EXITING M8 (N25)

At what point do you feel that spine-tingling connection? Is it when you enter the original White Star Line Ticket Office where people checked in so full of excitement to be joining “The Queen of the Ocean” RMS Titanic, then the world’s largest passenger ship? Or when you read the name on your boarding card, of a real-life passenger who embarked on what would become the most infamous maiden voyage of all time?

None of the 123 passengers who passed through the ticket office on Thursday April 11th 1912 could have foreseen that the “unsinkable” Titanic, at its final port of call before heading for New York, would never arrive. Walking in those passengers’ footsteps at the Titanic Experience Cobh, on a virtual journey to your waiting ship, you view Heartbreak Pier from which they departed and discover contrasting conditions on board for first- and third-class travellers in reconstructed cabins. Titanic Connections deepen further with through-theporthole tales of passengers – like eloping sweethearts Denis Lennon and Mary Mullin, never to realise hopes of a new life together in America. And when suddenly the iceberg is hit, you watch from a “lifeboat” as the Titanic sinks in a dramatic film recreation. On board, the ship’s brave band played to the end.

Haunting and heroic accounts unfold, of loss – over 1,500 people perished – but also of survival. Listen to the hologram of Margaret Rice, last seen with her young children clutching at her skirts; hear about “lucky stoker” John Coffey’s escape; let John Cargill, able-seaman on the Carpathia that answered Titanic’s distress call, describe scooping passengers to safety from the sea using empty coal sacks. You check your passenger name once more, against the list in the story room. What was your fate?

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