"Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition"

Left: A silly mortal stands on a recreation of the Titanic's Grand Staircase, at "Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition", currently at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas.

We are all passengers on the Titanic - Jack Foster, Irish philosopher

"Titanic - The Artifacts Exhibition" has been at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas since June 1st, and was joined more-recently by one of the two (independently-managed) travelling "Bodies" exhibitions. The "Titanic" and "Bodies" exhibitions are side-by-side at the Tropicana.

The ethical circumstances of the "Bodies" exhibition are somewhat murky - did the people whose pieces and parts are on display actually give their permission for this strange afterlife? In any event, the "Titanic" display sounded more interesting, and less-compromised, so I went to see it.

At the exhibition wall, a banner was painted announcing the paired exhibitions. The banner read:

Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies * Titanic * Bodies *

I found the banner annoying. I thought, "it was 1,573 bodies, or so, OK? Give it a rest already!"

At the beginning of the walk through, they hand you a White Star Line boarding pass for a real person on the Titanic. I drew Mr. David John Barton, age 22, who was travelling to Rochester, NY, to take a job with Kodak. He had twice-failed a physical exam for third-class passengers, was left behind as his friends sailed forth on other ships, but finally was deemed healthy enough for travel.

The exhibition featured great photographs, plus some film clips, showing the process of hand-riveting steel plates (an older process used in difficult-to-reach places) and the newer, hydraulic riveting process.

The heart of the exhibition was all the various artifacts of daily-life recovered from the depths. Some artifacts are good-as-new, but depending on the exact manufacturing processes involved, some artifacts have suffered salt-water damage over the decades. Well-made artifacts jostle with indifferently-made ones to catch your eye.

There were strange looking items, such as the Titanic's whistles, as well as "Kilroy's Sounding Indicator," which gonged every few minutes, and flashed a number, to signal that one of the coal furnaces in a boiler room needed coal. The Titanic had a first-class gymnasium, featuring dumbbells, a Turkish bath, a squash court that could be rented for $1 per half hour, plus an "electric camel." Mockups of a third-class cabin and a first-class stateroom were presented, as well as a frigid, ultra-air-conditioned first-class promenade deck. A twisted porthole and a decorative ironwork from the Verandah Window Cafe were also shown.

Dining and personal items include: jars, dishes, a chef's cap, a waiter's notepad, tiles, cooking pots, shaving gear, a medicine dropper with a rubber bulb, an eyedropper, a toothpaste jar, a shoe brush, and face mirrors made with faux-ivory plastic backing and handle (plastics were just being invented).

One big surprise is how much paper they recovered intact from the depths. In 1912, the federal government still had not taken full control of the authority to issue money (that was in 1914, I believe), so there were a variety of dollar bills issued by obscure national banks all across the U.S., featuring Indian chieftains, wildlife, and all sorts of people, including the late President William McKinley. Many European banks looked upon this colorful array of paper money with suspicion, so most Americans travelling internationally at the time carried British pounds instead.

The fuel use statistics confounded me: I don't even know if they are correct. One pound of coal consumed per foot of travel, or 60 pounds every 1.5 seconds. The Titanic carried 6,000 tons of coal!

Towards the end of the maze-like exhibition, they played a soundtrack featuring what sounded like New-Age whalesong, which conjured up emotions of aquatic dread. They have a large scale model of what the forward portion of the Titanic looks like today on the ocean bottom. The Titanic is rusting away rather quickly: in 40 to 90 years, the remaining structure will utterly collapse.

The last room features personal items that have been tracked directly to specific people: Adolphe Saalfeld's perfume vials, Howard Irwin's business cards, Marion Meanwell's valise, and items belonging to George Rosenshine and Franz Pulbaum. I saw a woman quietly weeping as she looked at the surprisingly well-preserved black leather shoes belonging to Edgar Samuel Andrew, an Argentine-born English teenager.

Andrew's story was a real surprise. He had been summoned from England by his family to attend his brother's wedding in the United States, but like many others, he had been bumped from his first-choice of trans-Atlantic ship by a coal miner's strike, and he was forced to depart sooner than he wished. Andrew was very annoyed:

Eighty-nine years after the sinking of the TITANIC, a conservation team and researchers from RMS Titanic, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SOST - news; the company owning the salvage rights to the famous ship) discovered that a suitcase brought up from the wreck site this past summer contained the personal belongings of a seventeen- year-old man named Edgar Samuel Andrew. Mr. Andrew, a citizen of Argentina, boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England, not far from where he was attending school.

Ironically, an exhibit of Titanic artifacts opened in Argentina in March 2001, and researchers were able to locate the family members of Edgar Samuel Andrew. Further investigation revealed a remarkable letter sent by Andrew to his friend in Argentina, Josey Cowan, just two days before he was to board the TITANIC.

Edgar had purchased a ticket to board the Steamship OCEANIC, but due to a coal strike, he was forced to change his ticket and go aboard the TITANIC. He wrote:

"You figure, Josey, I had to leave on the 17th this (month) aboard the ''Oceanic", but due to the coal strike that steamer cannot depart, so I have to go one week earlier on board the ''Titanic". It really seems unbelievable that I have to leave a few days before your arrival, but there's no help for it, I've got to go''.

"You figure, Josey, I am boarding the greatest steamship in the world, but I don't really feel proud of it at all, right now I wish the 'Titanic' were lying at the bottom of the ocean''.

The Titanic Exhibition captures a moment flash-frozen in time - a different, vanished world, just out of living memory, but still intimately connected with every part of our own world.

And Mr. David Barton? Like so many third-class passengers, he did not survive.