Page 39 - WDT MAGAZINE IRELAND ISSUE WINTER 2018

Our guide tour lasted 30 minutes after which we ex- scarred this port and its people. The Lusitania was
plored the exhibition area where we interacted with an sunk in 1915 off the Cork coast by German U-boat tor-
interactive audio-visual presentation that explained the pedo -- 1,198 passengers perished. Cobh was trauma
events leading up to and heartbreak
sinking. And finally, central as the dead,
we learned that both survivors and grief-
of the passengers stricken families ar-
printed on our board- rived in the small port.
ing cards survived 169 of the 298 dead
the disaster. What were buried in the Old
made this Titanic Church Cemetery just
experience a most outside the town in
remarkable one, was three mass graves.
that we were walking It was a most
in the same build- strange feeling as we
ing and walked the same town as the 123 passengers walked down the beautiful promenade at the water’s
who boarded the Titanic in Queensland. edge. Cobh, despite its association with two of the
On our way back to the ship we walked through the most well, know maritime disasters in history is now a
small but beautiful Kennedy Park, named after John genuinely energetic, and happy place filled with music
Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. We also stopped and and charm.
reflected at the Lusitania, another local disaster that

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