Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at Whitaker Center blog
posted on Thu Jul 15th, 2010 at 3:45 PM by Mike Rathfon
I recently explored Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at Whitaker Center and found myself completely immersed in the tale of the ship’s tragic maiden voyage in 1912 and the personal stories of its passengers and crew.
The story begins with each guest receiving a unique boarding pass profiling a real passenger aboard the Titanic. My passenger was George Hocking, a 22 year-old 2nd class passenger from Ohio, who was helping his family immigrate to America. I would not know the fate of my passenger until it was revealed at the end… and neither will you. 
As the exhibit details the events surrounding the Titanic striking the catastrophic iceberg and sinking over a 3 hour period, the deeper I was drawn into the pending fate of my Mr. Hocking. As this massive vessel was sinking quickly into the deep Atlantic without enough life rafts to hold all of the passengers, it becomes quickly apparent that not everyone could be saved. This New York Times article details the acts of chivalrous men who sacrificed their lives for those of women and children.
My most emotionally charged moment during the exhibit was the iceberg replica that allows visitors to feel the bone chilling coldness of the Atlantic Ocean that awaited those unfortunate souls who were plunged into the sea that night. After touching the iceberg for mere seconds, I vividly imagined the terror those passengers like my Mr. Hockings must have felt as they floated hopelessly in the pitch darkness among the sheer chaos in the middle of the sea.
The overall experience is very hard to summarize succinctly as the exhibit taps such a range of empathy and emotion. I felt the fear and panic of when passengers and crew realized the ship was sinking. I felt sympathy for those who lost loved ones in the wreck. And I felt deep sadness for the 1,517 passengers who perished aboard this “unsinkable ship” on April 15, 1912 -- like my Mr. Hocking.
But the most powerful emotion throughout the exhibit for me had to be a renewed sense of hope and conviction in our human nature to do the right thing in the face of a great challenge – like those who put their lives on the line to help their 706 fellow passengers – men, women, and children - who survived one of the 5th worst shipwrecks in history*.
Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition is on display until September 5.
Points of interest include:
- One now famous name that may have been among those who perished on the Titanic in 1912 was Mr. Milton S. Hershey, who along with his wife “Kitty” had purchased tickets to be on this historic voyage. If not for urgent business matters that required them to return early, I wondered what this region, now famous for his chocolate creations, would be like today had they been aboard that fateful journey.
- My favorite display of the 250+ artifacts was the Au Gratin dishes that were stacked in a ship cupboard and once the wooden cabinet rotted away over time the dishes remained stacked in a row, like dominos (shown above).
- *In 1912 the Titanic was considered the 2nd most deadly ship wreck in history (and still the 5th in modern history) behind the Sultana - the Mississippi River steamboat that sank April 27, 1865 near Memphis, Tennessee when one of the ship’s four boilers exploded killing an estimated 1,800 of the 2,400 passengers.
Zach Chizar
Public Relations Intern
Hershey Harrisburg Regional Visitors Bureau (HHRVB)
www.HersheyHarrisburg.org
