Museum to display Carparthia ship items

ST. PAUL, Minn., April 9 (UPI) -- The Science Museum of Minnesota says artifacts from the Titanic's rescue ship, Carpathia, will go on display there for the first time this June.

Tickets for "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition," featuring items that have never before been displayed publicly, are to go on sale April 14, the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

The exhibition is to open June 12.

Carpathia was 58 miles from Titanic when its crew received the distress call and raced through the icy waters of the North Atlantic to help. It arrived on the scene after Titanic had foundered, but the crew managed to rescue the 705 survivors of the disaster and carry them to their New York destination, the museum noted in a news release. Carpathia later returned to transatlantic service and was sunk by a German torpedo during World War I. Her wreckage was discovered in 1999, approximately 185 miles off the southwestern coast of England.

The Carpathia artifacts will be displayed in a new Rescue Gallery within the Titanic exhibition, the museum said.

"We are pleased to unveil yet another fascinating layer to the Titanic with the worldwide debut of more than 20 of the 50 artifacts recovered from RMS Carpathia," Chris Davino of Premier Exhibitions, Inc., said in a statement. "Visitors to the Science Museum of Minnesota will have the first opportunity to not only witness a unique piece of history, but to better understand the stories of those on board Titanic that notorious night in April 1912."

"Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition" will feature more than 250 artifacts that have been recovered from Titanic's wreck site, as well as detailed room re-creations.