Commander
JOSEPH FOSTER STACKHOUSE, Saloon Class Passenger
image: London
Illustrated News,
29 May 1915. Courtesy Mike Poirier.
Commander J. Foster Stackhouse, USN retired, was sailing on the Lusitania
to be reunited with his wife and twelve-year-old daughter in London, England
and traveling with Robert Dearbergh. Stackhouse is also said to have
sailed in connection with his work on the Belgian Relief Fund Commission.
He was a Quaker and lived at the Lotos Club.
Stackhouse was planning to lead the British Antarctic and Oceanographical
Expedition to survey the Antarctic coastline. He had hoped to purchase
from the Hudson Bay Company the Discovery, a ship once belonging
to Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Stackhouse had put down a £1000
deposit on the ship, hoping to be ready by 1916. An article in the
Sunday, 9 May 1915 New York Times said that he had been in the US
to raise "funds for an expedition to chart unmapped islands in the
Pacific Ocean. He had succeeded in getting promises of nearly $900,000
for his contemplated work"
The explorer also "had a theory that the sinking of the Titanic
was due to the iceberg that she struck being held on a submerged rock,
and he believed that if surveys and soundings of the paths of navigation
could be made it would result in tremendous benefit to the world."
Stackhouse's cabin on the Lusitania was A-34. Fellow passenger
Harold Boulton was convinced that Stackhouse
was a British agent on a secret mission. He was not alone in such
sentiments and such rumors persisted.
On the day of the disaster, Boulton sat down in the verandah café
with Commander Stackhouse for a cup of coffee. Stackhouse was busy
explaining to Boulton "how the Lusitania could never be torpedoed,
that the watches had been doubled, and the people were looking out, and
they'd see the periscope of the submarine a mile away . . .. And in
the middle of his trying to prove . . . that the Lusitania could
not be torpedoed," Stackhouse was interrupted by "two almost simultaneous
explosions."
Water and debris crashed through the glass roof and the two men ran
outside.
Lt. Frederick Lassetter then saw Commander
Stackhouse, and the Commander told Lassetter to look for his mother. When
Lassetter and his mother returned, they saw Stackhouse give his lifebelt
to a little girl and assist with loading the lifeboats. He was explaining
to those he helped that he could not join them because "There are others
who must go first."
During the Lusitania make her final plunge, Lassetter from his
relative safety in the water, saw Commander Stackhouse standing calmly on
the stern.
Stackhouse's body recovered as #211 and identified by Friday, May 14.
He was buried by relatives in Cork in a Quaker graveyard.
The contents of his pocket were given to his wife, and including a slip
of paper on which he had written, perhaps just moments before the end, "Let
mercy be our boast, and shame our only fear."
Contributors:
Michael Poirier
Judith Tavares
References:
Hickey, Des and Gus Smith. Seven Days to Disaster. G.
P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.
Hoehling, A. A. and Mary Hoehling.
The Last Voyage of the Lusitania. Madison
Books, 1956.
The New York Times, Sunday, 9 May 1915.
Preston, Diana. Lusitania: An Epic
Tragedy. Berkeley Books, 2002.
[Back to Saloon Class Manifest] [Lusitania Resource Home]