Eva Baker was born in Great Britain in 1891. She was a maid and at some time had left her home and travelled to New York City in the United States of America, probably in the pursuit of employment.
On 1st May 1915, however, she boarded the Lusitania as a second cabin passenger at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York harbour for what would become the liner’s last ever crossing of the Atlantic. According to a brief account in one of the New York City newspapers, the Elmira Telegram, Eva Baker was travelling to Paris, France, to buy her wedding dress!
Six days out of New York, however, on the afternoon of 7th May, the liner was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine
U-20, within sight of the coast of southern Ireland and about 250 miles away from her Liverpool destination.
Eva Baker was killed as a result of this torpedoing. She was aged 24 years and as no trace of her body was ever recovered from the sea and identified, she has no known grave.
Cunard Records, Elmira Telegram, The Guthrie Daily Leader, The Morning News, Boston Herald, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, PRO BT 100/345, Graham Maddocks.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.