Roll Back the Clouds, my
new novel about the Lusitania, releases on March 17. Many of the
passengers aboard the ill-fated, final voyage appear alongside main characters,
Geoff and Rosaleen Bonnard. I’ll be profiling several of them here. This week, meet
Father Basil Maturin.
Basil Maturin was born in 1847 in
Ireland. After receiving an education at Trinity College in Dublin, he was sent
to Philadelphia to be the rector at St. Clement’s Episcopalian Church. He
became a Catholic in 1897.
In
1913, he became Catholic chaplain at Oxford University. He embarked on a
preaching tour in the United States in 1915, and was returning to England on
the Lusitania. While in New York, he spoke to several Irish-Americans
and was surprised, but relieved, to discover they were not pro-German.
As
the Lusitania sank, he administered absolutions to several people, and
was seen placing a child in a lifeboat. He did not wear a lifebelt, and was
lost in the disaster. His body was recovered by two elderly fishermen and
identified by his papers, silver watch, banker’s drafts for ₤2,000. He was
buried in England.
In Roll Back
the Clouds, Father Maturin meets the Bonnards in the first-class
lounge, where they partook of afternoon tea.
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