Titanic Dinner

Wellington College held a Titanic Centenary Dinner for its parents, students and friends on the evening of Saturday, 14th April. The venue was the Senior Hall in the College. The event was extremely well attended with nearly 150 present. They were treated to a five-course dinner based on the First Class and Steerage (Third) Class menus served in the Titanic dining rooms on the evening of Sunday, 14th April 1912, the night the ship struck an iceberg. The idea of holding such a centenary dinner came from the work of Years 5 and 6 in the College, who have studied the Titanic in their History work on the early 20th century. Students from these year groups gave a series of presentations showing to the audience how the Titanic sank and why so many people died. There was also an extremely amusing performance from Katie Cook, in Year 9, who played Charles Joughlin, one of Titanic’s chefs, who survived nearly three hours in the icy waters, largely due to having consumed two bottles of whisky on the evening of the sinking!

No Titanic evening would be complete without some input from the James Cameron film of 1997 and Jamie Cook followed up his success as Joseph in the College production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by giving a moving performance of the Celine Dion song, My Heart Will Go On, and leading the audience in the less well-known Ballad of the Titanic. All of the participants and audience came in period costume: First Class for the women, Steerage for the men and the teaching staff came as the crew. At the end of the evening a toast was proposed to those who died on that fateful night in the Atlantic and the evening came to a close at around 11.40pm, the exact time Titanic struck the iceberg. Wellington College hope to hold an annual centenary dinner for a major historical event.