Ed Bristow shares an unexpected trace of the Titanic in an unlikely collection.
I was five years old when the wreck of the Titanic was found in 1985; it had been sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic for 73 years by that point. I was having difficulty learning to read at Primary School a couple of years later, so my Mum decided to buy me a book written about the discovery by Dr Robert Ballard, who had headed up the Franco-American team that discovered the ship. I was fascinated and read it from cover to cover, the first time I had ever managed the feat, and a vague interest has stayed with me ever since.
A benefit concert
Sometimes documents crop up in the most unexpected places, and a good example of this is within the Crichel Estate archive. The collection includes a variety of bound volumes that were used as combination visitors’ books, scrap books and sketch books, holding a wealth of famous individuals’ signatures as well as cuttings and drawings. One of the books (reference D-CRI/H/5/1/1) holds a programme for a benefit concert performed in May 1912 to aid survivors of the Titanic. It was the third time I glanced at it that I noticed the printing in the top of the front page was much better quality embossed print. Then I found that the paper has a White Star Line watermark; the programme was overprinted onto notepaper actually made for the Titanic.
