Dinner on the Olympia (sister to the Titanic)

My sister is a history buff and former museum curator. She is facinated by the story of the Titanic and recently took us all on a cruise on the Olympia, sister ship to the Titanic. A month and a half ago 8 friends of Jennifer received invitations to dinner on the Olympia. In the weeks following we recieved other mailings with our identities, an authentic recipe or food to bring, our boarding passes and other historical info about lives and times of the passengers aboard the Olympia and Titanic. The guests at this cruise were all female and, since wine was to be served at each course, staterooms would be provided....cool.....a grown-up slumber party!!

We were instructed to dress formally and to dress up our outfits to reflect the period if possible. We took this to heart and embellished liberally:



As the cruise got underway, we received telegrams and gifts from our character's husband or companion:


It appears we were very pampered and appreciated women!



The table was beautiful....Jennifer collects dishes. She researched the menu and used one from the Titanic. The original was 11 courses. Jennifer edited it to seven.


At each place was an envelope containing a short script for each character to read...it told something about each woman's life. We were suprised to learn that there were several divorced and/or remarried women. Some of the women had careers in various fields and were more independent than we expected. My character was a Renee Harris... who produced plays.


Those Edwardians really knew how to eat. Everything was delicious. We each contributed something to the meal. Jennifer and Kevin cooked all the main dishes. Kevin stayed in the kitchen and manned the stove so Jennifer could mingle more. He's such a sport.



After dinner we retired to our rooms while Jennifer hid items for an "artifact hunt." There were papers with odd tidbits of information about our identies or the ship hidden around the house. The guest who found the most won a beautiful pair of earrings.


Another fun activity was making portraits. We each selected a pose from a book of John Singer Sargent's paintings. Then we took turns having our portrait made in our selected pose... we each received a sepia toned framed portrait as a favor. Here is one pose that we did of Jennifer, Holly and I:


And here is the whole group together:

That's me in the rocker with the bottle. Hmmmm. We finished off the evening by changing into our jammies and having a good old slumber party.

I know this party took a huge effort of time, energy and resources for Jennifer. But what an unusual evening! She carefully selected people she knew would be interested in the history and enjoy the dress-up and acting involved. We learned, ate, and laughed all evening. Thank you Jennifer!