CS Mackay-Bennett around 1900 | |
History | |
---|---|
United Kingdom | |
Name | Mackay-Bennett |
Namesake | John Mackay & Gordon Bennett |
Operator | Commercial Cable Company |
Port of registry | London, England |
Builder | John Elder & Co., Glasgow |
Launched | September 1884 |
In service | 1884-1922 |
Out of service | May 1922 |
Homeport | Halifax, Nova Scotia / Plymouth, England |
Fate |
|
General characteristics [1] | |
Type | Cable ship |
Tonnage | 2,000 gross register tons (GRT) |
Length | |
Beam | 40 ft (12 m) |
Depth | 24 ft 6 in (7.47 m) moulded |
Propulsion |
The Cable Ship Mackay-Bennett was a transatlantic cable-laying and cable-repair ship registered at Lloyd's of London as a Glasgow vessel but owned by the American Commercial Cable Company. She is notable for being the ship that recovered the majority of the bodies after the sinking of the Titanic.
The ship was commissioned by the USA-based Commercial Cable Company from then noted River Clyde-based warship builders John Elder & Co. at their Fairfield Yards. The company incorporated a number of then new and original features into the cable ship. It was one of the first ships built from steel rather than iron, and she had a relatively deep keel design to both accommodate as much cable as possible and to keep the ship stable in the Atlantic Ocean swells. The design was also very hydrodynamic to keep her fuel efficient and fast in operation. The hull design included bilge keels to keep her stable, and she had two rudders, one fore and one aft, to maximize manoeuvrability. [2]
Named for two founders of the Commercial Cable Company, John W. MacKay and James G. Bennett, she was launched late in 1884. [3] Mainly based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she first arrived in March 1885, [4] she was also often used for operations on the European side of the Atlantic, based out of Plymouth, England. The Canadian author Thomas Raddall worked as wireless operator aboard Mackay-Bennett and based some short stories on his experiences aboard.
In addition to carrying out numerous difficult cable repairs, many during times of wartime danger, due to the nature of her work and resultant position in the Atlantic, Mackay-Bennett performed many rescues. Typical was the rescue of the crew of the sinking schooner Caledonia on 12 February 1912. [5]
In April 1912, she was berthed at Halifax during a period of long-term work maintaining the France-to-Canada communications cable. Of the three ships in Halifax at that time only Mackay-Bennett had a hold capable of holding the 125 coffins and ice forming part of the exercise to recover bodies. The ship became notable as the main vessel contracted by the White Star Line to carry out the difficult task of recovering the bodies left floating in the North Atlantic, after the Titanic disaster. The task was further motivated by Joseph Astor's announcement of a $100,000 reward for the ship recovering the body of his father J. J. Astor. [6] Her captain, Frederick H. Larnder, took on board a combination of specialists and an effective mobile mortuary. [2] [7] Both additional and specialized personnel and supplies were taken on board for the assignment. These included:
Crew were paid double pay for the grisly task. There was a hierarchy to the mortuary details as the ship could never hope to bring all back: first class passengers were embalmed and placed in coffins; second-class were wrapped in linen winding sheets; third class and crew bodies were weighted and buried at sea (116 in total). [8]
The ship left Halifax at 12:45 P.M. on Wednesday, 17 April 1912. Due to severe fog and rough seas it took the ship nearly four days to sail the 800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi) to the scene of the disaster. The captain instructed the ship's crew to keep their logbooks complete and up to date during the voyage and subsequent recovery operation, but only two logbooks are presently known to have survived: [9] seven pages from the logbook of engineer Frederick A. Hamilton, now kept in the National Maritime Museum, England, and the personal diary of Clifford Crease, a 24-year-old Naval artificer (craftsman-in-training); much of the detailed account of the recovery operation is today traced to Crease's diary, now held in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. [2] [9]
The ship arrived at the scene during the night, so recovery of bodies began at 06:00 on 20 April. [2] CS Mackay-Bennett was anchored close to but not within the recovery area, and she offloaded her skiff lifeboats. Crews then rowed into the recovery area and manually recovered the bodies into the skiffs. After recovering as many bodies as they deemed safe for the return journey (51 corpses), the crews then rowed back to the CS Mackay-Bennett. [2] [10] The captain noted that there was neither sufficient space aboard to store all of the recovered bodies nor enough embalming supplies aboard. As the Canadian Government and associated burial and maritime laws directed that any bodies carried had to be embalmed before a ship enter a Canadian port, the captain agreed to a system whereby: [2] [11]
At 19:00 on 23 April, CS Mackay-Bennett lay briefly alongside the Allan Shipping Line's Sardinian (en route to Saint John, New Brunswick), to collect additional canvas.
Just after midnight on 26 April, CS Mackay-Bennett rendezvoused with the Anglo-American Telegraph Company's CS Minia to get extra embalming supplies, before departing for Halifax at dawn that day.
After a seven-day recovery operation, the CS Mackay-Bennett had:
The crew split the $100,000 reward for Astor's body (around $2500 each). Using some of that money they paid for the burial of the body of the unknown child and his headstone monument - the casket was marked by a copper plaque reading "Our Babe". [2] [14] The entire ship's crew, together with the majority of the population of Halifax, attended the child's burial at Fairview Lawn Cemetery on 4 May 1912. [2] [14] With improved DNA testing, on 30 July 2007 Canadian researchers at Lakehead University announced that testing of the body's mitochondrial DNA had revealed that the child was 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin. [15]
After his death in 1961, Clifford Crease's body was interred only a few steps away from the grave of "Our Babe", a site he had visited on every anniversary of the tragedy during his lifetime. [9]
Mackay-Bennett Seamount, one of the Fogo Seamounts southeast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean, is named after Mackay-Bennett for her involvement in the Titanic disaster. [16]
The ship was retired in May 1922, anchored in Plymouth Sound to be used as a storage hulk. During The Blitz on England in World War II, she was sunk during a Nazi Germany Luftwaffe attack but later refloated. Her hull was finally scrapped in 1965. [17]
Fairview Cemetery is a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is perhaps best known as the final resting place for over one hundred victims of the sinking of the Titanic. Officially known as Fairview Lawn Cemetery, the non-denominational cemetery is run by the Parks Department of the Halifax Regional Municipality.
John Jacob Astor IV was an American business magnate, real estate developer, investor, writer, lieutenant colonel in the Spanish–American War, and a prominent member of the Astor family. He died in the sinking of the Titanic during the early hours of April 15, 1912. Astor was the richest passenger aboard the RMS Titanic and was thought to be among the richest people in the world at that time, with a net worth of roughly $87 million when he died.
SS Atlantic was a transatlantic ocean liner of the White Star Line, and second ship of the Oceanic-class. The ship operated between Liverpool, United Kingdom, and New York City, United States. During the ship's 19th voyage, on 1 April 1873, she struck rocks and sank off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, killing at least 535 people. It remained the deadliest civilian maritime disaster in the North Atlantic Ocean until the sinking of SS La Bourgogne on 2 July 1898 and the greatest disaster for the White Star Line prior to the loss of Titanic in April 1912.
The Commercial Cable Company was founded in New York in 1884 by John William Mackay and James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
The Unknown Child was the initially unidentified body of Sidney Leslie Goodwin, a 19-month-old British toddler who was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett after the sinking of the RMS Titanic. For almost a century, Goodwin's gravestone in the Fairview Cemetery read "Erected to the memory of an unknown child whose remains were recovered after the disaster to the Titanic April 15th 1912".
Michel Marcel Navratil Jr. was a French philosophy professor who was one of the last survivors of the sinking of Titanic on 15 April 1912. He, along with his brother, Edmond (1910–1953), were known as the "Titanic Orphans", having been the only children rescued without a parent or guardian. He was three years old at the time of the disaster.
CSS Acadia is a former hydrographic surveying and oceanographic research ship of the Hydrographic Survey of Canada and its successor the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
A total of 2,240 people sailed on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, the second of the White Star Line's Olympic-class ocean liners, from Southampton, England, to New York City. Partway through the voyage, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 passengers.
Walter Donald Douglas was an American business executive who traveled first class aboard the Titanic with his wife, Mahala, and maid, Berthe Leroy, in cabin C-86.
The crew of the Titanic were among the estimated 2,240 people who sailed on the maiden voyage of the second of the White Star Line's Olympic-class ocean liners, from Southampton, England, to New York City in the United States. Halfway through the voyage, the ship struck an iceberg and sank in the early morning of 15 April 1912, resulting in the deaths of over 1,500 people, including approximately 688 crew members.
Louise Gretchen Kink Pope, or Louise Kink, was a Swiss-American woman who was one of the last remaining survivors of the sinking of RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912.
RMS Titanic was a British passenger and mail carrying ocean liner, operated by the White Star Line, that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 as a result of striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, about 1,500 died, making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship up to that time. The disaster drew public attention, spurred major changes in maritime safety regulations, and inspired many artistic works.
The Fogo Seamounts, also called the Fogo Seamount Chain, are a group of undersea mountains southeast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean. This seamount chain, lying approximately 500 km (310 mi) offshore from the island of Newfoundland, consists of several submarine volcanoes that have been extinct for millions of years. They are one of the few seamount chains located in Canadian waters off the coast of Atlantic Canada.
William Denton Cox was a third class steward aboard RMS Titanic who died while bringing groups of third class passengers to lifeboats during the sinking.
Edward Austin Kent was a prominent architect in Buffalo, New York. He died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic and was seen helping women and children into the lifeboats.
Lifeboats played a crucial role during the sinking of the Titanic on 14–15 April 1912. The ship had 20 lifeboats that, in total, could accommodate 1,178 people, a little over half of the 2,209 on board the night it sank.
The musicians of the Titanic all died when the ship sank in 1912. They played music, intending to calm the passengers, for as long as they possibly could, and all went down with the ship. All of the men were recognized for their heroism, especially during the final hours of the sinking.
Gaspare Antonio Pietro "Luigi" Gatti was an Italian businessman and restaurateur, best known as the manager of the À la Carte restaurant on the RMS Titanic, catering to passengers for whom first-class service was not exclusive enough.
Mackay-Bennett Seamount, also known as Mackay-Bennett Knoll, is an undersea mountain in the North Atlantic Ocean, located about 680 km (420 mi) southeast of Cape Race in Canadian waters off Atlantic Canada. It rises to a height of over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and has an areal extent of 500 km2 (190 sq mi), making it slightly smaller than Carpathia Seamount to the southwest.
John Henry Barnstead was a Canadian tanner, barrister and the Registrar of Vital Statistics in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. In 1912, at age 67, Barnstead coordinated the retrieval, cataloguing, and burial of RMS Titanic victims, devising a system of cataloguing mass disaster remains that is still in use.