Everyone knows the story of the RMS Titanic, the allegedly unsinkable ship that hit an iceberg on the way from England to New York and sunk to the bottom of the ocean in April 1912.
More than 1,500 people died, it was one of the first worldwide news stories ever, and the sinking resulted in big safety improvements on ships, including the requirement that enough lifeboats be on board to carry all passengers to safety.
A joint American and French expedition found the wreck in 1985, and since then divers have been salvaging artifacts from the ship.
It’s a challenge to tell such a familiar story in a fresh way, and a new exhibition opening this week at the Portland Science Center aims to do that by making it personal.
So the first thing that happens when you enter the new Titanic exhibition is you’re given a boarding pass with the name and details of a Titanic Passenger. Nora Flaherty became Leonard Mark Hickman, a laborer from London traveling second class to Manitoba, and filed this first-person account of the journey.
“So as you make your way through, you may learn a little more about that passenger, but at the end of the exhibition, as well, there’s a list of all 2,200 names that were aboard the Titanic, divided into classes, and you might be curious to see if your passenger was lost or saved at the end of that exhibition,” says Mark Lach, the exhibit’s designer.
As Lach walks me through, he tells me that what makes an exhibition special is being close to real pieces of history, like a simple leather bag that was found, along with most of the items in the exhibition, in the Titanic’s five-mile debris field.
“So imagine suitcases and steamer trunks and bags being packed onto the Titanic, with everyone being very excited about the voyage, very energized about being on the ship that everybody was talking about, being on the ship that was being called practically unsinkable,” he says.
What’s striking about these artifacts is how well preserved they are — they don’t look like they sat at the bottom of the ocean for almost 100 years, and that makes it easier to believe that they belonged to real people. Even paper money and calling cards look almost untouched.
“Turns out anything found in leather, whether it was a leather bag or a suitcase, the chemicals used to tan leather actually repel the micro-organisms that otherwise would eat away at things like paper, anything organic, at the bottom of the ocean,” Lach says. “We drop something in our sink at home, paper, and it’s gone, right?”
In some cases, researchers have figured out who the owners of the artifacts were and told their stories in the exhibition. Hickman’s story — my story — isn’t told, but first-class passenger Adolphe Saalfeld’s is. He was a perfume maker from Manchester, England, and he survived the wreck.
Lach says they researched Saalfeld after unrolling his leather carrying case.
“Then all of these glass vials, all intact, none of them broken, very much lined up in rows, and then we leaned over to look at the tiny paper labels, and the fragrances altogether started to fill the room,” he says.
Like the paper, the scents had survived in the glass vials.
The exhibition also aims to give people a personal experience with an actual iceberg, which I’m encouraged to rest my hand on, and that, Lach says, is actually warmer than one made of saltwater would have been. The iceberg is kind of like the frost chunks that form in an older freezer, and like those chunks it will grow and change as the exhibition goes on.
Lach says bringing this exhibition to the docks of Portland, right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, also gives it a sense of immediacy. And there’s something else, too.
“And this did not occur to me until very recently, but we’re probably closer to the Titanic wreck site with these artifacts than they’ve ever been, because of the location of Portland,” he says.
And my passenger, Hickman?
“Oh, one of 168 passengers that were lost in 2nd class, so that’s it,” Lach says.
“Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” begins tomorrow at the Portland Science Center.
