CRUISE SHIP
SPECIAL INTEREST TALKS
by Carol Baxter
Carol Baxter, the history detective, is a Special Interest speaker telling true tales of drama, mystery and adventure (... and sometimes murder) on international cruise ships. Most sessions are gripping storytelling performances. Her topics include:
- Aviation mysteries and dramas
- Maritime mysteries and dramas
- WW2
- True historical crime
- General ocean-going subjects
Carol Baxter speaking on the Regent Seven Seas Explorer in 2024.
AVIATION TALKS
What really happened to Amelia Earhart?
Who could imagine that the disappearance of the world’s most famous aviatrix as she flew across the Pacific Ocean in 1937 would usher in one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time? Did she ditch into the sea? Was she spying for the US government? Was she captured by the Japanese? Let’s seek answers to this intriguing mystery.
The "GREATEST OVERWATER FLIGHT EVER"
Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew become the laughingstock of San Francisco in 1928 as they attempt the most dangerous flight of all: across the deadly Pacific Ocean to Australia.
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Mayday!
When a US pilot attempts to ferry a Cessna crop-duster from San Francisco to Sydney, his navigation system fails over the deadly Pacific Ocean. As darkness looms and his fuel tanks empty, can a nearby Air New Zealand DC-10 find him?
Click HERE to watch a video snippet from this talk (filmed late 2023).
The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller series
Why haven't you heard about Australia's first internationally-famous female aviator, Jessie Miller, who was a friend of Amelia Earhart and Charles Kingsford Smith? All is revealed in this three-part talk.
Carol's book about Jessie Miller, The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller, is being turned into a TV series called The Aviatrix.
The Feisty Mrs Miller (or Australia's Amelia Earhart)
Motivated by Charles Lindbergh's epic flight, bored Australian housewife Jessie Miller joins WW1 British aviator Bill Lancaster on a (hopefully) record-setting flight from England to Australia in 1927. But as they pass through dangerous countries (Mussolini's Italy, the Middle East) and over dangerous terrain, events soon spiral out of control.
Click HERE to watch a video snippet from this talk (filmed late 2023).
That Magnificent Gal in her Flying Machine
Australia’s first internationally famous aviatrix, Jessie Miller, travels to America in 1928 where she becomes a record-setting celebrity and a close friend of Amelia Earhart. But dark clouds are brewing on her horizon ... and the world's.
Click HERE to watch a video snippet from this talk (filmed late 2023).
Be Careful What You Wish For
As the Great Depression grips the glob, celebrity Australian aviatrix Jessie Miller and her partner Bill Lancaster need money. They invite a handsome ghostwriter into their Florida home to help write her autobiography. What's the worst that could happen?
Click HERE to watch a video snippet from this talk (filmed late 2023).
WORLD WAR 2 TALKS
Australia's Pearl Harbour
As America reels from the shock of Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and Britain from the Fall of Singapore ten weeks later, Japan turns its deadly gaze towards Australia. What are they plotting?
MARITIME TALKS
Shipwrecked
Imagine sending a fleet of eleven ships – six carrying cargoes of hardened criminals – across the world's oceans to establish convict colonies in Australia and Norfolk Island. What could possibly go wrong?
Daring Escape
Emboldened by Captain Bligh’s extraordinary Pacific voyage after the mutiny on the Bounty (1789), Mary Bryant, her babies and eight male convicts flee the horrors of NSW convict servitude in a stolen boat. Can they elude their British captors, survive the arduous voyage to Timor, and conceal the truth about their convict origins?
The Catalpa series
Little do most people realise that Ireland's centuries-long crusade to achieve independence from their British overlords was critically boosted by a bold plan set in motion by some Irish-Americans.
Catalpa Conspiracy
Irish-born Americans plot to help their homeland throw off the yoke of British oppression. Their plan to liberate Irish political prisoners – Fenians – from Australia’s last convict colony is both audacious and perilous. Could it possibly succeed?
Catalpa Confrontation
The American whaler Catalpa docks in Western Australia in 1876 on a secret mission to pluck Irish political prisoners – Fenians – from the grasp of their British captors. If they succeed, this extraordinary rendition would not only empower the Irish, it would tighten the screws of humiliation inflicted by the Americans on the British.
The Mary Celeste Ghost Ship
Who could have imagined that when the American ship Mary Celeste sailed from New York for Italy with a cargo of alcohol in 1872, it would become one of the world’s “greatest maritime mysteries”? After 150 years of theories, speculations and outrageous claims about this mysterious ghost ship, can we now determine what really happened to the ship and to everyone on board?
TRUE HISTORICAL CRIME TALKS
Murder that Launched the Electric Telegraph
A suspected murderer fleeing a strange death scene. A revolutionary new railway train used as his getaway vehicle. A line of “electric telegraph” wires strung between poles positioned beside these railway tracks. Who would triumph: the man or the world’s first commercial use of electricity?
From Carol's book The Peculiar Case of the Electric Constable.
Bushranger Captain Thunderbolt
Join outlaw Frederick Wordsworth Ward – aka Captain Thunderbolt aka the Gentleman Bushranger – on a rollicking robbing ride across New South Wales during the 1860s bushranging epidemic as he exposes the mostly British and Irish cops as bumbling incompetents.
From Carol's book Captain Thunderbolt and His Lady, which is being turned into a TV series called Thunderbolt and Bugg.
Australia's Largest Bank Robbery
Building a bank in a convict settlement? A settlement populated largely by thieves? Surely someone must have realised that maybe, just maybe, the temptation might be too hard to resist.
From Carol's book Breaking the Bank.
Black Widow
Australia nicknamed her “The Lucrezia Borgia of Botany Bay!” Some declared her to be “Worse than Jack the Ripper!” But was Louisa Collins guilty or innocent of the arsenic deaths of her two husbands … and perhaps others?
From Carol's book Black Widow. Watch a video snippet from her "Black Widow" cruise talk (filmed 2018).
GENERAL TALKS
It's About Time
"What’s the time? Have they changed the clocks again?" As we cross the world's oceans, let's explore the surprisingly strange subject of how humans shackled time and established the fixed time zones that plague us on our travels.
The Longitude Problem
Wrecked ships, drowned sailors, lost cargoes: disasters that wrought havoc because navigators couldn't determine their longitude at sea. How did the world solve the greatest technological challenge of its time?
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