The enigmatic message of a passenger of the Titanic that surprises the experts

the Titanic, the British liner making its maiden voyage from England to United States, I know sunk in mid-April 1912. More than a century later, its story continues to surprise. A Canadian family found on the coast of Bay of Fundy, in a bottle, an enigmatic message sent by a French teenager who would be on board the huge wrecked ship.

The letter, which is being analyzed today by a group of Canadian researchers, was written a day before the Titanic began its fatal sinking after hitting an iceberg. The manuscript hides a message from the young passenger to her own family, whose members have been separated, some in France and the others in the United States.

“I throw this bottle into the sea in the middle of Atlantic. We have to get to new York in a few days. If anyone finds it, tell the family Lefebvre en LiévinSays the letter found in the bottle, which was still sealed when a Canadian family found it in 2017 on a beach called Hopewell Rocks, in the Bay of Fundy, located in the province of New Brunswick, is of Canada.

But it was only then that science was able to give answers about the origin and authenticity of the message.

According to research conducted by scientists from University of Quebec (UQAR), the letter found was written by Mathilde Lefebvre, a young woman from 13 years, originally from Liévin, in the Pas-de-Calais department, north of France. The date that appears in the letter is Saturday April 13, 1912.

The teenager, according to the reconstruction made, was traveling in the third class of the fateful ship with her mother, Marie Daumont and three of her brothers. He was on his way to meet his father, Franck Lefebvre, who had left France two years earlier with four brothers from Mathilde, to try your luck in the United States.

Unfortunately the night of From April 14 to 15, the Titanic sank off Newfoundland and the teenager, along with the parents who traveled with her, were among the 1,500 deaths – between passengers and crew – that left the resounding tragedy as a balance.

The family that found the message consisted of Bellila was born, El Hadi Cherfouh and their children Koceila and Dihia. They immediately contacted UQAR to examine its authenticity and origin.

The historian Maxime Gohier, from the aforementioned Maison des Hautes Etudes, mobilized a multidisciplinary group of scientists to analyze the letter. “The bottle could be the first Titanic object found off the North American coast,” he declared on the official UQAR website.

“The story of its discovery and the enthusiasm it arouses is also an interesting subject of study,” added the researcher. The family who discovered the container with the letter were received by members of the team to document the location and circumstances of the discovery. In addition, investigators contacted members of the Lefebvre family, now residing in Aix en Provence, In the south of France“.

In fact, Jacques Lefebvre, with his wife Helen, living in the aforementioned French town, they discovered 2017 that part of their ancestors had perished in the Titanic. Mathilde Lefebvre would be a distant cousin of Jacques, that every year, since the discovery of the message, publish the photo of the letter on his Facebook account, in tribute to his loved one buried in the waters of the Atlantic.

In an interview with the regional media France 3, Jacques Lefebvre – who would be a great-grand-nephew of Franck Lefebvre, Mathilde’s father – he said a little more about what he knows about the tragedy in which five members of his family died. The man assured that Franck Lefebvre, Mathilde’s father, sent money from United States so that his wife, Marie, could travel with their children to see him again.

In addition to Marie and Mathilde, they embarked on Titanic the little brothers of the girl: Jeanne, nine years old, Henri, six years old and Ida, four years old. Lefebvre he supposes that the young woman threw the bottle into the sea for sheer pleasure. The man also points out that despite what has remained as a fact in the film of James cameron about this maritime tragedy, the third class was not locked up the moment of the sinking.

But somehow that didn’t stop the five family members Lefebvre who embarked on the Titanic perish in the shipwreck.

Historians, archaeologists, chemists and oceanographers They intervened in the analysis of the bottle and the letter, to learn more about its secrets. Thus, they were able to verify that the date on which the letter was written was indeed the one indicated by the head of the text –April 13, 1912-. Similarly, chemical analyzes of the bottle, cap and type of seal also coincide with the dating of the message.

In the meantime, it has also been proven that the crossing of the bottle could have perfectly been done from the scene of the transatlantic tragedy to the coast where it was found. “Simulations of ocean currents have shown how a floating object could, despite a very low probability, have moved from the point where the Titanic April 13 to Bay Fundy», Assured the oceanographer Daniel Bourgault, on the aforementioned page of the UQAR.

One of the questions still contained in the post he supposedly wrote Mathilde is that the type of writing printed on it differs from the calligraphy that was inculcated at the time, early 20th century, to French students. The files which were the subject of an investigation made it possible to find evidence of the handwriting of the parents of the teenager, but no document which makes it possible to affirm that the message was written by the young woman.

In this sense, the same Gohier He threw his own bottle into the sea, with a request whose answer is almost impossible to find. “If ever, by an extraordinary coincidence, someone had a manuscript of Mathilde, for example a school notebook, we invite you to contact us ”, wrote the historian on the page of UQAR.

The oceanographer Beaudry He added that the practice of throwing messages into the sea in bottles was a custom that has become quite common since the second half of the century. XIX, with the rise of steam navigation and the industrial production of glass containers. Often times, these types of posts were notes in newspapers around the world, although there was not much rigor in analyzing the authenticity of each of them.

In the case of MathildeHowever, the analysis seems to indicate that the young girl was, almost without a doubt, one of the victims of one of the most infamous naval tragedies of the 20th century. And that he frankly threw his bottle into the sea from the deck of the Titanic, without imagining the disaster to come.