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From a distance, they looked like white dots bobbing on the water. Others would describe them as looking like flocks of seagulls.

But as the SS Bremen steamed closer to this strange apparition on the afternoon of April 21, 1912, passengers on deck suddenly began to scream. Their ship was steaming into waters scattered with the floating victims of the RMS Titanic.

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“We saw one woman in a nightdress with a baby clasped closely to her breast,” reported passenger Johanna Stunke later. “There was another woman fully dressed, with her arms tightly clutching the body of a shaggy dog that looked like a St. Bernard.”

The Titanic sank 105 years ago this Saturday. While the 1912 disaster is remembered chiefly for its romance and myth, lesser known is the horrifying open-air graveyard that it left bobbing in the North Atlantic — and which Canadians ultimately had to sort through.

For about two hours, the Bremen was forced to carefully maneuver its way through the corpses. The disaster site was still littered with icebergs, at least one of which still bore telltale streaks of red and black paint.