Patrick Joseph Owens was born on his family farm in the townland of Tuam, Kilgefin, County Roscommon, Ireland, on the 9th May 1885, the son of Michael and Bridget Owens (née Dowling).
On the 13th October 1911, he left his native land when he boarded the Cedric at Queenstown, accompanied by an older sister, Kathleen, and on reaching the United States of America; they went to St. Louis, Missouri, where he found work as a truckman with the Wabash Railroad Company. He resided with another one of his sisters, a Mrs James Walsh, at 4818. Hammett Place, Missouri. His sister, Kathleen, married a Mr. Joseph Eustace in the city.
In the spring of 1915, he lost his job, and decided to return home to buy a small farm near his family home, and to be nearer to his widowed mother. He was engaged to be married to a Miss Annie Finnan, who was also an Irish immigrant from the County Roscommon area, and who was employed by Dean Carroll of the Catholic Christ Church Cathedral in the city. It was arranged that when he reached Ireland, and had established himself, Miss Finnan would travel to him in Ireland to get married.
Consequently, he booked as a third class passenger on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool, on the first part of his journey.
Having left St. Louis on Wednesday, 28th April, he arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 on the west side of New York on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for the liner’s scheduled 10.00 a.m. sailing from there. Having boarded, he had to wait until just before 12.30 p.m. before the liner left port, because she had to embark passengers, crew and cargo from the Anchor Liner Cameronia, which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for war service as a troop ship, at the end of April.
Just six days later, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. At that point, she was off The Old Head of Kinsale in southern Ireland and only 250 miles hours away from her Liverpool home port and destination.
As the coast of Ireland had been sighted earlier that day, Patrick Owens would have been able to see his native land quite clearly, but he would never set foot on it again, for he was one of over 240 steerage passengers who lost their lives as a result of this action. He was aged 29 years.
As his body was never recovered from the sea and identified, he has no known grave.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1901 Census of Ireland, 1911 Census of Ireland, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, St. Louis City Directory 1913, St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Catholic Tribune, PRO BT 100/345, UniLiv D92/2/58, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.