Day 44 – Titanic shoes, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Halifax has well known links to the Titanic disaster as it was the closest major port with road and rail links to mainland North America. Immediately after hearing of the disaster in 1912, Halifax was told that survivors were on their way. The town prepared to receive survivors, bodies, and a damaged ship. No one had told them that the Titanic was sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Then the survivors were taken to New York. The dead were taken to Halifax. In fact, three Halagonian ships were sent out to the site in the days after the sinking to retrieve bodies. What an awful task! 328 bodies were recovered. Some were buried at sea, some delivered back to relatives, and the remaining 150 were buried here in Halifax.

Today we visited the Fairview Lawn Cemetery where White Star paid for simple black granite gravestones for each body, some more extravagant graves were paid for by family. There is a grave to a J Dawson, but it has nothing to do with the character played by Leonard DiCaprio in the movie Titanic. It was recently uncovered his name (the man buried in Halifax) was not Jack but Joseph Dawson. He worked in the coal bunkers aboard the Titanic. It was quite sad to see so many graves just marked with the date of death, as many of the victims remain unidentified. One of the most famous graves there belongs to an unknown child. This was the only child’s body to be recovered from the water and for 100 years, no one knew his name. The crew of the ship who recovered him paid for the gravestone and buried him with tears in their eyes. Only 2 years ago, the little boy was identified (through DNA testing) as 19 month old Sidney Goodwin. His shoes are now on display in the Maritime Museum which is today’s chilling photo.
Also on display in the Maritime Museum are many items salvaged from the wreck, including a deck chair and carved pieces of decorative wooden panels.

The Maritime Museum also contains a section about the Halifax Explosion of 1917. The city was heavily damaged, and approx. 2,000 people killed, when the largest man made explosion (until the atomic bomb) went off, caused by a munitions ship (carrying 3,000 tonnes of explosives) catching fire after colliding with another ship. Halifax did not have a great start to the 20th century!