I came across this video in my YouTube feed, by a mortician with a YT channel:
The Titanic’s Darkest Secret: What Happened to the Bodies?
Initially, I thought, well…not much mystery there-- they were probably eaten by sea creatures, and even the bones eventually disintegrate over time. Grisly and sad, but no big surprise.
But, despite the fact I thought I had heard or read everything there is to know about the Titanic story, there were two takeaways from this video that I didn’t know, that surprised me. One grim, one kind of uplifting despite the circumstances. I’ll post them below.
Anyway, this video got me thinking-- what are the lesser-known stories / events from other otherwise well-known events from history?
Spoiler-blurred in case you want to watch the video:
A ship was dispatched soon after the sinking, to recover bodies. They brought 100 coffins and enough embalming chemicals for same. But they recovered many more bodies than they had coffins and embalming chems for, and no easy way to ID the bodies on board, so they had to make a cold, hard calculating decision: they looked for the best-dressed bodies, checking for expensive jewelry, cufflinks, shoes, etc. Basically they kept only the most valuable bodies-- the bodies that, most likely, someone would pay to recover. So the upper classes got First-Class treatment even in death. The rest were unceremoniously chucked back into the deep. And all the drained blood from the bodies that were embalmed on board, you may wonder? That also went overboard, chum.
The body of a toddler-- “body #4” moved the sailors so much as to the visceral nature of the tragedy-- otherwise hardened seamen who had seen many awful things-- that they pooled their money together to give the small child a proper burial. The body would remain unidentified for decades, until in the 21st century DNA testing led to a positive ID-- he was a 19 month old named ‘Sidney Leslie Goodwin’ who was part of a large English family, all of whom died on the ship.