Anyway, Halifax is lovely town on the eastern edge of Canada. It has a huge boardwalk and some very interesting art.
This one's called, "The Way Things Are."
Our first stop was the Maritime Museum. They have several good installations: A whole section on the 1917 Halifax Explosion in which two ships collided in the narrow part of the harbor. (One ship was carrying military ordnance and fuel and blew up when it ran into the other ship. The 2.9 kiloton blast killed more than 2,000 people and pretty much leveled the city. You can read more about it here.) Another section of the museum features the many, many shipwrecks off the Canadian coast with theories on why they sank and the bounty recovered from each. But I was most interested in the Titanic wing.
Halifax played an important part in the history of the Titanic story. They were the first to hear the news of the iceberg's impact; and the first to telegraph New York that Titanic would likely limp into Halifax harbor (instead of New York) since it was the closest large port/city with means to transfer folks to other parts of the continent.
When it became clear that Titanic probably wasn't going anywhere but down, Halifax sent three rescue ships, although it was pretty much agreed that they would instead be recovery vessels. The Mackey-Bennett, the Minia, and the Montgany (mohn-tah-nee) would recover just over 300 bodies. Many were buried at sea, they buried 150 in Halifax' three cemeteries, and some they were able to identify and return to relatives.
Other things I learned from the Exhibit: There were approximately 2,224 souls on board (the number is approximate because there were some people traveled under assumed names and were counted twice, and some folks with tickets cancelled at the last minute). Victims numbered between 1490 and 1635, Only 710 survived.
As the ships from Halifax arrived on the scene a couple of days later, the first body to float toward them was that of a toddler. After many attempts to identify the boy, he became known as the Unknown Child and was buried in a Halifax cemetery. Over the years DNA tests lead researchers down several paths, but in 2008 the boy was positively identified as Sidney Leslie Goodwin, the 19-month old son of Frederick and Augusta and the youngest of six. No one else in the Goodwin family was ever found.
A Halifax millionaire named George Wright has spent a month in Paris and bought a last minute ticket on Titanic. He wrote out a will before boarding which left his house in Halifax to a women's group (no one knows why). He came aboard Titanic and mostly kept to his room. No one ever saw him on deck after the collision. One story tells of him being a heavy sleeper and that he likely slept through the disaster, drowning rather than waking.
I think the most stunning revelation was that more men from the First Class section of the ship survived than did women and children from Third Class. The more things change...
After the museum, we got down to business and visited a couple of tap houses and breweries. Nova Scotia is now home to over 50 breweries territory-wide....that's a lot of good beer!
It was snowing by the time we returned to the ship, and we were advised that, instead of going on to Newfoundland, we would be heading out across the pond toward Cork. The weather was not promising to the north, and the captain decided that it would be best if we ducked south and headed out a day early. It's not the first time we've been diverted while on a cruise. That just gives us an extra day at sea. And if we're safer doing that...I'm all for it! So...onward to Ireland!!
Yeah, it snowed a bit overnight...
We'll be at sea for a few days, so I'll post when something interesting happens - maybe ice skating on the pool??
I rode through Halifax on my 1st trip to Nova Scotia on my motorcycle. When I went to Newfoundland on my motorcycle in July, it was cold enough to wear a jacket in the mornings and there were no icebergs close to shore, so I can only imagine the snow in April!
ReplyDelete