John Hayes, 31, was junior fifth engineer aboard Lusitania’s final voyage. He perished in the sinking.
Hayes married Jeanette Purves on 14 August 1914, less than a year before he lost his life in the Lusitania sinking. They settled in the Bootle neighborhood of Liverpool, England. Jeanette was pregnant at the time Hayes left on the Lusitania’s fatal voyage. He would never know their daughter.
Their daughter Jeanette was born weeks just after the Lusitania disaster on 27 May 1915. The Cunard Steamship Company paid for her to attend school in Colwyn Bay, North Wales.
John’s widow Jeanette was one of the last surviving Lusitania crew widows to draw a pension from Cunard. She died in 1984 at 89 years of age.
Photos of the Hayes family are on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress (of Ireland) gallery, donated to the museum by Hayes’ family in 1999.
Links of interest
John Henry Hayes Collection at the Mersey Maritime Museum
References:
“Flashback: John Henry Hayes was just one of 1,200 victims of the Lusitania disaster.” Liverpool Echo. Online. Accessed 7 May 2013. <http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-life/liverpool-lifestyle/2010/04/24/flashback-100252-26306143/>
“The John Henry Hayes Collection.” Mersey Maritime Museum. Online. Accessed 8 August 2011. <http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/visit/floor-plan/liners/lusitania/john-henry-hayes.aspx>
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