A WEST BAY couple celebrated a 60th birthday with a cruise on board a ship retracing the voyage of the Titanic.

Mike and Margaret Thompson, of West Walk, planned the cruise and a trip to New York to celebrate Margaret’s 60th birthday.

They booked their passage on the MV Balmoral and took part in a never to be forgotten experience that saw descendants of victims and survivors of the Titanic disaster give presentations.

Mike and Margaret, who works at the Bridport Golf Club, ate from menus replicating those served to the first class passengers and the ship’s orchestra played the music that was playing as the Titanic sank.

And at the same hour, 100 years on, a poignant service and wreaths were laid in the sea at the same spot the vessel slipped beneath the waves. At Halifax in Nova Scotia, on the way to New York, another service was held commemorating the place where many of the more than 1,500 victims were buried.

“It was really interesting – one man gave a talk dressed as his grandfather who was a steward in first class.

“And the service at sea was really quite eerie – and it just did not seem that cold, so it was hard to imagine icebergs in the sea.

“It is strange how the Titanic story still resonates when there have been many worse disasters. I think it is the romance, the class thing perhaps, but we will certainly never forget it.”

And the Thompsons could not believe their eyes when, halfway across the Atlantic they spotted a picture on the MV Balmoral’s bulkhead – of the East Beach and the cliffs at West Bay.

“Although there was no signature on the painting, we were told that the owner of the cruise line Fred Olsen always selects the painting for his ships so he may have had a connection with West Bay,” said Mike, recently retired from Westland.