The Kennebec Historical Society’s May public presentation “Mainers on the Titanic” by author Mac Smith will begin at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, at Christ Episcopal Church, 2 Dresden Ave., Gardiner.

When the passenger ship RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, in the frigid North Atlantic, its passengers included several who had ties to Maine. Smith tells their stories in his 2014 book “Mainers on the Titanic,” according to a news release from the historical society.

Many of the Maine-related Titanic victims were wealthy summer visitors to Mount Desert Island, but other residents of the state were aboard as well. Smith’s book includes descriptions of them and of sinking-related events in the state at that time.

The book recalls Mainers’ agonizing day-to-day wait for news of what happened to their loved ones aboard the ship and tells the stories of Maine passengers from their boarding to the sinking, their rescue, and their arrival back in the country; and, for those among the more than 1,500 who died, the retrieval of their bodies and transportation of them to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Smith, a Navy veteran of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and former news reporter for the Bar Harbor Times, lives in Stockton Springs, in the village of Sandy Point, where he is restoring the family homestead. This is his first book.

This KHS presentation is free, although donations will be accepted. The lecture will be followed by light refreshments.

For more information, call the society at 622-7718.