoke stacks or funnels sucked a few passengers into funnel number three — a gruesome way to go. But, just when it seemed they were gone, the release of steam in the number three boiler blew them, albeit completely coated with wet coal dust, right back out of the stack onto the surface where they were picked up by a lifeboat.
It was over in the blink of an eye. Just 18 minutes after the German torpedo struck the last trace of the Lusitania disappeared beneath the sea, leaving hundreds of passengers and crew trying to survive in the 55-degree water.
Olive Bernard, one of the passengers lucky enough to be in a lifeboat, described the scene as “one of agony … floating debris on all sides, and men, women, and children clinging for dear life to deck chairs and rafts. There were such desperate struggles as I will never forget. Many were entangled between chairs, rafts, and upturned boats. One by one they seemed to fall off and give up.”
Though the Lusitania was only 11 miles off the Irish coast, it was about two hours before the first rescue vessels — two small fishing boats — arrived at the scene and began pulling the survivors onboard. During the next few hours, larger boats from the port of Queenstown, about 25 miles away, added their weight to the rescue effort and also took on survivors from the seriously overcrowded fishing boats.
Long after dark there was a steady stream of boats returning to Queenstown with their cargo. One observer described the “ghastly procession of these rescue ships as they landed the living and the dead … under the flaming gas torches of the Queenstown waterfront… Ship after ship would come out of the darkness … awaiting their turn to discharge bruised and shuddering women, cripples, and half-clothed men and wideeyed little children.”
The death toll was astounding. When the Lusitania began its voyage to Liverpool the manifest listed 1,266 passengers and 696 crew members, plus three German stowaways who were discovered shortly after the journey began, for a total of 1,965 people. Of these 1,194 died, including 128 Americans.
When the news of the sinking reached the United States, antiGerman sentiment, already high because of Germany’s invasion of neutral Belgium and the destruction and atrocities its armies committed there, rose to an all-time high. But it was not enough to push America into the war. It was not until April 4, 1917, that the United States officially declared war on Germany and its allies
Here in Pottstown, on May 9, The Ledger’s front page proclaimed, “Lusitania Dead May Reach 1,500” and, in a separate front page story, reported that “Miss Buchanan Was Not On the Saved List.”
Two days later, The Ledger informed its readers that “Miss Buchanan’s Body Has Been Recovered.” Her cause of death was listed as exposure. In other words, she found some means of staying afloat. Perhaps she was one the careful ones who wore her lifebelt, only to die of hypothermia after hours spent drifting in the frigid water of the Irish Sea.
Her brother, Robert, who was serving in the British Army, was given leave to go to Queenstown where he was joined by their mother to oversee Mary’s burial.
In a postscript to the burial, in a 1918 issue of The Ledger, it was reported that Raymond S. Carle of Pottstown, then in the U.S. Navy, accidentally found Mary Buchanan’s grave in a cemetery in Queenstown, Ireland.
He wrote to his sister that he was attracted to the grave because it had a flower box with a large wreath of wax flowers in it.
On the wreath was a card that stated the flowers were from “Pottstown, Pa.”
There was more heartbreak in store for the Buchanan family. On Aug. 13, 1916, Allison Buchanan, still living in Pottstown, received a cablegram from her mother who had somehow managed to travel from Scotland to South America. The cable informed Allison that her brother, Robert, had been killed on July 2 while fighting in France.
That left Allison Buchanan alone in Pottstown, with her brother and sister dead and her mother, if the information in the cablegram is correct, somewhere in South America.
At some point before 1920, Allison left the Pottstown area. What became of her is a mystery, but the 1920 Federal Census of 1920 lists a single, 33-year-old woman named Allison Buchanan, who was born in Scotland and who came to America in 1913. The census documents report her residing in a boarding house and making her living as an “operator of talking machines.”