Newspaper - The Merion

1912 was quit the year for a great many people. The Titanic sank killing 1,517 people and the world was in utter shock. A horrible and preventable accident. But there were other things happening in the world that shouldn’t be overlooked.

·      It was a leap year

·      New Mexico became the 47th state

·      The Japanese Cherry Trees were planted along the Potomac

·      Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon at the Olympics

·      Woodrow Wilson became president

·      My grandmother came to America on a boat called the SS Merion

The Merion was built in 1902 for the American line, it also sailed for the Red Star line and Dominion lines. By the time my grandmother boarded the Merion in 1912 the titanic had already sank. I cannot imagine the fear and anticipation that my great grandparents had boarding that ship with their small children. They left from the same port that the Titanic had just a few months before. Over 100 years ago people didn’t just fly back home or take another ship back to their country to see family. It was often a one-time trip with no returns. Home was wherever they were going, not where they came from. My grandmother never went back to England. They came to America with nothing and became a apart of the American story.

The Merion had a much different fate than my grandmother. In December of 1912 it was involved in an accident when hit by a tanker near Philadelphia. In 1914 the ship was sold to the British Navy and used as a decoy. The following year in may, the Merion, now disguised as the Tiger was sunk by a German U-Boat in the Aegean Sea near Mudros. WWI was on the horizon.