The 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic is coming up just after midnight on April 15th. I thought that the TalkBass community might be interested to know that the body of the double bassist on the Titanic, one John Frederick Preston Clarke, was recovered and is now buried at the Mount Olivet Catholic Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
As you'll see in one of the photos below, this was his first gig on a boat of any kind. The band famously played in the first class passengers' lounge to calm everyone while the lifeboats were being boarded. It's presumed that the entire band perished.
I went by yesterday to take these photos. All of the small, wedge-shaped headstones in the two rows mark the graves of Titanic victims.
Halifax is all abuzz with memorials (including concerts) to remember the event. As the closest port to the accident site, the recovery of bodies was carried out by a fleet of volunteer vessels from here and many of the victims are buried in catholic, protestant, and jewish graveyards here.
A famous joke here is that a tourist comes to town and asks the guide, "Where are the survivors of the Titanic buried?" The guide replies, "We're not in the practice of burying survivors here, ma'am."
Anyway, here's the photos.
