Titanic Exhibit

WOW.

Finally dragged ourselves up to the city yesterday to see this awesome display.

More than just a collection of glass cases, the display is set up to simulate your boarding the great ship as a passenger. You are given your boarding pass which has a real person's name and the ship class they belonged to. Walking up a ramp from the creaking wooden docks you wander into the first class accommodation halls with rich carpet and crystal lights, past a resplendant replica of a first class stateroom, then into a darkened room lined with glass cases of objects normally found on that deck pulled from the ocean floor. Around a few corners you suddenly come into the brightly lit main staircase, yep, like the one in the movie, but in front of you, in real wood and glass.

Like I said Wow. That alone would be quite a thing to see. But there was so much more.

As you proceed through the "ship" you go on through the second class and then steerage, then to a room with a simulated iceberg and the actual "telegraph stand" (the machine with levers that were marked FULL/HALF etc. that communicated to the engine room what the engines should be running at). Yes, THE stand, the one stood in the bridge.

All along the way there are recovered artifacts, some small, some large, some rusted and broken, others seemingly untouched by time and the depths. In one room which contained a collection of personal objects of passengers there was a lifeboat outline projected onto the floor, giving you an impression of how small those must have seemed floating on the cold waters. Near the end was a wall segmented with lists of the living and the dead separated by class or crew. We checked our cards to see if "we" survived.

One of the four of us did. Mrs. Sid's was a woman in Third or Steerage class that survived.
Mine was the leader of the band, who although was assigned to second class on the card, was found on the steerage list with the dead.

One of four.

A very sobering moment.

In the last room stood a huge wall sized piece of the hull itself (30,000 pounds of steel), one inch thick window glass broken, ragged and torn, yet with the sheer size of the rivets and metalwork still conveying the proud lines of the world's most well known ocean liner. The portholes it bore once looked into an elegant stateroom, then upon the blackest night at the bottom of the ocean.


Some might object to such a display, might say that it should be left intact on the ocean floor for future generations. But the display pointed out that the Titanic is vanishing, rusting away. For whatever unstated reasons the decay it is suffering is speeding up. Dreams of lifting the ship in intact sections to the surface are gone, it has become too frail. They make a strong case for recovery of what they can to preserve it, so others may see what man can create but nature can still destroy. To serve the memory of those lost at sea and to tell their story.

If you have a chance, go see it, it's a humbling and amazing thing to see.

http://www.sftitanic.com/

 

I want to go see this so bad! Do you know how long it is going to be there?
I feel a connection to the story and the people after being in the musical and finding out that a possible great-grandfather may have gone down with the ship.

Rest in Peace John Edward Maguire, you shall not be forgotten.

 

We saw the same exhibit in August 2003 in Los Angeles -- it was amazing. Two of the three of us "lived" (we had two first-class passengers and a crewman, but it was the first-class man who died...not anyone we knew already). The ice wall was really cool (UGH what a pun, sorry) -- I held my hand against it as long as I could, and got my handprint in about 1". Glad you got to go, and ANYONE who can, should. I didn't think there was anything morbid about it; it made the disaster more real, if anything.

MCP

 

Will be there until mid Jan, let us know if you come down, we'd like to see it again.

 

Hey Master K, Titanic fieldtrip?

 

Would LOVE to!! Really been wanting to see it.

 

When this was in MN back in '99 (I think) they had *just* pulled that off of the ocean floor maybe like a month earlier (which was wierd because I had watched it on TV & I didn't know it was at the exhibit). But they didn't have anything like your tour - ours was just a headset saying whatever number you were standing in front of was. But it was still a really powerful exhibit. I was darn near crying upon just entering the building. And the simulated ice? I remember holding my hand there fur just a minute... very sobering.

No matter where this exhibit is - it is very much worth the drive and the admission fee to see it!

 

DOH!

Thought it had been extended, but it looks like the show closes January 7th.

Wellll.. since it is a traveling show, maybe it will go to Sacto or somewhere within driving distance.

Looks like we lucked out going when we did.

 

Aw pooh. And I'm going to be somewhat out of the area for New Year's.

I hope it does come to Sac. That would be nice.

 

I'm sure it will keep zooming around -- I mean, we saw it in 2003!!

MCP