Titantic disaster left a mark on many in Halifax

— On the 106th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, a Halifax woman reflected on her grandfather’s role in ensuring some of the victims were laid to rest.

About 1,500 passengers and crew members died on April 15, 1912, when the Titanic struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic, south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

Cable ships were dispatched from Halifax in the aftermath to pluck bodies from the water when it became clear that only those who made it into the lifeboats had survived.

Francis Dyke was just 20 years old when he sailed out from Halifax to help search for bodies.

Over a century later, his granddaughter, 68-year-old Pat Teasdale, spoke Sunday as she held a scanned copy of a letter he wrote to his mother about his experiences.

She said he trained in England and was working as the second electrician on the Halifax cable ship Minia when the disaster broke.

“Even though it was difficult work, he was very happy to do that work and help bring these souls back to Halifax as a resting place,” said Teasdale.

She said Dyke didn’t share many details about the time he spent on the frigid waters.

“To my knowledge, he didn’t share anything with his wife or any of his three daughters, one of whom was my mother,” she said. “He was very young when this happened, and it was a traumatic event.”

Teasdale said she learned of Dyke’s involvement with the Titanic in the 1960s, when he showed her a picture frame the Minia’s carpenter had made out of wreckage from the ship.

She discovered more details in the late 1990s, when she and her family found a letter he had written to his mother during the recovery efforts in a local museum.

“It really blew me away,” she said. “It’s detailed about what happened, but it’s also personal. It’s his reactions to what he was seeing and feeling.”

An excerpt from the letter reads “the MacKay (another ship tasked with retrieving bodies) had picked up over 200 bodies and had identified about 150 and had buried the rest.”

Dyke went on to become a ship wireless (telegraph) operator.