The identity of the man listed as Benjamin Eshoo recorded on the manifest of third class passengers who board the
Lusitania at Pier 54 in New York harbour on the 1st May 1915 is very unclear, however, in a revised passenger manifest which was issued in March 1917, he is named as
Ishoo, and in a later, third passenger manifest, and also on a list of people who died at sea in 1915, he is named as Benjamin
Ishov!
Although he was stated to have been born a subject of the British Empire in 1880, it is more likely, if the afore-mentioned is correct, that he was born somewhere in Imperial Russia, and became a British subject. The fact that no official records relating to him can be found, it is likely that the varied spellings of his name are incorrect translations of his Russian or eastern European name, and therefore make it now very unlikely that his true identity can be discovered.
Whoever the man was, it is believed that in 1915, he had been living in Yonkers, New York, in the United States of America, where he worked as a labourer.
Nothing else is known about him, except that in the spring of that year, perhaps because of the war and mindful of his patriotic duty, he decided to return to his homeland and consequently booked third class passage for himself on the May sailing of the
Lusitania from New York to Liverpool. His ticket was numbered 37372.
He would then have boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for the liner’s scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure. This was then postponed until just after mid-day, because she had to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Lines vessel the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for war service as a troop ship at the end of April.
Six days out of New York on the afternoon of 7th May, and within sight of the coast of southern Ireland, the
Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. At that time, she was only about fourteen hours steaming time away from her home port.
Benjamin Ishov lost his life as a result of this action and as his body was never recovered from the sea and identified later, he does not have a known grave. He was aged 35 years at the time he was killed.
Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.