Up from the deep
The nameplate from a sunken ship has found itself a new home in a museum.
Almost a century- and- a- half after Nova Scotia’s worst shipwreck, the basements, attics and sheds of the province are still yielding important artifacts from the ship.
The latest is an 11- foot- long nameplate which was donated to the SS Atlantic Heritage Park in Terence Bay by Barbara Corbin of Indian Harbour.
“I got lots of offers to sell it but I told them all that it wasn’t for sale, that
I was giving it to this museum,” Corbin said.
“One person said to me,
‘ You can’t trust those little volunteerrun country museums. You give it to them and it will soon disappear. I’ll pay you $ 4,000 for it.’
“I told him I even had it in my will that it would go to this place.”
Corbin explained how she and her husband, the late Rev. Harry Corbin, built a little cottage in Indian Harbour near Peggy’s Cove in the late 1950s. It was expanded several times and later became their home.
“I needed something to go above the fireplace so my godmother said that they had a board from an old shipwreck out in the barn.
“I had never heard of the SS Atlantic but it looked good over the fireplace.
“We were all set to spruce it up with new paint but Niels Jannasch from the Maritime Museum told us absolutely not to make any changes to it, so we left it as you see it today.”
The piece — called the quarterboard — identified the Atlantic while she was in port and is one of several important donations to the Heritage Park in recent years. Two years ago, Peter Christian of Prospect donated the clock from the chart room of the Atlantic, relating how his mother had kept it in her dresser drawer as though it was a piece of contraband. That clock still works.
The Heritage Park also has on display the White Star Line flag from the Atlantic.
It was donated by Andrew Thomas, the great- grandson of Capt. James Williams who was in command the night of April 1, 1873 when the ship was wrecked at Lower Prospect, near Halifax. She was the second ship built for the new White Star Line, which also lost the Titanic south of Newfoundland 39 years later.
The Atlantic incident was second only to the Halifax Explosion for loss of life in a Nova Scotia disaster. More than 400 victims are buried in the Terence Bay area, with 277 of them interred in the Heritage Park. Their memory is publicly honoured every year at the Blessing of the Boats, which will occur this year at 2: 30 p. m. July 30.