At this point, we all know the fate of the Titanic.  When we hear the mere mention of the tragic vessel, our brains instantly flash to the image of an iceberg and a massive ship being swallowed by the frigid waters of the north Atlantic. Oh, yeah, and there was that colossal movie made about the tragedy. But sadly, all we really think about the Titanic is the sinking boat and Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. 

As time moves forward, our history books tend to gloss over the intimate and more human details of landmark events. We learn one dramatic encapsulating picture, such as the sinking of the Titanic, and have a tendency to pass by the details of the actual individuals who made the history. We know all about our nation’s battles, but know very little of the people who actually fought in them. We know all about the monumental events in our nation’s proud history, but know very little about the individuals who sacrificed so much to achieve them. The story of the Titanic is no different. For the past several decades, it’s basically been all about the boat. With the grand opening of the new “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition” at The Science Museum of Minnesota, the passengers are now finally at the forefront. We no longer have to sit back and wonder, who were these passengers and where were they going?

Learning more about the Titanic passengers, in fact, is the first thing visitors find out when they view the new exhibit. At the entrance, each guest receives a replicated boarding pass that gives the name of an actual passenger on the Titanic. The boarding pass gives intimate details on the lives of the men and women aboard the world’s most famous ship. As I held the boarding pass in my hand, a historic event was no longer an abstract thought, one that could be easily and callously glossed over. The sinking of the Titanic was downsized onto a human scale. I was handed the boarding pass of Mr. William Gilbert, 47, from Cornwall, England. Gilbert was leaving England where he was enjoying a three month holiday and was travelling alone. He was headed to Butte, Montana, where he was to start up a boarding house with his sister Mary. The boarding house was to be for all his fellow Cornish miners that were working in the gruesome pits of Butte. Gilbert was staying in the 2^nd class accommodations. At the end of the exhibit, I was to find the memorial wall and find out if Mr. William Gilbert ever made it to Butte to fulfill his dreams.

I stepped onto a small wooden ramp, entered the exhibit, and was thrown directly back into 1912. As I moved through the exhibit, I viewed ancient tooth brushes, combs, eye droppers, and a United States $5 bill with the picture of a Native American in full head dress in the center. Then I read the actual dinner menu that was used on the Titanic. The minutia of the menu was another striking example of how the “Titanic: The Artifacts Exhibit” was bringing history down to a human scale. I read the classist menu out loud to my five year old son. 

“The First Class ate lamb with mint sauce and American ice cream. The Third Class ate boiled potatoes and stew,” I said.

“Which one would you want to eat?” My son Murphy asked me.

“I’m going to go with the Third Class menu of potatoes and stew,” I said, “Because that’s what they would’ve given us because we are Irish and German.”

“Yeah, I want that, too,” Murphy said. He shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s ok to say you want the ice cream,” I said.

“Ok, I want the ice cream,” Murphy said sheepishly. 

Each display room was set with a different mood. Using colored lights, sound effects, and massive wall size photographs, each room had either a honey walled good time vibe or a shadowy black lit foreboding. This, of course, had to be. After all, it was Titanic. In the end, Mr. William Gilbert sadly never made it to Butte, Montana, where he was to open a boarding house for Cornish miners. Gilbert was just one of the 1,523 passengers who drowned in 1912. But thanks to the new Titanic exhibit, I learned that he wasn’t just a mere passenger. He was a man who was coming off a vacation and had a dream blossoming in his heart. And that is to be celebrated, learned, and passed on to my son. Gilbert’s life was the history lesson.   

As the famous Irish philosopher Jack Foster once said, “We are all passengers on the Titanic.”

Some surprising facts about the Titanic care of the exhibition that you may not already know:

• Initial headlines of the Titanic disaster claimed all passengers survived and the Ship was being towed to land.
• At first most of the passengers did not believe Titanic was really sinking, hence the low number of 19 aboard the first lifeboat, even though it could carry 65.
• It cost $7.5 million to build Titanic and the Ship carried a $5 million insurance policy.