My grandfather, the Titanic’s violinist

When he died, the White Star Line sent a bill for his uniform

There can be few better places to consider the irony of the phrase ‘the good old days’ than Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I went last week to visit the grave of my grandfather, a 21-year-old violinist in the band of the White Star liner Titanic. More than 120 passengers and crew are buried here, 40 of them still unidentified as we approach the centenary of Titanic’s sinking.

The body of Jock Hume, my grandfather, was one of 190 recovered by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett and brought back to Halifax (more than a thousand bodies were never found). The corpses of first-class passengers — including that of the American millionaire Jacob Astor — were unloaded from the ship in coffins and driven to the mortuary in horse-drawn hearses. Those of the crew and of steerage passengers had been thrown on to ice in the hold for the sea journey, and were carried off in handcarts on arrival.