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One Saturday in the long, hot summer of 1989, a young man named Jonathan Pang organised a small dinner for friends. They were celebrating a birthday, and planned to continue the evening in style, with a big party on board a Thames pleasure boat. The boat was the Marchioness, and at ten to two, early on Sunday morning, it was struck by another boat, the Bowbelle. It sank, almost immediately. Of the seven people around the table that night – only two would survive.

Jonathan Pang joins Sue MacGregor and a group of survivors and bereaved mothers to recall just what went wrong that night, and why it took almost twenty years to find out the truth. Magda Allani, who was on the boat with Jonathan, discusses the guilt and the trauma of surviving a disaster that killed so many of her closest friends. Margaret Lockwood Croft, who lost her son Shaun, talks about the endless campaigning, and how the search for truth was all that kept her going. Eileen Dallaglio, whose nineteen year old daughter Francesca lost her life that night, describes how she found a kind of release for her grief in cheering on her son Lawrence at rugby matches. And Judy Wellington, who lost her son Simon, remembers how she resolved to make a success of her life, to live it as a tribute to her son.

Produced by Kate Taylor
Series Producer: David Prest
The Reunion is a Whistledown Production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4