Victims of Titanic rest in Halifax
VERSION FRANÇAISE

Two days after the shipwreck of Titanic, in 1912, a boat left the Canadian port of Halifax with a disaster cargo : blocks of ice, products for embaumer and of the coffins. Two weeks later, Mackay-Bennett was back with 190 corpses fished out in the Atlantic. The majority of the bodies were not claimed and were buried in Halifax.

Mackay-Bennett was the first of the three ships sent on the zone of the shipwreck, which made more than 1500 died. Together, the three buildings were to tear off 328 bodies with frozen water. When Mackay-Bennett arrived on the spot, April 20, 1912, the sailors had Cœur tightened.

" the ocean was covered, as far as the eye can see, of remains and of corpses which rolled on water like stoppers ", wrote Arminias Wiseman, one of the men of crew.

The cranes of Mackay-Bennett, normally used to go down from the underwater cables, hauled the bodies out of water. Other corpses were fished out by sailors on board small boats.

April 30, 1912, Mackey-Bennett, that the newspapers had called " the ship of death ", accosted in Halifax, where one made sound the alarm bell and put the flags in Bern. Death had not abolished the social classes and the bodies of the passengers of first class were unloaded in coffins. One was satisfied with a bag for the passengers with second and third classes and stretchers for the bodies of the sailors.

Hundred twenties and one not claimed body were buried with the cemetery of Fairwiew, at the node of a hill. The four lines of tombs carry all the same date : April 15, 1912. The names reflect the ethnique diversity of the victims, Italo Donati or Gustaff Johannson.

On certain tombs, those of men of crew, inscriptions recall the sacrifice of those which could " show in the world how an English must die ". One of the tombstones is engraved in the name of J. Dawson. According to Dan Conlin, it is about James Dawson, a man of the engine room of Titanic. However, from the teenagers come to collect itself on this tomb, whose their name points out Jack Dawson to them, the hero of fiction which interprets Leonardo DiCaprio in film of James Cameron...

Origin Source : Associated Press, Halifax. 1998.03.16
Translation via Jean Renoir jr

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