Mikentii Polubinski was born in Imperial Russia in 1874. In 1915, he was living in North Easton, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, having immigrated there, probably before the outbreak of the Great War.
In the spring of 1915, however, he decided to return home, possibly because he wanted to join the Tsarist forces against those of the Central Powers in what was rapidly becoming their losing fight on the eastern front.
As a result, he booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool for the major part of his journey home and having left North Easton some time in April, he arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, on the morning of 1st May 1915. With ticket number 39472, he boarded the liner in time for the liner’s scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure, but then had to wait until the early afternoon of that day before the Cunarder left, as she had to load cargo and embark passengers and crew from the Anchor Lines vessel the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for war service as a troop ship at the end of April.
Six days out of New York, on the early afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of southern Ireland, by the German submarine U-20 and sank within 20 minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her home port.
Altogether there were 68 Russian nationals on board the vessel and of these, 39 were killed and 29 survived the action. Mikentii Polubinski was one of the lucky ones who were saved, and after having been rescued from the sea, he was landed at Queenstown, where some Russian survivors were apparently badly treated by the local authorities.
It is not known whether Polubinski was one of these, or indeed if he ever made it back to his homeland and if he did, if he survived the war and the subsequent major revolutions in Russia. He was 41 years of age at the time of the sinking.
Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.