Nova Scotia Archives
RMS Titanic Resource Guide
Diary of Clifford Crease, mechanic on CS Mackay-Bennett
note: transcription publicly contributed - please contact us with comments, errors or omisions
April 21th Sunday
Fine weather started to
pick up bodies at six
a.m. and continued all
day till five thirty
P.M. Recovered fifty
one bodies, forty
six men four women
and one baby.
Burried twenty four
men at sea at eight
fifteen P.M. Rev
Canon Hinds in
attendance also Ships
Company. Bodies
in good state but
badly bruised by
being knocked
about in the water.
Clifford "Cliff" Crease (1888-1961) was born in Halifax and, along with his nine siblings, grew up working in his father's Argyle Street grocery. After completing his schooling Crease became an artificer — a craftsman-in-training — at the Commercial Cable Company. He was placed as a crewman aboard the company’s Halifax-based ship, the CS Mackay-Bennett, a vessel designed to lay and repair telegraph cables under the Atlantic Ocean. The underwater cable system was the major communication link between Europe and North America.
On April 5, 1912, Crease celebrated his 24th birthday. Only a few weeks later he and the Mackay-Bennett crew were tasked with the recovery of bodies from the sinking of the RMS Titanic. His memories of this gruesome task are recorded in this seven-page diary. Crease was a pallbearer for the "Unknown Child" at St. George's Church in Halifax.
Crease received his nautical engineer’s certification in 1914 and served in the First World War with honour as a volunteer with the Royal Canadian Artillery where he traveled with campaigns through France and Belgium as Sergeant of Canada’s #1 Siege Battery. In his civilian career he served as stationery engineer with the Oland and Keith breweries. Following his death in 1961, Crease was laid to rest in Fairview Cemetery — only a few hundred feet away from 150 graves of Titanic victims.
Date: 17 April - 30 April 1912
Reference: Wilcox Family Nova Scotia Archives MG 1 vol. 2605 no. 4