Titanic exhibition

[Skylace]

I have always loved the the Titanic and the history behind it. From it's conception to it's tragic end. Today my mom and I went to the Titanic Exhibition and had a wonderful time. Seeing the actual items that were present on the ship, from plates to clothing was breathtaking. I teared up a few times looking at some of the items and reading some of the eyewitness accounts. It was also a chilling (literally) moment to place my hand on a piece of fresh water iceberg and feel approximately how cold the water would have been.

I was given the boarding pass of one Miss Edwina Celia Troutt, second class. Originally from Bath, England but traveling back to America (where she had immigrated in 1907) to go and be with her sister, who was giving birth. I was traveling alone and survived. My mother was Mlle. Henriette Yrois of Paris, France. She was traveling second class with her married lover (father of two) filmaker, William H. Harbeck. They both died. Harbeck had been employed by White Star to film the maiden voyage. The film didn't make it either.

[faceless]

Sounds like a good trip - I'd quite like to see that stuff myself.

[Skylace]

Weird to see the face of the person who I "was" during the tour

[eefanincan]

A friend of mine's husband has some signed piece of memorabilia (a ticket or boarding pass I think) as he is quite into this as well. I believe the exhibit was here a number of years ago.... or at least parts of it.

I personally don't know all that much about it but it sounds quite an interesting way to experience the history. I could never gear myself up to watch the movie, but this sounds like something quite interesting.

[luke]

you should try the movie eefan, i thought it was going to be terrible, but its actually pretty good!

i saw a good program a while back with the guy who did titanic where they were diving down in their little submarine things to go into titanic and look around, really interesting

[faceless]

Titanic treasures to go on display at U.S. aquarium
22nd August 2008

The brightly lit room looks like any nondescript warehouse packed with boxes and dusty shelves. But inside this plain brick building is nearly £107 million ($200 million) worth of treasures from the world's most famous shipwreck. The 5,500-piece collection contains almost everything recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

About 200 pieces from the Titanic collection will be exhibited at the Georgia Aquarium in the U.S. starting today, the first time the show has been at an aquarium. When the fine china, brine-soaked shoes and water-stained sheet music are not on tour around the world, they have a permanent home in Atlanta, the headquarters of Premier Exhibitions, which has guardianship over the artifacts.

'It's like the Smithsonian - you could be here for weeks and not see everything,' said Leslie Cone, an assistant registrar with Premier, as she looked at the collection of delicate papers from the Titanic. 'There's just endless surprises and wonders in this collection.'

Officials with Premier are hoping the tactic will breathe new life into the 14-year-old show and help visitors better grasp the role the ocean has played in the story of the ill-fated ship. And aquarium officials hope the first-of-its-kind exhibition will bring more visitors to one of the world's largest fish tanks, where attendance numbers have been on a steady decline since it opened in 2005.

'Any time an attraction opens, attendance inevitably is going to slide from your opening year,' said aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci. 'We're trying to make sure people don't feel they've seen everything at the aquarium.'

The Titanic collection has helped unlock the mystery behind what was once the world's largest passenger ship, which eventually became the watery grave of 1,517 people. The ship has sat 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean since it sank on April 15, 1912. The collection includes everything from fine china and cookware to a 30,000-pound hunk of the ship's hull.

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Is this the exhibition you saw Sky?

[Skylace]

It's related to it but not the same thing. That is Titanic: Aquatic, what I saw was simply Titanic: Artifact Exhibition

[SpursFan1902]

We have a permanent Titanic exhibit in Orlando. I took my niece and nephew a couple of months ago. It is a great exhibit and these two sound good too. I would love to see them all.

[faceless]

US court aims to establish ownership for over $100m in Titanic artefacts
Determining present-day ownership of items recovered from wreckage has led to many lengthy court cases
Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk,
26 October 2009

The wreckage of the ship so famous it remains a metaphor nearly a century later is collapsing on itself two miles underwater. The ashes of the last survivor, a child of just nine weeks when the giant vessel went down, were scattered at sea last week after her death at 97. And the man who discovered the Titanic's resting place has described its treatment in the years since as a "freak show".

But still the legal battles go on over ownership of the remnants of the vast liner swallowed by the north Atlantic in 1912 with 1,522 lives. A Virginia court today began a hearing to decide the fate of thousands of artefacts recovered from the wreck of the Titanic estimated to have a monetary value of more than a $100m (£61m) but described by American officials seeking to protect the find as "historical treasure" as worth far money than a dollar figure.

Establishing present-day ownership has led to lengthy complex court cases because the original owners of the British-registered ship have long since gone. The ship belonged to the White Star line but when that company was sold to Cunard the Titanic was not part of the sale because it was already a wreck and considered unrecoverable.

After the wreck was discovered in 1985 by an oceanographer, Robert Ballard, various claimants emerged including insurance companies that paid out to the survivors and the relatives of the dead nearly a century ago.

After a series of court battles, an American company, RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), emerged as the owner of the salvage rights, allowing it to keep possession and put on touring display the 5,900 artefacts it has lifted from the ship during six dives. But the company does not own the ship nor the recovered items - from the ship's whistle and children's toys to a section of the hull - and has gone to court in pursuit of limited ownership as compensation for the huge salvage costs. Another US judge ruled that RMST did not own the salvaged items outright because a "free finders-keepers policy is but a short step from active piracy and pillaging".

Some shareholders have pressed for the company to be more aggressive in profiting from the find. But various US government agencies have waded into the case in an effort to prevent the collection being split up and sold to private collectors, and to establish a precedent for how such salvage treasure is handled in the future. An international agreement signed by Britain and the US designates the Titanic as an international memorial and seeks to protect it from being plundered or damaged by unauthorised dives.

RMST is owned by Premier Exhibitions, an Atlanta company that has a number of touring exhibitions from a Star Trek homage to "Bodies", an exhibit of preserved human cadavers. It says the Titanic exhibition has been viewed by 33 million people worldwide including at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

RMST has told the court that it wants to be declared the legal owner of the collection in order to recover some of the costs of salvage which have not been covered by revenues from the touring exhibition. The company values the artefacts at $111m. RMST were declared the owner, it would give it the right to sell the collection to a museum. Alternatively, the company is seeking a salvage reward of $225m.

The US state department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Washington are seeking to limit ownership rights. The judge in the case, Rebecca Beach Smith, a specialist in maritime law, has already said she believes the recovered artefacts should remain a single collection and accessible to the public. "I am concerned that the Titanic is not only a national treasure, but in its own way an international treasure, and it needs protection and it needs to be monitored," the judge has previously told lawyers in the case.

A US court has claimed jurisdiction over the fate of items salvaged from a British-registered ship in international waters on the grounds that part of the wreck is now on American soil and that its rulings under maritime law would be the same in an English or other foreign court.

RMST is considering a seventh dive next year. The last was in 2004. Shortly after discovering the wreck, Ballard told a US congressional hearing of his vision for its future. "Titanic is like a great pyramid which has been found and mankind is about to enter it for the first time since it was sealed. Has he come to plunder or appreciate? The people of the world clearly want the latter," he said.

Instead, Ballard has been angered by the treatment of the wreck, describing the repeated tourist dives, including of a New York couple who landed on the Titanic's bow in a submersible to be married, as having turned what should have been a dignified monument to the dead in to a "freak show at the county fair".

Ballard is among scientists who believe the salvage operations and tourist dives are contributing to the final collapse of the wreckage. His recent book, Return to Titanic, includes evidence of damage caused by submersibles hitting and landing on the ship. There is a gash to the bow. The mast and crows nest are badly decayed. The mast bell has been removed. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that the remaining structure is likely to collapse within the next 50 years.
Artefacts from the Titanic

The recovered artefacts offer a glimpse in to the class ridden, imperial-dominated world of 1912. They include coins that were legal tender throughout the Ottoman empire and dollar notes from some of the array of American banks that were permitted to print their own currency. First class plates in elegant cobalt blue and gold were hauled to the surface along with basic third class mugs with the name of the ship's owner stamped in red. Amongst the jewellery recovered is a gold and platinum filigree ring with over 75 gemstones.

There is evidence of the hopes and dreams the less privileged invested in the trip. A water-stained but still clearly legible official declaration of intent to become a US citizen belonging to a German passenger, Franz Pulbaum. Perhaps the most poignant items belonged to the 113 children on board, including marbles, one split in half. Almost half were lost, all but one from third class.

The first alarm over the iceberg that was to sink the Titanic was raised by the lookout, Frederick Fleet, ringing a bronze bell three times. It was brought up along with riveted heavy metal plates that made up part of the hull along D-Deck and the bed linen from third class cabins. Smart suits have been pulled up alongside a working men's boots. Stocks and shares were recovered, and so were London bus tickets. There is a clarinet and the sheet music for clarinet solos. A small porcelain pot that contained cherry tooth paste declares that it is "Patronised by the Queen".

[buddy55]

anyone going to florida may be interested

http://www.titanictheexperience.com/

[SpursFan1902]

This is the exhibition I saw, it is just now in it's own location instead of in the Orlando Museum. It looks like they have added quite of bit - folks in costumes and such. It really is an impressive collection and it looks like I may have to make the trek again to see it's new digs.