Barbara McDermott

Barbara McDermott as a three year old with Assistant Purser - William Harkness after her rescue, 1915

Barbara McDermott , née Barbara Winifred Anderson (born June 15, 1912 in Bridgeport , Fairfield County , Connecticut , † April 12, 2008 in Wallingford , New Haven County , Connecticut) was one of the last two survivors of the Lusitania disaster along with Audrey Lawson-Johnston in May 1915. She was the last survivor of the second class and the last surviving American woman. Due to her regular contact with Lusitania experts and the media, she contributed to the commemoration of the accident with her statements and memories.

Life

Barbara McDermott was the daughter of Roland Anderson and his wife Emily Mary Pybus, a young English couple who emigrated to the United States in the summer of 1911 and married in Connecticut that same year.

The then almost three-year-old traveled with her mother, Emily Anderson, who was five months pregnant, on the Lusitania in May 1915 to visit her numerous relatives in England. She was in the second class dining room eating her lunch when the detonation of the torpedo hit rocked the ship. McDermott was separated from her mother in the chaos on deck. William H. Harkness, the 25-year-old assistant to the ship paymaster, saw her alone on the boat deck and put her in lifeboat No. 15, one of the few boats that left the sinking ship safely. She was still holding her spoon in her hand. McDermott later learned that her mother had been put in the same boat. Emily Anderson fell in the water as the boat lurched down. However, she was pulled back inside.

Mother and daughter survived; Emily Anderson was one of the few mothers whose child had survived. Most of the toddlers were crushed to death in the chaos on deck or frozen to death in the icy Atlantic waters. Emily Anderson gave birth to her son Frank Roland Anderson on September 30, 1915, who died of pneumonia on March 16, 1916 at the age of less than six months . Emily Anderson died on March 11, 1917, at the age of 28, from pleurisy in connection with an abducted pneumonia. Until her death, her daughter Barbara was convinced that the physical strain and shock they suffered from the disaster were ultimately responsible for the early deaths of their mother and brother.

Barbara stayed with her father's siblings in England during the war and only returned to the United States after the war to live with her father and his second wife. She made the crossing in December 1919 on board the RMS Mauretania , the sister ship of the Lusitania . She was allowed to sit at Captain Arthur Rostron's table during the crossing . She married Milton G. McDermott, with whom she settled in East Haven , Connecticut and had two children, George E. and Elizabeth A. McDermott. Over the years, many interested people went to McDermott to speak to her about their experiences on the Lusitania . Despite her young age, she was able to remember the event and was a popular contact for historians and researchers who dealt with the sinking of the Lusitania .

Through decades of correspondence and countless personal conversations with naval historians, Lusitania researchers, other survivors and bereaved families, Barbara McDermott made a significant contribution to coming to terms with the event and helped to reconstruct it. She contributed photos of her mother and herself as well as numerous memorabilia. She gave regular interviews to those in charge of naval institutions and museums well into old age. Most recently she was available for the essays The Lusitania Resource: Lest We Forget and The Lusitania Resource: Lest We Forget Part 2 , in which numerous illustrated biographies of Lusitania passengers were compiled and published.

After her husband's death, McDermott lived with their daughter Elizabeth DeLucia and her husband James. Barbara McDermott died of kidney failure on April 12, 2008 at the age of 95. The memorial service was held on April 15, 2008 at the Clancy-Sisk Brothers Funeral Home in East Haven, followed by another on the same day at the Old Stone Church in East Haven. She left five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Their son George lives in Connellsville, Pennsylvania with his wife Vivien.

swell

• Brief biography of Barbara McDermott
• revdma2.com
• encyclopedia-titanica.org
• nhregister.com
• Full biographical details and recollections of Barbara McDermott