Jozef Marchewka was born in Poland, then part of Imperial Russia, in 1865.
Sometime before the Great War he had emigrated to the United States of America and settled in Three Rivers, Massachusetts, where he presumably found employment.
In the spring of 1915, however, he decided to return home, perhaps for patriotic reasons as the allied armies were clearly losing their battles to the forces of the Central Powers on the Eastern Front.
Consequently, for the first part of his journey, he booked third class passage on the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool and having left Three Rivers at the end of April, he boarded the liner on the morning of 1st May 1915 at her berth at Pier 54 in New York harbour. Her sailing was then delayed until the afternoon, as she had to embark passengers, cargo and crew from the Anchor Lines vessel the S.S. Cameronia
which had been requisitioned for war service by the British Admiralty at the end of April.
She finally got under way just after noon and six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May; she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20 within sight of the southern coast of Ireland and only 250 miles away from her destination.
Jozef Marchewka was killed as a result of the sinking and as his body was never recovered from the sea and identified afterwards, he has no known grave. He was aged 50 years.
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.