Thomas Rae was a Finnish sailor born in the town of Sortavala on the 21st of June 1890. Sortavala is located at the northern tip of Lake Ladoga near the Finnish/Russian border. Once a part of Finland, Sortavala now lies within the borders of modern Russia.
Ancestry.com contains the records of approximately forty five voyages where Thomas worked on ships traveling the New Orleans to Cuba route in the 1920's. Ancestry also contains the manifests of several excursions Thomas made from New Orleans to the Panama Canal.
In 1915, Thomas was a sailor aboard the American wooden schooner "Lewiston" on a voyage from Norfolk, Virginia to Maranhaõ, Brazil when she wrecked on an uncharted reef about 30 miles from shore. Luckily, the crew and captain made it to the lifeboat before the Lewiston sank. Thomas returned to the United States after the shipwreck with his passage paid by the American Consulate at Para, Brazil, aboard the S.S. Atahualpa. Notes on the Atahuala Manifest indicate that Thomas had been a resident of the United States since 1909.
Thomas registered with the draft for both world wars. In 1918, he was based in Boston, but not signed on with any ship's company. In 1942, he was working as a sailmaker on Front Street by the East River in New York (now classified as an historic riverfront area)
On his WWII draft Registration Card, Thomas is described as being 5 feet 6 inches tall with brown eyes, brown hair, and a ruddy complexion.
Thomas Rae died on the 10th of June 1982 and was buried on Hart Island on the 16th of June 1982.