Titanic - In Her Own Words

Being middle class, I sometimes fall asleep with Radio 4 on. In the small hours the same wavelength is  taken over by the BBC World Service and occasionally, when something particularly interesting is on, I wake up quite suddenly to hear it.

This is interesting, in that there must be a part of my mind that is alert, listening to the radio and then deciding to wake me up.

It happened last night, when Titanic - In Her Own Words was on:

To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, the BBC’s Sean Coughlan narrates one of the most authentic versions of events in existence. Using voice synthesis to re-create the strange, twitter-like, mechanical brevity of the original Morse code, this programme brings to life the tragedy through the ears of the wireless operators in the area that night. 

On the night of the disaster, the network of young Marconi wireless operators on different ships and land stations frantically communicated with each other across the cold expanses of the North Atlantic in an effort to mount a rescue for the doomed vessel. 

All these messages were recorded at the time in copper-plate handwriting, now scattered across the world in different collections, but together forming a unique archive.

it is a fascinating programme casting new light on fascinating but familiar story.

But I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that I awoke to hear it because I went to bed feeling a little guilty about passing on Lord Bonkers' take on the loss of the Titanic.