Thursday, March 15, 2018

LA BOURGOGNE, 4 JULY 1898 - SEA DISASTER

You probably haven’t heard about this passenger shipwreck. It happened off of Sable Island, Nova Scotia, on July 4th, 1898, in dense fog at dawn’s early light. It occurred 14 years before the infamous Titanic disaster. No Hollywood movies were ever made about this disaster and 584 souls were drowned. Three were from the Casazza family: Luigi (Louis), his young daughter, Rose and his brother James (Giacomo). Only one woman survived (Mrs. Adrian LaCasse), and she was saved by her husband. This newspaper article was about my husband's great-grandmother Catherine (Catarina), the wife of Louis. She was Thirty-two years of age at the time of the accident, a wife and mother of five children. When she lost her husband and daughter on that fateful morning, she was left to raise her other children, ranging in age from one to fourteen. It is likely that other Italian-American descendants today may have had ancestors on that doomed ship.  It was a horrific tragedy.



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