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Titanic History Saturday, September 7, 2024 |
| 1965 - 1st class survivor Miss Helen Monypeny Newsom died in Princeton, New Jersey, USA at the age of 72.
1872 - 2nd class passenger Mr René Pernot was born. 1928 - 2nd class survivor Mrs Esther Ada Hart died at the age of 65. 1879 - 3rd class passenger Miss Mary Mangan was born to John Mangan and Bridget Bourke in Carrowkehine, County Mayo, Ireland. 1860 - Butcher and survivor Mr Christopher Mills was born in Longton, Staffordshire, England, UK. 1996 - The cast for James Cameron's movie "Titanic" rehearsed in Los Angeles, California, USA. |
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The Artifact Exhibition (Seattle)
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The Space Needle was beautiful; I've always thought so. The whole city was bathed in sunshine and about a month remained before I'd be going to the Titanic Artifact Exhibit in Seattle. As I drove over the crest of a nearby hill, the Needle emerged, newly crowned with an enormous red and white White Star Line flag. The sight was amazing and it brought a smile to my face that all of Seattle could see this symbol of the Titanic. I wanted to take a picture of it, though all I had with me was a 35mm camera with black and white film in it. Another day passed and it was still there, and then it was gone. I have yet to find out what happened but my assumption is that it was bad timing and the irony was probably too much for people. George W. Bush was coming into town, the major aircraft manufacturer Boeing announced it would be leaving the area, and this booming tech city was getting hit with the full throws of the dot-com bust. There could be no greater omen or parallel than could be found in Titanic's optimism and ultimate demise. I'd bought my tickets months in advance to assure I could go to the exhibit on April 15th at 2:20pm. It would be the 89-year anniversary of the sinking and since 2:20am wasn't available, 2:20pm seemed right. Everywhere were billboards, signs, and radio commercials beckoning people to visit. As we drove up I was fully excited to be going. Vertical banners flapped in the wind just outside the Seattle Center, at the foot of the Space Needle. The open eating and walking spaces were decorated with small White Star Line flags and circular life preservers. Seemingly randomly there were signs and archways declaring things like "Port of Queenstown" and "Port of Southampton."
We stepped through the doors into a great gaping black room. We passed a quote on the wall and entered the first main room. This was dedicated to the construction and exterior amenities of the ship. Beneath our feet were shifting and creaking decking boards. The room was closed in on all sides with blown up historical images, a television, and more quotes on the walls. In the center of the room was a coffin-length Plexiglas case with a scale model of Titanic inside. The accuracy was phenomenal; every tiny detail, every little window was in place. My minimal knowledge of the ship became all the more dwarfed when my friend asked about something on the model and I didn't know what it was. Once we'd circled the room, we walked out with a stream of people along more decking that was somewhat raised off the floor. It was mimicking the pier with crates and luggage along the sides and an arched and riveted white doorway after a few feet.
Through another plain doorway and suddenly I was in a dream state. Sheltered by the sparkling chandeliers adorning the clean white ceiling, we were all facing the Grand Staircase. This most reminded me of the end of the movie when Rose is reunited with Jack. It was like we were all awaiting her return, gathering together because we knew she would be arriving soon. Walking along the tiled floor, I snapped pictures, my formerly quiet camera seeming so loud now. I'd started to hear comments of "I didn't know we could take pictures." I responded that we weren't but that I wasn't using a flash. I hoped they understood why that was.
A plain doorway herded us down a white hallway with clean white pipes running along the ceiling. The lights on either side and the backup in the hall was eerily reminiscent of the confused crowds awakened in the night and instructed to get their lifebelts on. To our right was a third class room with two sets of bunk beds all made up with red blankets and luggage strewn on them. Between the beds, on the wall were a mirror and a foldout shelf.
The next hallway was blackened with the ceiling distant and ominous again, noises of machinery, shoveling coal, and gears playing from above our heads. Over the doorway at the end of the hallway was a watertight door, so it was as if we were walking through the boiler room and out through one of the watertight doors. Dappled red light shone across it and there was a sense of urgency to get out of this place. Who could forget the vivid picture created by the movie when a boiler room worker barely made it under one of those doors as it closed? An entire room dedicated to the sinking awaited us. Giant sheets of cloth covered in tiny lights were the night sky above us. Ghostly light on the walls spelled out quotes said about that fateful night; a documentary of computer animation of the sinking played on a monitor to our left. By the walls and in the center of the room were cases holding artifacts like binoculars, a thermometer (which broke from the sudden change in temperature), instruments from the bridge, and other poignant items. At the far wall was a wall of ice, taller than the people standing beside it and covered in the handprints of people who'd tried to melt it. A sign explained that the wall of ice was as cold as the water would have been that night and asked us how long we could leave our hands on it. A single person could not leave their hand on the ice and create a print, at least not in leaving their hand on the wall continuously. My friend and I tried leaving our hands on and with my poor circulation my hand started burning. A boy wearing headphones for the audio tour held his hand much longer than I could.
In front of the right wall was what was touted as "The Big Piece." Towering above us all was a sheet of that brittle steel from the hull of the ship. Windows and portholes ranged from opened and shattered to closed and intact. It was in horrible shape, even considering its rapid descent to the bottom of the Atlantic. In fact, in getting it to the surface it was dropped and had to be pulled up again. In front of the monstrous hull fragment stood a pedestal with a circle cut out of the top, which was low enough so that children could tip-toe and get their fingers in. Inside was a wavy, crumbling piece just like "The Big Piece" only cut into a tiny square. This was part of the "hands on" experience of the exhibit. You got the chance to touch an actual piece of Titanic. The line was growing and it seemed a little trite to me so we moved on. The crowds shuffled to one end of the hull piece and back around it so we could see the other side. The inside was all the more mangled under the rippling green and blue lights. People lingered there and I took pictures while there were no exhibit workers around. We walked through a warmly lit room with copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other local papers announcing the sinking on the walls. The remarkable things were what was going on having nothing to do with Titanic. Natural disasters, economic changes, and general news had taken precedence over the news of Titanic as the story became older and the new information dwindled. Life continued without Titanic, just like it has after every great tragedy. This put you more into the daily lives of people who weren't on the ship and made me question whether anyone would be so obsessed with it if it had just happened. The center of this smaller room had cases of paper money taken from Titanic, currency from all over the world and some in worse shape than others. The idea that any of this survived was astonishing. We were really entering the part of the exhibit that focused on the commonness of the passengers. A case held things like combs, toothbrushes, and other tiny articles people would have taken on the voyage.
The lists on the wall visually struck me. The classes were posted from left to right from first to third and then the crew. Within each class, the top group would be survivors and the bottom group would perish. The balance of survivors versus victims obviously tipped from most first class people surviving to very few of the third class surviving. It reminded me that I was a third class male on my ticket. We all gathered around these lists, just like people in Southampton and New York would have done to see if their loved one had survived the sinking. My friend, the crewmember, had survived… and so had I. Part of me believed that they only handed out names of people who survived so as to not upset people but we did hear other people saying that their person had died.
As I signed the book an exhibit worker saw my camera and walked up behind me and told me I shouldn't have been taking pictures. If no one but he had told me that it would have been quite the useless comment since I couldn't very well refrain from taking more pictures of anything else. But I had been told once so far, so I had my response ready. Wandering through the gift shop showed all the twisted junk people have tried to hock under the name Titanic. There was the candy Runts in a tube capped with a plastic Titanic, blue floppy plastic water wigglies having nothing to do with Titanic except that they had little icebergs in them and Titanic printed on them, and dingy life preservers with simulated damage to them. What they carried in the gift shop threatened to cheapen the effort to make it a respectful exhibit. We walked out into the afternoon sunshine, our dilated eyes taking time to adjust. Because we'd walked up ramps before, we were a story higher than the entrance and on an open courtyard. People in shorts and typical tourist gear sat drinking their soft drinks and eating popcorn. This was 2001 again and as we left I snapped a final picture of the outside of the exhibit. The Titanic Artifact Exhibit at the Seattle Center runs March 3rd, 2001 through September 3rd, 2001. For ticket and other information, please visit www.TitanicSeattle.com. Copal All images taken at Titanic Artifact Exhibit in Seattle. Photography by Copal, 2001 |
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fox studios
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artifact exhibit
(chicago)
mercado
(orlando)
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