Ernest Stearing Cowper was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on the 8th March 1883, the son of Captain Matthew and Agnes Elizabeth Cowper (née Bright). His father was a master mariner and a commander in the Royal Naval Reserve, who was drowned at sea in April 1895, when his ship, the Marie, was lost with all hands. Altogether, there were seven sons and two daughters in the family and Ernest was the fifth of the sons to be born.
Just before the end of the Anglo-Boer War, in 1902, following three unsuccessful attempts at business apprenticeships in Liverpool, he joined the 1st Battalion, The Wiltshire Regiment, volunteering for active service. His maternal grandfather had actually commanded that battalion during the Crimean War and had met his death at the storming of the quarries at Sebastopol on the Black Sea! This fate was happily denied to Ernest Cowper, however; for although he arrived in South Africa after a meagre training, to take part in the war, it was in its final stages and he soldiered safely through it without mishap. He then continued to serve in the regiment for the next three years, being discharged with credit and honour, in 1905.
Following his military discharge, Ernest decided to follow his father as a merchant seaman, and served on a number of liners sailing out of Liverpool, including the
Oceanic, and Empress of Britain, as an assistant pantry steward. On the 12th June 1908, while on a return voyage of the
Empress of Britain from Liverpool to Quebec, he deserted the liner on reaching Quebec!
One of his older brothers, John, was settled in Canada and consequently, he decided to join him, and he eventually settled in Toronto, Ontario, where he developed his love of music and eventually became music critic to a well-known American newspaper chain. He was also recognised as a brilliant concert pianist. Through his work for the newspaper, he eventually became a well respected journalist for a local publication, named
Jack Canuck. As his brother John, had by this time achieved success as a member of The British Columbia Legislative Assembly and proprietor of Western Canadian Newspapers, he may have had some influence in securing Ernest his position.
In March 1910, he travelled to San Francisco, California, to visit a friend named Ellen Bell Downey, returning alone to Toronto at the end of April 1910. Then, on the 17th December 1912, the couple had a daughter, Elizabeth Downey Cowper, born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. At the time of the birth, the couple stated that they had married in San Francisco, California, however; no record of a marriage can be found for them!
In 1915, because of the war in Europe, Ernest Cowper and his editor/publisher, a Mr. Percy W. Rogers, decided to travel to the Continent to report on the progress of The Canadian Expeditionary Force for readers back home. As a result, they booked passage on the Lusitania, Percy Rogers as a saloon passenger and Ernest Cowper as a second cabin passenger. They both boarded the liner on the morning of 1st May 1915 at Pier 54 in New York harbour, before she left there for the final time later that day.
Ernest Cowper was especially pleased to sail on the liner because another brother Charles, had previously been an engineer officer on board, but was soon dismayed to discover that Charles had been transferred to another liner just before the
Lusitania had left Liverpool! In fact, Charles Cowper had been on board the armed merchant cruiser
Carmania, also of the Cunard Steamship Company, when she had engaged and sunk the German auxiliary cruiser
Cap Trafalgar on 14th September 1914.
After a fairly uneventful voyage, in the early afternoon of 7th May, Ernest Cowper claimed that he saw a U-Boat, some one and a half hours before the
Lusitania was struck! His assertion and account of the sinking were widely syndicated after the event, the reports stating: -
“I was standing with Mr. Rogers on the starboard side, when all at once we observed the wake of our ship and realised that something was happening. When the vessel appeared to swerve we ran to the other side and then clearly saw away on the horizon, the conning tower of a submarine. She was evidently bent on heading us off, and sent us right into the other one.
I have not the slightest doubt that a cleverly-laid scheme was planned and successfully carried out. The torpedo struck at right angles. When we saw the submarine, Mr. Rogers, who was most unconcerned said 'Here's where we get our copy.' Turning round he spoke to some ladies who were near, saying 'Keep you heads. Keep cool. I do not believe she will sink.' The last I saw of Mr. Rogers was when I got into the second boat. He was then calmly walking up and down the deck nursing a baby. I have not heard of him since, and I fear he has drowned.
There were two very prominent and wealthy Americans in my lifeboat. When we got clear, both stood up in the boat and recorded a solemn pledge that if the United States was not in this within seven days, they would renounce their citizenship for ever. The impression which this created you can imagine better that I can describe.
Here is another incident typical of many. After the ship had been struck we saw what appeared to be an overturned boat. We were soon disillusioned, for a loud cheer burst forth, and it emanated, so we found, from the submarine. There was more cheering and then a shout, 'Will you sing Tipperary now!’ after which the enemy craft disappeared from view.”
Although other survivors also claimed to have seen the surfaced submarine, there is, in fact no substance to the story as the log of the
U-20 shows that the commander, Kapitänleutnant Walter Schwieger and his crew did not surface at all after the torpedoing. Ernest Cowper's account must be treated with scepticism, therefore and parts of it were probably just journalistic licence! His editor, Richard J. Rogers was in fact killed after the ship was torpedoed and his body was never recovered and identified later.
In an account of the sinking published in The Cheshire Daily Echo on 10th May 1915, further parts of Cowper’s experience were also reported: -
“The Lusitania was struck forward. There was a loud explosion and portions of the splintered hull were sent flying into the air. Shortly afterwards the liner was struck again by another torpedo and she began to list to starboard.
The crew immediately proceeded to get the passengers into the boats, and everything was done in an orderly manner.”
A little girl named Helen Smith aged six, appealed to Mr. Cowper to save her, and he put her on a boat. It is feared that her parents are lost. Her grandparents belong to Liverpool. Mr. Cowper got into the last boat. Some of the boats could not be launched and had to be cut away as the vessel was sinking.
Second Cabin passenger Helen Smith was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred F. Smith who were travelling with Helen and their other daughter Bessie, an infant, from Ellwood, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., to their home town of Swansea, Glamorgan, in South Wales.
Cowper put her on the lap of second cabin passenger Elizabeth Hampshire, from Glossop in Derbyshire, England, and she eventually survived the ordeal - the only one from her family to do so!
Having been rescued from the sea, Ernest Cowper was landed at Queenstown and eventually got a boat to Holyhead, in North Wales, and safety.
On the voyage across the Atlantic, probably through Richard Rogers, Ernest Cowper had met and befriended saloon passengers, eccentric publisher and character Elbert Hubbard and his second wife Alice, who were both lost in the sinking. In March 1916, by which time he was living in Vancouver, British Columbia, he wrote to Hubbard’s son also named Elbert Hubbard but known as ‘Bert’
- about the last minutes of the his father’s and step-mother’s lives. This was later printed by Bert Hubbard in the foreword to
The Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard, in 1928, and read: -
"The Province" Office
Vancouver, B.C.,
March 12, 1916.
Dear Mr. Hubbard:
I should have written what I have written to you a long while ago - but I don't know, it seems as if the Lusitania left its seal on every one who was in it, and even now, almost a year later, I am afraid all the survivors are thinking more seriously of May 7, than they are of their business or the other things they should attend to. I know that is the case with me.
If you have been informed that there was a man on board who was in the company of your father and Mrs. Hubbard on many occasions, I guess they have me in mind, for we really did spend a lot of time together - so much so that he took to calling me ‘Jack.’ I don't know why, unless it was that I was then going on an assignment for the paper called Jack Canuck.
The night previous to the murder, I and Rogers, the proprietor of Jack Canuck, had attended at his cabin for a sort of little conversazione, a fruit feast or steamboat visit, in return for a visit he had made to me the night previously. I did not see him again until the next day, just a little before the torpedo hit us. I then called the attention of himself and Mrs. Hubbard to the extra watch which had been put on for submarines, and walked them forward to where two men were right at the stern with glasses. Two were on each side of the navigating-bridge, and three were in the crow's nest, which is half way up the foremast.
He expressed surprise at this, for he was sure a submarine would never make any effort to torpedo a ship filled with women, children and non-combatants. He mentioned the fact that there were no guns on board, and that there was no place to put them. I agreed that there were no guns, but pointed out that there were places to put them, and walked both round to the places which were built with the vessel for the mounting of guns if required.
Nobody but one having a close acquaintance with a ship would know what the round, elevated patch on the deck was for; but I come from a seafaring family, (my father having been drowned at sea while in command), and so I knew what they were for.
We then parted to go to our cabins before taking lunch. On finishing mine, I went to the top deck, and was smoking with Rogers when I saw the torpedo coming toward us. We both sought the shelter of the companionway until after the explosion, when I saw another coming and again took shelter. After the second one we emerged, for the vessel took a terrible list right away. I can not say specifically where your father and Mrs. Hubbard were when the torpedoes hit, but I can tell you just what happened after that. They emerged from their room, which was on the port side of the vessel, and came on to the boat-deck.
Neither appeared perturbed in the least. Your father and Mrs. Hubbard linked arms - the fashion in which they always walked the deck - and stood apparently wondering what to do. I passed him with a baby which I was taking to a lifeboat, when he said, “Well, Jack, they have got us. They are a damn sight worse that I ever thought they were.”
This baby was obviously Helen Smith. The letter continued: -
They did not move very far away from where they originally stood. As I moved to the other side of the ship, in preparation for a jump when the right moment came, I called to him, "What are you going to do?" and he just shook his head, while Mrs. Hubbard smiled and said, "There does not seem to be anything to do."
The expression seemed to produce action on the part of your father, for then he did one of the most dramatic things I ever saw done. He simply turned with Mrs. Hubbard and entered a room on the top deck, the door of which was open, and closed it behind him. It was apparent that his idea was that they should die together, and not risk being parted on going into the water.
The blow to yourself and your sister must have been terrible, and yet, had you seen what I have seen, you would be greatly consoled, for never in history, I am sure, did two people look the Reaper so squarely in the eye at his approach as did your father and Mrs. Hubbard. It was there that the philosopher shone. Both showed that they had not been talking for talk's sake, or writing because it presented itself as a means of securing a livelihood. Both were philosophers, and both showed that they were each other's most apt pupils. I don't believe that the prospect at that moment troubled them any more than it would have done had the call been to go to lunch instead of to tread The Valley of the Long Shadow.
If he wrote his philosophy, he certainly lived it to the last moment. He was a big man in life, but to my mind he is a vastly bigger man in death. I suppose you have asked yourself the question; "Was it possible for them to have been saved? Did they really do all that could be done?" To this I would say they could do nothing more than was done, especially if they wanted to remain together, and apparently there was no intention on either side of separating.
There was a preponderance of women and children on board. This fact is accounted for owing to the number of wives and children of men belonging to the Canadian contingents (which were almost wholly composed of Old-Country men) who were going to England, where they could live cheaper and be near to the hospitals where their dear ones would be taken in case of injury.
Some of the horrors of the disaster can never be committed to print. I can tell you this: there were a surprisingly large number of women on board who were in advanced stages of pregnancy - presumably English women who were going to their parents for the birth of their children. I saw the corpses of four of these in the mortuary at Queenstown, and they had been delivered of their infants in the water, precipitated labour owing to shock being the cause. But can you in your mind conjure such a picture! Because Great Britain is at war, there should be stretched out on the cold flagstones of the mortuary at Queenstown the bodies of four women in a condition which even animals respect, and this for the furtherance of the Kultur which Emperor William would impose on Europe, and America next, I suppose, were he not stopped (and he is stopped). And this is but one of the many horrors I could tell you.
It must be a source of gratification to you to know that they are getting the crews of the subs right along. The announcements are not made, but rest assured they are getting them. My mother resides in Liverpool, and a younger brother is in the service of Cammel-Laird's (Birkenhead, across the river from Liverpool). Cammel's are shipbuilders, and of course are now busy on warships.
My mother tells me that there is not a week goes by but what the crews of one or more German submarines are taken from them at Cammel's yards and buried in the little cemetery just near the shipyards. They work round the estuary of the Mersey. The destroyers get them, and they are brought up the river to Cammel's, where they are opened up and the bodies taken from them.
While I was in Scotland I was alongside the Gareloch, and they had got two away up the Clyde that morning - but never a word in the papers about it. If there is one thing the British Navy does better than another, it is to keep its mouth shut. But what a lot there will be to learn after it's all over and the story is written!
Yours very faithfully,
Ernest S. Cowper
Cowper was clearly wrong in the points he made in his last two paragraphs and whether he knew this at the time and was merely trying to help the Hubbard family to bear its loss, or he actually believed it, is not actually clear. There
was a small cemetery near to the Cammel-Laird's
shipbuilding yard in 1916, that of St. Mary’s churchyard, next to Birkenhead Priory, but there is no evidence that a single German naval crew member was buried there throughout the war years. Similarly, there is no evidence that two German U-Boats were ever destroyed in one morning in the Gareloch!
In 1948, his elder sister Agnes, known as 'Nancie', wrote a small book which she entitled
A Backward Glance on Merseyside about her life and family from her birth in the Victorian era until just after the Second World War. She devoted a chapter in it, to her brother's part in the
Lusitania’s loss and described waiting, pathetically, for news of her brother and then, particularly poignantly, the scene at Woodside Railway Station in Birkenhead, where relatives waited, mostly in vain, for the arrival of the last train from Holyhead which might have brought their loved ones who had survived.
We did not retire, for sleep would have been impossible. We were doing our best to convince each other that the morrow would bring good news when, at one a.m., came a ring at the bell, and mother cried, “Thank God, he is safe.” And sure enough, there in the doorway stood a telegram messenger holding the familiar orange-coloured envelope which held the message, “Saved, Ernest.” A short time ago I had occasion to search among my mother's papers and found this telegram put carefully away. It was evidently one of her family treasures.
On the following morning I arrived at the Dingle Station of the Overhead Railway, where it came as a great surprise to me to be confronted with the large newspaper placard of a well-known pictorial daily bearing a picture of my brother Ernest holding a small child whom, as I later learned from the paper, he had been instrumental in saving from the wreck. Later in the day another telegram arrived, saying, “Will arrive Sunday five-fifteen Woodside Station.”
So it was that on a beautiful Sabbath afternoon I witnessed, as regards the home-coming of its survivors the final scene of that great sea crime, the sinking of the Lusitania. Although the train from Holyhead, bringing the last of the survivors, was not due until five-fifteen I knew no rest and actually arrived on the platform with the clock hands at four-thirty. Early as I was, others were earlier, including some who, with little children, had kept an all-night vigil on one of our Liverpool stations where two trains had arrived, one in the early hours of the morning and one at mid-day. Although each had brought a little company of survivors, no familiar face had gladdened the hearts of these weary watchers. Though no message of promise had reached them they had heard that the last of the saved would arrive at Woodside Station at five-fifteen, and Hope, sometimes so cruel, bade them forget their fatigue and the weary watches of the night, and led them, dragging and carrying little children, to resume their watch at Woodside.
Memory has engraved, deeply, that scene, so tragic, so pitiful, and yet so inevitable a sequel to such inhumanity. I recall the little group seated upon luggage trucks which a kindly porter had placed for their accommodation; young women with tiny children in their arms, and others clinging to their skirts, blissfully unconscious of the tragedy and crime of the previous Friday afternoon. All of this little group, humble women, chiefly wives of the heroic 'black squad,' whilst bravely endeavouring to comfort and sustain each other, were, save for the ministering services of a Salvation Army Officer, left conspicuously isolated during their dramatic watch. One young woman, nursing an infant, looked faint and ill, and I watched with interest the kindly ministration of the Salvationist who, abandoning his post for a few minutes, returned with a cup of tea for her, standing by until, cheered by the beverage, she had somewhat recovered.
At last the train was signalled; a silence, weird and awesome, fell upon us broken only by the voice of a little child calling “Want to go home mummy, want to go home.” I saw the Salvationist relieve the woman of her infant; and then the train came steaming in. Oh! the mingled joy and agony of the next few seconds as carriage doors were flung open giving back, as from the dead, a few, but alas, for that tragic group, not one. Then a woman's voice was heard calling, “Has no one seen my Jim?” The returned survivors were greeted in silence by their friends who, in the face of so much stark sorrow, seemed to realise that audible expressions of their own great joy would be hardly less than an outrage. My brother was caught and held by women who eagerly accosted him with such questions as “Mister, did you see a big tall man anywhere; my husband?”
The train soon emptied of its comparatively few survivor occupants among whom the members of that poor, stricken group of women sought in vain for even one familiar face. At this moment an official of the Cunard Company was observed by them and was implored to say when and where the next batch of survivors would arrive. I found myself straining anxiously for the reply. The official hesitated but finally, with an effort, braced himself to say, “No more; no more. It is much better for you to know the truth; there are no more to come, not one.” Then a low chorus of moans arose from the tortured watchers who at last realised that nevermore would they behold the loved form of husband, father or son.
Not long after the sinking, Mr. H.T. Jones, a Wrexham schoolteacher and the uncle of Helen Smith - the little girl that Ernest Cowper had helped to save - related Helen’s account of the sinking and Ernest Cowper’s part in her survival, to a representative of his local newspaper The Wrexham Advertiser. This was published in the edition of 15th May 1915 and stated: -
Helen declares that when the torpedo exploded she heard the sound and then the people began to get into something of a panic, which caused the little ones to call out for help.
She secured the attention of Mr. Cowper, who placed her in a cabin, telling her not to move for he would presently come back for her. In a short time he came back and found Helen waiting for him. He placed her into a boat in which he also got. Mr. Cowper afterwards gave up his seat to someone else and the boat was launched safely.
This boat was picked up by a patrol vessel and Helen was safe on its deck. She noticed that several people were swimming about in the water. She recognised Mr. Cowper. She called out to the men to save him because he had saved her and this was done, and when Helen and her preserver met on the deck of the patrol ship there was much jubilation. Ultimately, Helen was met by her bereaved aunt, and both travelled to Swansea.
The story that Mr, Cowper swam with Helen in his grasp is not correct, for the little girl was never in the water at all according to her own story.
Helen is evidently a young lady of decided opinions. She says that she is very grateful to Mr. Cowper for saving her, yet she does not really like him. Her childish and very reasonable explanation is that he wanted to take her with him to Canada, whereas she wanted to go to Swansea to see her grandfather and grandmother - a choice one can imagine the brave and generous Mr. Cowper will very readily concur in and that he will as readily forgive her criticism for the same reason.
Mr. Jones said that his family has been unable to get in touch with Mr. Cowper but they hope to do so to thank him for the splendid service he rendered to this small lonely victim of German Kultur on that awful day.
It was Ernest Cowper’s and Percy Rogers’ intention to stay only one day in Liverpool before proceeding to the Western Front, to carry out their task of reporting the exploits of the Canadian forces, but Rogers was lost in the sinking and Ernest Cowper never made it to France or Flanders. Following his safe return to Liverpool, he stayed three weeks with his family in Liverpool and then received instructions to return to Toronto, which he duly did, boarding the
St. Paul at Liverpool on the 5th June.
No doubt taking advantage of the disaster to further his journalistic career, on the first anniversary of the sinking, he wrote of his experiences in
The New York Times Magazine and specifically mentioning the part played in the disaster by Bosun John Davies, he stated: -
He worked the forward falls on the lifeboats which got away from the starboard side, and smoked as he did it. He was assisted by two boyish-looking well groomed wireless operators, who, catching John Davies’ spirit perhaps, pulled out their cigarettes and smoked as they worked the after falls with him. They were drowned.
These boyish-looking well groomed wireless operators ought to have been Robert Leith, unlikely to have been
boyish-looking at the age of 29, and David McCormick then aged 20, but Cowper was wrong about their respective fates, as both survived. Furthermore, the story does not fit with the way in which either Leith or McCormick escaped from the sinking vessel. Both of them were working the wireless until virtually the last moment before the liner went down and then Leith got away in a sinking boat, in which there was only one other occupant and McCormick was taken down in the vortex when the
Lusitania sank and was picked out of the water shortly afterwards.
Ernest Cowper lodged a claim with the British Foreign Claims Department seeking compensation for injury to his health, loss of earnings, loss of money in his trunk which went down with the liner, and loss of profits on certain literary works he had contracted for. The British authorities forwarded his claim to the Canadian Commission, which had been established to deal with claims by Canadians for compensation.
The Commission ruled that no compensation could be made in relation to the loss of profits or earnings, however; it awarded him the sum of $2,500.00 in compensation for personal injury and medical expenses, and a further $1,500.00 for the loss of money and personal effects in the sinking.
Apart from Charles Cowper, another of Ernest’s brothers, Harry, served without mishap in the Mercantile Marine, throughout the Great War. The youngest of the seven brothers, Herbert, joined a local Territorial Force regiment of The Royal Field Artillery, and served (with only minor injury), throughout the war on the Western Front with the 55th (West Lancashire) Division. He also returned safely return home in 1919.
Ernest Cowper eventually married Ellen Bell Downey on the 20th September 1928 in Multnomah, Oregon.
After a successful life, in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s, Ernest Cowper died on 31st December 1938 after a very short illness, in Seattle, Washington, where he had settled, and thus did not live long enough to see the other great war of the twentieth century!
His sister Agnes later recorded the circumstances of his death in her book: -
On 1st January 1939, I received a letter from my brother Ernest in Vancouver. It was a bright and happy one telling me that, on that particular day, he was booked to give a pianoforte recital in Seattle. It was a letter full of high hopes and kindly greetings. The following day a cable arrived informing me that he had passed away on New Year’s eve after a few hours’ illness.
Although his death certificate stated he died on the 4th January 1939, this could have been erroneous, and his sister’s account is more acceptable. He was aged 55 years.
His widow, Ellen, died on the 14th May 1958, in Vancouver, B.C., aged 79 years.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Liverpool England Church of England Baptisms 1813 – 1917, Ontario Canada Births 1869 – 1913, Oregon Marriage Indexes 1906 – 2009, Washington Death Records 1883 – 1960, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1930 U.S. Federal Census, Michigan Passenger and Crew Lists 1903 – 1965, Border Crossings from the U.S. to Canada 1908 – 1935, U.S. Border Crossings from U.S. to Canada 1895 – 1960, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Canadian Claims Case No. 862, Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, A Backward Glance on Merseyside, Cheshire Daily Echo, The Last Voyage of the Lusitania, The Lusitania Case, Manchester Courier, Selected Works of Elbert Hubbard, Wrexham Advertiser, Graham Maddocks, Rachel Mulhearn, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.