Page 22 - March 2020

PERSPECTIVES

The Girl with the White Hair

Paul Fanning, DTM

This story is the result of The Better Speaker Series #274 “Selecting Your Topic” which any club
can conduct for its members.

I don’t know why, but I awakened with a start of three passenger ships, fast engines, huge in
in the middle of the night last week. Yes, I was length and breadth, elegant and safest built to
under the warm and toasty covers, it was fairly date called the Olympic, Britannic, and Titanic.

quiet, yet I could not fathom why I awoke so Two ended up on the ocean floor after sinking,
suddenly. Perhaps it was my dinner exacting and the Olympic was holed below the water
its revenge on me? No, not that. Or was it quite line when she collided with a Royal Navy ship.
possibly watching the last forty-five minutes of Eventually, the demise of the White Star Line as

James Cameron’s Titanic? Aha. That must have a company came about with the forced merger
been it—hearing in my dreams the screech and with her rival and even more famous Cunard
groaning of the metal rendering as the ship’s Lines of the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen
aft portion fractured off, the shrieking of the Elizabeth liners. I can blame my grandmother

doomed passengers and the eventual plunging for my fascination and historical interest in ocean
into the cold and relentless depths the two halves liners and the tragedy of the RMS Titanic, soon
of the jewel of the White Star Line fleet. to be remembered again after 108 years since she
I have always had an affinity for the White sailed to the United States, never to arrive and

Star Line, its pennant of red with the five-pointed never to be seen again for decades.
white star emblazoned on it fluttering from My grandmother (never grandma or other
ship after ship, always named with the ending less-than-formal titles) was born near London in
of “ic”. Famous, of course, for the Olympic class the year 1906, a full six years before the Titanic’s

22 ONE COMMUNITY