A mass funeral then a watery grave
Rare picture shows priest praying over Titanic victims before they were buried at sea
They were gathered nine days after the ‘unsinkable’ liner had gone down in the Atlantic Ocean with the loss of 1,512 lives.
And this haunting black and white photograph taken on board one of the body recovery ships following the Titanic disaster shows a mass funeral for dozens of the dead being buried at sea.
The image - which has been discovered a century on from the disaster in 1912 -
shows body bags stacked on the windswept deck while two crewman tip up a stretcher to drop a victim over the side.
The ship’s priest, the Reverend Hind, is seen conducting the service in front of the solemn crew, who were gathered days after the Titanic had sunk on its journey from Southampton to New York City.
Although the records show that 166 out of 306 bodies retrieved by the Mackay Bennett ship were buried at sea, no images of the macabre event have been seen by the general public until now.
Most of the victims dropped into the Atlantic were believed to have been chosen because they had no means of identification or were third-class passengers and therefore could not afford a funeral.
In the photo - which has a pre-sale estimate of £5,000 - one of the bodies is clearly labelled number 177, which was William Mayo, a 28-year-old London man who was a leading fireman on the ship. The image has been owned by the family of one of the crew of the Mackay Bennett until now - as they have made it available for auction at Henry Aldridge and Sons Auctioneers in Devizes, Wiltshire