John Benjamin Hine was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on 14th January 1891, the son of Foster Lancaster and Mary Jane Hine (née Phillips). He was the second oldest of eleven children, and his father was employed as a book keeper by Liverpool Corporation.
He was educated at St. Michael's in-the-Hamlet School, Aigburth, Liverpool and the family home in 1915, was at 23, St. Michael's Road, Aigburth.
He was employed as an extra vegetable cook in the Stewards' Department on board the Lusitania and engaged at Liverpool, on the 15th April 1915 for what would be her final voyage, at a rate of £6-0s.-0d. per month. He joined the vessel before she left Liverpool landing stage for the last time, on the 17th May 1915.
Having completed the Lusitania’s voyage to New York, he was killed, six days out of the port, on the afternoon of the 7th May 1915, when the liner was sunk on her return voyage to Liverpool and only hours away from her home berth, by the German submarine U-20, within sight of the coast of southern Ireland.
On the 10th May 1915, however, seventeen bodies were recovered from the sea between Baltimore and Castletownshend, about thirty miles from where the liner went down, by the Queenstown tender Flying Fish. Eight of these bodies were those of women and nine of them were men and it was reported in The Cork Examiner for Thursday, the 12th May 1915 that one of them was that of John Hine, although it names him as Hynes.
The bodies were later landed at Queenstown and taken to one of the temporary mortuaries there, where that of Extra Vegetable Cook Hine was given the reference number 171 and described as: -
Man, supposed crew John Hines, (sic), Veg. Cook 25 to 30 years, fair hair, clean shaven, blue eyes, hooked nose, thin face, slight make, boots and socks, 5’ 8” or 9”, supposed steward.
Then, on the 14th May 1915, it was buried in The Old Church Cemetery, Queenstown, in Mass Grave B, Row 6, Upper Tier. The remains still lie there today.
Despite the fact that John Hine has an identified grave, the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission did not originally recognise this and as a consequence, he is also commemorated on the Mercantile Marine War Memorial at
Tower Hill, London. As a result of Graham Maddocks’ research, however, the Commission has accepted that he has an actual burial site and in November 1998, erected a permanent memorial to him and other crew members, where he is actually buried.
It takes the form of a monument of Irish limestone, sited at the head of Mass Grave B, the centre one of the three. The names of crew members buried in the three mass graves are incised on two black granite panels on the memorial, with a legend in between them, which reads: -
1914 - 1918
IN HONOURED MEMORY
OF THOSE NAMED WHO,
SERVING ON THE
RMS LUSITANIA,
DIED WHEN THE SHIP WAS
SUNK BY ENEMY ACTION
ON 7 MAY 1915
AND ARE BURIED NEARBY
The name of Extra Vegetable Cook Hine is incised on the left hand panel.
The Commission has also stated that should it ever be necessary to renew the panel bearing his name on the Tower Hill Memorial, his name would be omitted from its replacement and his name removed from the Tower Hill Memorial register.
Register of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, Liverpool England Church of England Baptisms 1813 – 1919, 1891 Census of England, 1901 Census of England, 1911 Census of England, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Cork Examiner, PRO BT100/345, PRO BT 334, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, May Wills, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 10th January 2024.