James Robert Readdie was born in Gateshead, County Durham, England, on the 27th February 1886, the son of Thomas and Martha Dodds Readdie (née Runciman). His father was a joiner, and the family home was at 45. Derwentwater Road, and later at 16. Spencer Gateshead. James was the second youngest of six children in the family.
After schooling, he became a clerk to a shipping firm, and in December 1910, he made his first acquaintance with the R.M.S. Lusitania when he sailed on board her from Liverpool to New York.
He then settled in Brooklyn, New York and continued to work in the shipping industry, becoming the treasurer of the Donald Steamship Company. He returned to Gateshead for a holiday in 1912.
In April 1915, he booked as a second cabin passenger on the May sailing of the Lusitania to travel to England, and having boarded her on the morning of 1st May 1915, at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 on the west side of the city, he had to wait, in company with all the other passengers and crew, until 12.27 p.m., before she actually sailed on what was to become her last ever voyage!
The delay to her departure was caused because she had to embark the passengers, some of the crew, and the cargo from the Anchor Lines ship the S.S. Cameronia, which the British Admiralty had requisitioned at the end of April as a troop ship. Then, following a fairly uneventful crossing, the Cunarder was torpedoed and sunk on the afternoon of 7th May 1915, by the German U-Boat, U-20, off the coast of southern Ireland and only about twelve to fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her Liverpool home port!
James Readdie was lucky enough to survive this action, and having been rescued from the sea and landed at Queenstown, he eventually made it to his original intended destination. He was aged 29 years at the time.
His experiences of the sinking can not have put him off war-time trans-Atlantic travel; however, for exactly one month later, on 7th June, he arrived back in New York on board the liner St. Louis. During the four weeks he was in England, he married Annie Isabel Elliott in Gateshead, and she accompanied him when he returned to New York City, where they lived at 1306. Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City.
The couple had two daughters – Jean and Elizabeth, and lived for many years at 966.
Delamere Place, Brooklyn, New York City, before moving to Garden City, Nassau County, New York.
James Readdie died in Garden City on the 11th November 1974, aged 88 years.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, U.S. Social Security Death Index 1935 – 2014, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1915 New York State Census, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, U.S. World War I Draft Registration Cards 1917 – 1918, U.S. World War II Draft Registration Cards 1942, PRO BT 100/345, Graham Maddocks, Lawrence Evans, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.