HALIFAX - Five stamps commemorating the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic will be released by Canada Post on April 5.

The stamps, created by designers Dennis Page and Oliver Hill of Halifax, depict various parts of the Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912, with the loss of 1,500 lives.

A souvenir sheet of four stamps depict the bow of the Titanic stretched over a map of the Atlantic Ocean between the points of Southampton in England and Halifax.

The sheet of stamps also shows workers below the ship's three propellers.

A fifth stamp depicts the Titanic at sea between Southampton and Halifax with Cape Race, N.L., highlighted because its radio station was the first land-based site to receive the ill-fated ship's distress signal.

Halifax played a central role in the Titanic story as cable ships from the city were dispatched to pick up bodies from the Atlantic in the days after the accident.

Three cemeteries in the city contain the remains of 150 people whose bodies were recovered at sea.

Page says designing the Titanic stamp was a challenge.

"This was the biggest man-made moving object on Earth that after setting off on her maiden voyage hit an iceberg and ended in disaster. That really stuck with me and how I was going to show that feeling," he said in a statement released Tuesday when the stamps were unveiled.

"I imagined myself standing below her bow looking up which really gives that vantage point and perspective at how vast something like this could be."