All the lost memories

History yearned to own the rest. The right to salvage mementoes from the wreckage went to a consortium that called itself RMS Titanic Inc, and what it has drawn up from the depths is what you see in “Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition”, opening today at CentralWorld in Bangkok.

Here are the haunting remnants of life aboard the great “unsinkable” ocean liner that nevertheless sank almost immediately, during its 1912 maiden voyage from Portsmouth in England to New York. 

Along with the multitude of personal items belonging to the ill-fated passengers, there is a mock-up of the Grand Staircase, whose fame was bolstered by James Cameron’s movie “Titanic”. And you can see, life-size, what the passenger cabins looked like in first, second and steerage class. 

Paul-Henry Nargeolet of RMS Titanic Inc has seen what’s left of these structures aboard the actual sunken liner. He’s visited the wreck more than 30 times – more than anyone else – in the 25 years since it was found and has helped recover more than 5,000 artefacts. 

“On the real Titanic there was no piano – Cameron just added a grand piano in the movie,” Nargeolet, 66, tells The Nation. “But, except for the piano, I think the Titanic would have looked like it does in the movie. Cameron knows the Titanic very, very well, and he did a very good job with the film.” 

Nargeolet points out that RMS Titanic Inc doesn’t own the wreck per se.

“Technically, nobody really owns the sunken Titanic. First the ship was owned by the White Star Line, which abandoned its claim after it sank. The wreck is in international waters, so the first to claim it by displaying any artefact got the salvage rights, and we did.”

The firm, he emphasises, treats the wreck zone as both a memorial and an archaeological site. No objects are retrieved from inside the ship. “We do send cameras in to inspect the changing condition of the ship, but we never take anything from it. 

“We collect artefacts from around the ship. Evidently the ship imploded and then exploded, so there are many objects scattered around.” 

Nargeolet’s last visit was in 2010, when his team mapped the entire debris field for the first time, using sonar and remote-controlled robotic vehicles that took hundreds of thousands of photos. 

Has he ever seen a gouge in the hull – any clear evidence that an iceberg really sank the unsinkable liner? He’s seen nothing so clear, and is unsure about the story. “There are different theories. We know there was the iceberg, but we don’t know what exactly the iceberg did to the ship. We did X-rays and saw scrapes along the side, which can’t really tell if that was the actual cause of the disaster. It’s still, to this day, a mystery.

“When we first saw the Titanic we could tell immediately that the ship was deteriorating – it was already 75 years old,” Nargeolet recalls. “The worst enemy is rust. At that depth, 3,700 metres, the water is only 35 or 40 per cent oxygen, but that’s still enough to cause rust.

“Bacteria are dissolving the ship away too, and let’s not forget about the underwater current, which is very strong and changeable at that depth. It rocks the ship back and forth, and that also causes damage. Of the two separated parts of the ship, the bow and the stern, the stern was already in bad condition in 1986.”

Another century from now, he says, “I guess we’ll still see the engine, the boilers and other big parts of the ship, but maybe not the structure of the ship anymore.”

A former navy diver, Nargeolet has always been fascinated by shipwrecks, but nothing took hold of him like the Titanic, “because it’s so big and lies so deep in the ocean. At that depth everything is fascinating visually. I went down to her sister ship, Britannic [sunk by a mine off Greece in 1916], and it’s nothing at all compared to the Titanic.”

RMS Titanic Inc, he says, has “hundreds of people working constantly to preserve the objects once we pull them out of the water”. These are the artefacts in the exhibition, which Nargeolet observes tell “the stories of the people, both those who perished and the survivors, that make the Titanic special and timeless. Everyone can relate to it. 

“We once found a watch that belonged to a man who’d died on the ship. His daughter had survived, and we actually tracked her down and gave the watch to her. I’ve met six or seven survivors.” One was Elizabeth Gladys Dean, known as Millvina, who died in 2009, the last of the survivors. “She didn’t remember anything because she was only six months old when she was on the ship. 

“But Edith Haisman did remember well what happened, and what it was like in the lifeboat. She was 16 at the time.” Haisman died at age 100 in 1997, at her home in Southampton. 

Asked if his enthusiasm for the ship means he would even buy passage on board the Titanic if he could turn back the clock, Nargeolet answers without hesitating. “Yes, of course! Who wouldn’t want to be on the Titanic?”

 

Full steam ahead

_ “Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition” runs until September 2 at CentralWorld Live on the mall’s eighth floor.

_ Admission is Bt500 for adults (Bt350 for children under 12), available at ThaiTicketMajor or at the door. 

_ Call (02) 262 3838 or visit www.BECTero.com/Titanic.