Letter sent from the Titanic to researchers in Rimowski? | Eastern Quebec | News | The sun

Geologist Guilloom Marie and his students showed interest in sedimentation and erosion processes at work in the Bay of Fundy, to understand how an object can be buried in sand and released several decades late.

“It could have happened after a hurricane, Manon Saward provides as an example. A geographical colleague looked at the weather forecast for the days leading up to the discovery and there was no storm. This is another point of some doubt.”

The first Titanic artifact discovered in America?

The study of ocean currents and winds affecting the trajectory of the bottle in the North Atlantic was entrusted to Daniel Bourgalt of the Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMER-UQAR) and his colleagues from Norwegian Meteorology to Nut-Frod Dagestad. Laurent Bertino from the Institute and the Nansen Center for Remote Sensing and Environmental Studies in Norway.

“They did computer simulations to see where the Titanic was going before it sank a bottle thrown into the ocean,” Ms Saward said. With great currents, most of the goods go to European shores. It is not impossible for things to move towards America, it takes other paths, but the probability is very low, without zero. “

However, according to Professor Gohier, “this bottle may have been the first Titanic artifact to be found off the American coast”.

The biggest doubt

For historian Maxim Gohier, there is great skepticism over the calligraphy of the letter, which differs from what Mathilde taught children of French age in French schools in the early 20th century.

“It’s a handwriting that is very authentic, in paired and italicized letters,” Mrs. Saward believes. The shape of the letters and the many elements sow doubt. “

For Nicholas Boudreau, the only thing that allows us to say for sure that this letter came from the hand of Mathilde Lefebvre contains a sample of his handwriting.

“Maybe there are samples of his writing somewhere?” Asks the archaeologist. Maybe a writing book? One thing is for sure, Mathilde wrote this letter because researchers have samples of her parents’ handwriting, not her mother.