Revisiting the century-old Titanic at the Singapore Museum

Aspiring singer Miss Hilda Mary Slater, 30, was returning to America from a trip to England, where she had bought her wedding dress. When she arrives in New York, Hilda would be getting married to Harry Lacon, the son of a British baron who lived on an island off the coast of British Columbia.   The bride-to-be set sail on April 10, 1912 as a second-class passenger on board R.M.S. Titanic. Miss Hilda survived the tragedy of the Titanic, but a hundred years later, the whole world is still haunted by the “unsinkable” ship’s moving story.   For the centennial commemoration of the Titanic’s maiden voyage, the Singapore ArtScience Museum took visitors on a journey of the ship’s history. The passengers’ personal stories came to life in 275 out of the 5,500 artifacts recovered from the ship, which lay hidden for 87 years on the ocean floor.   The exhibit ticket – which resembled the ship’s original boarding pass – contains details about one of the 2,228 passengers on the ship. At the end of the exhibit, each of the visitors will know whether their ‘passenger’ survived the sea tragedy.   The visitors were led down a faithful replica of the Titanic’s red-carpet corridors to an exhibit of the first-class room – there was a bed with a soft mattress and delicate covers, a lazy sofa adjacent to it, and a dressing table for the ladies.   A single first-class ticket for the trip cost $2,500, about $57,200 (or P2.4 million) in today’s currency, according to the exhibit notes. Amenities included Turkish baths, a gymnasium, and a squash court for an additional fee. There’s a smoking room for the gentlemen, and a reading room with a fireplace for the ladies.   And who can forget the grand staircase, which was romanticized in the 1997 film Titanic? The museum recreated its grandeur complete with a chandelier at the center and an original cherub on one side.   From the main exhibit, visitors are led to the quarters of the third-class passengers. In contrast to the opulent chambers, here the rooms are crowded, with two bunk beds compressed together and separated only by a mirror and a folding table. A ticket for one of the bunk beds costs $40, about $900 today.   Many of the Titanic’s passengers were seeking refuge in America as “a response to explosive growth and great social tensions” in Europe, the exhibit noted.   The ship utilized the technology of watertight door-design, a novelty in naval history, which led to the Ship Builder Magazine’s claim that the Titanic was “practically unsinkable.”   Modern-day engineers may agree with the observation, but environmentalists would definitely not be impressed with the ship: it carried six tons of coal in order to sail across the North Atlantic Ocean, consuming a pound of coal for every foot traveled.   Visitors experienced the cold and starry nights that the ship offered, this time from a makeshift deck. Like the Titanic, lifeboats did not interfere with the viewer’s pleasure, even if, in the end, these proved to be crucial for the passengers’ survival.   The vessel carried only 20 out of the required 32 lifeboats, with the first seven lifeboats carrying only 160 people when they could carry as many as 430.   Near the last section of the exhibit, there was an interactive display consisting of a block of ice with finger holes, to allow visitors to experience how chilly the ocean waters were during the tragic voyage.   After all, according to the exhibit, many of the passengers did not die because of drowning, but due to hypothermia – a drop in the normal body temperature causing dysfunction of a body part or, in extreme cases, death.   There’s a bittersweet moment at the end of the exhibit as museum-goers are led to a wall where the names of all Titanic passengers were listed and categorized according to their accommodation and what happened to them.   It was astounding to know how class structure played a crucial role in the survival of the ship’s travelers.    Among those in the first class, 199 lives were saved while 125 were lost. With the second-class passengers, the ratio had shifted, with 116 lives saved and 168 lost.   Worse, only a handful of the third-class passengers were saved – just 181 compared to 529 who perished. The ship’s crew proved to be noble to the end, with only 209 surviving the tragedy and a whopping 701 lost to the sea.   The Titanic has become both a symbol of beauty and tragedy, in the sense that reliving its grandeur has become an obsession for many who have longed to find their Jack or Rose, just like in the movie, even as its only voyage led to the loss of so many lives.    An international ice patrol was put up after the Titanic sank, and since then, “No lives have been lost in monitored areas due to collision with icebergs,” the exhibit says.   Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit, which ran for six months until April 29 this year at the Marina Bay Sands Singapore, successfully recreated the history of the infamous ship. But more than that, it provided a human face to the tragedy and made each person count.   A hundred years after the maiden voyage of the Titanic, none of its passengers has died. All their names have been engraved in naval history, and their stories will last forever. – YA, GMA News