Dear Maria,
I took many photographs of the Tower Hill Memorial, London, a few years ago. You are more than welcome to the negatives of those photo's if you so require them. I also have a number of detail's of a couple of crew members who came from Birkenhead (my home town), Merseyside, England, as I am currently compiling biographies of all those who are commemorated on my town war memorial from the Great War. In case you didnt know, the S.S. Hesperian was 10920 Grt., and built in 1908. She was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic 85 miles S.W. by S. from the Fastnet Rock, by the German submarine U.20 (the same u-boat that had sunk the Lusitania), on 4th September, 1915, whilst on voyage from Liverpool to Montreal with general cargo. 32 lives were lost. If you know the name of the Captain of the Hesperian, you can get some of his service detail's from the Guild Hall Library, London, BUT BE WARNED ! They charge an arm and a leg ! If it is just a one-off request, they may well just send you the detail's, but add that they normally will charge £20-£50 for a search ! If you have any Royal Marines on board, their service papers can be aquired from the National Archives, Kew, London. Once you have a complete list of the crewmen lost, and have their detail's (as Bob Godfrey suggested)from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, you can then start to write off to the libraries of their home town's to see if there are any newspaper articles about them, which are alway's good to have. If you have a list of crew survivors, don't just think that because they survived that sinking, that they survived any subsequent sinking's. Check the C.W.G.C. website for people of the same names as these "survivors".....you might be surprised to find that one or two more may have been lost at sea after the Hesperian. If any of the survivor's were lucky to come through the Great War, and stay in the Mercantile Marine, there are Identification Certificates to all Mercantile Marine men, which were started in October, 1918. These have dates of birth, place of birth, seaman's number, and a photograph. If I can be of any help of any kind, please dont hesitate to contact me.
All the best,
Pete Threlfall
