Have you ever wished you could travel back in time and live a momentous historical event just as the people back then lived it? I've always felt that way about Titanic, ever since I was a kid. Yet at the same time, I felt I had lived it! I never understood this nor could I explain why I felt that way - until one afternoon a psychic friend of mine read me.
She and I had never talked about my fascination with Titanic, or even mentioned Titanic to one another so I was stunned when she said "You were on a ship that sank...you drowned and your body was never recovered. I'm being shown a Swedish flag and being given the name Johanna. Her last name began with an A I think. You weren't sailing alone, you were accompanied by your brother. Patty, I think you were on the TITANIC!"
(I just got goosebumps even typing that paragraph out.)
Now, I'm an internationally certified professional psychic myself so I know there are some legitimate very good psychics out there. Yet when my friend told me this I was like "NAH!" - until I looked through a complete Titanic passenger list.
Johanna Persdotter Ahlin, 3rd class steerage passenger. Drowned, body never recovered.
Was traveling back to the U.S. from Sweden, where she'd been born and had been visiting family - accompanied by her brother who also drowned when Titanic sank.
I won't go into all the details but my grandmother emigrated to America from Sweden on a ship,
accompanied by one of her brothers. The similarities between Johanna's family and mine are jaw dropping. My grandmother even resembled Johanna in appearance. How's that for freaky?!!
(Maybe I HAD lived it in another lifetime?!!)
I've spent over 20 years researching the Titanic sinking. Any time a Titanic party was thrown I was at it. Especially the ones thrown by the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Sadly, they're no longer doing them.
From Storytellers Cottage:
"Now, I do want to acknowledge that the sinking of the Titanic was clearly a tragic event, in which over 1500 people lost their lives. April 14th, 1912 was obviously a very sad day in history. However, replicating historic events and inviting guests to participate in them actually allows people to viscerally understand what life was like in other eras and places… like what it really meant to be divided into classes, or to be separated from your spouse because only women and children were allowed in the lifeboats, or to watch the last lifeboat launch without you, or to be trapped on the third class decks! So this kind of event, in addition to celebrating Golden Age splendor also provides a unique opportunity for your guests to expand their comprehension and awareness of a different era, and potentially increase their levels of tolerance and compassion for people who didn’t have the advantages that they do. It’s sort of educational time travel!"
I couldn't have said it better myself. A Titanic party is a way of celebrating the lives of those who lost their lives. We owe it to them not to forget them as in my years of research evidence points to us not being told the truth behind the sinking of the Titanic. Evidence points to those 1500+ people dying needlessly due to the biggest maritime insurance scam in history.
There are several ways you can throw a Titanic party. First you must decide are you going to do actual historical Titanic or Titanic the movie? You can do a murder mystery on the Titanic, an escape room Titanic, a last night on the Titanic dinner party and so on.
​
This woman knows how to throw a Titanic party! However, I'm sure all of us will agree most of us don't have a house her size full of antiques, nor the resources to throw a party like hers. Nonetheless, it's a good video to get ideas from.
Invitations
For all 3 of my Titanic parties I went with pre printed invitations.
I printed up replicas of the Titanic boarding pass and enclosed one in each invitation, instructing guests to bring their boarding passes with them to the party.
​
Guests were asked to come in
costume.
I went through the full list of Titanic passengers and assigned each guest the role of an actual Titanic passenger. Male roles for men, female roles for women. If there was a short bio of the actual passenger, I'd include that information - but not whether they survived the sinking or not.
I made sure my cast of Titanic characters were a good mix - officers, passengers from all 3 classes, crew employees in various positions.
I also had friends present playing specific roles like purser, wait staff, bartender, Marconi operator, etc.
Staging & Props
Obviously you're not going to turn your house into a 10 deck replica of Titanic. What you are going to do in your staging is use the power of suggestion by placing vintage items here and there.
Start by gathering up everything VINTAGE in your house with a maritime or Edwardian era flavor to it. Not modern cutesy vintage...actual vintage.
Old clocks or pocket watches, old photos, women's long formal gloves, costume jewelry, binoculars...you get the idea.
Once you have everything gathered up, look and see what items you still need for your staging. Ask family and friends if they have those items and if they do, if you could borrow them for your party.
​
There are a couple of ways you can stage this party.
You can decorate every room in the house to be a different area of Titanic. OR...you can section off spaces as different areas of the ship. This is the route you should go if you have a small space (apartment, condo, etc.) or if like me, you have an open concept house.
But let's start with staging the entry to your house. Hubby and I killed 2 birds with one stone.
Photo credit: Pinterest
Because we lived on a lake, we wanted to 'landscape' the front of the house with a pier post and rope walkway to the front door. We'd just never gotten around to doing it at that point.
We also had to install a wheelchair ramp as hubby had just broken his hip.
These became our boarding staging. I piled DIY cardboard crates and barrels and some old luggage at the bottom of the ramp.
Our purser stood there checking boarding passes before the guests could proceed up the ramp.
When they got into my entry hallway they were met by waitstaff who handed them a drink off a silver tray and invited them to explore the different areas of the ship and its various activities.
With each successive Titanic party we threw, we staged more rooms.
The first room guests would come to walking down this entry hallway was my bedroom. We had most of our antique pieces in our bedroom so really didn't have to do much staging.
All I added to this wall was a chamber pot I had from an 1800's bedroom I'd decorated previously and a wall porthole decal.
On the opposite wall I gave one of my corrugated faux fireplaces a facelift, we moved a table and chairs and the steamer trunk into the room. I added another porthole decal and scattered some vintage props around.
There was a method to my madness. Hors d'oeuvres on silver trays were placed on both the dresser and steamer trunk for guests to help themselves. I only placed 2 chairs in there so guests couldn't plant themselves in a chair, they had to move around and mingle.
The activity in that room was a Titanic trivia game. I'd put Titanic trivia questions on paper rolled into little glass corked bottles. My waiter in that room had a tray of these bottles and invited guests to pick a bottle and a trivia question to answer.
If they answered their trivia question correctly, they were awarded a small prize like a roll of lifesavers or a whistle
by our waiter, who played his character to the hilt, telling the winners "Just in case you find yourself floating on one of the ship's doors in the middle of the Atlantic at 2:30 a.m."
So this room served as our icebreaker to get guests interacting with one another as they tried to help each other get the correct answers to their trivia questions.
From there, guests proceeded into the main venue. We'd divided it up into 3 areas. The living room was a 1st class lounge. The kitchen island became a bar and the dining area a 1st Class dining room and I'll show you how easily we staged those areas.
On the back wall of the living room I hung a backdrop that made it look as though one were on the ship. In one corner I put a cardboard cutout of Capt. Smith with a ship's wheel borrowed from a friend's supper club.
I took one of our old life rings and repurposed it to look like a Titanic life ring and hung that on the wall as well.
I replaced our modern coffee table with one of our steamer trunks.
All of the furniture stayed as it was with the exception of one recliner I moved into the corner to make room for our string quartet.
My friend, Colanna is a professional musician and heads up her own string quartet. Her quartet played at my wedding reception. She volunteered to have them play at our Titanic party so this is the first thing our guests saw and heard coming into this main area.
Colanna and her quartet had all dressed in Edwardian costumes - including replicas of the Titanic life jackets - which our guests found most amusing.
Moving on to the kitchen area...
My kitchen is very modern and it was throwing
the whole Edwardian atmosphere thing off.
So hubby built a temporary 'hallway' with batwing doors to hie the kitchen from guests view. (Easily disassembled after the party)
​
The kitchen island became a bar with a friend playing a uniformed bartender. We'd made up whimsical names for drinks like "Iceberg ahead!" and "The QLD" and had a menu sign explaining what each drink was.
We also served drinks popular during the Edwardian era. Here's a listing.
All of the drinks were served with ice cubes that looked like ships and icebergs.
You can buy the molds here, 2 molds for $9.
​
For the dining area all I did was hang another wall backdrop of the Grand Staircase to make the area visually larger.
Photo credit: Amazon
This next room I'll show you we didn't add until our 2nd Titanic party and we added it specifically for a party activity. Staging this room is entirely optional.
We used our guest room as it already had what we needed in it - namely this secretary.
We wanted to recreate the Marconi room.
If you want to do the Marconi activity but don't want to stage an entire room, then just a corner with a small desk out of sight and earshot of all of your guests will suffice.
The Marconi room was super easy to stage. All of the electrical gadgets on the walls were cardboard boxes with scrap of electrical wiring running out of them.
The communication tubes were scrap pieces of PVC pipe spray painted gold.
Being ex-military and proficient at Morse code, hubby got adventurous and made a working telegraph. This sat on the Marconi desk and he played our Marconi operator.
If you are going to stage a bedroom as a Marconi room, don't worry about the bed. The Titanic Marconi operators, Phillips and McBride had their sleeping quarters attached to the Marconi room.
.png)
On the dresser in that room, we placed items from hubby's great grandfather's barber/shaving kit, my grandfather's pocket watch...guy stuff.
​
By the time our 3rd Titanic party rolled around, we were staging the basement as steerage. Eight sectioned off bunk beds became a 3rd class cabin,
my long banquet tables were set up to replicate 3rd class dining, and there was plenty of open space for Irish dancing - given both hubby and I were/are Irish.
So you have staging options - stage a small space with vintage items strategically placed here and there, a large space divided into sections or every room in the house.
Tablescaping
Titanic had a number of 1st Class dining salons as they called them, all of them decorated somewhat differently. All used the same dinnerware and table settings, however.
What did the Edwardians do for entertainment? After all, one can only play so many games of *YAWN!* shuffleboard. They ate and they did so in elegance, even in steerage where the passengers weren't used to fancy anything.
A 1st Class dinner began in late afternoon and ran into late night. The last Titanic dinner consisted of 10 courses, many with multiple selections per course.
Even the table settings were a complex affair with 10 eating utensils.
If you're striving for authenticity don't even think disposable dinnerware.
I was fortunate in that I inherited 4 different sets of china and Waterford crystal glasses to stage my table. My sister inherited the sterling silver flatware and I borrowed that from her.
That's pretty much all become a thing of the past now so if you don't have china and Waterford, plain dinnerware will suffice.
They didn't have centerpieces on their tables but if you want to go that route, by all means do so. I opted for no centerpiece and simply placed a replica of an authentic Titanic last dinner menu at everyone's seat at the table.
If you can't fit all your guests at one table don't sweat it. Set up card tables in various areas. Not everyone has to be in the same room.
Food/Menu
BIG word of caution: Do NOT try to cook and serve a 10 course last Titanic dinner by yourself. Don't even try to do a 3 course Titanic dinner by yourself unless you plan to have no interaction with your guests or eat because you're in the kitchen all night.
I knew we were in over our heads just looking at the last dinner menu. We got our European chef friend to prepare our last dinner and we had a couple of his friends acting as waiters to serve everything. And they were running, lemme tell ya!
Either get friends to help you with the dinner or cater it. Trust me on this one!
We did all 10 courses, most with authentic Titanic recipes. You're going to want to do as the Edwardians did and allow hours to eat everything. We simply aren't equipped to eat like the Edwardians did. All I can say is those Edwardian gals on that ship must've all been wearing some very tightly laced corsets!
Rather than offering several different choices per course as they did on the Titanic, we limited a course to one food. Even then it was way too much to eat, even eating it slowly.
​
​
Cream of Barley - Titanic recipe
Poached Salmon with Mouselline sauce & cucumbers - the Titanic recipe
Filet Mignon Lili - the Titanic recipe
Vegetable Marrow Farci - the Titanic recipe
Creamed Peas & Carrots - the Titanic recipe
Punch Romaine - the Titanic recipe
Roast Squab on Cress - the Titanic recipe
Waldorf Pudding - the Titanic recipe
However, since dining was entertainment for the Titanic passengers. we added a bit of our own entertainment.
We had a Capt. Smith look-alike arrive a bit later than the other guests and surprise them by joining them for dinner at the 'Captain's table'.
He spent most of the dinner bragging how his ship was unsinkable and why.
Our guests thought it was funnier than hell, this look-alike showing up.
We did have some entertainment planned for after dinner but at the end of the party, we had 'Molly Brown' rush in, telling everyone the ship was sinking, they needed to get to the lifeboats! Follow her!
She lead them out onto the deck where hubby had hung a DIY corrugated rowboat (appropriately named the RMS Bruce Ismay) over the side of the deck. This boat wouldn't hold 1 person much less all of our guests...but Molly Brown is still hollering for everyone to pile in that lifeboat.
One of our ship officers comes out and fires off a starting pistol while yelling "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST! YOU MEN GET BACK! GET BACK!"
And in the midst of all of this commotion, Colanna and her quartet have stationed themselves on the deck, playing Nearer My God To Thee. In their life jackets.
Not Colanna's quartet - to hear song only
No, we weren't being disrespectful to the Titanic victims. Quite the opposite in fact. We gave our guests just the tiniest taste of what it must've been like for the Titanic passengers in those final moments before Titanic slipped beneath the surface. Remember, we were transporting them back in time to experience Titanic!
Activities
Back to our Marconi room. In each invitation we included information about this planned activity and advised guests if they wished to participate in it, to bring some dollar bills with them.
See, back in the day the Marconi had just recently been invented. The wealthy saw sending a Marconigram as a way of flaunting their wealth to their fellow passengers. They paid per word to send that Marconigram, in today's standards $4 per word. So the rich would casually drop in conversation "Horrible the long wait I had this morning to send my Marconigram to check stock prices!" Yes, they were snobs.
This is why Phillips and McBride had such a backlog of Marconigrams to send out the night of Titanic's sinking - causing Phillips to have a snit when a fellow Marconi operator at the closest rescue ship telegrammed Phillips - to which Phillips replied "Shut up! I'm busy here!"
The fellow Marconi operator shut down his Marconi for the night, so never received the Titanic's messages that she was sinking and was close enough to rescue Titanic's passengers. Just some Titanic trivia for you...
​
Participating guests would visit our Marconi room and dictate a Marconigram to my hubby, who would write it down on forms I'd printed up ahead of time.
Being fluent in Morse code, hubby would then tap out their message in Morse code so they could hear what it sounded like. Their message had to contain a short message about something no one knew about them. They paid their $1 per word for their Marconigram and this money went into a pot to be awarded to the winner of the game.
When each player had sent their Marconigram, hubby took the written Marconigrams and read them aloud to all of the players. They had to guess who had sent the Marconigram going by what the sender had said about what was unknown about themselves.
Our guests loved this game so much we ended up playing 3 rounds of it, the pots growing bigger each time. They were in it to win it!
​
HAVE A COSTUME CONTEST
Have guests vote on who has the best overall costume, who has the most authentic costume, etc. and award prizes to the winners.
HUNT FOR THE HEART OF THE OCEAN
The Heart of the Ocean necklace in the movie, Titanic was fictitious but that doesn't mean it couldn't be used in your activities.
Purchase a cheap replica and hide it somewhere in your party area. Whoever finds the necklace first wins the game.
TITANIC-OPOLY
​
For a smaller group of guests consider playing Titanic-opoly - a take off on the game of Monopoly.
​
At the end of your party, don't forget to inform your guests if the Titanic passenger they were playing survived the sinking or not!