After serving in the U. S. Navy from 1882 to 1892, Walter Scott "Skipper" Meriwether became Navy editor of the New York Times. Shifting to the New York Herald in 1895, he was assigned as news correspondent with the U. S. Fleet in West Indian waters from some months before the war until the conclusion of hostilities. The author of many magazine articles, he was the owner of the Mississippi Sun of Charleston, Mississippi. He died in 1950.