Samuel Hanson was born in Stalybridge, Cheshire, England, in 1864, the son of William and Amelia Hanson (née Travis). His father worked in a cotton mill, and the family moved to nearby Dukinfield while he was still a child.
On the 24th January 1886, he married Mary Ellen Harrison in Dukinfield. She was a local girl who also worked in the cotton mills, and they had three sons, named James, Nelson and Samuel, and two daughters, named Amelia and Elizabeth. Sadly, Elizabeth died in 1896, aged two years, and Samuel died in infancy in 1903.
Samuel was a cotton spinner by trade, and at one stage, he was employed by The Newton Moor Spinning Company as a machine minder and then at the premises of The Hyde Spinning Company. At that time, the family address was at 236, Oaklands Terrace, Higher King Street, Dukinfield. Mary Hanson’s parents, the Harrisons, lived at Peel Street, Dukinfield and her brother, Mr. Nelson Harrison, at Robinson Street, Ashton-under-Lyne.
In March 1912 Samuel Hanson and his two surviving sons emigrated to the United States of America and settled in Central Falls, Rhode Island, where they obtained work in the textile trade and in June of the same year Mary and Amelia Hanson joined them there. The family address there was 101, Watson Street, Central Falls.
In the spring of 1915, Samuel and May Hanson decide to return to Lancashire for a short holiday and they must have been quite successful financially, since their arrival in America, as they were able to book second cabin passages for them both on the May sailing of the Lusitania. They left Central Falls at the end of April 1915 and joined the liner at New York, in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. sailing.
This was then delayed until 12.27 p.m., whilst the liner loaded cargo and took on board passengers and crew from Anchor Liner the S.S.
Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned as a troop ship at the end of April. Then, the
Lusitania slipped out into the North River and then into the Atlantic Ocean, for what became her last voyage. Six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, she was torpedoed by the German submarine
U-20, twelve miles off The Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland and sank only eighteen minutes later. At that stage of her voyage, she was a mere twelve or fourteen hours away from her Liverpool destination.
Samuel Hanson lost his life as a result of this action. Samuel Hanson was aged 51 years.
An article in The Hyde Reporter for 15th May 1915 stated: -
Mr. Nelson Harrison has been informed that Mr. and Mrs. Hanson were seen to get into one of the ship’s boats, but on being lowered from the davits, it capsized and the occupants were thrown into the sea.
The lifeboat was probably No. 17. The newspaper report continued: -
Mrs. Hanson’s body was recovered and taken to Queenstown, but the body of her husband is missing. Mrs. Harrison and her family were anxious that the burial of Mrs. Hanson should take place in Dukinfield Cemetery. They have been informed, however, by the Cunard Company, that all bodies with the exception of American citizens would be buried in special graves in Queenstown Cemetery.
In point of fact, Samuel Hanson’s body was one of the earliest to be recovered - even before that of his wife and after it was landed at Queenstown, it was given the reference number 44, in one of the temporary mortuaries there, probably the one set up in the yard of Cunard’s office at Lynch’s Quay on the waterfront.
Once a positive identification had been made, however, it was buried, as intimated in
The Hyde Reporter, on 10th May, in The Old Church Cemetery, just outside the town in Mass Grave C, Row 1, Upper Tier. This was the day on which most of the recovered dead from the sinking were buried after a long funeral procession which began outside the Cunard office. May Hanson was buried at the same time at the same grave location, probably next to her husband.
On July 8th 1915, property recovered from his body, which probably aided its identification, was sent on the steamer S.S.
Orduña firstly to Cunard’s New York Office and then on to the Boston office, for forwarding to the Central Falls address and to his son James Hanson, who had been granted administration of his father’s estate. It arrived there on 19th August 1915 and consisted of a gold watch and chain, a bunch of keys, a knife, a pair of spectacles, a ring, a silver watch, a pocket book, £4-0s-0d., in gold and some British and American coinage.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1881 Census of England & Wales, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, Massachusetts Passenger Lists 1820 – 1963, Cunard Records, Hyde Reporter, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv.D92/1/8-20, UniLiv D92/2/235, UniLiv D92/2/436, UniLiv PR13/6, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, David Fernley, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.