Travelling exhibition tells fateful story of the Titanic through 120 artifacts
In a travelling exhibition of artifacts from the Titanic, one of most haunting has to be a collection of white serving dishes.
In a display case, there are 20 standing on edge in sand. On the Titanic, they would have been used to serve food such as potato au gratin to first-class passengers.
On a ship that was considered “virtually unsinkable” for its many technical accomplishments, which included 16 watertight compartments, the dishes were another much more prosaic innovation. They were a new kind of stoneware that allowed meals to be taken directly from the oven and served piping hot on the plate. On the Titanic’s maiden voyage, they were being used for the first time.
Behind the display case is a photograph of the dozens and dozens of serving plates as they were found neatly stacked on edge on the sandy ocean floor — an amazing four kilometres beneath the surface.
How could so many dishes survive intact after the ship collided with an iceberg on April 14, 1912, broke apart and sank, killing 1,523 people?
By being protected in a wooden cabinet, according to Alexandra Klingelhofer, exhibition curator.
Over time, the wood rotted away, and the dishes settled like someone had gently placed them at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.
The dishes are among the 120 objects from the Titanic in an international travelling exhibition called Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. The exhibition opens Saturday at Lipont Place in Richmond.
The exhibition is produced by Premier Exhibitions, an Atlantabased company headquartered in Vancouver.
Klingelhofer, vice-president of collections for Premier, said the exhibition takes people on a journey from the decision to build the ship, to its launch in Belfast Harbour, through to life on board, the collision with the iceberg, the artifacts found on the ocean floor, and a memorial wall that names all those who died and survived.
Klingelhofer said there are several reasons why the Titanic and its story continues to resonate with people more than a century after it sank.
“It was one of the first horrific accidents that had people from so many countries all over the world on board the ship who could identify with it,” she said. “Second of all, I believe it is because of cinema.”
On board Titanic was Dorothy Gibson, a silent film actor. A month after the sinking, she appeared in the film Saved From The Titanic wearing the dress she’d worn on the fateful night.
What followed in the 20th century were more films such as A Night to Remember in 1958, and, most recently, James Cameron’s Titanic in 1997.
All the artifacts are owned by Premier Exhibitions. It is the only organization that is legally allowed to recover artifacts from the shipwreck and debris field, she said.
The executive chairman, president, and CEO of Premier is Daopin Bao, a graduate in film and video from Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
When Klingelhofer started with the company 10 years ago, she thought the story about the Titanic was a small one.
“I have found that is indeed not true,” she said.
“I’ve become a great believer. I truly think that each of the artifacts has something to say. We just have to have the means to tease it out of them.”
The exhibition includes a diverse group of objects from the Titanic.
There is a stained and slightly ragged cotton striped work shirt laid out flat in a display case that was once worn by William Henry Allen, a passenger in third class.
A silk tie owned by Franz Pulbaum no longer shines like it probably once did. No one is identified as the owner of a delicate 18-karat gold barrette, but it’s easy to imagine it once holding a woman’s hair in place.
The exhibition has one exhibit you can touch. Touch the Iceberg is an iceberg-shaped slab of ice that brings home how cold the water was the night the Titanic sank. The ocean was -2.2 C — even colder than the slab of ice — because salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water.
As the didactic panel explains, most of the people who plunged into the ocean did not die from drowning. They died of hypothermia.
Visitors to the exhibition receive a replica boarding pass that welcomes them aboard the White Star Line’s RMS Titanic.
Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition has toured around the world to cities that include Paris, Las Vegas, Dublin, Cape Town and Melbourne.
Lipont Place is in a former car dealership west of the Aberdeen stop on the Canada Line.
The exhibition is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets range from $13.95 for students to $17.95 for adults. Details at titanicvancouver.com