Halifax and the Titanic

On Sunday we decided to take the short trip into Halifax.  We needed to take the rental car back to the airport at some point so we made a day trip into the city.  There is much to see and do there but we decided to go to the Maritime Museum and see the special Titanic exhibit, some permanent and some just for the 100th anniversary, and visit one of the cemeteries where most of the victims recovered by cable ships from Halifax are buried.  The wharf is a fun happening place with play areas for children, restaurants and as we found, Theodore the Tugboat.  We ate out our first meal in Nova Scotia (after cooking in all week) at a great seafood restaurant called Murphy's on the wharf of the harbor watching the fog roll in.  We also watched a huge yacht right next to our table window prepare to sail out of the harbor and across the ocean to Great Britain. 

Looking down at the Halifax harbor from an upper street.

3-D glasses, ready for the Titanic experience at the museum.

Model of the Titanic, there were many of these with various information.  I did a lot of reading a loud to some very very interested children.  I think I know what we will be checking out books on when we return.

Sarah Kelly sitting in a reproduction of a Titanic deck chair.  There is an original chair (below) that was brought back on the cable ships when they brought back the bodies they found.

"Included in the salvage was this beechwood deck chair.  Almost fully intact, it featured the White Star Line trademark, a five pointed star, emblazoned on the headboard.  100 years later and fully restored, this deck chair survives at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.  One of only two known deck chairs remaining, this piece is the heart of the museum's permanent Titanic exhibit." - Taken from a postcard about the chair.  In the bottom left you see a piece of caning also recovered.  They used this pattern to re cane the chair.

A piece of the railing from the first class staircase.

Shoes worn by the unknown babe - more on him later down

Drew and Elizabeth admiring a ship; the boys loved this place!  This huge museum was all about ships from the beginning of shipping (sailing ships) up to modern day ones.  Lighthouses, cable-laying ships, and the special exhibits on the Titanic completed it.  We ended up staying until closing because none of the children wanted to leave. 

A huge lens from a lighthouse.

Where Titanic sank.  The town of Halifax is in red just above.  You can easily see its proximity in Nova Scotia to the disaster site.  This town, closest to the sinking, with many ships in the harbor because of the continuous cable laying operations on the Atlantic and the many activities of the port, was therefore available and had ships ready to head out on a recovery mission.  The White Star Line with an office in Halifax commissioned 4 ships for the recovery mission.

Elizabeth listening to information about cable ships dragging the ocean floor looking for broken cables. 

The unknown babe, now known 100 years later, hence the updated gravestone on the bottom.  Several days before I had read a piece from the April 14, 2012 Chronicle Herald (the Halifax newspaper) about "Our Babe".  You can read it too on this website here, the whole tragic story is there and it will move you.  If you look elsewhere on that website, there are many more stories of the Titanic for those of you who are interested or you can google The Chronicle Herald, April 14, 2012.  It's a special 100th anniversary edition.

Gravestones from some of the victims of the disaster.  All the "box" typed stones were provided by the town of Halifax unless the relatives wanted something else, then they were able to use whatever type of monument they wished.  Bodies were brought to Halifax, the closest port.  The recovery ships located 328 victims and brought back to Halifax 209.  The rest were buried at sea.  Any thought to be Protestant were buried here, in this Fairview Lawn Cemetery.  In recent years, some of the "unknown" have been identified and names have been respelled correctly due to better research.

I drove around the Halifax airport and found these hitchhikers.  I picked them up.

Quote of the Day: "He's my favorite, I have him in the car." - Jackson talking about Theodore the Tugboat and a colorful brochure he picked up earlier in the week and had been looking at it for several days.  Unfortunately, he had not said anything until we happened to see a model of it in the museum and then found the actual tugboat outside on the wharf where we took this picture.  The last "cruise" of the day had left just minutes before.  Had we known about it, one of us would have taken him on this; it was quite inexpensive and he just raved about Theodore the rest of our time there.  I will have to look for the television series on DVD that aired in Canada for several years.

Touching a lobster from the "touch tank" inside a restaurant on the wharf where we ate dinner.

Oak Island, Nova Scotia

"If you go ashore from a boat you probably won't get shot but "they" will make their presence known."   

We were having a discussion with Dutch at the Marina about Oak Island, the theories, the tours, and asking if anyone ever tries to go to shore by boat, and this was Dutch's response.  ~~~The Quote of the Day

When we first started looking for a house on Nova Scotia, we were looking for one close to the town where JB is teaching his class.  It was evident immediately that the only homes for short-term rent are along the Bay of Fundy on one side or up and down the Atlantic shore on the other.  We refined our search to the southern shores of the province specifically looking at St. Margaret's Bay, Hubbards, and the Chester area.  Unfortunately no homes were found that we could rent there, all booked so we looked a little farther south and came up with the house in Western Shore.  There is actually another house on the same road that rents as well but it was already reserved.  It turns out that we ended up with the best house to rent for our family.  The homes here all advertise that they are overlooking Oak Island. 
While we were trying to figure out why they all made such mention of an island, Scott appears and exclaims, "Oak Island, that's where those boys found the pit and dug for buried treasure."  He begins to tell us the story and the history.  Apparently he first found it from an e-book I downloaded from Homeschool Resource of the Day several years ago.  Then I vaguely recalled the story as well.  So here we are looking for a house to stay in that's right across the water from the famous Oak Island.

It is very intriguing to watch documentaries and videos about Oak Island and we are very curious now to stay near here.

Sunrise over Oak Island from our Yard

The house we're in is about as close to the island as one can get without going ashore which is not possible unless you want to be shooed away.  According to Dutch at the marina, some Americans own it now for the last couple of years and have sunk about $30 million into equipment and resources to start digging again.  There are only a couple of houses on there in which caretakers live and they also keep people off the island.  There is a causeway to the island which has no trespassing signs on it but there are no signs or any seemingly restrictions on the rest of the shores surrounded by water.  We have watched this island for days and other than an old barge that we can see on our side and an occasional vehicle on the causeway to it, there is no one and no activity.

Early in the week we went to the Chester Visitor Center which has a permanent display about Oak Island and all the happenings over the last 200 years with treasure seekers and others.  There was enough visual information to get the little ones full of questions.  I must have tried to answer 100 or more.  There was a reproduction of the tree with the rope attached and the pit in the ground, a cross-section of the depth that has been dug with the oak logs found in between every 10 ft and lots of photographs, newspaper accounts, and even artifacts from the island. 
One morning JB and Scott decided to take the boat out and they rowed over to the island and then disappeared behind it.  Later they reappeared on the other side of it and hefted their boat up and over the causeway to come back on this side.  They made it all the way around and no, did not go on shore.  Apparently though on the side where there is an inlet that cuts into the island for a long ways, they saw the other house and child playing on its deck.  There are weekends, about 4 or5 each year when you can pay $10 and go on a short tour where you see a shack and Borehole 10X in the ground but not in July.  The next tour is in August.
Here are some pictures of the island from the house, the dock, and the boat.

Daytime View of Oak Island in the distance as seen from the house

The chair is on the dock we use.  Oak Island is the further island in the distance.

The one visible house from the side as seen from the boat.

Another view from the boat.

More views from the boat.