James Andrew Gardner was born in Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand, in 1871, the son of Andrew and Sarah Gardner, later of Frederick Street, Dunedin. His father was a blacksmith. James Gardner was educated at Otago Boys’ High School, in Dunedin, which he entered in 1886. At that stage, the family home was in Albany Street, Dunedin.
In January 1893, in Christchurch, James Gardner married Annie Gray and they had three boys, Leonard James Wesley, born in 1894, who later became a fruit farmer in Nelson, Dunedin, Eric Clarence, who was born in July 1898, and William Gerald, who was born in 1901.
James Gardner was an active member of the local Methodist Church and was a lay preacher there. One source states that he was a banker, but he appears to have been a hosiery manufacturer, as stated in
The Otago Daily Times in its 12th May 1915 edition :-
The head of the family ..... was a well known resident of Dunedin until some 13 years ago when he relinquished his business as a hosiery manufacturer and went to Toronto, Canada. In that city, Mr. Gardner had a large interest in a costume manufacturing company, which he recently disposed of and was on his way to England to complete arrangements for some agencies when the disaster to the Lusitania occurred. It was his intention to have come out to New Zealand and settle near his eldest son, who is engaged in fruit farming in the Nelson district.
In 1902, he had moved with his family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he developed a large interest in a costume manufacturing company. Then, in 1915, he sold his interest in the business and decided to move back to Dunedin with his family to be nearer their eldest son, Leonard, who had returned to New Zealand some time earlier. Consequently, he booked second cabin passage for himself, his wife, and his two youngest sons, on the
Lusitania, which was scheduled to leave New York on 1st May 1915. Travelling from Toronto, the family party arrived in New York by rail, on the morning of 1st May, in time to join the liner at her berth at Pier 54 in New York.
The vessel’s departure was delayed until the early afternoon of that day, however, because she had to take on passengers, some crew and cargo from the Anchor Liner
Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war use at the end of April. Six days out of New York, however, she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine
U-20, whilst she was twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland and only hours away from her Liverpool home port and destination.
Both James Gardner and his wife Annie were killed as a result of the torpedoing, although both of their boys survived. As neither of their bodies was never found and identified afterwards, neither has a known grave. James Gardner was aged 43 years.
Not long after the sinking, an American sea captain Frederick D. Ellis wrote a book named
The Tragedy of the Lusitania, which was taken from press accounts of eye-witnesses of the sinking. In it, the fate of the Gardner family is outlined: -
Young Gardner, sixteen years old, said that when the Lusitania was struck by the torpedo his mother fainted. In spite of all efforts to restore her, she did not revive and she sank with the steamship. The youth also went under, but came to the surface, and seeing an upturned lifeboat, swam for it. He failed to get hold on this boat, but, seeing a boatload of survivors nearby, he swam to it and was taken on board. In this boat the youth found his father lying prostrate in the bottom in a collapse. Efforts to revive the elder Gardner were unavailing and he died.
Captain Ellis must have been mistaken about James Gardner dying in the bottom of the lifeboat in light of the fact that his body was not buried afterwards. It is inconceivable that if his body had been there, that it would not have been landed at Queenstown and then, as a matter of course, respectfully buried. This, of course, puts the rest of Ellis’s story into question.
Fate and the Imperial German Army was to kill one more of the Gardner family before the Great War had run its course. James Gardner’s son Eric Clarence Gardner, perhaps to avenge the family’s deaths, enlisted under age in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and whilst serving as 30932 Lance Corporal E.C. Gardner of the 3rd Battalion, The Auckland Regiment, he lost his life in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on the Western Front, on 15th October 1917, during The Battle of Passendaele.
James Gardner’s eldest son Leonard also served in the Army during the Great War. As 2007 Sergeant L.J. Gardner, he served with ‘C’ Squadron of The Canterbury Mounted Rifles. This unit served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, and in May 1915, Leonard Gardner was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. He suffered a gunshot wound to his right thigh and shell shock in October 1917, and following treatment, he was returned to New Zealand where he returned to fruit farming.
New Zealand Birth Index 1840 – 1950, New Zealand Marriage Index 1840 – 1937, UK Outward Passenger Lists 1890 – 1960, Cunard Records, Otago Boys’ High School Old Boys Register, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Otago Daily Times, Tragedy of the Lusitania, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv.D92/1/6, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Trevor Richards, Stuart Williamson, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.