Four Thousand Lives Lost

Over four years, four ships were lost under different circumstances and 4,000 lives with them — but one thing linked them all: it was John Charles Bigham, Lord Mersey, who was appointed to head the inquiries into each disaster. Mersey is often referred to as a 'company man', or a government stooge. But is this the whole truth? Everyone has heard of Titanic and Lusitania but more passengers died when the Empress of Ireland sank in May 1914. That inquiry turned into a head-to-head between an American lawyer and a British one. Did Mersey let the right man win? Was he fair to Captain Lord of the Californian when he blamed him for the loss of so many lives on Titanic? The U-Boat that sank the Falaba with the loss of 104 lives behaved very differently to the one that torpedoed the Lusitania just six weeks later. Did Mersey reflect that in his findings or was he more interested in propaganda than truth?

The name of Kershaw's Brigade of South Carolinians is familiar to all who wore the gray and saw hard fighting on the fields of Virginia, in the swamps of Carolina and the mountains of Tennessee. This was ""the First Brigade of the First Division of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia,"" and many of its members volunteered for service before the first gun was fired at the Star of the West, while its ragged regimental remnants laid down their arms at Greensboro not till the 2d of May, 1865, nearly a month after the fateful day of Appomattox. Its history is a history of the war, for, as will he seen, there were few pitched battles in the East that did not call forth its valor. The chief merit of Captain Dickert's book is that it presents the gay and bright, as well as the grave side of the Confederate soldier's experience. It is full of anecdote and incident and repartee. Such quips and jests kept the heart light and the blood warm beneath many a tattered coat.

Over four years, four ships were lost under different circumstances and 4,000 lives with them - but one thing linked them all: it was John Charles Bigham, Lord Mersey, who was appointed to head the inquiries into each disaster. Mersey is oftern referred to as a 'company man', or a government stooge. But is this the whole truth? Everyone has heard of Titanic and Lusitania but more passengers died when the Empress of Ireland sank in May 1914. That inquiry turned into a head-to-head between an American lawyer and a British one. Did Mersey let the right man win? Was he fair to Captain Lord of the Californian when he blamed him for the loss of so many lives on Titanic? The U-Boat that sank the Falaba with the loss of 104 lives behaved very differently to the one that torpedoed the Lusitania just six weeks later. Did Mersey reflect that in his findings or was he more interested in propaganda than truth?