The first body to be claimed and released was Number 124, John Jacob Astor. Despite the condition of the body—crushed and covered with soot (Astor had been caught beneath the forward funnel when it fell into the sea)—identification had been a fairly simple procedure. The records show that he wore a blue serge suit, a blue handkerchief (with, curiously, the initials “A.V” on it), a gold-buckled belt, brown boots with red rubber soles, and a brown flannel shirt with “J. J. A.” on the collar. It was this shirt that provided the positive identification of Astor’s body, not as commonly believed, the amount of cash he carried. (This included £225 in notes, $2,440 in American currency, £5 in gold, 7s in silver, and 50 francs. Other personal items included a gold watch, gold cuff links, and a diamond ring with three stones.) The body was claimed by his son Vincent, who, along with the family’s lawyer, Nicholas Biddle, and the skipper of Astor’s private yacht, Captain Roberts, had taken a special train to Halifax.
The purser’s list prepared aboard the Mackay-Bennett, which the coroner was now using to assist in identifying the bodies, makes for melancholy reading. Some entries are remarkably detailed, which often meant that identification was relatively easy: many others were heartbreakingly stark, making identification nearly impossible. For example: “Number 33; Male, estimated age: 30; blue suit; no marks; brown hair and moustache; no effects.” Or: “Number 23, Female, about 25, fair hair. Sum of 150 Finnish marks sewn into clothing.” Or: “Number 63; Female, estimated age 22, dark black hair. Clothing—blue dress and blouse, black shoes. Effects—purse with miniature photo; key; few coins; photo locket. No marks on body or clothing. Probably Third Class.” Or: “Number 88; Male, estimated age 50, dark hair, moustache light. Clothing—dungaree trousers, flannel shirt. No marks on body or clothing, no effects. Fireman.” One particularly sad entry is Number 328—“four feet, six inches, about 14 years old, golden brown hair, very dark skin, refined features. Lace trimmed red-and-black overdress, black underdress, green striped undershirt, black woolen shawl and felt slippers. Probably third class.”5
In what was probably the strangest twist in the process of identification, the body of Michel Navatril was originally identified as “Mr. Hoffmann,” the alias under which he was traveling. It was money that enabled authorities to identify “Mr. Hoffmann” as Michel Navatril: he was being sought by a number of French creditors for outstanding debts. The creditors had issued, on both sides of the Atlantic, a detailed description of Navatril, and this description came to the attention of the Nova Scotian authorities. It matched the body of “Mr. Hoffmann” so closely that the creditors’ representatives were called in, and in short order they were able to confirm that the body was indeed that of Michel Navatril. When his body was recovered, the equivalent of several hundred dollars in French francs were found in the various pockets of his clothing. The representatives promptly placed liens on the cash he had been carrying.6
Three days after the Mackay-Bennett returned, the burials began. Based on instructions from relatives—or in the case of the unidentified or unclaimed bodies, educated guesswork about the victim’s religion—those still at the curling rink were designated to be buried in one of three Halifax cemeteries : Fairview, which was a nonsectarian plot; Baron de Hirsch cemetery, right next to Fairview, for those who were Jewish; or Mount Olivet, about a half-mile to the south, for Roman Catholics. All the bodies were properly embalmed, placed in simple yellow-pine coffins, and on Friday, May 3, 1912, the first of a series of funeral services were held.
At 9:30 A.M., a Mass was celebrated at St. Mary’s Cathedral, with the Archbishop of Nova Scotia presiding. The cathedral was filled with mourners, which included representatives from the White Star Line, while the coffins of four victims, all young women, rested on a catafalque. At the conclusion of the service, they were taken to Mount Olivet, where they were buried at 4:00 P.M.
At 11:00 A.M. a service began in the Brunswick Street Methodist Church for fifty victims who were to be buried at Fairview. As the service was intended to be nonsectarian, it was conducted by the Halifax Evangelical Alliance. The chancel was covered with floral arrangements, the sanctuary draped in black, and in the congregation sat the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, along with officers from HMCS Niobe (her crew had provided an honor guard at the curling rink) and from the garrison of the Citadel in Halifax. The scripture read by the Very Reverend Dean Crawford was from Psalm 90 (“Thou dost sweep men away; they are like a dream, like grass which is renewed in the morning ... in the evening it fades and withers.”) The sermon was given by the Rev. Dr. McKinnon of Pine Hill Presbyterian College. At the close of the service, the band of the Royal Canadian Regiment played “Nearer, My God, to Thee” as a recessional while the coffins were carried to waiting hearses.
At this point, in an especially tactless episode involving the Titanic’s dead, Rabbi Jacob Walter, a leader in Halifax’s small Jewish community, took it upon himself to decide that, in addition to those victims already designated for burial in the Jewish cemetery, ten of the bodies intended to be laid to rest in Fairview should go to Baron de Hirsch instead. While the memorial services were being conducted in the city, Walter pried open a number of coffins not yet scheduled for burial and decided that ten of the bodies he inspected were Jewish (how he determined this was never explained). Walter then persuaded workers to move the ten coffins he had arbitrarily selected from Fairview to Baron de Hirsch. Provincial authorities happened upon these transfers as they were taking place and immediately put a stop to them. White Star records later showed that four of the ten bodies Rabbi Walter had picked out were actually Roman Catholic, though they were not intended for interment in Mount Olivet, and the families of the other six had left specific instructions for their burial. What motivated Rabbi Walter to commit such a bizarre act, or what he hoped to gain from it will never be known. To its credit, Halifax’s Jewish community repudiated the rabbi for his behavior.
Ironically, one victim who was buried in Baron de Hirsch by mistake was “Mr. Hoffman”—Michel Navatril. Because he had first been identified as Hoffmann, it was believed that he was Jewish, and the error was not discovered until after the burial. Navatril was actually a Roman Catholic, but in a deeply touching act of kindness, the Jews of Halifax chose to allow Navatril to remain among their kin in Baron de Hirsch, and had his correct name cut into his headstone.7
Halifax is a seafaring town, and like any seafaring town, beneath its sometimes rough and seemingly uncaring exterior lies a heart as big as the sea itself. That this was so was shown on May 4, 1912, a day any Haligonian can regard with quiet pride. Only one burial took place that day, but it brought out all the concern and sympathy that Halifax could show.
The body of a blonde-haired boy, about two years old, had been picked up by the Mackay-Bennett on April 20. The purser’s entry was pathetically brief: “No identification; no effects.” The sight of the little fellow was enough to move even the tough seamen of the cable ship’s crew to tears, and once the word of his plight reached Halifax—no one knew who he was and no one came forward to claim him—the city’s heart went out to him. Provincial authorities and White Star officials were inundated with offers to sponsor the boy’s funeral. Finally, Captain Lardner and the crew of the Mackay-Bennett, who had first requested to take responsibility for the child, were granted permission to sponsor the service.
St. George’s Anglican Church was filled that Saturday morning with mourners, and a huge crowd waited quietly outside. The chancel overflowed with wreaths and flowers. After a simple but moving service, six crewmen from the Mackay-Bennett shouldered the small white coffin and carried it to the waiting hearse, which then drove to Fairview Cemetery. There on the hill-side overlooking Fairview Cove the boy was laid to rest among the others from the Titanic. A few years later a granite marker would be placed over the little fellow’s grave, with the inscription: “Erected to the Memory of an Unknown Child Whose Remains Were Recovered after the Disaster to the Titanic, April 15, 1912.” The mar
ker was paid for by Captain Lardner and his crew.
Eventually the boy would be tentatively identified as Gosta Leonard Paulson. He had sailed from Southampton. with his mother, two sisters, and a brother. By coincidence, his mother is buried only a few feet from him. His sisters and brother were never found.8
Ultimately, six weeks’ searching by four ships resulted in the recovery of 328 of the Titanic’s dead. Of them, 119 were buried at sea; of the 209 brought back to Halifax, 59 were claimed and taken away for burial elsewhere. The rest remained in Halifax, and the city has been kind to them.
All cemeteries have a certain tranquility about them, but there seems to be a special quietness that surrounds the four rows of marker stones showing where the Titanic’s dead lie at Fairview, a quietness that is equally shared by the plots in Mount Olivet and Baron de Hirsch. All three graveyards are well tended—the marker stones are not allowed to fall in disrepair, though the harsh Halifax winters have taken their toll on some. A corner of Thomas Baxter’s headstone is deeply fractured and in danger of breaking off, the foundation of the marker over the grave of the little boy has become badly eroded, while fissures have appeared in the bases of other stones.
Every grave is marked with a space on the stone for a name and the words “Died April 15, 1912.” Whenever known the name has been inscribed: one in Fairview reads “Jock Law Hume”—he was the second violinist in the orchestra, the young man whose mother didn’t want him to sail on the Titanic, but who needed the extra money he would earn because he would be getting married in a few weeks. A fellow musician, the bass-violist Fred Clarke, is buried in Mount Olivet. Save for Wallace Hartley, whose remains were sent home to Lancastershire, none of the other musicians from the Titanic’s band were ever found—nor were any of the ship’s officers or engineers, though more than one of the bodies never positively identified were described in the coroner’s report as “probably” or “possibly” an engineer.9
In Mount Olivet and Baron de Hirsch cemeteries, all of the stones are identical (there are nineteen victims buried in Mount Olivet, ten in Baron de Hirsch), each stone standing some eighteen inches high, fourteen wide, and seven deep. In Fairview Cemetery, most of the marker stones are of the same design, but a few stones are larger than the others and bear long, elaborate inscriptions.
One is dedicated “In Memoriam—Ernest Edward Samuel Freeman, last surviving son of Capt. S.W Kearney Freeman, R.N., Husband of Laura Mary Jane Freeman, Lost in the ‘Titanic’ disaster April 15, 1912. He remained at his post of duty, seeking to save others, regardless of his own life and went down with the ship. Erected by Mr. J. Bruce Ismay to commemorate a long and faithful service.” It would be interesting to know if Ismay ever contemplated the irony of that inscription-though in fairness to Ismay it should also be remembered that he set up a lifetime pension for young Freeman’s parents.
The inscription on another stone reads:In Memory of Our Dear Son, Harold Reynolds, who lost his life in the “Titanic” disaster, April 15, 1912.
Out of that bitter waste
Alone with Thee
Thou didst each hero saint
From sorrow free
No human help around I see
Nearer to Thee
See angel faces beckon me
Nearer to Thee In the midst of life we are in death
Even eight-five years later it isn’t difficult to imagine the grief of the parents who raised the stone to “George H. Dean, Lost on S.S. ‘Titanic’ April 15, 1912, aged 19 years. Very deeply mourned by his sorrowing parents Fred and Mary Dean.” A similar heartache comes through the words carved into the marker for a steward, Herbert Cave:In Loving Memory of Herbert Cave, dearly beloved husband of Gertrude Agnes Cave, lost in the “Titanic” April 15, 1912, aged 39 years.
There let my way appear
Steps unto heaven
All that Thou send’st to me
In mercy given
Angels shall beckon me
Nearer my God to Thee
Nearer to Thee
A stone dedicated to a trimmer reads:Sacred to the memory of Everett Edward Elliott of the heroic crew S. S. “Titanic” died on duty April 15, 1912. Aged 24 years.
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.
A trust fund was set up by the White Star Line for the perpetual care of the graves in Fairview and Mount Olivet—those in Baron de Hirsch are provided for by the Beth Israel Congregation of Halifax. These days the fund is administered by Cunard, which assumed that responsibility when it took over White Star in the 1930s. Visitors come quite regularly to Fairview Cemetery, less frequently to Mount Olivet and Baron de Hirsch. Some leave flowers, other wreaths, many just stand quietly, trying to imagine what it was like that cold April night so many years ago. It is a lasting image, the site of so many graves, holding the remains of people who would have ordinarily died in obscurity, but now are mourned by total strangers.
CHAPTER 14
Resurrection
Will you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook?
—Job 41:1
THE MIDNIGHT WATCH IN THE CONTROL ROOM OF THE RESEARCH VESSEL Knorr was promising to be monotonously routine during the first hour or so of September 1, 1985. “Routine” consisted of one man, in this case Bob Lange, sitting before a television monitor, joystick in hand, while two others, Jean-Louis Michel, the team leader, and Stu Harris, kept close watch on banks of instruments that included monitors for side-scanning sonar, bottom-scanning sonar, and a magnetometer, as well as several additional television monitors.
Back and forth the Knorr passed across a rigidly defined sector of the ocean, allowing Argo, an ungainly looking underwater survey device, to conduct a thorough search of the bottom. This admittedly dull routine, which required tremendous concentration on the part of the men guiding Argo, had been going on for more than three weeks, twenty-four hours a day, with no results to show for it—just endless, unchanging views of the seabed. There was no reason to believe that this watch would be any different. In fact, a certain amount of pessimism was beginning to creep into the attitudes of the men who were controlling Argo: the Knorr was fast approaching the end of the search area; the calm, clear weather that permitted such a laborious effort, only a few weeks each year in this part of the Atlantic, was about to run out; and they seemed to be no closer to finding their elusive quarry than they had been when they began searching on August 9, three weeks before.
All that changed just twelve minutes before 1:00 A.M. Stu Harris suddenly noticed that there was something on one of his monitors that looked like a big circle. “That looks like a part of it,” he said. Lange swung the Argo toward the object and the picture grew clearer while the object grew larger.
“That’s big!”
“Look at it, will you?”
The Argo moved closer, and now a clearly discernible pattern of rivets appeared on the object. The watchers could see it was cylindrical, probably close to thirty feet in diameter, and then they saw it had doors, three of them, furnace doors at that. Suddenly everybody started talking at once.
“It’s a boiler!”
“A boiler?”
“LOOKS LIKE A BOILER!”
“YES! YES! FANTASTIC! IT’S A BOILER!”
“Somebody better go get Bob!”
“Bob” is Robert Ballard, Ph.D., one of the last major players to take the stage in the drama of the Titanic. The boiler seen on the television monitor was one of the twenty-nine boilers installed in the Titanic seventy-three years before—a single-ended boiler from Boiler Room 1. When the Argo found it lying on the ocean floor, it marked the culmination of an ambition that had been driving Ballard for more than ten years: he had found the Titanic. 1
Almost from the moment she disappeared into the depths of the North Atlantic, the Titanic was the object of wildly imaginative plans and schemes to raise the w
reck. Before too long, though, it became apparent to everyone that the technology of 1912 wasn’t up to the task of even finding the ship, let alone bringing her back up. All that would be left of her were the few objects plucked by passing ships from the rapidly dispersing field of wreckage in the middle of the ocean, the photographs taken of her during her brief life, and the memories of the survivors.
For a brief time, the Olympic enjoyed a rather morbid popularity as passengers would cross the Atlantic on her and vicariously relive the disaster, pointing out to one another places on board where various incidents had taken place on the Olympic’s sister. Among the great favorites were the spot near the First Class Entrance on the Boat Deck, where the band stood as they played their last pieces of music; Lifeboat 8, which Mrs. Straus refused to enter without her husband; and Boat 2, the position from which Collapsible D had been lowered, after Edith Evans gave up her seat to Mrs. John Brown. World War I soon ended this rather bizarre pastime, and when the war was over and the great liners returned to service, the transatlantic passenger trade had changed beyond recognition. Gone were the days of the grand floating palaces: a more casual, egalitarian environment, less concerned with ostentation and more with convenience, replaced the rigid class structures and formal manners of the prewar voyages. By the standards of the 1920s, the ornate elegance of the Titanic seemed pretentious and quaint. The ship and the disaster faded into a distant recess of the public’s memory, intermittently being revived by the editor of some local newspaper on the occasion of the death of a survivor who had lived in his hometown; commemorated sometimes by the unveiling of a new monument or memorial, with ever-dwindling crowds in attendance; remembered only by an annual ceremony conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard, which every April 15 dropped a wreath at 41.46 N., 50.15 W—a tradition that continues to the present day.
Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic Page 31
