Isaac Lewis was born in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, on the 6th March 1883, the son of Isaac and Anna Lewis (née Caulfield). His father was a book keeper, who is believed to have died in 1888. He was one of seven known children, and following the death of his father, he resided with his mother and some of his siblings at the home of his maternal grandmother at Isaac Street, Toxteth Park, Liverpool.
On the 22nd September 1908, he married Jane Marshall Morris at St. Paul’s Church, Princes Park, Toxteth, Liverpool, and the family home was at 10. Elm Road, Wood Hey, Rock Ferry, Birkenhead, Cheshire. Their daughter, Edith, was born in September 1909.
Isaac Lewis’s business was in cotton, principally as a cotton buyer, and he made regular visits to the southern states of the United States of American in the pursuit of this profession. In the spring of 1915, he and his wife and child had been on one of these visits and for their return to Britain, they had booked second cabin passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool, which was scheduled to leave at 10.00 a.m. on 1st May 1915. Having arrived at the liner’s berth at Pier 54 in New York harbour, the sailing was delayed until the afternoon so that she could embark passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Lines ship the S.S. Cameronia. This vessel had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war service at the end of April.
The Lusitania finally left harbour just after noon and six days later, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 twelve miles off the coast of southern Ireland sank after only 18 minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about twelve to fourteen hours away from her home port and destination.
In October 1984, Isaac Lewis’s wife, Jane - then aged 102, was interviewed by a representative of The Imperial War Museum for its Sound Archive section, and remembered the following: -
Our reason for being in America was my husband's business. We'd finished the business. We always came home, then back again when the cotton started again. ..... We used to go down to the southern states. ..... I only had one daughter then and she was with me. She was five, just five.
We were on the deck. We were on the deck and it was just on the lunchtime, and we had just come down to lunch, and we were just inside the dining room, just inside the door so we could get out quickly, because we had heard rumours something might happen. So that we could get out quickly we took a dining room table by the door, and then when the awful noise came we could just get round the door and onto the landing and down the staircase.
But the people came pouring through the dining room from the other part of the ship, people fell down, people walked over them but you couldn't do anything because the boat was going sideways. We got out luckily because we were near the door otherwise we would never have got out because of the people.
Then we went down the stairs and instead of going up they went down and I fell down but we got down on to the lower deck and then we stayed there and we didn‘t go down on the ship any further and we were standing by a lifeboat on the ship waiting to see what we could do. There was nobody about where we were, hardly, but there were plenty in the water. And then my husband said that he had better go down to the cabin and get lifebelts and I said “No - you're not going down,” because I said “if you go down there, you'll never get up again.” , and then I said “If you are going we are all going together.”
Well we stayed there and there was a lifeboat, a small boat in the water and it was tied or fastened or something and we got in the boat but we couldn’t get away and not one of the men could find a penknife on them - they seemed to have lost them all. So we got away eventually and I was thrown into the boat because we had to be quick. So we went away from the ship for a time and the people were in the water everywhere. .....
And I was in the little ship, the little boat on the water. My husband said to me, he said, “Look round now,” he said, “she’s going down now.”. And I said, “No, I won’t.” I didn’t want to see her go down, but I thought I’d better look and I looked and just before - she was just going down, down into the water. The end of it like that was the last I saw of her. And I was in the little boat. Never saw her again, down she went! And we sailed on the water for a time and they took us off onto a fishing smack. .....
And then we went on to Queenstown. We never stopped again. When we got to Queenstown there was a howling mob there. To get off took us some time. ..... So then we all got off at Queenstown and the people gave us a good, good welcome, but it was terrible, terrible.
It was night time then. And we all had to try and get shifts on, to get to sleep. So we were given a bedroom, my daughter and I and my husband - he was helping with different things. And we were in bed. My daughter she was sick. It had upset her, the shock, I think. And we were wondering
where my husband was. .....
At this time, Isaac Lewis was almost certainly touring the makeshift mortuaries in Queenstown, as he had been asked to do, by Cunard officials in the town, in the hope that he might be able to identify any of the recovered dead. Eventually, the Lewis family was able to make it back safely to Rock Ferry, where Jane Lewis, pregnant during her Lusitania ordeal and the journey home, was successfully delivered of her second child, a son named Kenneth Isaac, who was born in November. Their third child, a daughter named Mary, was born in 1917.
She concluded the Imperial War Museum interview by stating: -
I’ve had a good life. Mind you, I suppose I’ve looked after myself too. But I had the best of husbands that any woman could ever have in this world.
Isaac Lewis continued to make annual trips to the United States of America to buy cotton, and in later years was frequently accompanied by his wife, and youngest daughter, Mary. They were making these trips until at least 1954.
Isaac Lewis died on the 6th December 1964 at The Chase, Oldfield Way, Heswall, Cheshire, aged 81 years. The family home at that time was at 19. Hesketh Road, Southport, Lancashire. Administration of his estate was granted at Liverpool, on 15th April 1965, to his widow, Jane, and his son, Kenneth Isaac Lewis, cotton merchant. His effects amounted to £39,616-0s-0d.
His wife, Jane, survived him by more than 20 years, passing away on the 4th June 1984, aged 103 years!
The official list of passenger victims published by Cunard in March 1916 lists Isaac Lewis’ forename as John, but this is clearly an error.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Liverpool England Church of England Marriages and Banns 1813 – 1921, 1891 Census of England & Wales, 1901 Census of England & Wales, 1911 Census of England & Wales, 1939 Register, New Orleans Passenger Lists 1813 – 1963, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, IWM SA 7361, Murder On The Atlantic, Probate Records, UniLiv D92/2/207, Graham Maddocks, Lawrence Evans, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.