Vintage View: Our fascination with the famous wreck of the Titanic

Kya deLongchamps explores our fascination with the famous wreck of all time in the number of museums dedicated to the RMS Titanic.

Considering its slender log — no ship in history has travelled further. There are museums and exhibition galleries dedicated to the RMSTitanic all over the world from the shipbuilding quarter of Belfast to the flashing canyons of Las Vegas. The sinking remains the deadliest modern maritime disaster in a time of peace.

In terms of historical detail and contextualising life in Edwardian Belfast and its renowned shipyards, the Titanic Experience, opened in 2012 simply cannot be beaten. Let’s face it, it may have been a long time coming, but for the Titanic story — its location, location, right there on thehallowed dock where the ship was born.

The cool edifice of the museum designed by the late Eric Kuhn, is a legacy in itself. With its signature iceberg architecture and six floors of multi-media, Titanic Belfastretells the story of the White Star liner from its conception to its sinking on its maiden transatlantic voyage on April 15, 1912.

The presence of SS Nomadic, the last of the White Star liners in the Hamilton dry dock is a moving inclusion, as this relatively modest vessel was a tender to the greater Titanic, and is the last surviving White Star line ship in the World. The museum does not display artefacts from the wreck site on ethical grounds.

However, it does house many fascinating pieces associated with the characters of the ship and its time, including identical china that would have been used on board, a luncheon menu of passenger Ruth Dodge, (on its reverse, a hand-written note from a ship steward), and the personal watch of Lord William James Alexander Pirrie, Chairman of Harland and Wolff. Tickets issued for launch day (May 31, 1911, at 12.15pm) are especially poignant.

The Drawing Offices of Harland & Wolffe, where the plans for Olympic Class RMS Titanic would have been worked up, are carefully preserved as part of an engaging walking tour. The First World War battleship HMS Caroline, a survivor of the Battle of Jutland (1916) is moored in the Titanic Quarter if your feet can stand the pace.

The seasonal activities and temporary exhibitions at the Experience and its surrounding attractions demand return visits. £18 for adults and £8 for children (5-16) with further concessions. Discovery (walking tour) £8.50/£7.50 for adults and children.

titanicbelfast.com.

Cobh Heritage Centre looking out to the last landfall of the liner, also celebrates the Titanic’s Irish legacy and the 123 passengers who departed by tender to Roches Point. Like all the emigrant stories relayed at the Heritage Centre, in particular surrounding the equally riveting fate of the Lusitania, the Titanic section is meticulously detailed, beautifully illustrated and genuinely emotional. Adults: €10.

cobhheritage.com

Abroad, the United States has taken the Titanic legend whipped on by James Cameron’s behemoth (1997) and gone cheerfully all to sea. Self-guided audio-tours using the smartphone puts the event right inside your head. Flanked by the Smokey Mountains, and anchored by the joys of Dollywood, Pigeon Forge is an old mid-century resort in Tennessee, stuffed full of attractions both natural, carnival and animatronics.

Titanic at Pigeon Forge and its sister museum at Branson (Missouri), claim to surpass even Belfast, as the largest permanent Titanic exhibit in the World. Free of the restraining principles of the Belfast museum, Pigeon Forge boasts 400 authentic artefacts removed from the Titanic’s debris field.

The facade of the museum is a half-scale, 400-foot recreation of the ship, set on water, a fabulous scene stealer to gawp up at as you stand in line. The melodrama continues after ‘boarding’, with a two-hour, self-guided tour through the various classes of decks. The Grand Staircase is an ambitious touch in what many rate as the best Titanic museum experience outside of Ireland.

Taste and reverence take something of a backseat, but where else can you touch an iceberg outside the Arctic Circle? If you want to see an actual piece of the ship’s hull, you’ll have to fly west to the Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, who has 250 items trawled from what many regard as a gravesite for almost 1200 souls lost at sea. These pieces include closed luggage and unopened bottles of champagne. Tickets from €29.

titanicpigeonforge.com.

The more subtle setting of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Nova Scotia, Canada, has part of the First Class Lounge of the Titanic, which surfaced and drifted after the sinking. €5.17

maritimemuseum.noviascotia.ca.

A similar lounge arch can be seen at the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, Northumbria, fitted out with salvage from Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic, scrapped in 1936. In the UK, Sea City is another superb and formal museum for dedicated maritime enthusiasts in Southampton, an ancient passenger port with deep resounding ties to the White Star Line. In 1907, the company established its Express Line in Southampton instead of Liverpool. On April 10, 1912, Titanic left Berth 44 of Ocean Dock en route to Cherbourg. There were 23 steamship companies in the port at the time of Titanic’s sinking and 500 families in the city lost a family member in the disaster. Sea City has dedicated its principal gallery of interactive and material on just the Titanic.

The exhibition concentrates on the lives of the crew, bringing their individual stories into touching relief. For the morbidlycurious, a pocket watch found on the body of a steward is on show displaying the exact time it stopped as he slipped into the lethal, icy waters. A lifejacket, taken aboard the Carpathia, strapped to a survivor or a recovered victim, has recently been donated to the museum and is also on display. From £8

seacitymuseum.co.uk.

In the continuing 21st century voyage toward bigger, better, best? Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co, are currently constructing a Titanic II to a commission by Australian mogul, Clive Palmer. Currently, sinking under contract and marketing expenses, the project’s future is uncertain.