Day 65, Halifax
We slept in this morning, truly enjoying our beds at their fullest! Weather was awful, so didn’t really feel like going out.
Happy midsummer!
In case one were to forget what country one is in.
A living parrot at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic!
Tickets from New York to London on the Unsinkable Titanic for merely 36,25 USD! Departure on 20th of April 1912! Two of the most devastating events in Halifax’s history occurred in the 1910s, both covered in the museum. First, on 15th of
April 1912, Titanic sank some 1100 km outside Halifax. Halifax being the nearest port (of size), victims that were retrievable from the sea were buried here. (Survivors were evacuated to New York.)
Lounging in a (replica) Titanic deck chair. Only first and second class passengers were entitled to use these.
Here is an actual Titanic deck chair, rescued by a crew member on one of the three ships dispatched from Halifax to look for bodies.
In 2010 the unknown child who perished when Titanic sank was identified. His entire family had also died, so nobody was left to identify him in 1912. His shoes can be seen on the right.
The second disaster in Halifax in the 1910s was the Halifax Explosion on 6th of December 1917 (coincidentally, but unrelated to) the very same day Finland became independent from Russia. The Halifax Explosion was the largest man-made explosion
before the atomic bomb and killed at least some 1650 people and obliterated completely the red neighbourhoods on the map, while severely damaging the orange ones. The explosion was an accident when a munitions ship collided with a war relief ship
- the munitions ship caught fire and some 20 minutes later the ship exploded in an enormous blast, shattering all windows within kilometres and causing an 18-metre tsunami, completely exposing the seafloor in Halifax harbour. Buildings by
the harbour disappeared entirely in the explosion and the catastrophe was so traumatic that the event was not spoken of in Halifax for decades.
This porcelain tea set was rescued by a man from his house that was not entirely levelled by the explosion, but that caught fire when the stove in the house fell over. He managed to save two of his children too, but the rest of his family died.
Others in Halifax lost literally every living relative, as it was common to live close to each other in extended families and if one family member’s house was destroyed, probably the others’ were too.
