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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue our Titanic hour with an exhibition where you can see an actual life vest from the ship. The passenger manifest clothing from survivors and letters from those who did not make it. There are more than 200 original objects on view at Titanic. The Exhibition. The real stories of Titanic is arguably more dramatic than any of the fictional accounts.

Dreamed up in London in 1907 by two ship magnets, it was a luxury vessel that the world had never seen. It would've cost $220 million in today's money to build. She set sail from Southampton on April 10th, 1912, picking up people in France and Ireland along its route to New York City. Within a week, the ship would be at the bottom of the ocean, just hours after hitting an iceberg at 11:40 PM on April 14th.

Two-thirds of those aboard died. Approximately 1500 people with 712 survivors. You learn about the lives of the passengers, the crew, and the original idea men, and the exhibition now on view at 14th Street on Sixth Avenue. Joining us now as director and CEO of Musealia, the organization behind the show, Luis Ferreiro. Luis, nice to meet you.

Luis Ferreiro: Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: What is the story you're hoping to tell in this exhibit?

Luis Ferreiro: We hope to tell the real story of Titanic, and actually what we like to say is that this is not so much an exhibition, but an experience. It's a little bit like a time machine that takes you back in time until 1912 and explains you and allows you to encounter the story of Titanic. It's basically based in three main elements. One being the original artifacts from Titanic, and we chose specifically artifacts in most cases where we knew who they belong to, so there's always a human story behind.

We have the recreations of inner parts of the ship that allows us to physically place the visitor inside Titanic. We will walk through a first-class corridor, compare a third-class cabin with first-class suite. Of course, there is the real story. Everybody that goes into the exhibition will have an audio tour and a voice, music, and sound effects will actually explain you beyond the myth and the legend, what is the real story of Titanic.

Alison Stewart: The very first object we see is this life jacket. It's in the center of a dark room with a spotlight on it. Why is that the way you wanted to start this story?

Luis Ferreiro: Everybody that goes to this exhibition, or that by the way, has been to any of the movies, they already know the end of this story. Obviously, all of our visitors knows how this is going to end. One of the elements, underlying principles that we explain in the exhibit is that somehow this is one single story in the mind of most of the people. Once you get to know all the different, multiple experiences of the survivors and the victims, you will see that in many cases they have different testimonies and conflicting testimonies about the same event.

However, there is only one moment in which I would say almost all of them have the same description. It's about this moment of silence that happens when Titanic completely vanishes and is under the water and just before Carpathia comes for rescue. This moment of silence is the one that is shared. This one experience that most of the best majority of survivors can share, because then after that moment, basically, you will see how stories are so different and [unintelligible 00:03:43] about even the same moment about the musicians and whether they played. Some say they played and which song they played. Others have different recalls, different songs about which was the final song. Others say that they never heard at all the musician. We wanted to start with that moment of coincidence in the testimonies narrative.

Alison Stewart: There's a lot of correspondence that's available, which is really interesting from people on board who are able to send home letters in the very first days of the voyages when the ship was picking up passengers, along the way, on the way to New York before that huge crossing. What do we learn from these letters about who was on board and what they were anticipating about this voyage?

Luis Ferreiro: I would say there's a few elements. Documents are so fantastic for us who work in exhibitions because basically there is a lot you can tell about them. I think probably the most important key about all these letters is to understand that actually, Titanic is not the story of the ship, but the story of those who traveled and perished or survived that night.

When you read these letters, you have to understand in order to grasp the tragedy in its immensity, you have to understand that just seconds before hitting the iceberg, that was being a very important trip, journey for most of them. You can see through the letters that they all had their personal stories, and you can see some people who are traveling under false name because they were leaving debts behind. Others that they are speaking to their families about how great the ship was and how happy they were to start a new life in America.

You can really connect to the human stories within Titanic by reading these handwritten letters. We also have letters from the crew. We have probably the two most important surviving documents in the history of Titanic, which are the letters written by First Officer, William Murdoch. The one written on April 11th, he basically narrates the weather, the cold strike, the almost collision with another ship at the port of Southampton, and how basically they were developing this first voyage of Titanic.

It's a unique document. Again, you can compare the experiences and you can understand how different it was for a third class passenger than to a first class passenger to a crew member. I think that is fascinating about these letters.

Alison Stewart: We also learned about the building of the ship. Why was there a demand for a luxury ship of this kind?

Luis Ferreiro: Well, that is also something we tried to explain. One of the key elements of this story is actually immigration. These huge vessels would have never been constructed, if it was not because of this mass of immigration that they were transporting in third class from Europe to America. Actually, and it's explained because in the exhibition we also have tickets. What we call tickets nowadays to get on board the ship.

In first and second class, there were actually tickets as we know them today, but in third-class and we have, and we display them. These are actually immigration contracts. They had to go through a process before they could sign this agreement with the transportation company to actually immigrate into the States. The reason why these huge ships were built was because the money was actually was made by transporting immigration in third class, you had to have first class and second class. Of course, they made money there, but the numbers simply cannot compare to the amount of people that were immigrating in third class.

Alison Stewart: What was unique about the vessel?

Luis Ferreiro: Oh, there's so many things, and there's also a little bit of myth and a little bit of a legend. It is funny because Titanic had actually to sink in order to become unsinkable, if you allow me, in history. Before it sank, Titanic was actually not so well known. The Olympic, which was the first, this was a series of vessels, the Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic.

The Olympic was the one that took most of the credit and most of the attention by the press and by passengers. Titanic was actually not that important at that time but of course, it was known and it was at that time the biggest one because it was based in the same plans as Olympic, but it was just modified slightly in some parts.

I would say that it was unique because of the technology it involved. Also, in part and despite the sinking, in how safe it was, when it comes to the design. It was absolutely not the case, when it comes to the measures and regulations in case of an accident. This is also something we explain in detail in the exhibition. Despite the legend, the movie, and the myth around Titanic, it's actually a story of failure after failure.

It's a legal failure. The law was actually only conceiving ships of 4,000 tons in 1890. Titanic, 20 years later, was a ship of 46,000 tons. It was allowed to leave port with not even half of the capacity in lifeboats of those passengers that were traveling in the ship. It was a failure in terms of the rescue operations. The staff had no idea what to do and you can see. I think you were speaking about the movie. There is this scene where you can see, I think there's an Arab family and trying to read the translation of the science in order to get from third class to first class because it was such a [unintelligible 00:10:11].

Nowadays those who are listening to us and who go into a cruise, they will be told what to do in case of an emergency. They are shown how to put the life vest on. All of that actually comes from 1912, comes from the tragedy of Titanic because it was not done before. It's a story of failure. There was no need to have a radio operator 24 hours a day. It was then changed. It's a story of failure that actually, anthropologically speaking it's absolutely fascinating how in this case, the British society was able to overturn it into the story of myth and legend and women and children first and be British and the musicians playing until the last moment. Of course the story is actually a little bit different.

Alison Stewart: Yes. That was interesting to learn in the exhibit that most people did not die of drowning, but of a hypothermia because they were in the water. Because again, the lifeboats not a good rescue plan, not knowing how-- Yes. That was very interesting to find out.

Luis Ferreiro: Correct. There is controversy about where was the California and then how fast it could have arrived or not. If they have had this protocol, this load this obligation of having a radio operator 24 hours a day, probably the story would've ended up in a different number. Of course, Titanic would've sank but the number of victims would have been probably very different.

Alison Stewart: It's a fascinating exhibit. It is called Titanic. The Exhibition. It is at 14th Street on Sixth Avenue. I've been speaking with Luis Ferreiro, Director, and CEO of Musealia. Thank you so much for being with us. We really appreciate it.

Luis Ferreiro: Thank you so much. Take care.

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Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. Tomorrow February begins, thinking about romantic Valentine's dinner. Time to start planning. Eater New York's Robert Sietsema, joins us with suggestions. I'll also see many of you later tonight for our Get Lit with All Of It event at the New York Public Library with Stacy Schiff. We'll be discussing The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, with musical guest, Rosanne Cash.

I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.

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