People on board

MACK, Robert

Robert Mack was born on the 3rd of May 1895 in Paisley, Scotland to Robert Mack and Margaret Lindsay Grant, the third of their four sons. Robert Snr was an ‘Engineer’s Patternmaker’ and at the time of Robert’s birth the family was living in New Sneddon Street. They had moved to Niddry Street by 1901 and the eldest son John, aged fourteen, was a ‘Yarn Dryer’. In 1911 the family was living in Incle Street and Robert, then aged fifteen, was a Shop Assistant to a Grocer. The family attended Paisley Abbey parish church where Robert was a choirboy.

He was employed as an apprentice patternmaker with Fisher’s Ltd. before he enlisted in the Cameron Highlanders on the 28th of August 1914. Robert Mack landed in France on the 9th of July 1915. The day before he had written his unofficial ‘Soldier’s Will’, in which he left “all his property and effects” to his younger brother, James. He fought in the Battle of Loos and was then wounded at the Somme on the 10th of October 1916.

While travelling from Dublin to Holyhead on the 10th of October 1918 on RMS Leinster he was listed as being in the 6th Battalion of the Cameron Highlanders, which was in France at the time. The 3rd Reserve Battalion was based in Ireland from 1917 and he may have been temporarily assigned to that battalion. Robert Mack did not survive the sinking nor was his body recovered. His name is recorded on the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton and in James Meikle Smith’s book Paisley’s Fallen in the War 1914-1918.