dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

>>104424

On May 1, 1915,[6] Alfred Vanderbilt boarded the RMS Lusitania bound for Liverpool as a first class passenger.[7] It was a business trip, and he traveled with only his valet, Ronald Denyer, leaving his family at home in New York. On May 7, off the coast of County Cork, Ireland, German U-boat, U-20 torpedoed the ship, triggering a secondary explosion that sank the giant ocean liner within 18 minutes. Vanderbilt and Denyer helped others into lifeboats, and then Vanderbilt gave his lifejacket to save a female passenger. Vanderbilt had promised the young mother of a small baby that he would locate an extra lifevest for her.[8] Failing to do so, he offered her his own life vest, which he proceeded to even tie on to her himself, since she was holding her infant child in her arms at the time. Many consider his actions especially brave and gallant since he could not swim and he knew there were no other lifevests or lifeboats available. Because of his fame, several people on the Lusitania who survived the tragedy were observing him while events unfolded at the time, and so they took note of his actions. He and Denyer were among the 1198 passengers who did not survive the incident.[9] His body was never recovered.[10][11][12]

According to A. A. Hoehling and Mary Hoehling (in their study, The Last Voyage of the Lusitania) Vanderbilt's fate was ironic, as three years earlier he had made a last-minute decision not to return to the U.S. on RMS Titanic.[13] There has been some historical confusion as to which member of the Vanderbilt family was booked on the Titanic and recent studies have determined that George Washington Vanderbilt was actually booked to travel on the Titanic along with his wife Edith and daughter Cornelia, not Alfred Vanderbilt. (A Titanic Mystery by Eric Sauder and Brian Hawley).<[14]