Henry ‘Harry’ Pollard was born in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, England, in 1883, the son of Edwin and Grace Pollard (née Gawthorp). He was the third-youngest of nine known children in the family.
In 1915, his father was the sub-postmaster of a post office on the south shore of Blackpool pleasure beach, the popular holiday resort in Lancashire, and had previously owned and run “Eaglehurst”, a guest house in Douglas, on the Isle of Man.
One brother, Francis ’Frank’ Pollard, was a well known confectioner in Silsden, Yorkshire, where Edwin Pollard had first begun manufacturing firelighters at The Old Corn Mill, and another brother, Lewis Pollard, lived at the family home in Blackpool.
Harry Pollard, who was unmarried, was an engineers’ draughtsman. He was employed by the armaments firm of Vickers, Son and Maxim, of Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, and in December 1914, had been sent to Washington D.C. in the United States of America, to the firm of G.W. Moss, to conduct company business there - no doubt connected with the war.
During the last week of April 1915, however, he had cabled his family in England to say that he intended to return home on the May sailing of the Lusitania, and that once the liner had docked in Liverpool, he intended to carry on to the Isle of Man and spend the weekend with one of his sisters, who still lived there.
Consequently he booked saloon passage on the ship with agents G. W. Moss, of Washington D. C., and boarded her - with ticket number 13133, before she left New York just after mid-day, on 1st May 1915. He was allocated a berth in room E40 which was the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward John Charlton, who came from Waterloo, on the outskirts of Liverpool. The liner had been scheduled to sail at 10.00 a.m., but this was delayed whilst she embarked passengers, some crew and cargo from the Anchor Lines vessel the Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned as a troop ship at the end of April.
Then, six days later, the steamer was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20, off the coast of southern Ireland, only hours away from her Liverpool destination. Harry Pollard was killed as a result of this action.
After news that he was missing had reached his family, his brothers Frank and Lewis travelled to Queenstown hoping to discover him there, but they found no trace of him - alive or dead. As a consequence, he has no known grave. He was aged 31 years.
On Friday 14th May 1915, The Craven Herald and Wenslydale Standard gave a brief account of his loss and said of him: -
Although he was comparatively a young man, he had made rapid strides in engineering pursuits. He was always possessed of a studious nature in his school days, when he was best known in Silsden, which no doubt assisted him greatly in the work which he took up after his scholastic career had terminated and being of inventive mind, he brought out several patents which have proved of a very remunerative character. ..... The people of Silsden were regretted to hear of the untimely end to the success of a promising career.
Bedroom Steward Charlton who had looked after Harry Pollard in room E 40, survived the sinking, however and eventually found his way back to his home in Waterloo.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Bradford Daily Telegraph, Craven Herald, Sunday Pictorial, Yorkshire Post, PRO 22/71, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Margery West, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.