Category: Halifax Titanic

Titanic: The Auction – How many items?

On By Sandi Krawchenko AltnerIn Halifax Titanic, Titanic, Titanic Auction, Titanic Salvage, Uncategorized13 Comments

The Titanic treasure trove is going up for auction.  Many critics will sum up the announcement by saying, “greed wins out in the end”.  After 18 years of court battles, the artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck of the Titanic will be sold just before the 100th anniversary of the sinking.  Guernsey’s of New York will conduct the auction, and makes the following announcement on their website:

“On April 11, 2012, precisely one hundred years to the day of Titanic’s maiden voyage, there will be an unprecedented auction of artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the legendary ocean liner, and related intellectual property and intangibles. Guernsey’s will be offering all of the assets and rights of RMS Titanic, Inc., a division of Premier Exhibitions, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRXI), which for 18 years has served as steward and salvor-in-possession of Titanic and its wreck site.”

The assets, according to Guernseys, “include the complete collection of more than 5,000 artifacts, as well as other extraordinary intangible assets, in the first and only sale of objects that have been recovered from the wreck site of Titanic two and a half miles below the ocean’s surface.”

The Big Piece - now on display in Las Vegas

The question of the precise number of artifacts in the “complete collection” will undoubtedly raise the ire of Titanic followers and purists.  The reported number of artifacts removed by the salvor are no longer available on the Premier Exhibitions website. However, a year ago, the website’s FAQ section was much longer and offered the following:

No. 53            How many expeditions has RMS Titanic, Inc. conducted?

RMS Titanic, Inc. has conducted seven research and recovery expeditions to the Titanic’s wreck site in 1987, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2004.

No. 54            How many artifacts has RMS Titanic, Inc. recovered?

To date, RMS Titanic, Inc. has recovered over 5,500 objects from the wreck site, ranging from delicate porcelain dishes to a 17-ton section of the hull.

The documentary Titanic Revealed, produced in 2004 states there were more than 6,000 artifacts recovered.  It also explores a number of the arguments at play in the raging debate over whether recovering artifacts from Titanic was grave-robbing or an effort to preserve history.

The rules governing the auction of Titanic salvage say all of the artifacts must be sold in one lot, so any dreams fanatics might have of successfully bidding on a Titanic teacup to display in the family china cabinet are impossible. There is also a series of court ordered covenants and conditions that are intended to ensure that the public will continue to have access to seeing the collection, or at least part of it. One would hope that there will also be strict oversight of how the winning bidder is protecting the pieces and making them available to the public. The temptation to slip a few of those items into the black market might well be exceptionally high.

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You may have been among the 22 million people who have seen some of the auction items  in the traveling Titanic exhibit that brings a couple of hundred items from spoons to plates and buttons to a town near you.

For a fee of about $20.00 you are given a “ticket” with a passenger or crew name so that at the end of the tour you can learn whether that person survived.  Six such tours are simultaneously offered in different cities at any given time and both Edmonton and Regina have shows at this writing. The tours are for profit, and done on the cheap, with little more than the bare minimum to satisfy the searching gaze of true Titanic enthusiasts, but they provide, at least, a chance to see something of what remains from Titanic.

The future of those tours, as popular as they are, is now unclear.  One can only anticipate that a fresh round of court appearances will ultimately define what is to become of the Titanic treasures and the access the public will have to appreciate them.

Titanic’s 100th Anniversary – Where will you be?

On By Sandi Krawchenko AltnerIn Halifax Titanic, History, Titanic, Titanic Survivors2 Comments

Home from your summer vacation and wondering how to bring something more meaningful to next year’s travels?

How about Titanic? The 100th anniversary of the sinking is April 15th, 2012.

If you are truly adventurous, and wealthy, you might consider a $60,000 ticket to dive down to the Titanic and see the resting leviathan with your own eyes.

Less expensive, and greatly appealing for many, are the memorial cruises for the anniversary. My guess is you might find some people on board who are truly interesting fellow fanatics with history, detail, memorabilia and stories to share.

If you have plans to be in Europe next summer, Belfast has awakened to the profitable opportunities of being the birthplace of Titanic and has invested a great deal of money into creating a Titanic Quarter. This sounds truly interesting to me.

Of course there are many other communities that have a special connection to Titanic, including South Hampton and Halifax, which I will talk about in future postings.

I would also love to hear what your plans you are making, and what you have learned about places to gather for the anniversary.

Titanic’s “Unknown Child”

On By Sandi Krawchenko AltnerIn Family history, Halifax Titanic, History, Titanic1 Comment

A small pair of brown shoes that were hidden away in a police sergeant’s desk in 1912 have provided the deciding clue to the identity of Titanic’s “Unknown Child”.

Scientists and Titanic students have been searching for irrefutable DNA evidence to positively identify the Titanic victim remembered as the unknown child. But, when it comes to examining samples from 90 year old graves, science is not as precise as we wish it could be.

The aftermath of the Titanic disaster involved a grueling recovery operation to bring the bodies back to shore.

Halifax was chosen as a convenient location for the salvage operation as it was the closest port that had a railway connection. Some of the bodies were laid to rest at sea while 209 others, many of them unidentified passengers from third class, were brought to Halifax.

150 of the dead were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax. Over 40 of them remain unidentified.

Many of the recovered bodies showed evidence of being battered in the violent break up of the great ship, but the tiny lifeless body of a young boy’s otherwise perfect body had been found bobbing in the ocean among the wreckage. The crew of the recovery vessel, The MacKay-Bennett were so moved by the sight that they took up a collection to pay for the child’s funeral and tombstone at Fairview Cemetery.  Officially, the child was known as body #4.

The marker at his grave has come to represent the lives of all 50 children who died in the sinking on April 15, 1912.

On it is written: Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster of the Titanic April 15, 1912.

A decade ago, two Canadian men, Dr. Ryan Parr of Lakehead University in Ontario, and historian Alan Ruffman of Halifax, joined forces to solve the mystery. They were granted permission to exhume the grave of the Unknown Child in May, 2001. The samples Dr. Parr had to work with for DNA testing included a small piece of bone and a few teeth. While Dr. Parr worked in his laboratory, Alan Ruffman set out on a very ambitious journey to find descendants of five boys the two believed could be the Unknown Child. The five boys were:

  • Gilbert Danbom (age five months, born in Sweden)
  • Alfred Peacock (age seven months, from England)
  • Eino Viljam Panula (age thirteen months, from Finland)
  • Sidney Goodwin (age 19 months, from England)
  • Eugene Rice (age 2 years, from Ireland)

Ruffman worked doggedly in his quest to track down the descendants he needed to find. Dozens of people from historians and genealogists to family members joined him in his effort and he was able to make the contacts needed to gain the DNA samples to be tested.

Three of the five boys were immediately identified as non-matches. But, the remaining two both came up as possible matches. They were Eino Panula and Sidney Goodwin.

However, in examining the evidence beyond the DNA, it was decided the Goodwin boy was too young to have the shape and condition of the teeth that were recovered from the grave.

In November of 2002, Alan Ruffman and Dr. Ryan Parr announced that the remains of the unknown child were most likely that of the boy from Finland named Eino Panula.

This week emerged news that Dr. Ryan Parr believes they had made a mistake and that the young victim is actually Sidney Goodwin of England. Dr. Parr is now Vice-President of Research and Development of Genesis Genomics in Ontario. He and his colleagues have written an article for the June issue of the journal, Forensic Science International: Genetics, in which they state: “the remains of the young boy are most likely those of an English child, Sidney Leslie Goodwin”.

The deciding factor was the existence of the shoes, which were donated to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax in 2002 and are now on public display.

They had been in the family of Clarence Northover for 90 years.  The following is recorded on the website of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic:

Clarence Northover, a Halifax Police Department Sergeant in 1912, helped guard the bodies and belongings of the Titanic victims.
“Clothing was burned to stop souvenir hunters but he was too emotional when he saw the little pair of brown, leather shoes about fourteen centimeters long, and didn’t have the heart to burn them. When no relatives came to claim the shoes, he placed them in his desk drawer at the police station and there they remained for the next six years, until he retired in 1918.”
Excerpt from July 26, 2002 letter by Earle Northover, grandson of Clarence Northover.

Ultimately, the little shoes were to provide the final clue needed to determine the identity of the boy.   On examining the shoes almost one hundred years after the disaster, it was determined that the shoes were too big for a child that was only 13 months old.  Sidney Goodwin, 6 months older than Eino Paluna, had to be the boy who wore the shoes.