Charlotte Louise Field was born at Sausalito, San Francisco, California, in the United States of America, on the 1st December 1879, the daughter of Alfred Bishop and Ellen Frances Field (née Lapham). Her father was associated with The American Trading Company of 214. California Avenue, San Francisco, and Charlotte was the youngest of three children, having an older brother and sister.
On the 19th March 1902, she married Arthur Courtlandt Luck in El Paso, Texas, and they had two sons, Elbridge Courtlandt, born in 1905, and Kenneth Field, born in 1908. In 1915, the family home was in Massachusetts, but Charlotte and their children temporarily resided with her mother in San Francisco, California, while her husband was working abroad, which he frequently did.
Arthur Luck was a mining engineer, working for the Graton & Knight Manufacturing Company, of Worcester, Massachusetts, and in the spring of 1915, he had been working in Europe - perhaps in Great Britain, connected with her war effort - and decided to send for his wife and two boys to join him. Consequently, the firm booked saloon passage for the three of them to travel from San Francisco to New York and then on to Liverpool, via the R.M.S. Lusitania.
As a consequence, they arrived at Pier 54 in New York harbour on the morning of 1st April 1915 and (with ticket number 10541) boarded the liner, whereupon, they were escorted to saloon room D61, which was the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward Edwin Huther, who came from Liverpool.
They had their last sight of their homeland in the afternoon of that day when the liner finally left the harbour and slipped out into the North River and the Atlantic Ocean. Just six days later, the family travellers were all killed after the liner was torpedoed on 7th May 1915, just twelve miles off The Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland by the German submarine U-20. She sank within 20 minutes - only hours away from the safety of her home port and destination.
Arthur Luck had travelled to Liverpool to meet them and tragically had to cable his relatives in San Francisco to say that: -
..... he had received no details concerning the catastrophe, nor any word that would indicate whether his family was safe.
No word about any of them was ever received afterwards and they were all three eventually presumed dead!
Bedroom Steward Huther, who had looked after them in room D61, also perished in the sinking and never saw his Liverpool home again.
Arthur Luck and her mother, Frances Field, both submitted a claim before the Mixed Claims Commission seeking compensation for the loss of Charlotte and the children. On 21st February 1924 the Commission awarded Arthur Luck the sum of $20,000.00 for the loss of his wife and children, and a further $3,900.00 for the loss of their personal belongings in the sinking. They awarded Frances Field, who was by now a widow, the sum of $5,000.00 for the loss of her daughter.
Texas U.S. Select County Marriage Index 1837 – 1965, 1880 U.S. Federal Census, 1900 U.S. Federal Census, U.S. Passport Applications 1795 – 1925, Cunard Records, Mixed Claims Commission Docket No. 7, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/114, El Paso Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Nyle Monday, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.