David Bemis is the son of Gregg Bemis, who conveyed title of the Lusitania to the Lusitania Museum. Now calling Camden, Maine his home port, David has worn many hats, the majority of which revolved around the ocean. Following in his father and grandfather’s steps, he fell in love with sailing at an early age and added diving to that love when his father brought home a couple of sets of diving gear in the mid-1960’s. David and his father just donned the gear and walked into the cold water of Cohasset, Mass.

After teaching himself celestial navigation, David spent a few years after college doing boat deliveries until purchasing a farm in Berkshires. Swapping the skipper’s hat for the hat of a farmer and engineer, he spent 13 years dry-docked before purchasing a sailboat in Hamble, England, and once again went out to sea. David has worked as a Captain and divemaster, and did underwater moor construction in St. John. After 10 years of living and working on the water, David returned to land to work as a yard manager before retiring.

From the early days of his father’s involvement with the Lusitania to the present, David was intrigued by the endless stories Gregg told him of his efforts to get to the bottom of the many mysteries of her sinking. Fifty years of batting so many obstacles, from natural to technical to legal and political, only hardened his father’s resolve to fight on. Along the way, Gregg came to love and admire so many of the people he met in Ireland and thus, when he accepted that he would no longer be the one to tell the story of the Lusitania, he knew that the Lusitania Museum would be the best to continue on. It is David’s belief that museums such as the Lusitania Museum are the primary means of preserving and disseminating the knowledge which is gained from the efforts of those like David’s father and others.

Con is a native of the Old Head of Kinsale, an unmissable promontory off Ireland’s south coast, famous for being the nearest landfall to the spot where RMS Lusitania was sunk on May 7th, 1915, by a single torpedo fired by the Imperial German Navy’s SM U-20 (a U-boat). Con is a retired Physics and Maths teacher as well as a Civil Engineer. On his retirement, at his brothers invitation, he became involved in the Old Head Signal Tower Project in 2010. After initial research the project was divided into three manageable phases.

The first phase involved the restoration of the Napoleonic Signal Tower as a Visitors Centre, Panoramic Viewing Point and mini-Lusitania Museum displaying a small number of Lusitania artefacts which had been recovered and restored post diving operations on the ship from 2011 onwards. The restored Signal Tower was officially opened as a Visitors Centre on May 7th 2015 to coincide with the centenary of the sinking.

The second phase involved the design and creation of the Lusitania Memorial Garden in the sunken semi-circular space to the south of the Signal Tower. Its centrepiece is the 20-metre long curved ‘wave’ sculpture, designed and erected by local artists, Liam Lavery and Eithne Ring. The bronze pieces were cast in France and contain the names of all who sailed on RMS Lusitania on its last fateful journey as well as Lusitania story panels.

The third and on-going final phase of the project involves the design and creation of a dedicated, modern Lusitania Museum to tell the full story of the ‘greyhound of the sea’, RMS Lusitania, its Captain, William Thomas Turner, crew and passengers and its immense historic significance in the context of the unfolding of WW1.

Con has been deeply involved in each phase of the project, acting pro bono, on behalf of the Lusitania Museum/Old Head Signal Tower Heritage CLG, as the principal technical coordinator and liaison with the Designers, Contractors and Capital Support Services to bring each phase to a successful conclusion.

Read Con’s letter to the Bemis family here.