People on board

WARREN, William

William Warren was born in Kingstown on the 27th of December 1882 to John Warren and Kate Wall. William was the fifth of their six children, the first three all dying during 1878 of different causes. Both John and Kate’s fathers were Sailors and John and his elder son John were Pilots. The family lived in the Clarence Street / Sussex Street / Mulgrave Street part of Kingstown, among many other seafaring families, some of them also with the name Warren. William worked as a 2nd Steward with the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and in January 1908 he married Charlotte Archbold from Wellington Street. Like William’s father, Charlotte’s father, then deceased, had been a Pilot.

They lived with Charlotte’s widowed mother and siblings in Wellington Street which is where she was in the 1911 census, though William was absent. Just days later she gave birth to their first child, Marie Charlotte, who was followed in 1912 by Richard Laurence. In September 1914 William joined the King’s Own Liverpool Regt. and served in France for 3 years, being wounded twice, gassed and sent home suffering from shell shock.

William joined the City of Dublin Steam Packet Co. and was working as a Third Steward on RMS Leinster on the 10th of October 1918. He did not survive the sinking, nor was his body recovered. In November 1918 his widow, Charlotte, wrote to the Ministry of Pensions in London regarding a Widow’s Pension, outlining her husband’s military service.

His name is recorded on a family gravestone in Deansgrange cemetery, which includes Charlotte, who died in 1928, and the two children. William was awarded the Mercantile Marine Medal and the British War Medal, and his name is recorded on the Tower Hill Memorial in London.

Source of information: Alan Warren