Aug 2nd: "Did you know that many of the victims of the Titanic disaster are buried in Halifax?" the young woman asked.
I shook my head, "I didn't know that. How interesting." And so, Sparky and I drove the short distance from our hotel in downtown Halifax to the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where the graves for 121 people are arranged in the shape of a ship's hull.
From a New York Times online article:
This somber stewardship came about largely by chance: Halifax happened to be the closest major port with good rail connections when the ship sank, 700 nautical miles away in the North Atlantic.
Three ships sent from Halifax to find the Titanic’s dead recovered more than 300 bodies.
About 100 were buried at sea, but families who could afford the cost had 59 others transported elsewhere by rail.
The rest were buried locally, some of them attended to by a funeral home that is still in business.
Out of the 2,208 people who boarded the Titanic in Southampton, only 705 survived when the ship sank.
It was an sobering experience to see so many graves with the same date of death: April 15th 1912.
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