Ambrose James Moyle was born at 3, Wilks Court, Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, on the 24th August 1893, the son of Ambrose and Martha Moyle (née Lewis). His father, who was a railway porter, died shortly before Ambrose was born. Ambrose was the youngest of three children in the family, and he had a step-sister from a relationship his mother had before marrying his father.
His mother married William Henry Iveson in Birkenhead on the 9th June 1895. As a result, Ambrose was brought up with the surname Iveson. He was educated at the St. Paul's Schools, Rock Ferry, and the family later set up home at 27, Warwick Street, Birkenhead.
Before serving in the Mercantile Marine, Ambrose worked as a cleaner at Birkenhead Railway Station, before becoming a window cleaner who was very popular with his customers, being renowned for whistling all the time he worked. When war broke out, he tried to enlist in the Army, but having been turned down on medical grounds in the spring of 1915; he decided to join the Cunard Steamship Company instead. At that time, he was engaged to be married to a Miss Comer.
Still using his step-father's surname, Iveson, he engaged as a scullion in the Stewards' Department on board the Lusitania at Liverpool on the morning of the 17th April 1915, at a monthly rate of pay of £3-15s.-0d. (£3.75p.), just before the liner slipped out of the River Mersey for the last time. Having successfully concluded his first trans-Atlantic crossing to New York, he began his second on the early afternoon of the 1st May 1915, as the liner began her return journey to Liverpool.
It was never completed, for six days out of New York, on the afternoon of the 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine, U-20, within sight of the coast of southern Ireland and at best fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her home port! Ambrose Moyle was killed as a result of this action and as his body was not one of those recovered and identified afterwards, he is commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London. He was aged 21 years.
Eventually, in August 1915, his mother was given the balance of pay owing to him in respect of his sea service from the 17th April to the 8th May 1915 - 24 hours after the liner had been sunk!
The family home in Warwick Street, Birkenhead, is very close to the scene of one of the anti-German riots which followed the sinking of the Lusitania. The pork butcher's shop of a Mr. Dashley, who was of German origin, was sacked by a mob in nearby Oxton Road and Ambrose Moyle's family were always of the opinion that the mob was particularly enflamed by his death.
6134 Private Charles Edward Iveson of the 2nd Battalion, The King’s Shropshire Light
Infantry, who was killed in action in Belgium, aged 21 years, on the 8th January 1915, lived at 12, Warwick Street, the same street as Ambrose Moyle, and in view of the fact that they were both using the surname Iveson at their times of death, it is possible that they were related, through Ambrose Moyle’s step-father.
Cunard records erroneously show Ambrose Moyle’s assumed surname to have been spelled Iverson.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Cheshire Diocese of Chester Parish Baptisms 1538 – 1911, 1901 Census of England, 1911 Census of England, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, UK Railway Employment Records 1833 – 1956, Birkenhead News, (photo 15/05/1915 p.2 c.4), PRO BT 334, Graham Maddocks, Theresa Arrowsmith, Vera Oldham, Peter Threlfall, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 19th January 2025.