A Titanic night, and memorabilia, to remember
Part of an occasional series showcasing interesting pieces in area museums or highlighting the stories behind them. This week we’re at The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News.
The Titanic launched 110 years ago this month, but it was immortalized for what happened 11 months later.
On April 15, 1912, the touted “unsinkable” ship sank after striking an iceberg during its maiden voyage from England to New York. More than 1,500 people died. Collecting the floating bodies took weeks.
The Mariners’ Museum and Park has several items from the ship on view
through its online catalog. It also has the model of a lifeboat, complete with survivors, that was used in the 1958 film “A Night to Remember.”
Among the artifacts is a Chanel No. 5 perfume bottle and a section of a drawing table believed to have come from a first-class stateroom. The table was collected by crew members on the Mackay-Bennett, one of the ships dispatched to recover the dead. Another is a life preserver made of linen and cork block. It is believed to have come from one of the victims. It was donated to the museum by the family of Edwin Clay McLellan, an undertaker in Nova Scotia who prepared the bodies for burial.
An off-white silk scarf in the catalog supposedly belonged to Madeleine Astor, the young wife of financier John Jacob Astor IV. Astor, the man behind New York’s posh Waldorf-Astoria hotel, who died in the sinking. Madeleine Astor escaped in one of the lifeboats and reportedly gave the scarf to another survivor, Leah Aks, to protect her 10-month-old son, Frank, from the cold.
The Aks family was on their way to Norfolk to join Leah’s husband, who had settled here months before. Frank Aks died in 1991 and The Mariners’ bought artifacts from the family in the late 1990s.
The Mariners’ Museum’s galleries will reopen May 28. Its park and Noland Trail are open. The online collection may be viewed at marinersmuseum.org.