More exhibitions of this calibre please!

A FEW days ago I went to the Potteries Museum to see the Titanic exhibition, put on to commemorate the disaster of 110 years ago this month.

I had not visited the Museum for several years and was surprised to see how much it had changed.

Real imagination had gone into the arrangements of the ceramics and their demonstration of how the past flows into and moulds the present.

The exhibition itself looked like an expression of pride, selfconfidence and the acquisitive urge. In the words of a voice-over ‘The 20th Century swept in on a tide of progress.’

The sheer size of the ship, the biggest ever built at that time, enabled the White Star Line to cater for a wide variety of passengers. At the top end of the scale the passengers lived like princes, dinner was brought in to their luxurious dining quarters to the strains of ‘Roast Beef of England’ played by a band.

Special gowns – one was on display – were worn to breakfast.

At the steerage end of the scale conditions were much more Spartan. The social structure reflected the one onshore. It was a whole layered society on the water. No wonder there have been films on it.

These ships – for the Titanic had several sisters – marked a leap to modern technology and yet is witness to change. The Titanic used 600 tons of coal a day. It had an extra fourth funnel which it did not need but looked good.

‘The Shipbuilder’ described the mighty boat as ‘practically unsinkable.’ It and its sisters were so big that Harland and Wolff had to adapt Belfast Shipyard to construct them – rather like oligarchs building yachts so big that it has been difficult to get them out to sea.

Yet nothing is safe, particularly anything vulnerable to human error, and it was a succession of human errors that caused the fatal crash and an optimistic belief that they would not be needed that made the owners economise on lifeboats. Lessons were learnt from this.

The exhibition put over well the poignancy of the fate of the passengers and crew, who never imagined their voyage could come to such an end.

Sadly, the social differences had life-and-death consequences; proportionately more steerage passengers died than first class ones.

The contrast between the pictures of the ship blazing with light and the model of the rusty wreck at the bottom of the sea was a dramatic reminder of what can go wrong.

Can we hope for similar exhibitions in future?

Margaret Brown