Wreck of Marco Polo relived in virtual reality video

Anyone attending the virtual reality event at UPEI will be travelling back in time to July 1883 when the Marco Polo crashed off the shore in Cavendish, P.E.I.

The wreck of the fastest ship in the world was witnessed by a then eight-year-old Lucy Maud Montgomery. A few years later at the age of 15, Montgomery's school teacher encouraged her to write about it and she wrote an essay detailing what she saw.

"So what we've done is taken the essay she wrote — a prize winning essay for the Montreal Witness that was published when she was 16 — and we've actually used that as the script," said Elizabeth Epperly, the founder of the L.M. Montgomery Institute.

'You are there'

Epperly said Montgomery describes things in such detail in her writing that a reader can picture it.

"But now with virtual reality when you put on the headset and goggles …you are there on July 25th,1883, when that huge ship — 184-feet long — was hurtling towards the land because of the storm and the captain knew the only way to save the crew and the cargo was to ground the ship."

This and more is what anyone who puts on the goggles will see Epperly added.

"You are surrounded by the sounds and the sights of that time."

Image inspired

The virtual reality event was created by Alan Edwards of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design who Epperly said took the text, created the images and used a teenager's female voice to narrate it as Montgomery may have.

"Her images are inspired by her own magnificent eye for seeing the detail and knowing just what to pick out."

The virtual reality runs from July 27 to July 30 at the Robertson Library at UPEI.

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