The significant Lusitania casualty Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society Marine Lifesaving Medal in Silver 3rd type awarded to Mr. John Stevens, 2nd Officer, S.S. Catalonia for having with Boat’s Crew rescued the 11 men crew of the Norwegian Barque Lindsay in a gale on 18th February 1895. He would later find himself aboard the liner Lusitania when she was infamously sunk off the coast of Ireland by the German submarine U-20 on 7th May 1915. His body being recovered he is now buried in Barnoon Cemetery, St. Ives, Cornwall.
Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society Marine Lifesaving Medal in Silver, 3rd type; (MR. J. STEVENS. 2ND OFFR. S.S. CATALONIA. FOR HAVING WITH BOAT’S CREW RESCUED 11 MEN CREW OF BARQUE LINDSAY IN A GALE 18/2/95.) housed in its significantly damaged box of issue.
Condition: box damaged and in virtual relic condition, Nearly Extremely Fine
Awarded to Mr. John Stevens, 2nd Officer, SS. Catalonia for having with Boat’s Crew rescued the 11 men crew of the Barque Lindsay in a gale on 18th February 1895.
John Stevens was born in 1852 in St. Ives, Cornwall, England, the son of Matthew and Jane Stevens. He married Elizabeth (Bessie) George in Cornwall in 1881. A local newspaper article dated 2nd March 1895 covers the events for which he would be awarded the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society Marine Lifesaving Medal in Silver:
‘Many of our readers would doubtless have seen an account of the landing of the crew of the Norwegian Barque Lindsay at Liverpool a few days since. The following additional particulars (extracts from a letter received in St. Ives) will be read with interest.
On the 18th Inst, the Cunard Royal Mail steamer Catalonia, on passage from Boston, U.S.A. for Liverpool in lat 50-59N and long 13-26W sighted a barque flying signals of distress. It was blowing a strong gale from the S.E. at the time and bitterly cold with a high sea. The Cunarder was stopped and Officer John Stevens (son of Mrs. Stevens, Bowling-green St. Ives) gallantly offered to go in a lifeboat to the poor fellows’ assistance. The No.5 lifeboat was immediately launched, and after considerable difficulty reached the disabled vessel, which proved to be the Lindsay, 580 tons, belonging to Tonsberg, Norway. The sea was so heavy that the greatest danger was experienced in getting the crew of the barque into the lifeboat and to again reach the Catalonia, but the lifeboat proved an excellent sea-boat, rowing eight oars. All went well and the Cunarder sped her way to Liverpool with the Lindsay’s crew. She had been 82 days out from Apalachacola, bound to Sutton Bridge; and when rescued the crew had been four weeks short of provisions and were then living on the remains of a bag of oats which had been given them by a vessel laden with oats; but the latter vessel was also short of provision, so could not help in any other way. At the time of the rescue the Lindsay’s crew were in a most pitiable plight-hungry, cold and worn out which pumping, for their ship was fast sinking, making two feet of water an hour. The rudder-head was also gone and she was the mercy of the wind and sea. The captain of the Norwegian, who had his two sons with him, was able to save only the ship’s papers and his chronometer, and he presented the latter to Officer Stevens to show his gratitude to one who had risked his life to save him, his two sons and his crew.’
In 1915, the family lived at 11 Bellair Terrace, S. Ives. They had two children, John and Elizabeth, also known as Bessie.
John Stevens senior was a career deck officer in the Cunard Steam Ship Company and in early 1915, he was serving as Chief Officer on the steamer Pannonia. In early April, whilst she was berthed in an American port, he received a cablegram to tell him that his wife, Bessie, was seriously ill. Later after the Lusitania was sunk, the Liverpool press stated that he was given special permission by the company to return to England to be with her and set sail on the Lusitania to get home as quickly as he could. However, Bessie Stevens died on 8th April 1915, three weeks before the Lusitania set sail on her last voyage, so it would seem that the press reports owed more to drama than to accuracy.
However another account published in the Cornish Echo of 14th May 1915 states that Chief Officer Stevens was on board ship in France when he heard that his wife had died, but was unable to leave his ship until she berthed at New York, where he arranged for a substitute to take his place. This would be a more reasonable explanation for the delay in his return to St. Ives.
Stevens did sail on the Lusitania, however, having joined her in New York on 1st May and a crew list published by Cunard in March 1916 describes him as Extra Chief Officer Stevens, which implies that he was on the nominal strength of the Lusitania for the voyage home and did not sail as a passenger. This is fortified by the fact that the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission also list his being a member of the crew. Presumably mindful of his tragic circumstances and his high position within the Cunard Fleet. Cunard must have allowed him this privilege, although one could probably assume that his duties on board would have been minimal. In that rank, however, he would have been entitled to a monthly wage of £21-0s-0d.
The kind gesture made to him by Cunard only made worse the tragedy that followed the family in that spring of 1915, however, for he was killed when the ship was sunk on the afternoon of 7th May 1915, by the German submarine U-20, whilst steaming off the coast of southern Ireland. The Official History of the Merchant Navy in the Great War states that he was standing his watch on the bridge when the torpedo stuck. His body was later recovered from the sea, however and it was initially taken to one of the temporary mortuaries specially set up in Queenstown and given the reference number 98, until it was positively identified.
On 11th May 1915, it was delivered to Messrs G.H. Lee & Co of Liverpool for burial, which eventually took place at Barnoon Cemetery, St. Ives and his remains still lie there today in the family grave.
Stevens’ funeral was covered in a local newspaper:
‘The funeral of Captain John Stevens, one of the victims of the Lusitania disaster, whose remains were brought to St. Ives for internment took place on Sunday. Captain Stevens had been in the employment of the Cunard Company for about 28 years. About five weeks his wife died suddenly, leaving an only daughter. Deceased at that time was Chief Officer in the Cunarder Pannonia, and on the day of his wife’s funeral he arrived at a port in France. Being unable to arrange for a substitute, he proceeded to New York. After making the necessary arrangements with the officials of the company, he was temporarily released from his duties, and wired to his friends at St. Ives to say that he was sailing for home in the Lusitania. At the very time when his daughter and other relatives were expecting a telegram announcing his arrival, the intelligence was received of the sinking of the liner, and a subsequent message reported the finding of the body.
There was a large attendance of relatives at the funeral, the mourners being deceased’s only daughter (Miss Stevens) and his brother (Mr. Matthew Stevens) with some hundreds of sympathising friends and neighbours, the coffin was covered with floral tributes. The officiating ministers were Revs. Walter Seed and Charles Cooke (Wesleyans)…..
The deceased who was aged sixty-three was the eldest son of Mrs. Jane Stevens of Bowling-green. He had not spent much time at home having been at sea for forty-five years but he had intended to retire within the next few months.
A series of tit-for-tat moves intensified the naval portion of World War I. The Royal Navy had blockaded the Germany at the start of the war; as a reprisal to German naval mining efforts, the United Kingdom then declared the North Sea a military area in the autumn of 1914 and mined the approaches. As their own reprisal, Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom a war zone, wherein all Allied ships would be liable to be sunk without warning. Britain then declared all food imports for Germany were contraband. When submarines failed to sink many ships, the German authorities loosened U-boat rules of engagement. The German embassy in the United States also placed fifty newspaper advertisements warning people of the dangers of sailing on a British ship in the area, which happened to appear just as RMS Lusitania left New York for Britain on 1 May 1915. Objections were made by the British and Americans that threatening to torpedo all ships indiscriminately was wrong, whether it was announced in advance or not.
On the afternoon of 7 May, a German U-boat torpedoed Lusitania 11 miles (18 km) off the southern coast of Ireland inside the declared war zone. A second internal explosion occurred. The damage caused her to sink in 18 minutes, killing 1,197 passengers and crew. Hundreds of bodies washed ashore, but most were never found.
The German government attempted to find justifications for sinking Lusitania. Special justifications focused on the small declared cargo of 173 tons of war materials on board the 44,000-ton displacement ship, and false claims that she was an armed warship and carried Canadian troops. In defence of indiscriminately sinking ships without warning, they asserted that cruiser rules were obsolete, as British merchant ships could be armed and had been instructed to evade or ram U-boats if the opportunity arose, and that the general warning given to all ships in the war zone was sufficient.
After the First World War, successive British governments maintained that there were no "munitions" (apart from small arms ammunition) on board Lusitania, and the Germans were not justified in treating the ship as a naval vessel. But the most important protests at the time came from the US. Under neutrality inspections, the US was aware the ship was not armed, was acting in accordance with American law, and was chiefly a passenger vessel carrying almost two thousand civilian passengers and crew, including over a hundred American citizens (including many celebrities) among the dead. The US government argued that whatever the circumstances, nothing could justify the killing of large numbers of un-resisting civilians, and that the United States had a responsibility to protect the lives of law-abiding Americans. The Americans had already warned the Germans repeatedly about their actions, and the Germans had also demonstrated that submarines were able to sink merchant ships under cruiser rules.
The sinking shifted public and leadership opinion in the United States against Germany. US and internal German pressure led to a suspension of German Admiralty policy of deliberately targeting passenger ships, as well as later stronger restrictions. War was eventually declared in 1917 after the German government chose to violate these restrictions, deliberately attacking American shipping and preparing the way for conflict with the Zimmermann Telegram.
