Synneva Andrine “Anna” Jakobsen was born in Bergen, Norway, on the 23rd May 1872, the daughter of Jakob and Baarni Pedersen (née Olsdatter). As is the custom, her family name was determined by her father’s forename!
After completing her education, she became a domestic servant and cook in a mental hospital in Bergen and met Peder Gustave Nikolai Endresen, who was a merchant seaman, and on the 23rd May 1895, Anna’s 23rd birthday, they had a daughter, named Birgit Louise.
In the early 1900’s, Anna and Peder Endresen immigrated to Hull, Yorkshire, England, where they married in the summer of 1904. In early 1905, their son, Edwin Johann was born.
By 1911, the family were residing 34. William Street, Hull, and Anna Endresen was recorded as being a widow. It is not known when or where her husband died.
To support her family, Anna Endresen joined the British Mercantile Marine and had served on the Cunard liner Cameronia as Anna Enderson, and she held the position of Matron in the Stewards' Department during the Lusitania's final voyage. She engaged for this voyage at Liverpool on the 14th April 1915 at a monthly rate of pay of £5-0s.-0d., and reported for duty at 7 a.m. on the 17th April, after which the liner left Liverpool for the last time, bound for New York.
Having arrived at New York without mishap on the 24th April, the Lusitania began her return journey to Liverpool on the afternoon of the 1st May, after a delayed start, and six days later, she was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20.
Matron Endresen was killed as a result of this action. Her body was recovered from the sea afterwards, however, and was landed at Queenstown, where it was given the reference number 71 in one of the temporary mortuaries there - almost certainly the one hurriedly set up in the yard next to the Cunard office on the waterfront at Lynch‘s Quay. It was later buried on the 10th May, in The Old Church Cemetery, Queenstown, in Mass Grave C, 1st Row, Upper Tier, where it lies today. Matron Endresen was aged 42 years.
The 10th May was the day that most of the victims' bodies were buried in a communal funeral following a long procession from the town itself which began outside the Cunard office.
Despite her having a known place of burial, she is also commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London, which commemorates the missing of the Mercantile Marine in the Great War, because the Commission was not initially aware that she had an identifiable burial site. However, once Graham Maddocks had established beyond doubt that she was buried in The Old Church Cemetery, the Commission agreed to erect a permanent memorial to her where she is buried.
This was done in November 1998 and takes the form of a monument of Irish limestone, sited at the head of Mass Grave B, the centre one of the three. The names of crew members buried in the three mass graves are incised on two black granite panels on the memorial, with a legend in between them, which reads: -
1914 - 1918
IN HONOURED MEMORY
OF THOSE NAMED WHO,
SERVING ON THE
RMS LUSITANIA,
DIED WHEN THE SHIP WAS
SUNK BY ENEMY ACTION
ON 7 MAY 1915
AND ARE BURIED NEARBY
The name of Anna Endresen is incised on the left hand panel as Matron A. Enderson.
The Commission has also stated that should it ever be necessary to renew the panel which bears her name on the Tower Hill Memorial; her name would be omitted from its replacement.
Possessions recovered from her body, which probably aided its identification were
handed over to her daughter in Liverpool on the 29th October 1915 and administration of her estate was granted to Birgit Louise Welburn, (wife of William Garbutt Welburn), on the 24th October 1916. Her effects amounted to £160-14s.-3d. (£160.71p).
Gore's Directory for 1914 shows a Mrs. Hannah Henderson living at 50, Spenser Street, Bootle, so she must also have used a further Anglicisation of her name on occasions.
Germany was to inflict further tragedy on the Endresen family in the Second World War. Edwin Johann Endresen was serving as Chief Officer on the s.s. Koranton which was one of a number of merchant vessels crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America, to Hull, in Yorkshire, as Convoy SC-25. The Koranton fell behind the other vessels and as a result lost the protection of the naval vessels in the convoy. It was torpedoed while 250 miles south of Reykjavik, Iceland, at 1.50pm on the 27th March 1941, with the loss of all 41 crew members. Like his mother, the name of Edwin Johann Endresen is also commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Norway Select Baptisms 1634 – 1927, 1911 Census of England, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Gore's Directory, Probate Records, PRO BT 100/345, PRO BT 334, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Robert O'Brien, Peter Engberg-Klarström, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 2nd May 2023.