How Document Freeze Drying Saved Pieces of History

On the night of April 14, 1912, a luxury cruise ship owned by the White Star Line hit a massive iceberg.  Two hours later, in the early morning of April 15, it sank.  The ship’s name will be forever etched in history, not only as the largest passenger steamship in the world in her time, but as one of the deadliest maritime disaster in history.  Her name: RMS Titanic.

The sinking of the Titanic has been immortalized in many books and even movies as a tribute to the dramatic and dreadful night that claimed the lives of 1,517 people.  But while many mourn for the tragic loss of human lives, no one really paid much attention to another human loss in that tragedy – the many books, documents, and memorabilia carried aboard the liner that night.

In 1985, after being buried for a long time in the bottom of the Atlantic, Titanic’s wreckage was discovered, and that’s how the amazing story of restoration using document freeze drying method started and followed this momentous event.

Document Reprocessors, a damage restoration company, got a call from a professor of historic preservation at Eastern Michigan University.  The professor commissioned the company to restore as much as 800 artifacts from the RMS Titanic.  And what a treasure trove it was of postcards, books, ticket stubs, and photographs!  There was even a suitcase of possessions owned by a boy who died in the Titanic.   It was no doubt the most exciting project the company has handled.  The fragile materials have historical value, and the employees were both scared and excited and honored to be a part of it.

The company prides itself in its document freeze drying expertise.  The artifacts from the liner were given the royalty treatment, with a special document freeze drying method applied.  A cryogenic chamber housed each artifact to allow it to dry at a slower and more controlled pace.  The drying used an ultra-sensitive vacuum. 

A mathematics book was one of the most precious that was restored using the document freeze drying method.  And as each document was restored, the employees who handled them uncovered precious information from these mementoes.  Such as the little boy being born in Argentina and studied in Britain.  The document freeze drying applied on his possessions yielded his tragic secret: he missed his New Jersey passage on another ship to attend his brother’s wedding and ended up in the Titanic.

The university professor was impressed with the job done by Document Reprocessors.  The university did not have the expertise on document freeze drying and the artifacts lay dormant in university labs for several months before the company stepped in.  The document freeze drying technology that the company employed was top-of-the-line and enabled the artifacts to be preserved.

Today the many artifacts recovered through document freeze drying method have been returned to the RMS Titanic, Inc., the corporation who salvaged the artifacts from the ocean floor.  They are now part of a rotating Titanic exhibit, and an important historical evidence shared to many.