A Name Retrieved: Lusitania’s Lost Bride

Reflections on the Lusitania tragedy and the significance of remembrance

Some years ago, I stood in St Multose’s churchyard in Kinsale, a historic coastal town where Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way meets the Celtic Sea. A small group had gathered around a grave with the stark inscription: ‘An unknown victim (woman) of the Lusitania outrage, May 7th 1915’. The marker was familiar to me, as I had made a photograph of it back in the 1980s, and its mystery had never waned in my mind. We were there to commemorate another anniversary of the loss of the passenger liner Lusitania, torpedoed just 10 miles southwest of the Old Head of Kinsale’s protruding headland.

What began as a decades-old photograph of an unnamed victim transformed into a personal journey of remembrance and the restoration of a forgotten name.

2025 marks 110 years since that fateful day when the “Greyhound of the Seas” met its fate in waters visible from our Kinsale shore. Each May, this anniversary invites reflection on how photography connects us to personal and collective memory—an attempt to hold time still in the face of forgetting.

The early years of the twentieth century were the peak of transatlantic sea travel. During the second wave of the Great Atlantic Migration, between 1880 and 1910, some 17 million migrants from these islands and eastern and southern Europe packed their hope and belongings and boarded a ship bound for the New World. However, these statistics often lose individual life stories, and a single human experience is more telling.

Margaret MacKenzie emigrated to America from her home in Shieldaig, Scotland—a remote fishing village north of the Isle of Skye. In the modern era of the fast steamship, the goodbyes to her family were not as final as they would have been for those who had left on sailing ships in the previous century. Technology had reduced the time of crossing the Atlantic from weeks to days, and a booming demand led to larger, faster and more luxurious ships. Lusitania was the Cunard Line’s flagship, a 785ft, 32,000-ton behemoth, whose speed earned her the nickname ‘Greyhound of the Seas’.

In America, Margaret found work on a ranch near Oil City, Wyoming—modern-day Casper. She met and fell in love with an American from Illinois, James Shineman, and their romance quickly blossomed into a marriage proposal and engagement.

That day in St Multose’s churchyard was a bright, crisp May day—conditions not unlike those in 1915 when the ship met its fate. Traffic hummed by, making its way to and from the town centre while passing gulls and crows made their calls overhead. Some of the group—primarily members of the Kinsale History Society—were in quiet conversation, others reading inscriptions on the gravestones.

A history society member briefly recalled the events of 1915 before a minute’s silence was observed at 2:10 p.m., the moment the torpedo detonated and unleashed tragedy and loss on an unprecedented scale. First, I thought of the people on deck seeing the torpedo trail racing towards the ship. Then, I thought of the sheer terror of the explosions and the ensuing chaos. Finally, as the prayer service began, our thoughts turned to a very different Mayday in 1915.

Margaret and James were married on 19 April 1915 and planned their honeymoon around a surprise visit to Margaret’s family in Scotland. They had booked their passage on the steamship Cameronia, which made regular transatlantic crossings between Glasgow and New York. This Anchor Line ship was smaller and slower than the pride of the Cunard Line and was due to depart on the same day as Lusitania—1 May.

That morning, the British government took control of Cameronia, requisitioning it as a troopship in the war effort. Passengers were transferred to Lusitania, increasing her numbers significantly and delaying the departure by two and a half hours. The newlywed Shinemans were upgraded to a second-class cabin aboard Lusitania—they, like most of Cameronia’s passengers, were ‘enormously pleased’ with the transfer. They had been moved to a more luxurious ship that would get them to Liverpool four days early.

As the tugboats moved Lusitania off Pier 54 and turned her east to begin her 202nd transatlantic crossing, Margaret, James, and the other Cameronia passengers were oblivious to the notice placed by the Imperial German Embassy in that morning’s newspapers. The notice warned passengers of the dangers of wartime travel aboard a ship flying the flag of Great Britain or any of her allies.

Photography and memory work in similar ways. Both attempt to fix what is inherently unfixable: time itself. As William Henry Fox Talbot noted, photography captures “the most transitory of things, a shadow, maybe fettered by the spells of our Natural Magic, and maybe fixed forever in the position which seemed only destined for a single instant to occupy.”

After a smooth Atlantic crossing, the ship entered the declared war zone on the western approaches to Great Britain. The unescorted Lusitania slowed to take bearings from the Old Head of Kinsale, fixing her position after hours of steaming blind in fog. The German submarine U-20, low on fuel and supplies, was about to begin the journey back to her home port when lookouts spotted a four-funnel steamer on the horizon. The transcendence of war was about to visit the 2,000 passengers and crew aboard Lusitania.

The unknown woman was one of five bodies that landed in Kinsale and were buried soon after. Only 289—fewer than a quarter of those who perished—were recovered.

As the centenary of the sinking approached in 2015, a group of researchers related to the survivors began a project to identify the woman interred in Kinsale. Through meticulous archive work, they identified her as Margaret MacKenzie Shineman. Her husband James’ body was also recovered after the tragedy, many weeks after the sinking. Tides and currents had swept him up the west coast of Ireland to where he was found, between Doolin and the Aran Islands. Officials identified him by tracing his pocket watch back to its maker in Wyoming. He was laid to rest in Carrigaholt, County Clare, in July 1915.

One hundred and one years after the loss of Lusitania, an elegant marble gravestone was added to the mysterious crypt in St Multose churchyard. It reads ‘Margaret MacKenzie Shineman, December 25th 1888—May 7th 1915’. She was twenty-six years old.

About the Author

John Collins is a photographer and writer based in Kinsale, County Cork. For over four decades, he has documented Ireland’s southern shoreline’s coastal landscapes, marine environments, and historical narratives. His work explores the intersection of time, place, and memory. An experienced diver and former RNLI volunteer, Collins brings an intimate knowledge of land and sea to his photographic and written work.

Kinsale: Light and Time

This essay appears in expanded form in “Kinsale: Light and Time” (Atrium Press, 2023), a collection of photographs and reflective writing spanning forty years of observing life in this historic harbour town. The book weaves natural history, local heritage, and personal narrative through image and text, meditating on how place shapes identity and how photography allows us to witness the passage of time.

Available at local and national bookshops throughout Ireland and online through Cork University Press.