Olive Palmer was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, in the summer of 1911, the daughter of Albert and Frances Annie Palmer (née Oakes) of 2. Oliver Street, Coventry. Her father was a fitter in a gun factory, and she had an older brother, Edgar, born in late 1908.
In October 1911, her father immigrated to Canada when he boarded the Corsican at Liverpool and sailed to Quebec, Canada. From there, he travelled overland to Toronto, Ontario, where he found employment as a millwright. As soon as he had established himself in Toronto, he sent for his family.
In May 1912, her mother, Olive, and her brother, Edgar, joined him in Toronto, where they lived at 9. Earlsdale Avenue, in the city. Her brother, Albert, was born in Toronto on the 28th February 1915.
In the spring of 1915, the family decided to return home to Staffordshire, perhaps because of the war, and having booked second cabin passage on the Lusitania, the family left Toronto at the end of April, and joined the ship at her berth, at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915, in time for her scheduled 10.00 o’clock departure.
This was then postponed until the early afternoon whilst the liner loaded cargo and took on board passengers and crew from Anchor Lines vessel the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned as a troop ship at the end of April. She finally began what was to be her last ever trans-Atlantic crossing at 12.27 p.m..
Six days later, however, the whole family was wiped out when the liner was sunk off The Old Head of Kinsale, in southern Ireland by the German submarine U-20, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger. At that time, she was only about twelve to fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her Liverpool home port and destination.
Although the bodies of her mother and brothers were later recovered from the sea and buried in Queenstown, no trace of Olive Palmer or her father was ever found.
Consequently, she has no known grave. She was only four years old.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Canadian Passenger Lists 1865 – 1935, Cunard Records, Lusitania, UniLiv D92/2/139, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.