Titanic memories

If the city of Halifax in Nova Scotia is looking for a new twin it might consider of those television soap opera locations where tragedies regularly happen whenever ratings flag. It has been the fate of this gentle compact city with a population of little more than 100,000 to be the scene of one epic real-life disaster and a player in two other global tragedies.

The most devastating happened in 1916 when a French cargo ship, the Mont Blanc, packed with munitions destined for Europe’s First World War battlefields, collided with a Norwegian freighter in the harbour and created the biggest accidental man-made explosion in history. An estimated 2,000 people died that night and another 9,000 – around a fifth of the then population – were injured by the blast, flying debris, fires and collapsing buildings as a shock wave swept through the city, snapping trees and flattening homes. In this century the city’s airport became the emergency refuge for many of the planes stranded in mid-air when US airspace was closed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001.

But perhaps the most poignant of all will be commemorated this April when the city marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. For a century the loss of the “unsinkable” luxury liner has gripped the public imagination inspiring more than a dozen films, numerous documentaries and countless books as well as scientific expeditions to the wreck.

Halifax was never intended to have any part in the great liner’s story. Built in Belfast, it was on its maiden voyage from Southampton and Cork to New York when late on the night of April 14 it struck an iceberg. Less than three hours later the pride of the White Star Line disappeared beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic.

Of the 2,200 people on board only 705 survived, most of them picked up from lifeboats or found clinging to wreckage by the Cunard liner Carpathia, which answered Titanic’s distress call. The rest either froze in the water or were carried under in the wreck. The living were ferried onwards to New York. The grim task of collecting the dead fell to Halifax.

The port happened to be the base for the cable ships which laid and repaired the huge telegraph wires which crossed the Atlantic seabed. Their crews were used to working in deep water and in all conditions. Two of the vessels were the first boats chartered to sail the 700 miles to the site of the sinking with orders to collect as many bodies as they could find.

The story of the tragedy and gruesome salvage operation is told in a permanent exhibition at the Maritime Museum on the Halifax waterfront where among the most avid visitors are passengers from the vast modern cruise ships that tie up just a few yards away. Most seem oblivious to the irony as they queue to have their photographs taken alongside the artefacts and the huge photographs of the Titanic’s lavish interior before climbing back aboard their own “unsinkable” ships to head out into the Atlantic. On display are some of the luxurious fittings as well as poignant reminders of the colossal human loss, including a tiny pair of child’s shoes.

The first salvage ship, the Mackay-Bennett, left Halifax laden with ice, coffins, body bags and embalming fluid, its crew bolstered by the addition of a church minister and an undertaker. In all, 328 bodies were recovered, the last one a full month later. As space to accommodate them aboard ran out, some had to be buried at sea. Eventually 209 were brought back to Halifax.

Even in death the rigid class system survived. First class passengers came ashore in coffins. The others were in canvas bags, or on open stretchers. The wealthy ones found a resting place in Snow’s Funeral Parlour. The rest were placed in a makeshift morgue at the Mayflower Curling Rink, guarded by police to deter souvenir hunters. Only 59 bodies were returned to bereaved families. The rest, some still unidentified, were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax.

The largest group of graves is at Fairview Lawn on the outskirts of the city where the White Star Line commissioned a prominent land surveyor, FW Christie to design the Titanic plot to fit into the slope of the hill. It is now firmly on the itinerary of Titanic tours. Each grave was intended to be marked with a simple granite headstone but some families paid to have extra engraving. Others, holding the bodies of unidentified victims simply bear the number they were assigned as they were found. All carry the same date of death, April 1. None could have survived long in the freezing water before hypothermia claimed them.

The brief inscriptions tell their own poignant stories and embody echoes of Edwardian values. Some speak of individual heroism such as that of Ernest Freeman, the chief deck steward. His headstone reads: “He remained at his post of duty, seeking to save others regardless of his own life and went down with the ship”. The stone was paid for by his employer, fellow Titanic passenger and boss of the White Star Line, J Bruce Ismay. Ismay, who lived to the age of 74, famously quit his sinking ship in a lifeboat 90 minutes after it hit the iceberg and was reviled in the American press as the coward of the Titantic.

The headstone of another crew member, Edward Elliott, 24, reads: “Each man stood at his post while all the weaker ones went by and showed once more to all the world how Englishmen should die.”

Titanic carried too few lifeboats and even some of those were launched only partly full. Quite how closely the tenet of “women and children first” was observed remains a matter of some controversy. It is said that more first class male passengers than third class children made it to the boats. But it is also true that while men made up three quarters of those on board, more than half the survivors were women.

The most poignant of all the Fairview memorials is one dedicated to “The Unknown Child”, a toddler whose body was one of the first recovered by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett. These were tough men, well used to death and danger. But they were so moved by the sight of the tiny body floating in the ocean that they paid for his funeral service and the special memorial.

The identity of the child remains uncertain but researchers still sift through the records of the victims together with the possessions and clothing they were found with any fresh clues that emerge as more artefacts come to light. Working on snippets as flimsy as a bit of embroidery on a garment, or recently discovered family photographs perhaps showing an item of jewellery, they still manage to put names to some of the anonymous victims.

As recently as 1991 six names were added to gravestones that for 80 years had borne only numbers. It is now believed the child is either a Swedish two year-old who was on his way to join his father in Chicago, or possibly a toddler from Wiltshire.

The other grave that brings modern visitors up short is that of J Dawson, the name of the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the Oscar-laden 1997 film.

A century on, modern Halifax has not forgotten the Titanic and the anniversary will be marked with special ceremonies as well as a festival of Titanic films, concerts, talks and exhibitions and a special salute at the International Tattoo.

The graves are well-tended and cared for. It is hard not to feel that the victims, whose great ship still lies 700 miles away, eerily upright in 13,000ft of water and was only discovered in 1985, have found a fitting resting place.