This page was created by Madison Luke.  The last update was by Erika Strandjord.

Star of the Sea : A Postcolonial/Postmodern Voyage into the Irish Famine

David Merridith (Spoiler)

Lord Thomas David Nelson Merridith, son of Thomas David Oliver Merridith, is one of the central characters of the novel.  He is the passenger on the ship fated to be murdered - we know this from the very beginning.  He is the eldest son in his family and has two sisters - Emily and Natasha, whom he loves very much.  His mother left with them to live in London when David was six.  David was raised by a nanny, Margaret Duane, and became fast friends and lovers with her daughter Mary.  Once Mary’s and David’s fathers found out about this relationship, they quickly put an end to it.  David and his father did not get along at all. Once David finished his education in Hampshire and returned to Galway, his father arranged for him to marry Amelia Blake, the daughter of neighboring landlord Henry Blake.  However David had no desire to marry Amelia and so refused.  This got him disowned by his father and insulted the entire Blake family. 
He eventually married a young woman named Laura Markham in London and together they had two sons - Jonathan and Robert.  He soon grew bored of city life and became restless, wanting to do something useful with his life.  He became depressed and began to visit prostitutes and feel suicidal.
Eventually, his father, Lord Kingscourt passed away, leaving his land to David.  David moved back to Ireland, thrilled at the prospect of being able to do something productive with his life. He made plans on how he would improve his father’s estate:

He would build a new pier and a moorings for the fisherman, perhaps a model school for the smallholders’ children.  Get in a proper estate manager to help the tenants; some local man, a young man, who was clever and decent.  Maybe send him to the Agricultural College in Scotland.  Teach the people about soil and hygiene.  Give them the benefit of modern ideas.  Encourage them to widen their old-fashioned thinking, to change their outmoded customs and unwise ways.  This reliance on the ‘lumper’ or ‘horse potato’, for example, when it was clearly so prone to infestation by blight - that could all stop now.  Merridith would stop it.  Kingscourt would be the best-managed estate in Ireland, or anywhere in the United Kingdom for that matter (247).

This was before the potato famine and had David been able to realize his dreams, he could have avoided some of the tragedy.  But he inherited an extremely debt-ridden estate and it was all he could do to keep it going as it was.  He turned back to his old ways of sleeping around and drawing prostitutes.  This is where he runs into Mary Duane again, working as a prostitute. We also learn that Mary’s mother Margaret, his nanny, was also his mother, making Mary and David half siblings.  This explains why their fathers were so intent on them not forming a relationship. 
By the time he is on the ship, David has contracted syphilis from sleeping around so much in London and Ireland.  He is slowly going blind and crazy and is miserable and depressed.  He is brutally murdered while in the port at New York, before he even gets a chance to leave the boat. 

Work Cited
O’Connor, Joseph. Star of the Sea. Florida: Harcourt Books, 2002. Print.
Researcher/Writer: Michaila Gerlach
Web Designers: Madison Luke and Andrew Olsen

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