People on board

McKENNA, Samuel Walter

Samuel Walter McKenna was born in Dundalk on the 1st of February 1892 to William McKenna and Margaret Morton. Samuel (who used either or both of his names) was the youngest of a large family with the eldest born in 1873. William worked for the Great Northern Railway as Timekeeper, Clerk and Storeman. He died in Dundalk in 1900, aged fifty-two and the family cannot be found in the 1901 census. In 1911 Walter was working as a Drapery Assistant in Clanbrassil Street in Dundalk.

He later moved to England and was living at Tunstall Terrace, Sunderland when he enlisted with the 25th (Tyneside Irish) Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. According to the record he had previously been with the 34th Divisional Cyclist Company. By 1918 Samuel McKenna was Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant.

On the 2nd of October 1918 he married Violet Adeline Haxby in the Wesleyan Chapel in Ripon, Yorkshire. Violet was just few months younger than Samuel and had been an ‘Ironer’ before her marriage. It appears that they travelled to Ireland after their marriage, perhaps to meet some of his family, and were returning on the 10th of October. Neither survived the sinking though Samuel’s body was recovered and brought to Dundalk where he was buried in the Protestant section of the cemetery. Violet’s body was never recovered.