HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — After a moment of silence, a research team on Thursday started to exhume the graves of three unidentified victims of the 1912 Titanic disaster in hopes of helping three families find lost relatives.
The three graves were marked with stones bearing only numbers — 4, 240 and 281 — and the date the luxury liner went down, April 15, 1912.
The team will carry out DNA tests on the remains in the graves — belonging to a woman in her 30s, a man in his 20s and a young child — which the familes hope will prove to be those of relatives lost in the disaster.
About 150 of the 1,500 people who died when the ocean liner sank off the Newfoundland coast after hitting an iceberg were buried in Halifax. Forty-three of them were never were identified.
A white canvas tent surrounded the exhumation site at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, where several onlookers gathered to watch. The families seeking the exhumation have remained anonymous.
Researcher Alan Ruffman, president of the Titanic Society, said the intention was to help the families finally have closure, including a woman — now a grandmother — who was orphaned in the sinking.
The woman “had real hardship, and the connection to the Titanic is very real” for her, Ruffman said. “And she would like to put a name on the grave.”
Principal investigator, Dr. Ryan Parr, co-director of the paleo-DNA laboratory at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario said Wednesday he made contact with one of the families through their minister.
“This particular family had just wondered and wondered what happened to their relative,” he said. “They’ve done all the research they can do. The DNA analysis is their last resort.”
The Titanic went down about 375 miles southeast of Newfoundland on its maiden voyage. It sank into the icy North Atlantic in less than three hours.
Lack of lifeboat space, poor evacuation procedures and slowness of response to distress signals have been cited for the reason that most of the more than 2,000 people aboard were killed.
The wreck of the vessel was finally discovered in 1985, 73 years after its sinking.
