Frederick William Groves – affectionately known as “Bunny” - was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the 30th June 1913, the son of Sidney and Clara Gertrude Groves, (née Lee). The family home in 1915 was at 142. Lee Avenue, Toronto, and his maternal grandparent William Lee also lived there at 11, Langford Avenue.
In the spring of 1915, his father, who had emigrated from England in 1907, decided to bring his family there, and introduce Bunny and his mother to his family and consequently booked second cabin passage for all three of them on the May sailing of the
Lusitania from New York.
Having left Toronto some time in April the three of them arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her scheduled 10 o’clock departure. Having boarded the vessel, they had to wait until 12.25 p.m., before she actually left her moorings and began her last ever crossing of the Atlantic.
This was 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 at the end of April. 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.
All three members of the Groves family lost their lives as a result of this action and although the body of Frederick’s mother was eventually recovered from the sea and buried at Queenstown, nothing was ever seen again of either him or his father Sidney.
Frederick Groves was aged 22 months at the time of his death.
Ontario Canada Births 1858 – 1913, Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/31, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.