Several years ago, when I was in the U. S. Army, I was assigned to a duty station in Europe and my orders placed me on a troop ship, sailing from Fort Dix New Jersey the first week of April. The voyage was scheduled to take approximately nine days to reach port of debarkation in Europe.

The significance of my ocean voyage, on this date, didn't occur to me until I was on board and the journey had begun. I then remembered that the great ship Titanic had sailed from Southampton England on approximately the same date in 1912, bound for New York City, and that my Atlantic voyage would very closely back track the route taken by the ill fated ship, and possibly take me directly over the watery grave of the ship and 1516 Souls who went down with her. This fact made the trip very special and memorable to me, and I have never forgotten it. Although I didn't see any icebergs on the trip, the possibility was very much on my mind. I took several pictures during the trip, two of which are displayed with today's postings.

Statistics vary somewhat among the accounts of the tragedy but it is generally agreed that the Titanic carried 2229 people, passengers and crew, and that only 713 of them survived. Of the 1516 people lost, 53 were children. Although Titanic carried more lifeboats than the legal requirement, the total capacity of her boats was 1178, which is perhaps the saddest statistic of all. What is even more tragic is the fact that many of the lifeboats were launched when filled to much less than full capacity. This condemned more than 450 people to death in the icy waters unnecessarily.

In the weeks following the disaster, approximately 266 bodies of the 1516 casualties were recovered from the Atlantic. Many of the bodies, because deterioration made identification impossible, were buried at sea. Some of those who were identified were claimed by their relatives but the remainder; approximately 150 people were accepted by the city of Halifax Nova Scotia who agreed to provide funeral services and burial.

In spite of best efforts of the White Star Line and officials in Halifax, only about half of the bodies buried there were identified. One of the unidentified bodies was that of a "little fair haired boy". Many people in Halifax vied for the opportunity to sponsor his funeral and provide his headstone and hundreds of people came out to his funeral. He was buried under a granite headstone with the simple inscription "unidentified child" but 90 years later, in 2002 he was identified, through DNA testing as Eino Viljami Panula, a member of a family from Finland and was only 13 months old at the time of the disaster. His mother and brother were also lost in the disaster.