Alexander Chambers Harkins was born in Dundee, Angus, Scotland, on the 2nd June 1874, the son of James and Elizabeth Brown Harkins (née Adamson). Nothing is known about his family, except that he had an older sister named Jessie, and both of them were brought up by their aunt Ellen Adamson. Their family home was at 370, Loons Road, Dundee.
Alexander’s uncle, Mr. William Adamson was a wirework manufacturer of 6, Shore Terrace, Dundee and in 1915,
his son Edwin, Alexander Harkins’ cousin, lived in The United States of America, in New York.
In 1892, Alexander Harkins had emigrated to the United States of America and took up work as a waiter in the officers’ dining room of Broad Street Station, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Whilst there, he lived at 6235, Woodland Avenue.
By the spring of 1915, however he had developed tuberculosis and as his doctors told him that he did not have long to live, he decided to return to Scotland to die. Consequently, he booked second cabin passage on the
Lusitania and joined her at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York before she sailed out into the North River for the last time, just after mid-day on 1st May 1915. Her sailing had been delayed from her scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure because she had to load cargo and embark some crew and passengers from the Anchor lines ship
Cameronia, which the British Admiralty had taken up from trade to use as a troop ship at the end of April.
Before Alexander Harkins boarded the vessel, he met up with his cousin Edwin Adamson in New York, and it was arranged that if, for some reason, he missed the
Lusitania, Adamson would cable his own father in Dundee, to that effect.
Thus, when the vessel was torpedoed and sunk on the afternoon of 7th May by the German submarine
U-20, off the coast of southern Ireland, Alexander Harkins’ family in Dundee harboured the hope that they might yet receive a cable from Edwin. However, the much awaited cable never arrived and it was eventually and reluctantly accepted that Alexander Harkins had been killed.
As his body was never recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, he has no known grave. He was aged 40 years.
In the list of those on board the Lusitania published by The Cunard Steam Ship Company in March 1915, the spelling of Alexander Harkins surname was incorrectly stated as
Harkens!
Scotland Select Births and Baptisms 1654 – 1950, 1881 Census of Scotland, 1891 Census of Scotland, 1900 U.S. Federal Census, 1910 U.S. Federal Census, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Dundee Advertiser, Dundee Courier, Evening Telegraph, New York Times, Philadelphia Public Ledger, Sunday Post, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Lawrence Evans, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.