Titanic, other luxury ships part of exhibit at Coe Hall

The golden age of luxury ocean liners is best remembered for the tragedies that befell the Titanic and the Lusitania, but not all early 20th century Transatlantic crossings sailed disastrously into history.

Most voyages aboard the Titanic’s sister ships on the White Star Line, the Olympic and Britannic, and the Cunard Line’s Aquitania and Mauretania, ended uneventfully for passengers ranging from the fabulously wealthy to Ellis Island-bound immigrants. The era’s highs and lows are chronicled in a new Planting Fields exhibition featuring posters, archival documents, ship models and memorabilia such as reproductions of Titanic dinner plates.

Luxury ocean liners had one thing in common with 1997’s “Titanic” movie: class distinctions.

“They were very glamorous if you were in first class, with incredible public rooms designed by the best architects of that era,” says Henry B. Joyce, executive director of the Planting Fields Foundation. On less luxurious decks, the Aquitania could accommodate up to 2,000 third-class passengers, most of them bound for an uncertain fate at Ellis’ immigration inspection station.

Models of the Titanic, the Aquitania and the Lusitania, which was torpedoed by German U-boats and sank on May 7, 1915, are also displayed in Planting Field’s Coe Hall.

THE COE CONNECTION

Coe Hall’s rooms mirror the luxurious style of first-class ocean liner rooms, Joyce says, but the connection with the era goes beyond décor. Coe Hall’s original owner, William R. Coe, emigrated in steerage from England to the United States in 1883, made his fortune in marine insurance and chaired the board of the firm that brokered the hull insurance on the Titanic. He met his future wife, Mai Rogers, daughter of Standard Oil partner H.H. Rogers, aboard an ocean liner.

Andrea Crivello, Planting Fields curatorial assistant, notes that among the documents on display is Coe’s letter outlining plans for a June 1 family voyage aboard the Titanic. It’s dated April 8, 1912, seven days before the “unsinkable” ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic, claiming more than 1,500 lives.