Thomas Edward Marsh was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the 23rd November 1913, the only son of Thomas William and Annie Sophia Marsh (née Wright). His parents had immigrated to Canada in 1913, from Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, England, and settled in Toronto, where his father worked as an engineer.
In the autumn of 1913, his mother had taken up the position of housekeeper to the Hook family, who lived in Millicrest Street, Toronto. George Hook, another Englishman, was head of the family and as his wife had died in the autumn of that year, he employed Annie Marsh to look after his two children, Elsie and Frank, and look after the house.
By the spring of 1915, however, George Hook decided to return to England as it had occurred to him that that he could earn his living just as easily in his native land. As this would have effectively ended Annie Marsh’s employment, the Marsh family decided to return home as well. Thus, they all booked third class tickets on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool and having left Toronto in April, they arrived 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 o‘clock departure.
They then had to wait until 12.25 p.m. before the liner actually slipped her moorings and slid out into the North River, as she had to embark crew, passengers and cargo from Anchor Lines steamer the S.S. Cameronia, which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for service as a troop ship.
All three members of the Hook family survived the subsequent sinking of the liner, but both the male members of the Marsh family were killed, when, on the afternoon of the 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20, off the southern coast of Ireland and only 250 miles away from the safety of her home port.
Thomas’ mother Annie, having been rescued from the sea, eventually made it back to the home of her parents-in-law in Westgate where she told of her survival to a representative of local newspaper The East Kent Times, in which she stated: -
We came from Toronto to New York and took a berth on the Lusitania, which was sailing on the morning of May 1st, I, my husband and eighteen months’ old baby. I was sitting sewing after I had dressed my baby, when I heard the explosion. Rushing to the steps I saw my husband who took me to the second-class deck. I remained there with my husband as long as I possibly could, and tied the baby around me.
I took to the water as the vessel was sinking fast. Within a few minutes the baby got loose and I lost him.
She also stated that the night before the sinking, her husband had had a dream that the vessel had been torpedoed!
Although the body of baby Thomas Marsh’s father was later recovered from the sea and buried outside Queenstown, that of the eighteen month old infant never was.
Ontario Canada Births 1832 – 1914, Cunard Records, Cork Examiner, East Kent Times, Isle of Thanet Gazette, Seven Days to Disaster, 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.