Angela Baffa Tresca Amalfitani di Crucoli was born in Italy, in November 1883, into an old Italian family.
She was married to Michel Nickolas Pappadopoulo and the family home was in Athens, Greece, where her husband was a successful Persian carpet dealer. It is believed that they had three children.
On 26th March 1915, the couple arrived in New York on board the Lusitania from Liverpool, presumably in connection with her husband’s business, and for their return to Athens, they had booked their passage from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and had set out from there to New York at the end of April 1915. Once they had boarded the Lusitania - with ticket number 14673 - they were allocated room B78, which was under the personal supervision of First Class Bedroom Steward Arthur Clegg, who came from Liverpool.
The liner’s scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure had then to be postponed until 12.27 p.m., as she had to take on board passengers, crew and cargo from Anchor Liner the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for use as a troop ship at the end of the previous month. Then, six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20 off the southern coast of Ireland and only hours away from her Liverpool destination.
Although Michel Pappadopoulo was killed as a result of this action, his wife, Angela, survived. Having found herself in the sea, she swam around for a good twenty minutes wearing a heavy dress, before she was pulled into a collapsible boat. One source states that she was able to swim in the sea for some considerable time, partially because she had been given a jumper and a pair of trousers by one of the crew, before the ship sank.
Afterwards, a fellow saloon passenger, Charles Hardwick of Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., mentioned Mrs. Pappadopoulo in an interview with his local newspaper, The Newark Evening News. He said: -
Mrs. M.M. (sic) Pappadopoulo who was on her way to Athens with her husband, swam for a long distance towards shore when she was picked up. She believes her husband was drowned.
Similarly, fellow saloon passenger survivor Robert Cairns gave an interview in
Queenstown for The Cork Examiner, in which it was stated: -
He assisted getting quite a number of people into the boats, and spent a couple of hours in the water himself. He assisted a Greek lady and kept her afloat for a very long time, being ultimately picked up by the Brock.
This must have been Angela Pappadopoulo as she was the only Greek lady on board, so she must have been rescued from the sea by H.M.S. Brock, which was a Royal Naval trawler, before being landed at Queenstown.
It was eventually established that her husband had perished in the sinking, but before any concrete evidence of this was forthcoming, having initially recovered from her ordeal in Queenstown, she went to London to await further developments. She was aged 32 years at the time of her ordeal.
Her husband's body was eventually recovered and identified - one of the last so to be, and having been given the sad news of its recovery she requested that a lead lined coffin be made for it and that that, and all other papers and personal effects, be sealed carefully, and forwarded to the Cunard South West Office in London.
Eventually, on 17th May 1915, Mikes Pappadopoulo’s body was delivered to London and interred in West Norwood Cemetery. Although cemetery records indicate that the burial was a temporary measure, presumably because there was an intention to have the remains brought to Greece, Michel Pappadopoulo remains there to this day, in an unmarked grave, designated as plot 36671 in the Greek section of the cemetery.
Apparently, all three of her children died as a result of the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, and Angela was later introduced to Alexandre, Count Bakeev, a Russian aristocrat who had fled his homeland after the Russian Revolution in 1917, and had settled in Paris, France. They are believed to have married, but no details are known about this.
Countess Angela Bakeev is reported to have died in Paris, France, on the 1st May 1936, aged 53 years.
New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, Cork Examiner, New York Times, Newark Evening News, Last Voyage of the Lusitania, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv. PR13/6, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Colin Fenn, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.