YouTube historian sheds light on tragic shipwreck off Cape Sable Island
A dark moment in Nova Scotia’s storied maritime history has been brought vividly to life thanks to YouTube creator Tom Lynskey. His Part-Time Explorer channel on YouTube has featured 10 Nova Scotia video documentaries in the last year that have garnered millions of total views. A native of New Jersey, Lynskey has ties to Nova Scotia and now owns a home in Yarmouth.
One of his latest documentaries delves into the wreck of the SS Hungarian, an 1860 disaster off Nova Scotia’s Cape Sable Island that claimed the lives of all of the estimated 205 people aboard. Lynskey’s interest in the wreck was piqued when he came across an etching from a magazine depicting the ship crashing in the waves while scouring eBay for items related to Nova Scotia shipwrecks.
“I ended up spending a lot of time in Yarmouth lately, and that’s only about an hour away from the wreck site,” he said. “The Yarmouth County Museum has artifacts from it, as do several other museums down in Shelburne, and I just wanted to pursue it from there. It had never really been covered in a full documentary, and I think it deserved to be.”
Lynskey said it took him about six months to complete the project, though he had it in mind for two or three years. He used a mix of on-site footage and realistic animation to bring the story to life, relying on local historians, archival records, museum artifacts, and local historian Chris Swim to reconstruct the tragedy.
The SS Hungarian met its fate in the early hours of Feb. 20, 1860, during a fierce storm. Unlike the SS Atlantic, which ran aground off Prospect, N.S., in 1873 with some survivors, the Hungarian’s wreck was located more than two kilometers offshore in the open Atlantic, making rescue impossible. Witnesses on land could only watch helplessly as the ship’s lights disappeared into the waves.
Lynskey’s work on the video led him to release another focusing on the wreck of the SS Indian, a sister ship to the Hungarian. The earlier disaster, just two months before the loss of the Hungarian, sparked widespread criticism of Nova Scotians for looting, prompting the government to act swiftly during the Hungarian tragedy.
According to Lynskey, he’s always had excellent cooperation in Nova Scotia from local museums and archives and people who are eager to tell their story. He hopes videos like the story of the SS Hungarian will bring more attention to the province and its rich maritime history.
“It’s a way to take a local community which might have a couple thousand visitors a year and get their story out there to millions of people around the world,” he said. “Just this morning I saw comments on it saying that this video has finally made up their mind for them to go and visit Nova Scotia and check out these sites.”
Lynskey’s dedication to bringing these historical events to life through his documentaries is not only a testament to his passion for storytelling but also an invaluable contribution to preserving the maritime history of Nova Scotia for future generations.
