100th Anniversiry

At 12:13 pm on 31 May 2011, exactly 100 years after Titanic rolled down her slipway, a single flare was fired over Belfast's docklands in commemoration. All boats in the area around the Harland and Wolff shipyard then sounded their horns and the assembled crowd applauded for exactly 62 seconds, the time it had originally taken for the liner to roll down the slipway in 1911.[225] On 12 March 2012 BBC's Songs of Praise, from Belfast, took the form of a Titanic memorial. The programme included a selection of maritime hymns and ended with Nearer, My God, to Thee, allegedly the last tune played by the ship's band.[226]
On 4 April 2012, the 100th anniversary of Titanic's completion and her maiden voyage was celebrated by the theatrical re-release of the 1997 feature film, Titanic in 3D.[227] ITV1 produced a four-part Titanic mini-series, written by Oscar-winner Julian Fellowes, broadcast in March and April 2012.[228] Titanic Tales: Stories of Courage and Cowardice is a dramatic production co-written by Duncan McCargo and Stephanie Winters, based on original testimonies of survivors, along with authentic music. It was commissioned by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and premiered in New York on 12 April 2012.[229]


An original stageplay called Iceberg – Right Ahead! will be performed at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London from 22 March – 22 April 2012, the Lyric Theatre, Belfast is performing White Star of the North, and the street theatre event Sea Odyssey: Giant Spectacular was held in Liverpool over the weekend of 20-22 April.[230] The event which attracted 600,000 spectators[231] was inspired by a letter written by a 10-year-old Liverpudlian girl, May McMurray, in 1912 to her father William, a bedroom steward on the Titanic who did not survive the sinking. The letter never reached him and is now on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum.[232][233][234]
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed The Titanic Requiem, a work composed by singer/songwriter Robin Gibb and his son RJ Gibb, at the premiere on 10 April in London.[235] The event includes a hologram show depicting the sea, the ship, and the iceberg.[236]
The cruise ship Balmoral, operated by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, has been chartered by Miles Morgan Travel to follow the original route of Titanic, intending to stop over the point on the sea bed where she rests on 15 April 2012.[237]
On 14 April 2012, Halifax’s Maritime Museum of the Atlantic held a candle-lit procession by the water from the museum to Halifax's Grand Parade, which passed some of the city’s Titanic related landmarks along the way. Following this, Halifax’s Fairview Lawn Cemetery held an interfaith memorial service in remembrance of the hundreds of lives lost in the Titanic tragedy and for the 121 Titanic victims buried at the cemetery, followed by a wreath-laying and musical performance the next day.[citation needed]
The SeaCity Museum in Southampton, Hampshire opened on 10 April 2012, the date when RMS Titanic made her maiden voyage out of Southampton.[138] It was designed to show Southampton's 2000 years of sea history, as well as commemorate the 549 city residents who sunk with the Titanic.[138]
To mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking, the BBC World Service broadcast, on 10 April 2012, a radio documentary in the "Discovery" series, entitled Titanic - In Her Own Words. The programme was conceived and created by Susanne Weber and was narrated by Sean Coughlan who had previously written a book on the Titanic radio messages.[238] The programme used voice synthesis to re-create ". the strange, twitter-like, mechanical brevity of the original Morse code messages.. " transmitted by Titanic and neighbouring ships. The messages often included the fashionable slang expressions of the time such as "old man". The BBC noted: "All such messages were recorded at the time in copper plate handwriting, and were now scattered across the world in different collections, but together formed a unique archive".[239] On 14 April BBC Radio 2 aired a three hour minute-by-minute account of the disaster to coincide with the time it happened.[240]
Besides commemorations on land, two ships participated in memorial services at the spot where Titanic sank. Azamara Journey left New York on 10 April, with passengers interested in the Titanic story, many dressed in period attire. A stop was made at Halifax to visit the graves of 121 victims. A second ship, MS Balmoral, set sail from Southampton, with 1309 passengers, on 8 April and also held onboard memorial services, 640 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland.[241]
Postage stamps have been issued to mark the centennial: Canada Post issued a series of five designs, Britain's Royal Mail issued a set of 10, Gibraltar created five stamps,[242] Isle of Man, six.[243] and the Republic of Ireland's post office, An Post, issued four commemorative stamps [244] The Canadian Mint produced a $10 silver commemorative coin, and two coloured collector coins (25¢ and 50¢) and the British Mint two £5 coins.[245][246]