Duncan McCorkindale was born in Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, on the 30th March 1908, the son of Daniel and Elizabeth Campbell “Bessie” McCorkindale (née Ritchie). His father was a machinist.
In April 1911, his parents emigrated to the United States of America and settled in Chrome, New Jersey, where a sister to Duncan, named Mary, was born in September 1914.
His father had worked as a watchman at the Liebig plant of the American Agricultural and Chemical Company for a number of years, and then decided to try his hand at farming in Saskatchewan, Canada. In the spring of 1915, his father decided to move to Saskatchewan and prepare a home for his family, and in the meantime, his wife would bring their two children on a month-long holiday to Scotland, thereafter joining him in Saskatchewan.
As a consequence, Daniel McCorkindale purchased second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania for his wife and children, and accompanied them to the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, in time for her scheduled 10 00 a.m. departure for Liverpool on the morning of the 1st May. After seeing them board the Lusitania, and no doubt cheering and waving them on their way, he began his long journey to Saskatchewan as the liner departed, on what proved to be her final voyage.
The liner’s departure for Liverpool had been delayed until the early afternoon, so that she could take on board passengers, cargo, and crew from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war work as a troop ship. Then, six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, and sank just eighteen minutes later. At that stage of her voyage, she was only 250 miles from the safety of her home port.
Al three members of the McCorkindale family were killed as a result of this action by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schweiger. Duncan McCorkindale was aged seven years at the time and as his body was never recovered and identified afterwards, he has no known grave.
His father’s former home was in Main Street, Renton, Dumbarton where his grandmother, Mrs. Helen McCorkindale, still lived. Coincidentally, fellow second cabin passenger, Miss Grace French, who survived the sinking, also originally lived in Main Street, at No. 184.
New York passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, The Central New Jersey Home News, Evening Telegraph, Perth Amboy Evening News, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.