261622 Frmn. Thomas Patten Mercantile Marine SS Memphian from:Sand Street, Liverpool (d.8th Oct 1917) Thomas Patten died on 8th of October 1917, at the age of 47, aboard SS Memphian, a defensively armed British merchant steamer that was torpedoed without warning by German submarine U96 when 7 miles ENE of Arklow Light Vessel, Ireland. Thirty-two lives were lost. The ship was en route from Liverpool to Boston, Massachusetts.
My grandfather told me that his father asked him to see him off at the pier head. By the time my grandfather returned to the family home in Sand Street, word had reached the family that the ship had gone down with all hands. At age 11, his father dead, my grandfather had to provide for his mother and sister, as being "on the parish" they had very little money. He told me a story about getting some coal for the fire in the front of his jumper by crawling under a gate into a factory yard. He thought he had been spied and was terrified he was going to be deported to Australia!
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