One hundred years ago today the Mackay-Bennett funeral ship set sail for the site of the Titanic's sinking. It arrived at the scene early in the morning of April 20. The sailors, looking over the side, were appalled at what they saw: dozens of bodies, bobbing about in the waves, upright in their white life vests, heads bowed in death. Then began the grim task of recovering the bodies. 337 were found, 309 by the Mackay-Bennett. One was a two year old boy.
The Mackay-Bennett sailors were deeply touched by the recovery of the little boy's body. They took up a collection among themselves and the public, and gave him a grand funeral in Nova Scotia. He was buried beneath a large grave marker (right). In a sense, his grave marker became a monument to all of the children who died on the Titanic. He was one of only three children whose bodies were recovered, and his little shoes were kept as an artifact of the Titanic.
Sidney Leslie Goodwin |
3 comments:
I never really thought about the efforts to recover the bodies. What a horrific task!
Interesting about this baby in your post, Stogie.
According to one of the links I followed, the child's body was identified in 2002 as that of Eino Viljami Panula and not until 2001 as that of Sidney Leslie Goodwin.
AOW, you mean that Sidney was identified in 2007, when they had better DNA analysis available, what they call "microchondrial DNA" testing. Panula was not the child in the grave after all.
Stogie,
Another one of my damn typos. **sigh**
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