Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition

This guide to Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition traces the twenty-foot slab of hull salvagers call the Big Piece, spotted on the ocean floor in 1994 and hauled toward the surface in 1996 as two cruise ships of tourists cheered. It follows the storm that intervened, the recovery ship without enough winch strength to finish the job, and the years the fragment spent slipping back toward the seabed before another vessel returned for it. Look for the crushed portholes and rivets still visible on its surface, among more than three hundred fifty genuine objects raised from the wreck two and a half miles down.