This Connecticut architect was dead for hours in the Irish Sea. Then her eyelid moved.

Theodate Pope Riddle’s Miraculous Lusitania Resurrection

Theodate Pope Riddle cheated death when the Lusitania sank in 1915.

The pioneering female architect from Connecticut boarded the ship with her maid and a Harvard professor, but their journey ended when a German torpedo struck. As the ship went down, Pope jumped into the icy Irish Sea.

Hours later, rescuers pulled her lifeless body aboard a fishing trawler and laid her with the dead. Fellow passenger Belle Naish spotted Pope’s eyelids flutter and got sailors to try resuscitation.

After two hours of effort, Pope came back to life.

Her Hill-Stead home in Connecticut now stands as a time capsule where you can walk the same halls as this remarkable survivor.

She Boarded The Doomed Ship On A Spiritualist Mission

Theodate Pope, a 48-year-old architect from Connecticut, got on the RMS Lusitania on May 1, 1915, with her maid Emily Robinson and Harvard professor Edwin Friend.

They wanted English ghost researchers to back their new American group. The three had left the American Society for Psychical Research.

Pope let Friend and his medium wife Marjorie live at her Hill-Stead home for séances. She moved from cabin D-54 to A-10 because her neighbors’ six kids made too much noise.

German Warnings Went Unheeded By Passengers

The German government put out a warning on April 22, 1915, printed in American newspapers the same day the Lusitania sailed. The notice said any British ship in the war zone might face attack.

Fellow traveler Theodore Naish saw but ignored this warning, thinking officials would tell each American person before boarding. Pope and her friends only learned about these newspaper warnings after leaving New York.

During the trip, Pope worried that Germans “intend to get us” but felt sure “we would surely be convoyed when we reached the war zone.”

A Peaceful Afternoon Walk Turned Deadly In Seconds

At 2 p.m. on May 7, Pope and Friend took a walk along the deck near the right-side rail when a strong blast shook the ship.

Pope later said, “The sound was like an arrow entering the canvas and straw of a target, made a thousand times louder.” German U-boat U-20, led by Captain Walther Schwieger, fired one torpedo from 700 meters away.

Friend yelled “By Jove, they’ve got us” as a second blast boomed from inside the ship.

Untrained Crew Members Created Deadly Lifeboat Chaos

The Lusitania’s crew showed poor skills at launching lifeboats. Pope watched one lifeboat tip over, throwing all its people into the sea.

She and Friend went to the boat deck where they saw another lifeboat being lowered while the ship still moved forward, causing it to flip and dump everyone into the water.

They spotted a boat getting away safely on the right side, but the ship tilted so badly it nearly rolled on top of the waiting lifeboats.

Friend refused to board because women and children still waited, and Pope wouldn’t leave without him.

Their Last-Minute Decision Changed Everything

Friend ran inside to find life jackets, coming back with three: one for himself, one for Pope, and one for her maid Robinson.

Pope and Friend chose to jump from the deck rather than risk the unsafe lifeboats. Friend went first, smiling and waving to them from the water.

Pope called “Come, Robinson” to her maid before they jumped together. The moment Pope hit the water, she got pulled down, caught between decks and sure she would die.

The Irish Sea Became A Nightmare Of Struggling Bodies

Pope opened her eyes underwater to see green water and a lifeboat bottom, hit her head on the keel, then came up among “a hundred frantic, screaming, shouting humans in this grey and watery inferno.”

She saw a man with a head cut to her right, a woman’s head nearby, and an old man floating upright to her left. Trash and scared swimmers knocked against her.

A scared man jumped onto her shoulders, thinking she could keep him afloat. The mess grew worse as more people entered the cold water.

Everyone Around Her Disappeared As She Lost Hope

Pope looked for Edwin Friend but couldn’t find him anywhere in the churning water. She grabbed a floating oar for support as the huge ship sank beneath the waves.

Thinking the whole scene seemed “too horrible to be true” and must be just a bad dream, she passed out while holding the oar.

Hours later, as evening came, the fishing boat Julia found her unconscious body draped across the oar. Sailors pulled her out with boat hooks and placed her on deck among the dead “like a sack of cement.

A Fellow Passenger Refused To Accept Her Death

Belle Naish, another Lusitania passenger who had lost her husband Theodore in the sinking, spotted Pope among the bodies on the Julia’s deck.

Something made Naish doubt Pope was truly gone. She bent down to touch Pope and noticed her eyelids flutter slightly.

This tiny sign of life convinced Naish to beg the crew to try artificial respiration despite their certainty Pope was dead.

Two sailors cut off Pope’s wet clothes with a carving knife and worked for two full hours trying to revive her.

Two Hours Of Resuscitation Brought Her Back To Life

After 120 minutes of non-stop artificial respiration, Theodate’s breathing steadied and she slowly woke up. She came to beside a charcoal fire in the captain’s cabin, hearing someone say “She’s conscious.”

Pope had no memory of the sinking and needed many weeks to recover in Ireland and London.

She searched desperately for Friend among the survivors, but neither his body nor Robinson’s was ever found among the 1,198 people who died that day.

Her Gratitude Created Lasting Legacies

Pope gave Belle Naish a lifetime pension to thank her for saving her life.

Naish later donated her land to the Boy Scouts, creating Camp Naish as a memorial to her husband Theodore.

The U.S. Mixed Claims Commission awarded Pope $4,850 for personal property loss and $15,000 for pain and suffering, plus interest from the German government.

Artist Mary Cassatt wrote to Pope saying, “If you were saved it is because you have still something to do in this world.”

She Found Love Again Almost Exactly One Year Later

On May 6, 1916, just one day before the first anniversary of the Lusitania disaster, Theodate married diplomat John Wallace Riddle at her Hill-Stead home.

They kept the ceremony simple, with the bride wearing “a traveling dress of dark material” without attendants or decorations.

Pope created a chair at Harvard University for psychical research to honor Edwin Friend, with Leonard T. Troland hired as the first professor.

She held séances trying to contact Friend, claiming he appeared “flushed and furious about the dastardly deed that ended his life.”

Visiting Hill-Stead, Connecticut

Hill-Stead Museum at 35 Mountain Road in Farmington preserves 19 rooms exactly as Theodate Pope Riddle left them in 1946, including her bedroom and husband John’s study where they lived after surviving the Lusitania disaster.

Guided tours run Wednesday-Sunday 10am-4pm for $18 adults. You can’t bring cameras or bags inside.

The grounds have three miles of trails and Beatrix Farrand’s Sunken Garden, which hosts an annual poetry festival.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• The Rise and Fall of America’s First Diplomat, Silas Deane
• After Pequot War massacres, one sachem’s desperate deal with English colonists
• This state executed more “witches” than Salem and nobody talks about it