HALIFAX - Ninety-five years after the doomed Titanic slid to the bottom of the North Atlantic, historians, authors and others have gathered in this city where many of the victims from the infamous maritime disaster are buried.
More than 100 members of Titanic societies from countries including the United States, Sweden, Germany and Britain are in Halifax this weekend listening to lectures, touring gravesites and visiting museums featuring artifacts from the famed vessel.
The so-called unsinkable ship went down on April 15, 1912, after hitting an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Organizers said Halifax, where more than 100 of the dead are buried, was the ideal location to mark the 95th anniversary.
"It's truly an amazing place. ... The saddest part is of course the graveyards,'' said Steve Rigby of the British Titanic Society, which organized the three-day convention.
"It's a rather special place to come to remember these people who died.''
More than 1,500 crew and passengers, from poor immigrants to American socialites, died when the ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.
More than 700 people survived.
Though the luxurious Titanic, owned by the White Star Line, boasted cafes, a swimming pool and a vast promenade deck, it had only enough lifeboats to carry about half the people on board.
After the sinking, vessels were sent from Halifax to pull bodies from the frigid water.
Among the volunteers who assisted in the grim mission was Cliff Crease, a 24-year-old engineer aboard the Mackay-Bennett, a cable repair vessel.
Crease helped retrieve the body of renowned U.S. millionaire John Jacob Astor and the unknown child, a boy whose remains were retrieved but never identified.
Crease's granddaughters, Rabia Crease Wilcox of Vancouver and Dini Zuest Wilcox, said their grandfather kept many of his memories buried.
"He talked about it to men. ... He never talked to women about it because it was horrific, it was traumatic,'' said Rabia Crease Wilcox, who has written a book on her grandfather's experience with the help of her sister.
"In those days, men never really talked about those things or what their feelings were.''
Geoff Robinson, who has spent years researching the Titanic from his home outside London, said it's not surprising the story is still attracting attention and questions nearly a century later.
"We have the biggest ship in the world ... full of important people out on her maiden voyage and she has the most extraordinary accident,'' said Robinson, who pored over thousands of pages of Titanic-related documents while working with the public records office in the U.K.
"You can go on and on and on. It sounds like a plot for a ... Hollywood epic.''
The British Titanic Society has already started planning for the 100th anniversary of the sinking.
Plans include a cruise tracing the voyage of the Titanic, and transporting group to the very spot the ill-fated vessel sank on the night of the anniversary.
