1. New York

Weeks after her fiancé, a musician who drowned on the Titanic dies, Emma Heyer is still inconsolable.

She reads the reports from the survivors endlessly. Each night she goes into fitful sleep, imagining the dead man’s final moments.

It’s a doubly tragic death because he only joined the ship at the last moment, substituting for another band member who fell ill.

It seems that he died heroically still playing with the other members of the ship’s band. But a disparity - which at first seems minor - is emerging about what they were playing as the ship sank.

Some who were on board are adamant it was the hymn Nearer My God To Thee. Others are equally insistent that it was a waltz tune, Song of Autumn.

It seems a simple matter to resolve. She takes the money she’s been saving for the wedding and travels to New York and the headquarters of the White Star line.

The officials have nothing to tell her and, although sympathetic to her loss, seem somewhat over anxious to get rid of her. Just what exactly are they hiding? It’s then that she meets Danny Gunther, a newspaper man hungry for a story.

Written in five parts by Ron Hutchinson.

EMMA ………Jasmine Hyde
DANNY ..…. Nathan Osgood
SWANSON …. Colin Stinton
HAVERMAYER …. Matt Rippy
DOCTOR ....Patrick Bailey

Director: Eoin O'Callaghan

A Big Fish Radio production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in April 2019.