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Titanic The Exhibition is a traveling museum of sorts. It features some replicas, and some actual original pieces of the historic ship. Also lots of stories about it, and the people on it when the disaster struck. Since we both love some history and spooky stuff we thought we should come check it out.
It was a little busy for how much we paid but it was still pretty neat, and I would probably do it again if it came back.
Quick Details:
Length: With a lot of squirreling between exhibits, we did about 2 miles.
Trail Type: Meander
Difficulty: DR2. It is ADA accessible.
Elevation Gain: NA
Restroom: Yes, you just need to ask where it is, according to the website.
Dogs? No.
Other Info: Fee area. Tickets started at $28 per adult. Also, since it is a traveling show, it is only here for a limited engagement.
To Get Here:
Take i15 to 106th South, head east about 4/10ths of a mile to State Street and go left. Go about a half mile and turn left on 102nd South. Go about 2/10ths of a mile southwest through the parking lot, around the corner. it is on the south side of the building west of Old Navy.
This year anyway. Seeing as it is a traveling show, the location can change if they come back.
The Adventure:
It is in an old retail space. It kind of looks like maybe it was an old At Home store or something (playing with google, I guess it was a Buy Buy Baby at some point). Anyway, I bet they would have done it at The Leonardo but it closed for good this year. :(
The sign again.
Inside.
A couple pictures while we wait. They did pictures on a recreation of the bow before sending you to a group to wait again to start the tour.
I thought it was super crowded today, but look at the corrals they can spread more of a crowd into. o.O I am glad we chose to do it on a weekday.
After a short video the first room appears to be a overview.
Quick Note: Between the low lighting, and no flash policy (which I am happy to follow) and the crowds, I am not 100% thrilled with a lot of my images today, but I like the story they tell. We’ll see if I can doctor them up some.
Cute little seating area.
Olympic and Titanic 1st and 2nd class brochure. The Olympic is one of the sister ships. If I remember from the video. It was in service for 24 years. A 3rd, the Gigantic (renamed Britannic) was lost after hitting a mine in WW1, never becoming a passenger ship. A lot of the artifacts and images came from the nearly identical sister ship: Olympic.
Giant chain.
A model of the ship.
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Stern.
Various artifacts.
The bow.
Specifications.
A recovered pocket watch and a bolt.
Thomas Andrews Navel Architect of White Star Line.
Titanic being built.
Brochures and such.
The model again. I believe this would be the port side?
Laying the Keel.
15,000 proud Irish men worked 9 hours a day, 7 days a week to build the Olympic and Titanic.
Design and Execution.
Captain Edward James Smith.
He had 4 decades of experience, captained 17 ships for over 2,000,000 miles of experience. He never had in incident as on 1907. however, it seems he did struggle as the ships got larger. He ran the Adriatic aground in 1909. He was master of the Olympic when it ran into the Hawke in 1911, less than a year before the Titanic voyage.
Accounts vary as to what he was doing during the final hours. The circumstances of his death are in dispute. His body was never recovered.
The ship.
The next room appears to be mostly related to boarding.
The largest steamers in the world, White Star Line.
Cute little vest.
Recreation of the hull.
White Star sailors cap and luggage tags.
Crates and another huge chain.
Provisions for the Crossing.
Wow. That is a LOT of food. But then again, they had a lot of people to feed for almost a week or so.
Watching the ship being loaded with crates for hours.
And Sailing Day April 10, 1912. After 3 stops to pick up and drop off passengers a total of 2224 excited passengers set sail for New York City on April 11, 1912.
The doorway into the “ship”.
Then it appears we move on to First Class.
Swanky!
White Star Line Third Class silver serving dishes.
Isadore and Ida Straus - Ida boarded a lifeboat and said “Where you go, I go”. But Isadore refused to get in lifeboat, so the couple perished together on the Titanic.
and Benjamin Guggenheim. “No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.” Both he and his valet Victor Giglio perished on the ship.
Both of these people sound familiar from the 1997 movie, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.
Also, the patriarchy was definitely still a thing back then, but they also had chivalry as evidenced here. Now we still have the patriarchy but chivalry seems to have been replaced with misogyny.
A reproduction of a First Class Suite.
Titanic had 45 world class staterooms. The 4 most exquisite had a private promenade, bathroom bedroom, and sitting room. A one way ticket went for $3,300 ($77,500 today).
One of them was occupied by co-owner of Macy’s Department Stores, Isadore Straus and his wife. Their suite was the inspiration for Rose’s room in the 1997 film.
Original First Class Suite Door. This was auctioned off of the Olympic in 1935.
Picture of one installed.
Third Class China.
Spode cup and saucer. We wondered what the heck a Spode cup was, I guess it is a brand. They made the China for all of the White Star Line Ships, this pattern was specifically designed for Titanic. This was taken as a souvenir when passengers disembarked in Queensland. It is not clear if it was given, purchased, or uh.. just taken. Although I guess by using the word taken kind of implies that.
More silver serving dishes.
White Star Line Second Class China.
Landis wondered how many dishes they had on board. I said I didn’t know, but I bet a previous sign answered that!
And it did! From the boarding room is the Provisions for the Crossing sign. It lists a bunch of food, and then at the bottom. “To serve the passengers, the ship also had an enormous amount of fine china and other tableware including:
57,600 pieces of crockery, 29,000 pieces of glassware, 44,000 pieces of cutlery, 196,100 pieces of linen.
Yes, I would describe that as enormous! And it’s all sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Well, what hasn’t been recovered anyway.
Some kind of wood trim. I don’t think I caught the sign.
Mrs. Margaret Brown AKA The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Now here I remember from the movie. I believe she was played by Kathy Bates. And a quick IMDB check confirmed that.
She helped load passengers into lifeboats, eventually being convinced to board a lifeboat herself. She tried to persuade crews to go back and save more passengers. She made it to the Carpathia.
When asked how she managed to survive she quipped: “Typical Brown Luck. We’re unsinkable”.
Class act.
I did not catch if this is Titanic, or Olympic, or reproduction. But it appears to be part of the grand staircase.
A picture of the grand staircase.
Artist renderings of some of the dining areas.
White Star Line First Class Crystal.
Gymnasium and Major Archibald Butt.
Card table.
Turkish Baths.
First Class Reading/Writing Room.
Fancy chair.
First Class Smoking Room. Gentlemen only.
Legend has it that Titanic’s designer, Thomas Andrews was last seen in the smoking room at the fireplace.
A La Carte Restaurant.
Passengers could dine on the ship here anytime between 8 AM and 11 PM, rather than the First Class Dining Room which had strict meal time meals only.
First Class Wisteria Pattern.
More First Class dishes.
John Jacob Astor IV - The Wealthiest Man on the Ship.
He built the Astoria hotel in New York. After divorcing his wife he scandalously married the 18 year old Madeleine Talmage Force.
He secured a spot for his young, pregnant wife in one of the lifeboats but was told no men in lifeboats until the ladies are off. He perished. His son was born 4 months later.
The absolutely beautiful Grand Staircase.
Again.
Pretty statue.
Closer.
Balcony above.
Jack and Rose.
In the 1997 Movie, Rose descends the staircase to meet jack before dinner. Later, Jack passes Rose a note that says “Make it count, meet me at the clock”.
Said clock.
Grand Staircase The Focal Point of First Class. It went to A deck down to F deck.
At the mid landing was a 12 foot tall wooden sculpture by artist Charles Wilson. At it’s center the clock which is flanked by figures representing Honor and Glory crowning time.
The majority of pictures from “Titanic’s” Grand Staircase are actually from the nearly identical stairs from the sister ship Olympic.
Landis found some chairs under the Grand Staircase.
Looking towards the front.. ish.
The side.
After this I believe we have moved into a Second Class exhibit.
Bars and Lounges.
Carved wood from the Titanic’s aft staircase.
Casual Dining Options.
Grand Staircase Chandelier.
Second Class Life “This feels like First Class”
First Class and Second Class did not mingle and had separate dining rooms. But they shared a kitchen galley, and the Second Class dining room had a piano for dinnertime entertainment. After their first meal, many Second Class passengers thought they had accidentally been seated in First Class.
First Class chamber pot.
Miss Bertha Lehmann.
Random objects.
Manuel Uruchurtu Ramirez - The Mexican Hero of the Titanic.
Another chandelier.
After this we went into the Third Class exhibit.
Starting to see some pipes and such.
Third Class Life.
The 75 Third Class cabins were small, and vibrated at the hum of the engines. Comprised mostly of immigrants they paid $40 ($940 today) for the privilege. But they did say it was comparable second class on other ships of the time.
One of the rooms.
The harts. Mother and daughter (Eva, 6) survived. Eva was one of the last survivors to remember the sinking. She wrote an autobiography titled Shadow of the Titanic. She passed in 1996.
Separation of Classes.
In the 1997 movie, the gates shown as locked between First and lower classes may have lead some people believe it was done on purpose.
The fact is, the gates were always locked to prevent lower class passengers from wandering into First Class and mingling with First Class passengers.
When the ship started sinking, the already locked gates remained as such.
What it does not say, aside from the you know, obvious emergency egress precautions that now, thankfully exist, the fact that in an emergency nobody thought that uh… maybe can we get someone to go around and unlock the gates? But you know… it was a luxury liner. Below decks can stay below decks.
Yay, they didn’t purposely lock the riff-raff below decks in an emergency, but boo, no one helped them. Snark aside, actually one of the problems they determined after the fact was a complete lack of emergency drills for passengers and crew. That is now a requirement.
Into the cargo hold.
Cargo.
What Titanic carried besides passengers and crew.
Titanic's designation as a Royal Mail Ship (RMS (I have been wondering what that stood for)) meant she carried mail across the Atlantic. 26,000 cubic feet was reserved for mail.
But, she was mainly a passenger ship so 19,000 cubic feet for passenger luggage, and other random goods being transported as well.
Boiler rooms, Bulkheads and Watertight Doors.
Boiler.
Again.
Landis decided to play with a shovel.
Portal.
I guess this took us to a balcony exhibit. We didn’t get a map or anything, so I am just kind of calling the exhibits by what appear to make the most sense by what we see. Sometimes I see a sign that pretty much confirms that, sometimes I don't But, I think I did pretty good today.
A deck with a nice starry night.
I loved what they did to create the illusion of the ocean below, but I kind of killed the starry night illusion getting it. o.O
Fancy windows.
Promenade Deck.
Each class had it’s own open air deck.
More First Class china.
With the fancy windows again.
Deck chair. First Class folks got a nice little blanket.
Another door with a portal.
Which took us into the disaster.
First warning.
Third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Seventh, from the crows nest.
Bell.
This showed a timeline of the disaster, but I couldn’t really get any decent pictures so meh.
Final Moments. I suppose this could be the cliff notes.
Telegraph.
Iceberg.
Touch the Iceberg.
They encourage you to touch it. It’s real.. or very well simulated. It is 0 degrees. The ocean on that night was 2 degrees below that, but due to salt content it wasn’t frozen. Brrr.
The iceberg again. People have melted their handprints into it.
The other side. I wonder how they keep this frozen. This room isn’t cold.
Old life jackets. They sure don’t seem like much, but I am sure it was better than nothing.
Lifeboats. More lifeboats than regulations required.
Titanic could accommodate 3547 people. Maximum lifeboat capacity was 1178 (more than required). Only 710 survived.
After the disaster, the United States Government declared that: All ships arriving in America must have enough lifeboats for everyone aboard. Safety and lifeboat drills were mandatory for passengers and crew, wireless equipment must be manned 24 hours a day.
It sucks that pretty much all safety regulations we currently take for granted came from horrific disasters and accidents.
The Band Played On.
Violin.
The passengers manifest. Lost passengers above, saved passengers below.
They give you a little card with a passenger, and some information about them. Both of ours were lost.
I got Mr. Arthur Henry Gee.
Landis got Mr. Charles Melville Hays.
Mr. Gee, Arthur Henry. He was traveling alone, so his family obviously survived. Landis’s guy Mr Charles Melville Hays was traveling with his wife and daughter. He perished, they survived. Oh, he is listed in this picture too. Nice. We sometimes get separated due to whatever shiny thing caught our attention at times (I love that we’re both cool with that) so he was elsewhere while I was at the wall and I didn’t remember his guy. Anyway, the point is, I was focused on my guy at the moment, and it is just a happy coincidence I got his as well.
Postcards.
The toll and the investigations on both sides of the ocean.
Conflicting Reports and News of the Tragedy.
Newspaper headlines on opposing walls.
Gold swimming medal recovered off the body of Edward Lockyer.
More artifacts.
Then we moved onto a recovery exhibit, again, at least that is what I am calling it.
The light blew out the top but I think the rest fills in the blank…
…it was thought lost to history. Then, on September 1, 1985 an amazing discovery was made. Titanic has at last been found.
Under the sea.
This room is neat. They put a glass floor over the “sea floor”.
Search for Titanic.
Wealthy relatives proposed finding the Titanic, but no one knew the ships location, depth or condition.. in 1977 HMS Hecate located what they thought was the debris field. Billionaire Jack Grimm financed 3 failed expeditions in the 1980’s.
in 1985 a French and American searched in a methodical grid patterns. on September 1st, 1985 they found the boiler which was confirmed to be the Titanic.
A portal.
Wreck Site.
Titanic is laying upright in 2 pieces on the ocean floor. at a depth of about 13,000 feet.
That kind of freaks me out. The highest I can say we have been off the top of my head is Lofty Lake at 10,810 feet, and I mean, obviously that isn’t strait up! I guess it would be more relevant to say that is almost as deep as Utah’s highest peak, Kings Peak is high at 13,528 feet. Wow, just mind boggling.
Anyway, as the ship broke at the surface, the bow gradually filled with water and suffered only minor damage, Scientists speculate the stern section had trapped air. As it sank the pressure collapsed and imploded the ships decks. Additional the corkscrew descent and landing left it virtually destroyed.
Rusticles.
Rusticles, which look like rusted stalactites are coating entire sections of the hull. The bacteria are slowly digesting the ship metals, leaving behind rust particles. At the current rate, Titanic may be disintegrated in less than 50 years!
Submersibles.
The only way to get to ocean depths of such immense pressure is by using deep-sea submersibles.
Final Resting Place
There have been many ideas for raising the Titanic, but she is just too big and too fragile. Thousands of artifacts have been recovered including a 20 ton piece of the hull. The recovery expeditions inspired James Cameron to make the 1997 movie. Sadly, titanic is disintegrating on the ocean floor. New research indicates there may be nothing left by 2050.
Paul Henry Nargeolet AKA Mr. Titanic completed 37 successful dives to the Titanic. Unfortunately he was one of 5 people who died in the 2023 Titan submersible implosion accident an his way down to the Titanic again.
“The wreck is not just steel and rivets-it is a sacred place. You feel the souls of those who were lost.” - Dr. Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The bow.
White Star Line Flag.
Then there was a small local ties exhibit.
Titanic Connections to Utah and the Mountain West.
The Collyer Family. They were heading to Idaho.
Hugh Woolner was on his way back to Casper, Wyoming.
LD$ Missionaries.
Irene Corbett from Provo.
Johan Julian Sundman was on his way to Cheyanne, Wyoming. He ended up staying in Salt Lake City for a while before returning home to Finland.
“By the time I succeeded in reaching the upper deck, several boats had already been launched. I made my way to the rail where a boat was being put off. It was full of people, but I saw no women left on the deck. Someone yelled to me ‘Jump.’ The boat was already being lowered. I jumped and fell on my head in the middle of the boat, knocking over two or three of the occupants.” Sundman continued saying he crawled over people and grabbed an oar to start rowing away from the doomed ship. - From the Salt Lake Tribune April 28th 1912.
Well holy crap. I was able to find the full archived article on the U of U digital archive (outside link) Neat!
Now we are moving into the Movies about the Titanic area. Mostly focusing on the 1997 one.
The movies.
James Cameron’s Titanic, 1997
The Titanic of all Titanic’s.
The original 1997 blockbuster won 11 academy awards.
The 2012 remaster was the largest grossing film in history with the box-office receipts approaching $3 billion.
Prop clothes.
Prop dishes.
Romance Aboard.
Inspiration for Rose and Jack.
Karl Behr, runner-up at Wimbledon tennis tournament in 1907, booked passage in pursuit of Helen Newell, despite her disapproving parents. The two survived and later married.
Madame De Villiers, a Belgian cabaret singer, had beguiled Quigg Baxter, a Montreal hockey player. Quigg drowned after making certain De Villiers was safe.
Daniel Marvin (19) and Mary Farquharson (18) wed in January 1912. Daniel gallantly got out of the lifeboat to fetch his pregnant wife’s coat and perished with the ship.
First Class passengers John and Nelle Snyder survived after a crewman loading lifeboats allegedly yelled “Put in the brides and grooms first!”
Second Class passengers Edward and Ethel Beane each believed the other had drowned. Miraculously both survived in separate lifeboats, and later reunited.
A number of registered ‘couples’ were in fact unmarried, one or both running from their former lives.
Aww, so tender!
Titanic. Triumph and Tragedy.
For over 100 years, since that cold morning of April 15, 1912, the world has been mesmerized by the story of the Titanic.
The themes, two storylines continue to grip us.
One tells of how we built the largest and grandest ship that ever then sailed.
The other tells how Titanic was a tragic paradigm of human arrogance.
At its core, Titanic will always be a story of both triumph and tragedy.
And so she lies in a watery grave, a testament to the best and worst of our ambition at the mercy of nature’s implacable power.
Movie set photos.
Reproduction of Jack’s drawing, and of course the famed necklace.
Script.
After this there is a 3D experience (which costs extra) to the right, or of course the exit through the Giftshop to the left.
I picked up a magnet and a shot glass. In the moment we thought the price for the pictures they took were a little too hefty, but now I am kind of kicking myself for not just getting them. Meh.
The sign again.
The outside sign.
After this we decided to have dinner at the nearby Longhorn Steakhouse. It was a nice way to end a good date night.
Well, that was really fascinating and neat! I loved how the themes took you from boarding, through the classes, to the disaster, recovery, and movie. I think that just about covered it all. It was a little busier than I would have liked for what we paid, but meh. Other people are allowed to be interested in things that we are, I guess. Hah! Anyway, as cool as it was, I am going to take 1 squirrel for the crowd.
As for difficulty, it is pretty flat, and ADA compliant. DR2.
Dogs are not allowed.
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