The Titanic Exhibit

For the last several weeks there has been an exhibit at the Rochester Museum an Science Center featuring artifact recovered from RMS Titanic. I have been aching to go and today I finally got my chance. My friend Liz and I drove up to Rochester this morning and bought our tickets.

The tickets they give you are actually duplicates of Titanic Boarding Passes on the front and on the back is a name and information on one of the actual passengers from the doomed voyage. I thought that made a lovely souvenir (which is a good thing because there was very, VERY little in the gift shop and I would love to have gotten something else but....a $10 thimble. Really??)
Of course there were all the photos you've seen a million times of the ship and the crew and the different features such as the incredibly beautiful grand stairway. As well as film of the building of the ship and the recovering of the artifacts, but there was also featured room recreations...

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In other places (Chicago for example) there seems to have been even more room recreations. I saw photos of one of the restaurants on board as well as the deck with the captain at the helm, but at this particular exhibit they had a first class cabin and a third class cabin. Oh! I could live in a room like that first class cabin! It was so beautiful and done just in the elegant, regal style I love, too! It's a shame one can't find rooms like that anymore outside of a museum!

Another "cool" feature was a mock iceberg. You were told that the iceberg was not quite as cold as the waters the Titanic went down in and challenged to leave your hand on it for as long as you could. I didn't make it one full minute! Many of the people who made it off the ship and into the water did not drowned, but died of hypothermia after being exposed to the frigid Atlantic waters!There were displays of artifacts found on the ocean floor: Dishes that were stacked neatly in the sand. Bottles of perfume that still hold their scents, letters, money, toys, clothes, shoes, jewelry anything and everything you could imagine. It was really quite amazing to see these things and realize where they had been and what they had been silent witness to!

Along the walls there were photos and biographies of many who had been on board that night. Stories of cowardice and stories of valor. Some familiar stories (Molly Brown for example) and others unknown to me before today (There was a Haitian man and his French Wife and their 2 little girls. They had switched to the Titanic at the last moment because the ship they had planned to cruise on would not allow the children in the dining room to share meals with the parents. The whole family perished.)

It was a very moving experience. If you have the opportunity go see it for yourself. And let me know what you think...