RMS Titanic: My Personal Fascination

Ninety-six years ago today.

I'm not really sure exactly when the great ship first caught my attention, but I know I was very young. I can remember sitting up with my babysitter and watching the late movie. There were beautiful rooms and beautiful dresses and beautiful people, all aboard a beautiful ship. Then they all died.

For some reason, I felt most sorry for the ship herself.

Everyone is familiar with the story of the Titanic's demise, and the 1500 people who perished with her. Thanks to James Cameron's hugely successful film, there is a new generation of interested people to join those of us who were first introduced by A Night to Remember.

Although Cameron's film is not all that the "rivet-counters" would have it be, I will forever be grateful to it for making me feel as if I were onboard. That scene where the sunken Titanic morphs into the one moored at Southampton in 1912 makes me catch my breath every time.

In Halifax, Nova Scotia there are three cemeteries which serve as the final resting places for the majority of the victims whose bodies were recovered. Fairview Lawn Cemetery and Baron de Hirsch Cemetery are adjacent to one another, and Mount Olivet Cemetery is a short distance away. I have lived in the Halifax area on more than one occasion, and have visited the gravesites several times. It is an indescribable feeling.

I still remember the first time I saw the stones at Fairview. They are arranged in long rows, in such a way that, when viewed from above, the rows resemble the lines of a ship. Many of the stones were erected by the White Star Line, and many of the bodies were never identified.

Stone after identical stone, April 15, 1912, and the number identifying the body in the order it was found.