Andrej Petrenok was born in Imperial Russia in 1881. Some time almost certainly before the Great War, he had left home and having emigrated to the United States of America he settled in Mechanicsville, Saratoga County, New York State, where he found employment, as a labourer.
In the spring of 1915, however, he made the decision to return home, perhaps to enlist in the Imperial Russian forces after he had learned of the disasters to the Russian Army at the hands of the Central Powers on the eastern front.
As a result, he booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool for the main part of his journey home and having left Mechanicsville, he boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York, with ticket number 38939, on the morning of 1st May 1915. The liner‘s scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure was then delayed until the early afternoon of that day, as she had to load cargo and embark passengers and crew from the S.S. Cameronia. This Anchor Lines vessel had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty at the end of April, for war service as a troop ship.
Six days later, in the early afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 within sight of the coast of southern Ireland, and sank in just 18 minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about 250 miles away from the safety of her home port.
Altogether there were 68 Russian nationals on board the Lusitania when she went down. Of these, 29 survived the sinking and 39 were killed. Unfortunately, Andrej Petrenok was one of those who perished as a result of this action and never saw his home land again! He was aged 34 years at the time.
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.