Titanic Deck Chair in Halifax, Nova Scotia

[Jay Roches]

There's probably an old thread on this, but I thought I'd refresh it.

In the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, is an authentic Titanic deck chair recovered from the wreck in 1912.

There is also a replica which museum guests can sit in. (Or, at least they could when I visited in 2003.)

I thought it was one of the most comfortable things, if not the most comfortable, that I've ever reclined on. It's solid wood, but it didn't feel hard. Perhaps that's because thousands of other people had already used it, and perhaps a brand-new chair wasn't so comfortable, but it really did seem to show an intuitive, natural curvature that predates studies of ergonomics by many years. Even better, I'm 6'0", which is tall enough to feel that most chairs and seats in public spaces are designed for someone shorter (and usually narrower). I've also seen the RMS Titanic, Inc. exhibitions twice, but no "artifact" is as memorable as that chair, not even the walk-up iceberg.

Has anyone else tried the deck chair? What did you think?

 

[Sandy McLendon]

I can't speak to the comfort of the deck chair, but the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic has one other Titanic artifact that is certainly worth a look.

It's a bit of elaborately carved paneling from the First Class Smoking Room, ejected from the wreck during that awful final plunge. If you visit the Museum and find that the paneling looks familiar, it's because it was copied for the Cameron movie, for Jack and Rose to cling to. Cameron learned of it while in Halifax during the time when he was shooting dives to the wreck, and incorporated a copy of it into his design for the picture, instead of having the prop-makers just build a generic bit of wreckage.