Patrick Joseph “Paddy” Loughran was born at 2. Bridge Street, Newry, County Down, Ireland, now part of Northern Ireland, on the 29th September 1895, the son of Michael and Mary Loughran (née McKay). His father was a labourer, and Patrick was the youngest of nine children. The family home was later at 40. Queen Street, Newry, County Down.
After leaving school, Paddy Loughran most likely found work as a labourer before emigrating across the Irish Sea to Liverpool, Lancashire, England, where work was more plentiful. He eventually joined the Mercantile Marine as a trimmer on steam ships operating out of the port of Liverpool.
He engaged as a trimmer in the Engineering Department on board the Lusitania at Liverpool on the 12th April 1915, at a monthly wage of £6-0s.-0d. and joined the vessel at 8 a.m., on the morning of the 17th April, before she left Prince’s Landing Stage for the final time.
Paddy Loughran was killed, three weeks later when the vessel was torpedoed and sunk. His body was not amongst those recovered and identified afterwards.
As he has no known grave, he is commemorated on the Mercantile Marine Memorial at Tower Hill, London. He was aged 19 years.
According to family folklore, Paddy Loughran’s eldest sister, Mrs. Rose McConville, was asleep in her home in Queen Street, Newry, on the night of the 7th May 1915, when she heard a tapping sound on the pantry window. She went downstairs to the pantry and on looking out the window, she saw her brother, Paddy, standing in the garden in his seaman’s uniform, holding a long white scarf with lace all around it.
Paddy smiled at her, but did not speak, and she knew that the scarf was the one he had promised to get for her when he had left to embark on his last voyage. Needing both hands to unlock the door from the pantry to the garden, she placed the candle she was holding on the floor. Having unlocked the door, she picked up the candle, and when she opened the door a soft breeze, which smelled of the ocean, extinguished the candle. On stepping into the dark garden, she could see no sign of her brother.
She called out his name and searched around the garden and garden shed without finding him. As Paddy used to tease her, she thought he had climbed over the garden wall while she was unlocking the pantry door and gone to his own house to return with the scarf the following morning. She returned to her bed and slept for the remainder of the night.
She awoke the following morning to the sound of crying from the kitchen below her bedroom, and on going down to the kitchen she found her parents, and some relatives and friends crying and speaking in soft voices. She quickly learned that the Lusitania had been sunk and that there had been tremendous loss of life, and possibly her brother was among the victims.
She told her father about seeing Paddy through the pantry window during the night, and he advised her not to tell anyone about it as nobody would believe her.
Several weeks later, a surviving crew member, who was also from Newry, called to the family home and told them that Paddy was on deck, about to get into a lifeboat, when he remembered the scarf, he had purchased in New York for Rose, and telling his friend to continue without him, he went towards his berth to retrieve the scarf and was never seen again. This crew member is likely to have been either trimmer Andrew McKendry or fireman Patrick McKenna, both of whom were from Newry, and survived the sinking. Another man from Newry who served among the crew was trimmer Michael McGuigan, who like Paddy Loughran was lost, and whose remains were never found.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, 1901 Census of Ireland, 1911 Census of Ireland, Cunard Records, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner, PRO BT 100/345, PRO BT 334, PRO BT 351/1/83950, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Brian Treanor, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.
Revised & Updated – 10th March 2024.