Titanic Deck Chair (1912)
There are only ten intact deck chairs remaining from the RMS Titanic after it struck an iceberg and sank in April of 1912, including this one housed at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Nova Scotia. On the night Titanic slipped beneath the ocean’s surface, Chief Baker Charles Joughin hastily began tossing deck chairs overboard in the hopes they could be used as flotation devices for himself and others left adrift in the freezing water. He later estimated tossing fifty or so of the chairs into the water.
Additional loose chairs would have floated off the Titanic’s decks as the water consumed the ship. Commercial Cable Company ship Mackay-Bennett, tasked with recovering bodies from the Titanic disaster site, logged fourteen deck chairs recovered from the floating debris field. Most of the chairs are lost to history, but this precious artifact is a poignant reminder of the Titanic’s final night.
