CS Mackay-Bennett
CS Mackay-Bennett around 1900
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History | |
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United Kingdom | |
Name | Mackay-Bennett |
Namesake | Gordon Bennett |
Operator | Commercial Cable Company |
Port of registry | London, England |
Builder | John Elder & Co., Glasgow |
Launched | September 1884 |
In service | 1884-1922 |
Out of service | May 1922 |
Homeport | |
Fate |
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General characteristics [1] | |
Type | Cable ship |
Tonnage | 2,000 gross register tons (GRT) |
Length | |
Beam | 40 ft (12 m) |
Depth | 24 ft 6 in (7.47 m) moulded |
Propulsion |
The Cable Ship Mackay-Bennett was a transatlantic
Design and build
The ship was commissioned by the USA-based Commercial Cable Company from then noted River Clyde-based warship builders John Elder & Co. at their Fairfield Yards. The company incorporated a number of then new and original features into the cable ship. It was one of the first ships built from steel rather than iron, and she had a relatively deep keel design to both accommodate as much cable as possible and to keep the ship stable in the Atlantic Ocean swells. The design was also very hydrodynamic to keep her fuel efficient and fast in operation. The hull design included bilge keels to keep her stable, and she had two rudders, one fore and one aft, to maximize manoeuvrability.[2]
Operations
Named for two founders of the Commercial Cable Company, John W. MacKay and James G. Bennett, she was launched late in 1884.
In addition to carrying out numerous difficult cable repairs, many during times of wartime danger, due to the nature of her work and resultant position in the Atlantic, Mackay-Bennett performed many rescues. Typical was the rescue of the crew of the sinking schooner Caledonia on 12 February 1912.[5]
Recovery of bodies
In April 1912, she was berthed at
- Canon Kenneth Cameron Hind of All Saints Cathedral, Halifax
- John R. Snow, Jr., the chief embalmer with the firm of John Snow & Co., the province of Nova Scotia's largest undertaking firm, hired by White Star to oversee the embalming arrangements
- Sufficient embalming supplies to handle 70 bodies
- 100 coffins
- 100 long tons (100 t) of ice, in which to store the recovered bodies
Crew were paid double pay for the grisly task. There was a hierarchy to the mortuary details as the ship could never hope to bring all back: first class passengers were embalmed and placed in coffins; second-class were wrapped in linen winding sheets; third class and crew bodies were weighted and buried at sea (116 in total).[8]
The ship left Halifax at 12:45 P.M. on Wednesday, 17 April 1912. Due to severe fog and rough seas it took the ship nearly four days to sail the 800 nautical miles (1,500 km; 920 mi) to the scene of the disaster. The captain instructed the ship's crew to keep their
The ship arrived at the scene during the night, so recovery of bodies began at 06:00 on 20 April.[2] CS Mackay-Bennett was anchored close to but not within the recovery area, and she offloaded her skiff lifeboats. Crews then rowed into the recovery area and manually recovered the bodies into the skiffs. After recovering as many bodies as they deemed safe for the return journey (51 corpses), the crews then rowed back to the CS Mackay-Bennett.[2][10] The captain noted that there was neither sufficient space aboard to store all of the recovered bodies nor enough embalming supplies aboard. As the Canadian Government and associated burial and maritime laws directed that any bodies carried had to be embalmed before a ship enter a Canadian port, the captain agreed to a system whereby:[2][11]
- First-class passengers were embalmed, placed in coffins, and stored in the rear cable locker. These included the bodies of: John Jacob Astor IV, the richest man aboard, body No.124 recovered on 22 April, identified by his unique diamond finger ring and the initials sewn on the label of his jacket;[12] architect Edward Austin Kent, body No.258; and Isidor Straus, owner of Macy's Department Store.
- Second-class passengers were embalmed, wrapped in canvas, and stored in the forward cable locker.
- Third-class passengers and crew were buried at sea, a total of 116 bodies. In October 2013, a photograph taken by Fourth officer R. D. "Westy" Legate came up for auction, which captured the Canon ministering over a ceremony of multiple burials at sea on board the ship.[10]
- The body of band leader Wallace Hartley, found fully dressed with his music case strapped to his body, was transferred to the Arabic and returned to England, where on 18 May he was buried in Keighley Road Cemetery, Colne, Lancashire.[13]
- The body of 19-month old
At 19:00 on 23 April, CS Mackay-Bennett lay briefly alongside the
Just after midnight on 26 April, CS Mackay-Bennett rendezvoused with the
After a seven-day recovery operation, the CS Mackay-Bennett had:
- Recovered 306 of the 328 bodies found from among the 1,517 who perished aboard Titanic
- Buried 116 at sea, of which only 56 were identified
- Set sail for home with 190 bodies on board, almost twice as many as there were coffins available
- Arrived in Halifax on 30 April 1912, began unloading her cargo at 09:30, and transferred the bodies to the ice rink of the Mayflower Curling Club.[2][11]
The crew split the $100,000 reward for Astor's body (around $2500 each). Using some of that money they paid for the burial of the body of the unknown child and his headstone monument - the casket was marked by a copper plaque reading "Our Babe".
After his death in 1961, Clifford Crease's body was interred only a few steps away from the grave of "Our Babe", a site he had visited on every anniversary of the tragedy during his lifetime.[9]
Mackay-Bennett Seamount, one of the Fogo Seamounts southeast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean, is named after Mackay-Bennett for her involvement in the Titanic disaster.[16]
Retirement and scrapping
The ship was retired in May 1922, anchored in Plymouth Sound to be used as a storage hulk. During The Blitz on England in World War II, she was sunk during a Nazi Germany Luftwaffe attack but later refloated. Her hull was finally scrapped in 1965.[17]
References
- ^ "History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy - Commercial Cable Company 1886". atlantic-cable.com. Retrieved 7 November 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Clydebuilt: The ships that made the Commonwealth - CS Mackay-Bennett David Hayman, BBC Four, 5 June 2014
- ^ "RMS Titanic Resource Guide". Nova Scotia Archives. 20 April 2020. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
- ^ "CS Mackay-Bennett". Government of Nova Scotia. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
- ^ "An Echo of a Past Tragedy, The Diary of Frederick Hamilton (Cable Engineer: MacKay Bennett)", Encyclopeida Titanica
- ^ Titanic: The Aftermath
- ^ "CS Mackay-Bennett". Encyclopedia Titanica. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
- ^ Clydeside Built: The Mackay-Bennett
- ^ a b c d Nick Logan (12 April 2012). "Diary of Mackay-Bennett crewman tells haunting tale of Titanic recovery". Global News. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
- ^ a b Rob Ferguson (4 October 2013). "Rare photo of Titanic body recovery shows Halifax ship". The Star. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
- ^ a b "Titanic Victims". Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 14 February 2013. Archived from the original on 6 December 2016.
- ^ "John Jacob Astor IV". Encyclopedia Titanica. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
- ^ "Titanic band leader's violin is authentic, say experts". News Wiltshire. BBC. 15 March 2013. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
- ^ a b Holm, Brandon C. (9 March 2007). "RMS Titanic: The Funerals, Memorials and Legacy of the Lost Passengers and Her Crew". Encyclopedia Titanica. Retrieved 8 November 2011.
- ^ "Titanic baby given new identity". BBC News. 1 August 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2007.
- ^ "Advisory Committee on Undersea Feature Names". Fogo Seamounts. Fisheries and Oceans Canada. 16 January 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
- ^ Glover, Bill (11 October 2019). "History of the Atlantic Cable & Submarine Telegraphy - The Commercial Cable Company". Retrieved 5 February 2020.
External links
- Mackay-Bennett at Encyclopedia Titanica
- CS Mackay-Bennett on Facebook
- Mackay-Bennett at the Atlantic Cable website