Harry Robinson Frost was born in Snape, Suffolk, England, in 1872, the son of Robert and Ellen Frost (née Robinson). His parents were school teachers, and the family home was on Farnham Road, Snape. He was one of nine children, and was educated in the school managed by his parents.
As he approached the end of his formal education, he trained to be an elementary school teacher, but must have abandoned the idea, for instead, he immigrated to Canada in 1897.
On the 8th November 1905, he married Grace Miriam Stevens in Rainy River, Ontario. At the time of his marriage, he was living in the nearby town of Kenora, Ontario, and described as a merchant.
By 1915, he was shipping wholesale fruit in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and lived with his wife at 1922. Robinson Street, in the city. In the spring of that year, he decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean to England to visit his family. The reason might have been the ailing health of his mother, who subsequently died in November of that year.
Whatever the reason for travelling, he booked as a second cabin passenger on the
Lusitania’s May sailing from New York to Liverpool. He boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York port on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure. He would then have had to have waited until 12.27 p.m. before the liner actually sailed. This was because she had to embark passengers, cargo and crew from fellow Cunard liner the S.S.
Cameronia, which had been requisitioned at the end of April by the British Admiralty, for war service as a troop ship.
Six days out of New York, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania
was torpedoed twelve miles off The Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland by the German submarine
U-20, and sank within eighteen minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about fourteen hours away from the safety of her home port.
Harry R. Frost was one of some 230 second cabin class passengers who managed to survive this action and after having been rescued from the sea, he was landed at Queenstown. There, he was given a boat and rail ticket (numbered 242), to Saxmundham, Suffolk, and expenses of £0-7s-8d., (£0.42p.)., for the journey. Thus, it is presumed that his original intended destination in Great Britain was in Suffolk.
He did not remain long in England; however, as he boarded the Philadelphia at Liverpool on the 26th May – just nineteen days after his ordeal, and returned to Canada, via New York, to be re-united with his wife.
Harry Frost lodged a claim for compensation for the loss of his personal effects with the Canadian Commission which had been established to deal with such matters, and when his case was decided, he was awarded the full sum he had claimed - $445.60.
He later owned a grocery store in Masset, Graham Island, British Columbia, and continued to reside there after he retired from business.
Harry Frost died on the 15th August 1949, in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery, Prince Rupert. He was aged 76 years.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Ontario Canada Marriages 1826 – 1937, British Columbia Canada Death Index 1872 – 1990, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1921 Census of Canada, Canada Voters List 1935 – 1980, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Canadian Claims Case No. 812, UniLiv.D92/1/1, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.