Frank Edward Wilson was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the United States of America, on the 13th May 1910, the son of William and Emily Leah Wilson (née Green). His father was a carpenter and Frank had a younger sister named Dorothy, who was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1913. Both of his parents had emigrated from Great Britain, and in 1915 were residing in Toronto.
His parents had married in Ontario, Canada, in 1907, and in the spring of 1915, they decided to permanently return to Great Britain and settle around Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, which is where his mother was from. Consequently, his father travelled to Wales where he presumably found employment and a home for the family at 14. Raglan Street, Risca, Newport. While waiting to join his father, Frank and his mother and sister stayed with relatives in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Having received word that his father was ready for them to join him in Newport, Frank, and his mother and sister, boarded the Lusitania 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 12.25 p.m. as the liner had to load cargo and take on board
passengers and crew from Anchor Liner the S.S. Cameronia which had been requisitioned by the British Admiralty for use as a troop ship, at the end of April.
Six days out of New York, on the afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20, twelve miles off the southern coast of Ireland and sank in only eighteen minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about 250 miles away from the safety of her home port.
Frank Wilson, his mother and his sister Dorothy were all killed as a result of the torpedoing. None of their bodies was ever recovered from the sea and identified later, and as a consequence, none has a known grave. Frank Wilson was only four years old at the time of his death, being less than a week away from his fifth birthday.
Massachusetts U.S. Birth Records 1840 – 1915, Cunard Records, Western Mail, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.