Antoni Gryszkiewicz was born in Tsarist Russia in 1889. At some time, probably before the Great War, he had left there and having crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the United States of America, he had settled in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, where he presumably found employment.
In the spring of 1915, however, he decided to return home, possibly because he wanted to support his country at a time when it was faring very badly against the forces of the Central Powers on the eastern front.
Consequently, he booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania
from New York to Liverpool for the first part of his journey home. Having left Three Rivers some time in April, he boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her scheduled 10 o‘clock departure. This was then delayed until the early afternoon, because she had to load cargo passengers and crew from Anchor Liner 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 early afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania
was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of southern Ireland, by the German submarine
U-20. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her home port.
Altogether there were 68 Russian national passengers on the Lusitania when she went down. Of these, 39 were killed and 29 survived. Antoni Gryszkiewicz was one of the lucky ones who survived and after having been rescued from the sea, he was landed at Queenstown, from where it is probable that he continued his journey and ultimately reached Russia. It is not known, however, if he survived the war and the subsequent major revolutions in Russia. He was aged 26 years of age at the time of the sinking.
After the sinking, some Russian survivors were to complain to The Russian Consul General in Liverpool about their poor treatment at the hands of the British Authorities at Queenstown and it is to be hoped that Antoni Gryszkiewicz was not one of these.
Cunard Records, Graham Maddocks.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.