Susan Whitewright Pearl was born in St. Pancras, London, England, on the 26th February 1914, the third child of Frederic Warren and Amy Lea Pearl, (née Duncan). She had an older brother, named Stuart, who was born in 1910, and two sisters, Amy, born in 1912 and Audrey, born in 1915. In 1915, the family home was at 20. Lowndes Square, Belgravia, London, England, but they also maintained a home at 375 West End Avenue, New York, in the United States of America although her parents spent a lot of their time travelling abroad. To facilitate this, they employed two maids/nurses, Alice Lines from Folkestone, Kent, England, and Great Lorenson from Skagen, Denmark.
Frederic Pearl was a wealthy retired United States Army surgeon-major, but once the Great War had broken out in Europe, he and his wife decided to offer their skills to The Queen’s Hospital at La Panne, Belgium, which had been set up by Belgian doctor Antoine Depage and his wife Marie to treat war wounded.
As a result, saloon passage was booked for the family on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool on the first part of the journey to Belgium and they all boarded the liner at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York on the morning of 1st May 1915. Once on board, Susan’s parents took over suite E51, Alice Lines occupied room E59 with Susan and Amy, and Greta Lorenson took Stuart and Audrey into room E67. The rooms with the nursemaids and the children were the personal responsibility of First Class Bedroom Steward Alf Woods who came from Liverpool. The ticket for the whole family was numbered 46071.
Following a fairly uneventful crossing of the Atlantic, on the afternoon of 7th May 1915, the liner was struck by a single torpedo fired by the German submarine U-20, under the command of Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger. Just before she was hit, Alice Lines and Great Lorenson had taken the three older Pearl children to lunch in the first class nursery, leaving Audrey sleeping in room E59.
The torpedo struck just after this, and Greta Lorenson managed to get up on deck with
her two charges, where Alice Lines saw her, very distressed, but still maintaining a firm grip on little Susan. She then handed Amy to a stewardess who helped the three of them to get into a lifeboat. The lifeboat must have been one of those which was badly launched; however, for not long afterwards, all its occupants were thrown into the sea. None of them was ever seen again, nor were their bodies ever recovered and identified later. As such, none of them has a known and recognised grave. Susan Pearl was only fourteen months old at the time.
According to Audrey Lawson Johnston, formerly Audrey Pearl, in an interview with Graham Maddocks in 1999: -
Greta Lorenson and Susan actually got into a lifeboat but it capsized and they were thrown out and they must have been drowned for they were never seen again.
Apart from Amy and Susan Pearl and Greta Lorenson, the rest of the Pearl party survived to be rescued from the sea and landed at Queenstown, from where they eventually made it to the British mainland. First Class Bedroom Steward Wood who had looked after the two children and Great Lorenson in room E59 also survived and eventually returned safely to his native Liverpool.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, New York Times, Seven Days to Disaster, PRO 22/71, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Audrey Lawson Johnston, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.