I Touched a Piece of History

This past Sunday, I had the pleasure of going to see the Titanic Artifacts exhibit at the Atlanta Civic Center. The Titanic has always fascinated me - even before the blockbuster movie. I remember as a child being utterly spell-bound by a picture in an encyclopedia of an iceberg and the ship - the story was so sad.

When you get to the exhibit, you are a given a boarding pass of a real Titanic passenger - at the end, you find out if your person survived or perished. I had Mrs. Edward Candee, an author and a first class passenger. Mr. Q had Mr. Thomas Everett, a British immigrant traveling third class.

When you enter the exhibit, it is very bright in the room, and old-fashioned music is playing. As you proceed through the exhibit, the rooms get darker and darker - eventually you end up in a room light only by "starlight." The sounds get eerie, too - as you move through you hear the thumping of huge engines and the creaking and groaning of a ship.

The artifacts were wide-ranging: glassware and china, leather goods, money, even perfume that still had a smell! The microbes and conditions at the bottom of the ocean destroy many things, but strangley enough, leather is minimally effected - there were wooden and paper objects that were protected and preserved.

Finally, you reach the end and find out what happened to your person. Mrs. Candee, a women traveling first class survived, as I suspected. Although there were not enough lifeboats, women and children, particularly those in 1st class, survived, because of the "women and children" first tradition. Mr. Everett, alas, was not as fortunate - 3rd class men and the crew were the bulk of the casualities.

For more information on the exhibit, click here.

For more on the Titanic, click here.