WRETCHED CONDITION OF BODIES
Some few of the bodies had been prepared for burial at Rimouski, but so great was the work that most of them had to be put in the coffins as they were found, the women in shreds of clothing, some absolutely naked, as were most of the children, with anything available wrapped over them, while most of the men were in trousers and undershirts. Every undertaker in Quebec and Point Levis had been engaged by the Canadian Pacific Railroad with instructions to embalm all the bodies and prepare them for burial. Each body was also photographed for its identification.
Many of the coffins were of the crudest make; some had this inscription: “Ne pleurez pas sur moi!” (Do not shed tears over me), but as the sailors arranged the coffins and the marines took their station tears were visible in the eyes of many. Coffin No. 1 had a card bearing these words: “Woman on bottom, baby on top.” There were two in the coffin. The only other writing on the boxes were words indicating that within were “fille,” “fils,” “femme” or “homme.” With the bodies were in some instances the articles found on them, such as watches, pocket-books containing money, letters or other things that might help in the identification.
Solemnly the search continued. A man would find the bodies of his wife and children. A woman would identify the body of her husband. In the hunt for bodies of the victims there was no distinction of class. Every person, whether finely dressed or roughly clad, took his turn in the line that moved constantly from coffin to coffin. The great majority of persons, however, were disappointed in their search.
LOST HIS ENTIRE FAMILY
At times a frantic man would hurry from coffin to coffin looking over the shoulders of persons near it and trying to satisfy himself by a quick glance that the body was not that of the loved one—most of the bodies were so marred that quick identification was impossible—and then dash to the next. The most pathetic is the experience of C. W. Cullen, a candy merchant of Montreal, who had sent his wife, two children and a maid, Jennie Blythe, on the Empress of Ireland for a summer trip to England. The maid alone survived.
Cullen ran from one coffin to another looking for his wife, but in vain. Then he turned to gaze on the coffins of children. He quickly found the body of his daughter, Maude, six years old, who in the excitement following the collision had been seized by the mother. The search among the babies ranging from twelve months to three years then went on. Some of the babies lying in the coffins looked as if they were asleep, with their hair curled or ruffled by a light breeze. Others had bruised foreheads, suggesting vividly how they had been hurtled against stanchions or the sides of their cabins and killed before the water came upon them. The legs and arms of others were cut and bruised terribly. Upon the little ones Cullen gazed and finally picked out one baby with blond hair. He turned to Canon Scott, rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, and said:
“That is my boy.” Then Cullen turned again to search through the bodies of the adults for his wife.
TWO CLAIM SAME BABY
Scarcely had he turned away when T. H. Archer, who had lost wife and baby in the wreck and had escaped himself, began to study the faces of the babies. He had found the body of a woman that he supposed to be his wife. He came upon the body of a child marked No. 118, which had been identified only a few minutes before by Cullen as the body of his baby. Archer insisted that the body was that of his baby Alfred. He was told that Cullen had decided that the boy was his own child.