THE WIDOW of a former Cunard White Star line chief engineer is set to make an emotional farewell to her husband next week when she scatters the ashes of her husband over the site where Titanic sank in the north Atlantic 90 years ago.

Dennie Farmer, 71, from Lymington, will be joining the QE2 along with her daughter, Sue Donaghy, of Titchfield Common, for the service, along with members of the Titanic Society.

Willie Farmer, who was aged 85 when he died last year, also served on board the Carpathia - the Cunard vessel which picked up survivors from the Titanic disaster 24 years before Mr Farmer joined the company.

Mrs Farmer will be taking the emotional cruise with her daughter to say a final farewell to her husband at his own request.

She said: "He wanted it because his father was a White Star engineer himself, who, at the time of the sinking, was on another ship. In Willie's early years with the company, he knew so many people who knew of engineers and mechanics who had gone down on the Titanic."

Willie, who lived with Dennie at Curzon Place in Lymington, served as an engineering officer with the company for 43 years and was chief engineer on both the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2.

Between 1936 and the outbreak of the Second World War, Willie served aboard various Cunard White Star liners including the Carpathia.

His final years with the company were with the QE2 at the time when she was the most technologically advanced passenger ship in the world.

- Originally published March 2002.