Mystery Factory

There was an article in the paper this week about Lillian Asplund, the last Titanic survivor. She died at the age of 99 having outlived 710 other survivors from the sinking ship.

Many strange stories surround that notorious ‘night to remember’. One such story comes from Winnipeg, Manitoba – about as far away from a coastline as you can get. The Reverend Charles Morgan, minister of the Rosedale Methodist Church was taking a cat nap in his study the evening of April 14th, 1912, when he fell into a trace like sleep in which he heard the crushing sounds of water and cries for help. Above the noise he heard strains of an old, seldom sung hymn. He asked the congregation to sing that hymn in his church the next morning. The opening lines were: “Hearing Father, while we pray to Thee, / For those in peril on the sea.” It was one day later that the Winnipeggers discovered that the Titanic had hit an iceberg on the evening of April 14th and the ship’s chaplan was giving an evening service at the time. After they had hit the iceberg, the ship’s chaplan lead his congregant passengers in the singing of “Hearing Father, while we pray to Thee, / for those in peril on the sea.”