00:00The Titanic set sail from Southampton heading for New York City on the 10th of April 1912.
00:06She was the largest passenger steamship in the world and this was her maiden voyage.
00:11It was also her last.
00:13Four days into the crossing, just before midnight, she struck an iceberg.
00:18Less than three hours later, she sank.
00:21Over 1,500 people were killed and only 700 survived.
00:25Halifax and Nova Scotia was chosen as the base for the salvage operation
00:29as it was the closest port with a railway connection, enabling relatives to come and identify the dead.
00:35This is why the tragedy has left such a mark here.
00:38We know that the experience of finding and recovering Titanic bodies
00:41had a profound emotional impact among the cable ship crewmen who were doing the work.
00:46There's a number of letters and diaries that they talk about.
00:49Some of them were really excited at first.
00:51They thought they would find millionaires' bodies and get rewarded.
00:53They knew they were part of a big international story.
00:56But just the days and days of finding these awful frozen corpses
01:00and the grim hard work of pulling them up by the hundreds really took a toll on the men.
01:05And every ship had chaplains aboard to counsel the men.
01:09And it's clearly it moved, but it also created kind of many disturbing memories for them.
01:19The maritime museum of the Atlantic's Titanic exhibition has a number of signature pieces.
01:27There's a beautiful carved oak archway that led to the first class lounge.
01:32Director James Cameron used a faithful replica of this for the lover's death scene in the 1997 film.
01:38There's also a deck chair, and for many people, its emptiness evokes the loss of the 1,500 lives.
01:44And that isn't the only piece that could cause a pause for thought.
01:49Perhaps one of the most moving artifacts in the exhibit is a pair of shoes from a little two-year
01:53-old boy.
01:54And these are the shoes of the unknown child, the youngest body that was found.
01:57And the authorities kept all the clothing of this little boy, hoping a family would come forward to identify the
02:04victim.
02:04They were supposed to burn the clothing afterwards when it was clear that nobody knew who the child was.
02:08But the police sergeant in charge of the evidence didn't have the heart to burn these little pair of shoes.
02:13And he kept them in his desk for years and years until he gave them to his family and they
02:16donated them to us.
02:17So it's this little pair of empty shoes that kind of remind you of kind of one young life lost
02:22among many when Titanic sank.
02:25The grave of this young boy can be found at Halifax's Fairview Cemetery.
02:32121 victims of the disaster are here, some of whom couldn't be identified, some whose families couldn't afford to ship
02:39them back to Europe.
02:41There's a grave in Fairview Cemetery of one of the engine room workers aboard Titanic who toiled in the boiler
02:47rooms.
02:47And his name was Jay Dawson.
02:50And he died aboard Titanic, as many of the engine room workers did.
02:55It would have been all but anonymous, but when James Cameron made his movie, he had a prominent character named
03:00Jack Dawson.
03:01And for a number of years, there were legions of teenage movie fans who were convinced this was the grave
03:06of the heroic character in the movie.
03:08And it's sort of become a bit of a cult attraction in the Fairview Cemetery.
03:13When you see these tombstones, many of which don't even have a name, you can be forgiven for thinking that
03:19it almost represents a battlefield graveyard.
03:21When in fact, it's a poignant reminder of a tragedy that unfolded almost 100 years ago and still has a
03:27resonance today.
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