Tragedy remembered
STANDING in darkness on a crowded deck, with freezing winds blowing across the North Atlantic, six Maryborough history buffs have relived the final moments of the 1503 people who perished when the Titanic sank exactly 100 years ago.
The Watts, Foale and Van Wyk families boarded the MS Balmoral last week, for a voyage re-creating the Titanic's momentous trip.
On Sunday, the ship stopped at the spot where the famed Titanic sank with the loss of more than 1500 people on April 15, 1912 - a moment that was commemorated with prayers and hymns by those on board the Balmoral.
"Sitting in my cabin at 11.40pm as the Captain gave his address, I visualised myself hearing the ship hit an iceberg and experiencing the chaos that followed," Maryborough photographer Jocelyn Watts wrote in her travel blog.
"As we slowly filed our way out of the lounge, I imagined myself in the same slow and tedious line, not peacefully walking to towards the aft decks for the second half of the service, but desperately trying to get through the crowds to claim a seat in a lifeboat."
The other passengers were equally moved as Ms Watts, speculating on the terror those doomed passengers had experienced.
"Just think, they would have been out here like this, the water about 20 degrees colder, " one man said.
"Once the Titanic's lights went out, it would have been pitch black on the moonless night."
The re-creation of the tragic voyage has instilled in the group an overwhelming gratitude that such a tragedy is unlikely to occur again.
"It's difficult to imagine what was going through the minds of people onboard the Titanic on that fateful night," Ms Watts wrote.
"I'm not a descendant of the Titanic's victims or survivors, just someone from the other side of the world who's been touched by the stories of heroism, survival and tragedy - and ever so grateful that maritime laws have changed dramatically that travel by sea is now much safer."
To read Ms Watt's blog about the trip, visit www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/WhatsWattsDoin/
