MR. ISMAY'S MUNIFICENT GIFT
Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, son of the founder of the White Star Line, has given £25,000 in War Loan stock to the Mercantile Marine Service Association, Liverpool, to inaugurate a national mercantile marine fund. The object of his gift, he states, is to mark his admiration of the splendid and gallant manner in which the officers and men of all ranks of the British Mercantile Marine have "carried on" throughout the war.
The primary object of the National Mercantile Marine Fund is to make grants or pensions to necessitous masters and seamen of all ranks who have served at sea in British merchant vessels at any time during the war, and it also makes equal provision for the widows and children of such seamen. Preference is to be given to applicants and dependents of masters and seamen who have sailed out of Liverpool or in Liverpool-owned. ships, or have had their homes in the port of Liverpool. The pension is not to exceed £50 per annum, while a grant to any one person is not to be more than £100. Mr. Ismay has further provided that after 10 years from the date of its foundation the funds may be used so far as they permit, after satisfying the primary foundation, to assist aged and incapacitated British masters and seamen of all ranks who have served in British ships, and their widows and children.
This is not Mr. Ismay's first token of his gratitude and admiration of British sailors. Not long ago he and Mrs. Ismay associated themselves in a gift of £11,000 with which to found a fund to benefit the widows of seamen who lost their lives while on active service afloat. His father, the founder of the White Star Line, in 1887 by a gift of £20,000 founded the Liverpool Seamen's Pension Fund to benefit deck officers and seamen.
This was supplemented by his widow, Mrs. Margaret Ismay, who richly endowed a fund for the widows of those seamen who had been pensioners in the Liverpool Seamen's Pension Fund. Since the inception of these two funds, 564 seamen and 185 widows have benefited by pensions amounting in the aggregate to £70,000.
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