Mr. Joseph Frankum, Third Class Passenger
Joseph Frankum, 36, of Detroit, Michigan, United States, was traveling
third class on board Lusitania with his wife Annie, their 6-year-old
son, Francis, 4-year-old son Frederick, and their 10-month-old daughter
Winifred. The family was going to see Joseph’s mother, who lived in
Birmingham, England. When the ship was struck, the family was below
decks in third class.
Frankum was from England and moved to Canada, where Annie gave birth to
Frederick, and then moved to Detroit, where Winifred was born. In the
United States, Joseph and Annie had been Sunday school teachers. Joseph
believed that it would be good for the family to relocate to England, and
so they booked passage aboard Lusitania. They were having a
cup of tea and preparing their luggage when the torpedo hit.
From the Manchester Guardian, Monday, 10 May 1915, page 8:
“We divined what it was immediately,” he said, “and I took up
the children and hurried my wife to the boat deck. I put them all in
a boat, and went below for a lifebelt. I found two, and on my way back
I gave one to a man, but afterwards I was sorry I did not keep it for my
wife. She had got out of the boat again, and we waited [on the port
side], because for a time we thought the ship was going to keep afloat.
When it was certain that she was sinking I put my wife back in the boat and
clambered in myself. We saw that it was not free of the ship, but thought
it would float off as the ship sank. To our horror, it went right down,
and I seemed to sink a long way before I felt myself rising again.
It was a dreadful sensation.
“When I came to the top I could not see anything of my wife and children.
I swam to an upturned boat, but it was terribly difficult because of the
wreckage which kept striking me. I got on the boat with others, and
we were like this for about three hours, while dead bodies in all postures
were floating about us. A young man was condoling with me because
I had lost my wife and children, when a man’s body floated by. He
turned the head up with an oar and shouted out, ‘That is my father.’
Then we tried to comfort each other. At Queenstown I went searching
everywhere, and at last found my little boy, but I have now no hope that
my wife and the other two children have been saved.”
Frankum and his fellow survivors were picked up by a torpedo boat, which
Frankum claimed was looking for the submarine that sank Lusitania,
and went on to search for survivors. He said that a woman
died on the torpedo boat before they reached shore.
When Joseph landed, he began looking through the bodies brought ashore for
his loved ones instead of sleeping. He did not find any trace of them.
He only had on a pair of pants, and slipper, and one sock. He
had some money, his papers, and a watch that had stopped at 2:22. Helpful
people had told Frankum that one of his sons was at the Rob Roy Hotel and
found his oldest son Francis there, waking Francis from his sleep.
"How did you come here Dad?" Francis asked.
Joseph had some difficulty finding the words to express himself, but said,
"You see Francis, I told you God would take care of you, and He has -- hasn't
He?"
"Yes Dad, He has," Francis answered.
Joseph met up with his brother soon after the disaster, and they went on
to Liverpool to await further developments of Joseph's missing wife and children.
They continued on to Aston, Birmingham where their mother lived at 55
Webster Street. No word was received about Joseph's family. Reporters
came to the house to ask him about his experience on board the sinking liner,
and while he had great difficulty retelling the story, it was published in
many newspapers. Francis was also interviewed, where he recounted
that as the ship sank, their lifeboat capsized. He held onto
an upturned boat and there he stayed until he was rescued.
A few years afterward, Joseph and Francis moved to Scotland. There,
in 1920, Joseph married again, this time to Jessie Elizabeth Mitchell in Kelvin,
Lanark. They then moved to Dunoon, Argyll. Jessie died in 1952
and Joseph one year later in 1953.
Francis married and worked with the Church of Scotland as a clerk at St
John's Dunoon. He died in 1985.
Links of Interest
Lest
We Forget
References:
Kalafus, Jim and Michael Poirier (2005). Lest We Forget:
Part 1 ET Research. <http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/lusitania-lest-we-forget.html>
“His Wife’s Lifebelt.” Manchester Guardian, Monday, 10 May
1915, page 8.
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