The Lusitania Tragedy and the Pacific Northwest
Local Roslyn residents among the casualties as the sinking of the Lusitania ripples from Europe to Washington State.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The scene as the Lusitania went down is described by the survivors as heartrending beyond words. Battling for life, the passengers called to relatives and friends or bade each other goodbye. Many children were without their parents, and the women landing presented a pitiful appearance. Residents of Roslyn and adjacent coal mining camps fear that Mrs. Mary Lambie and her little daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, were lost when the steamship was torpedoed. A cablegram from Harry Birchall, also of Roslyn, told of his safety and of his inability to find the missing woman and her children.
“The scene as the Lusitania went down is described by the survivors as heartrending beyond words.”
The sinking of the Lusitania was a global event that felt intimately local in 1915, as small towns like Roslyn scanned the passenger lists for neighbors. Today, this reminds us how local communities remain tethered to international crises through globalized travel and social networks.
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