Joseph H. Mason was born in Great Britain in 1884. Sometime before the Great War, he had emigrated to the United States of America and settled in Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and child, who was named Howard.
Because Detroit was and is, the centre of the automobile industry in America, it is likely that Joseph Mason was a mechanical engineer. The family home was at 131. Ferris Avenue, Highland Park.
Maritime tragedy first struck the family on 29th May 1914 when Joseph Mason’s wife and son had set out to return to Great Britain for a holiday. Having boarded the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Ireland, for the journey to England, they both lost their lives when the vessel was sunk in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, after a collision with the Norwegian vessel Storstad.
Almost a year later maybe because of the loss of his family or perhaps because of the war in Europe, Joseph Mason also decided to return to his homeland and booking a third class passage on the Lusitania, he joined the liner at her berth at Pier 54 in New York harbour on the morning of 1st May 1915. He had his last glimpse of his adopted country just after mid-day as the liner began her delayed sailing out of the North River and into the Atlantic Ocean.
Six days later, he was dead, killed after the liner had been torpedoed by the German submarine U-20, twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland and only hours away
from her Liverpool destination. He was aged 31 years and as his body was never found and identified afterwards, he has no known grave.
Thus in the course of less than a year, disaster at sea had wiped out the whole family!
Cunard Records, Boston Globe, Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Forgotten Empress, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Nyle Monday, Peter Threlfall, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.