Titanic

When we went to the Tulip Festival there was a guy in a booth there that had information about the first ever Titanic: Treasures from the Deep Mobile Museum. I was totally intrigued by this. I couldn't figure out what a mobile museum was and how they could have artifacts from the Titanic there. The coupon I got said it was free, so I asked my parents if they wanted to come along. Of course they did and so we met up at Washington Square on Saturday afternoon to go through the museum. It turned out the mobile museum was two big trailers together that created a big room that you could walk through and look at the artifacts. My trip to the Tulip Festival was totally worth it since I got a VIP coupon that kept us from waiting in line with the plebeian masses for over two hours. We only had to wait for about 15 minutes. They took our picture in front of the main staircase before we went in and gave us each a card that represented a passenger that was on the Titanic. I was 15-year-old Mrs. Selini Yazbeck from Hardin, Lebanon who was traveling to America with her husband of 50 days to Pennsylvania, where Antoni was a successful shoe merchant.

The exhibit was quite nice. Lots of signs and information and about 50-75 different artifacts that had been recovered from the wreck. I was amazed at the paper items that were on display. How could a wrapper from razor blades or soap have survived mostly intact after all this time? Amazing.

I find the Titanic stuff fascinating.



So I did a little research on Mrs. Yazbeck when I got home and this information from a letter she wrote

Selini/Celiney Yazbeck, Third Class Passenger
Letter from Mrs.Decker dated June 15 1955:
"I was a bride of 50 days. My husband and I were on our way to America to make our home. He had been to America before where he had a business.When I first realized that something was wrong, it was 11 o'clock [sic] at night and I was fast asleep. Suddenly, I heard a tremendous noise and immediately knew the ship had been hit hard. It almost threw me off the bed. The motor stopped at once. My husband and I jumped up and ran to see what had happened. We went to the engine room and saw the crew trying to repair parts of the ship. We were still wearing our night clothes. We rushed back to our room to put on our life preservers then went up on deck. Later we returned to our rooms to try to get our clothes, money and jewelry, but we found our room to be flooded with water. We went back on deck and we all started praying. We thought we could never be saved. All the lifeboats were being lowered. There were only 14 lifeboats. My husband and I headed for the lifeboats. He push me on and as he tried to join me, two policeman [sic!] grab him as they wanted to save all the women and children first. I began yelling and crying as I wanted to join him on the sinking ship. The boat was paddled away from the Titanic so fast that I couldn't jump off and be with my husband. We were about five minutes away from the ship, but we could still see it as the lights stayed on until the Titanic sank. The people on the Titanic were yelling and crying as it was slowly sinking. When the ship sank it made a tremendous noise that I will never forget. The impact of the sinking was so great, it shook the waters and we thought our lifeboat would sink too, everyone screamed. After the sinking, which was right at midnight [sic], we were without any lights. As our boat was being paddled in the dark, everyone prayed.I had fainted and I was very depressed (There were 14 people aboard our lifeboat). The next morning we saw a big ship. We were all taken aboard one by one with a rope + a board. On the ship, I met mysister who was also on the Titanic + had been put on one of the other lifeboats. We were given hot tea, blankets and clothes. After four days we arrived in New York. I was ill and was taken to the hospital where I stayed for a week. After a week, I was reunited with my father. My name was Celiney Yasbeck."