Sunday, January 17, 2010

William McMurray goes down with the Titanic

I was surfing the web recently and discovered that one of my 1st cousins went down on the Titanic. I never could find him on the census, it was because he was a steward on steamships that crossed the ocean. He was on the steamship 'Republic' in 1909 when it was struck by the Steamship 'Florida' off the coast of New York and sunk. The nearly 2000 people on the ship were able to evacuate. William received an award on that occasion. I remember watching a documentary on the cause of the collision on PBS. William is now part of history displays and information can readily be found about him on various websites due to his fate on the Titanic. He must have been very good at his job, since he was on two of the premiere steamships of that era. What a coincidence, both sank.
familysearch.org has now indexed Cheshire parish registers and now I have his birth date as well as those of his siblings. They were all born in Birkenhead which is just across from Liverpool where there was shipyards. He married Clara Jones in 1902 in the Liverpool area. They had three children; May, Ivy, and Ernest. From a website I learned that Ernest was on the 'Laconia' in 1942 when it was torpedoed by German submarines. This is a well known incident, not only for the large loss of life but how the allied bombers responded. The submariners started rescue operations as they were unaware that 1800 Italian prisoners of war were on board. The submariners were bombed so they ceased rescue operations and changed there future policies on rescue operations. Ernest was lost. I have learned about this from web pages. I do not have any documentation nor access to it as it would be at the National Archives at KEW. The genealogy of William McMurray is on my website.

1 comment:

  1. Presume you know about this letter written by his daughter May which was returned unread to her?

    http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/titanic/mcmurray.aspx

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