People on board

PARRY, Louisa

Louisa Parry, known as Louie, was born in Holyhead in 1896 to Owen Parry and Catherine Williams. She was the fourth of their nine children. Owen worked as a Stonemason and then as a Coal Porter, in 1911, for the London North West Railway Co.  Louisa attended the Park School in Holyhead until she was fifteen when she went to train as a Nurse Probationer at the College, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucester, and later worked in Mexborough Yorkshire. She returned to Holyhead in 1914 and began work as a 2nd Stewardess on the mailboats for the City of Dublin Steampacket Company, where two of her sisters were similarly employed. In October 1918 she was engaged to be married.

It is believed that Louisa Parry had not been due to work on the 10th October 1918 but was filling in for one of her sisters. There were just three stewardesses on board, Mary Coffey, Hannah Owen and Louisa Parry, as well as a larger number of stewards. Reportedly when the torpedo struck the ship Mary Coffey and Louisa Parry distributed lifejackets and helped women and children up on to the deck.

Going below again, Louisa was apparently helping a woman and child in a cabin when the door slammed shut and no one was able to open it because of the pressure of water in the corridor.
Louisa Parry’s body was not recovered but her name is remembered on several memorials including one in the Park School and the War Memorial in Holyhead and on the York Minster memorial for women lost in the Great War. She was awarded the Mercantile Marine medal and the British War Medal.

Family notices printed in the local paper a year later showed the effect her loss had on her family:

   North Wales Chronicle & Advertiser, 10th October 1919