A Night to Remember - The Story of the Titanic

Welcome to A Night to Remember - The Story of the Titanic.

The Titanic Centenary Event will prove to be “Bigger than Ben Hur.” That’s almost a certainty. On looking up various Internet sites it’s obvious. There are page after page mentioning that ship’s name. It’s been almost a hundred years since that great White Star liner struck that iceberg . Yet more people follow the Titanic Story than at any time in its history – apart from those actual few days following the sinking. A quick Google Search will reveal that many huge functions are being organized in such places as Belfast, Ireland, where the RMS Titanic was built, in Massachusetts in the United States, where many of those that drowned were laid to rest, and even in South Australia’s premier venue, the Adelaide Convention Centre ‘down under.’

As a Storyteller I have long told the Titanic Story. This started in early May 1982 at a Toastmasters Meeting. Only a few weeks earlier I’d heard one of my Toastmaster friends present a speech he called, “A Night to Remember” – a five to seven minute speech on, of course, the Titanic Story. Trevor Wilson was his name, and I and the rest of our club sat there riveted as Trevor put pictures in our minds. My own version followed a couple of meetings later. It, too, was received with much enthusiasm.

I didn’t present that story again until nearly fifteen years later. By now I was regularly going outside of my Toastmasters’ public speaking club environment to organizations such as Rotary, Lions, National Seniors, Golden A and many others. By this time I’d put together a lot of yarns. But it was on reading The Titanic – The full story of a tragedy, by Michael Davie, that I thought, “Yes, why not do a story on the RMS Titanic. And so a five to seven minute presentation done years earlier eventually grew to a full forty-five minutes after-dinner presentation. And for more than a dozen years now I’ve been presenting in its longer version. And people love it!

Now comes the Centenary of that most famous of all sea stories. The Titanic Centenary Event will sweep the world. There will be theatre parties, dinner parties, stage productions. This most famous of all ocean liners will sail again in the minds of men and women all around the world. It’ll be on radio, television and in the newspapers. There will be features written, possibly a few more books published and there will be a few people like me: storytellers telling it orally to an audience.

Yes, I will be telling the story of the RMS Titanic for the umpteenth time. On Friday 13^th April 1912, on the very Eve of that great sea tragedy I will be, with the help of some very good friend, commemorating the occasion at our own Titanic Centenary Event. It truly will be “A Night to Remember!”

More detail can be obtained by going to the links below.