Matthew Freeman, about 19, was a British citizen and waiter aboard Lusitania. He is reported in Hoehling and Hoehling as the amateur lightweight boxing champion of England. During the sinking, he helped lower the boats and injured his hand in the process. Marie Depage helped bandage his hand. Once Marie bandaged his hand, he tried to find a way off the ship. He ran to the stern, now the highest part of the ship, and looked over the edge. He wondered if it was a bit too high for him to dive from there.
Remembering that he was an athlete, he gathered his self confidence. He climbed over the railing and dove. As he landed, his head struck the side of a floating lifeboat. Blood started to ooze from the wound. Though a bit dazed, he maintained consciousness and started swimming.
Freeman was submerged a second time by a man who had grabbed him, “eyes bulging with fear.” Freeman surfaced again and swam to a deck chair. Dr. Daniel Moore called to him to urged him to grab the other side of the keg several times. They and four other men struggled to hold on to the keg to keep afloat. Freeman grew faint, but harsh speaking roused him. Once Freeman said: “I am going to go,” but Moore ridiculed this and it gave him strength. By stroking with their legs they succeeded in reaching an upturned lifeboat with about a dozen people clinging onto it.
They were in the water for about an hour and a half. Moore vomited from the exposure but kept himself going. Freeman collapsed, half-conscious. There were about twenty-three persons on the raft, but in the hours that followed many dropped off. Freeman recalled “ten of them died beside me there in the water.”
They were picked up by the patrol boat Brock. By then, only five, including Freeman and Moore, were still alive and clinging to the lifeboat.
As of 1955, at age 59, Matthew Freeman was living in Miami Beach, Florida, at 1042 Michigan Avenue.
Contributors
Michael Poirier
References
Hoehling, A. A. and Mary Hoeling. The Last Voyage of the Lusitania, pages 130, 151-152, 178. Madison Books, 1956.
“Long Battle in the Water.” New York Times, Monday, 10 May 1915, page 3.
My great uncle was Matthew Freeman. Postcards were made at the time calling him the hero of the Lusitania.
Hi Ruth,
Great of you to visit and drop a line! Let us know if there’s anything else that you would like to add to his story on this website.
Here’s something curious…an undated letter (forwarded to RRF’s wife on Cape Cod on July 14, 1915) from Lusitania survivor James Tilley Houghton to Richard Rich Freeman of Wollaston, Mass. describing the last days/hours of Tilley’s Harvard classmate (and RRF’s son) Richard Rich Freeman, Jr. It seems Marie Depage also bandaged his hand:
My dear Mr. Freeman,
My delay in writing is I know inexcusable and although my reason in no way excuses me still the fact that my nerves have been in such a condition since the catastrophe that I have actually been unable to write about it may to some extent modify the opinion you must have of me. I can give you my sympathy more wholeheartedly because I knew Dick ever since sophomore year in College and he being the only person on board whom I had known for any length of time I feel his loss more keenly than any of the others. I will start at the beginning of the trip for I’m sure that you want to know everything that happened throughout the entire voyage even though the reading of it will cause you additional pain.
When I boarded the boat about a quarter to ten I was delighted to find that he was going across and during the two hours delay we stood on the deck talking most of the time, he telling me of his plans and I congratulating him upon having such a fine trip ahead of him. I asked him to let me sit at his table for my own party was pretty well scattered for they could not get a table so as to be all together. He and Broderick and Turner and I then went down and got seated at the same table. We had a most delightful time for two days at the end of which my party got rearranged and I had to go over to their table. We had a fine time at meals however for those two days although the conversation was mostly on mining topics I enjoyed it immensely and felt that I was acquiring a great deal of information on that subject. After leaving the table I didn’t see quite as much of Dick but several times we had tea together and almost every night we would walk about the deck together talking of our friends and of the days when we were at Cambridge together. On the day we were torpedoed I was in my stateroom when we were struck and when I came on deck I found him shortly after finding Mme Defage, who was a member of my party. It seems he had been standing near Mme Defage by the rail and had suddenly seen the periscope pop up then almost instantly disappear and immediately the torpedo started he called to Mme Defage and they both watched the torpedo coming and it struck almost under them. They were both covered with spray and soot. He was immensely pleased at having pleased at having seen it and was laughing and joking about it and recounting the experience to anybody who asked about it. I saw him several times from then on but he would dash away every few minutes when he saw some place where he could be useful. I saw him helping lower one of the boats and later I saw him upon the top deck (the deck above the boat deck) disentangling ropes. He must have gone down and got his life preserver for when the order had been given that no more lifeboats should be powered and we were all standing about waiting for the next emergency to arise he suddenly appeared with one. He walked over to a woman who was standing near us and said “Haven’t you a lifebelt.” She answered “No” and he immediately lifted his off and told her she must take it. She protested but he wouldn’t hear a word of it but started tying it about her laughing and joking all the time saying that he was a good swimmer and the belt was in his way etc. He then came over to us and we joked a moment or two. I suppose it seems strange to you that under such tragic circumstances there should have been so much joking and it seems strange to me now and the only way I can explain it is that we were all under a terrific strain and by making witty or silly remarks we could at once cheer up those about us and relieve our own feelings. Mme Defage noticed that he had a handkerchief about his hand and demanded to see it. He protested that it was nothing but on taking off the handkerchief we found that a piece of skin about the size of a dime had been torn from the palm of his hand by the flying wreckage of the torpedo. She scolded him for putting on the dirty handkerchief but he said he was too healthy to get any infection but she took her own handkerchief and bound it up scolding him all the while for being too careless. The wound didn’t amount to anything but it must have smarted a little. I suppose under ordinary circumstances nobody would have paid any attention to it but as it was it gave us all something else to think about and was welcomed as such. After that I again lost track of him until the ship started on her final plunge down. I saw him holding down the ropes which were stretched across the space where the lifeboats had been for some women to get across. Shortly after that, in fact immediately Mme Defage and I jumped over the side into the water which at that time had risen almost to our feet. As I sank I was struck by some wreckage but came to almost immediately. As I was whirled about in the whirlpool created by the sinking ship I escaped death by an inch at least a dozen times. There was the most astounding [amount] of wreckage being whirled about and I am certain that all the others were struck by some of it. I like to think that this is what happened for when I go, I would ask nothing better than such a speedy and painless death. I know that this has been a perfectly terrible blow to you and Mrs. Freeman but I am sure that it must be a continual source of comfort to you to know that Dick went like a man thinking only of others and giving his life that the women and children might be saved. If we all can, when our time comes, acquit ourselves as nobly and as fearlessly as he did, we will have nothing of which to complain. I know there must be thousands of questions you want to ask me and I shall try to get to Boston in the near future. I shall let you know well in advance and shall consider it a great favor to do anything in the world to alleviate your sorrow. With my most heartfelt sympathy to both you and Mrs. Freeman I am your most sincerely
James T. Houghton
My Grandfather THOMAS Mr. John Saved Victualling Crew British Second Waiter