The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic's Titanic exhibit tells many compelling stories. One of these involves a tormented marriage, kidnapping, secret identity, and tragic death. It took 84 years before it reached a final closure in front of Grave 15 in Row 1 of the Baron De Hirsch Jewish Cemetery in Halifax, NS. The story began, however, at noon on April 10, 1912, when the luxury liner Titanic set sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York City but sailed instead into tragedy and history when she scraped an iceberg and sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912.

Alan Ruffman, author of Titanic Remembered: The Unsinkable Ship and Halifax, says that White Star Line, the Titanic's owners, chartered several Canadian vessels to search for the dead. Of the 328 bodies recovered, 119 were buried at sea and 209 were taken to Halifax. Of the 209 bodies, 59 were shipped back to their families and 150 were buried in Halifax. This is the largest number of Titanic victims buried anywhere in the world. One of these bodies buried in Halifax was allegedly that of a "Mr. Louis M. Hoffman."

When the Titanic set sail, it was reported to be carrying three second-class passengers listed as Hoffman: Louis M. Hoffman, "a widower," was travelling with his two young sons. In an Internet article entitled Michel Navratil: Unlucky at Love and At Sea, Lynne Remick says Titanic passengers could not have known that Louis M. Hoffman was the name of a friend that had been taken by Slovakian-born Michel Navratil. A tailor who had lived in Nice, France since 1902, Navratil had married in 1907. By 1912, says Ms. Remick, his business was in trouble and intense family pressures were placing a severe strain on his marriage. Michel and his Italian-born wife Marcelle reluctantly separated. Their two boys, Edmond, age two, and Michel Marcel, age three, went to live with their mother, but were allowed a visit with their father over the Easter weekend of April 6-7, 1912. When Marcelle came to take the two boys back, both they and their father had disappeared.  Navratil, writes Ms. Remick, had kidnapped his sons and planned to take them to America. He had purchased passage under an alias on the Titanic.

Once on the Titanic, Navratil was cautious and rarely let his boys out of his sight. According to the Encyclopedia Titanica, he relaxed only on one occasion when he allowed fellow passenger Bertha Lehmann, a 17-year-old Swiss girl, who spoke French but no English, to watch over the two boys while he played cards in the hours before the Titanic scraped the iceberg. When the doomed Titanic started to sink, Michel, aided by another passenger, dressed the boys and brought them up to the boat deck. At about two a.m., says the encyclopedia, all the lifeboats had been launched with the exception of four collapsible boats with canvas sides. Second Officer Charles Lightoller ordered a locked-arms circle of crewmembers around Collapsible Lifeboat Boat D so that only women and children could board it. Navratil handed his two sons through the ring of men.

Encyclopedia Titanica says that Michel Marcel never forgot his father's words as the boy was placed in the lifeboat and handed to a young American woman: "My child, when your mother comes for you, as she surely will, tell her that I loved her dearly and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us, so that we might all live happily  together in peace and freedom in the New World."

Navratil perished when the Titanic sank. His body was one of those recovered and taken to Halifax. The Nova Scotia coroner's report stated that "Louis M. Hoffman" was a man whose age was estimated to be about 36, though Navratil was just 32. The Encyclopedia Titanica says that the Nova Scotia coroner's account also reported that when Mr. Hoffman's body was found, it was wearing a brown suit, a grey overcoat with a green lining, and carrying £6 in a purse. "Mr. Hoffman" had also been carrying a bill for Room 126 in the Charing Cross Hotel, a receipt from Thomas Cook and Company for notes and money exchanged, a gold watch and chain, a pipe in a case, a ticket, coins and keys. Most, significantly though, he had also been carrying a loaded revolver.

Because Navratil had used a Jewish-sounding surname, he was interred on May 15, 1912, in the Baron de Hirsch Cemetery, which had been designated for the Jewish victims of the Titanic disaster. Although many Jewish victims were buried elsewhere, Navratil was the only non-Jew to be buried in this cemetery.

Michel Marcel and Edmond ("Lolo" and "Momon," as they called themselves), were among the passengers rescued by the vessel Carpathia, Michel being hauled aboard the rescue vessel in a mail sack. According to the encyclopedia another survivor on the Carpathia, Margaret Bechstein Hays, volunteered to care for the two boys since no parent came forward to claim them and she was fluent in French.

Once in New York, the boys were sheltered in the Hays' home under the auspices of the Children's Aid Society until Marcelle Navratil recognized her sons from photographs in one of the many newspapers that covered the story of the "Orphans of the Titanic." Marcelle was brought to America by the White Star Lines, reunited with her two sons on May 16, and sailed back to France with them on the Oceanic.

The "Titanic Tots," as the newspapers sometimes referred to the two boys, grew up to live vastly different lives. Edmond worked as an interior decorator, architect and builder. He fought with the French army in the Second World War. He was captured by the Germans but managed to escape. His health suffered badly during the war and he died in 1953 at age 43. Michel Marcel earned a PhD and became a professor of psychology; he also studied philosophy. He maintained that his powerful memories of Titanic, the loss of his father and the frightening experience of being alone in a foreign country,
influenced the rest of his life.

The Encyclopedia Titanica records how, years later, he vividly remembered the experience: "My father entered our cabin where we were sleeping. He dressed me very warmly and took me in his arms. A stranger did the same for my brother. When I think of it now I am very moved. They knew they were going to die…He [my father] handed us over to a pretty American. I remember the plop the lifeboat made as it hit the water. I went to sleep in the boat. Then when I woke up at dawn our lifeboat was moving away from the icebergs and I didn't see them."

Michel Marcel returned to the United States in 1987, to attend the ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. But real closure had taken place for him on August 25, 1996, when, 84 years after the sinking of the Titanic, he had visited his father's grave for the first time. David Flemming, a former director of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, was one of those who accompanied Mr. Navratil to his father's grave. Mr. Flemming said he watched Mr. Navratil hesitate, then place his hand on his father's gravestone, smiling as he recalled the music of the lullaby his father had sung to him. "Someone asked afterward what he had thought," Mr. Fleming reported. "I remember what he said, 'I heard the angels sing.'"

Michel Marcel died January 31, 2001, at age 92. An obituary that appeared on February 4, 2001, in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, discussed the coroner's report and described Michel Marcel's return to his father's gravesite. At the time of his return, Michel was the last male survivor of the sinking of the Titanic. At the time of his death, only four women remained alive of the doomed ship's 705 survivors. (About 1,500 people lost their lives, though published figures vary slightly.)

What made the elder Navratil's story even more poignant was that he had never stopped loving his wife. Although he had virtually cleaned out the family's bank accounts before leaving, he had carefully left enough money for his wife to buy a one-way ticket to follow him to New York where he dreamed the little family would be able to start a new life together. That was never to be; his story ended in a Halifax grave.