April 10, 1912. Tonight our new ship sails on its maiden voyage to New York City. As one of the people responsible for her construction, I am proud of this beautiful lady! She certainly lives up to her reputation as the most luxurious ship afloat. I will sleep well, though I am troubled by one thing. I danced with a lovely woman named Edith Russell; while waltzing to "Ciribiribin," she told me that she had a feeling "so strong" that she "would never reach America" on the ship. I must ask her what she meant ...

Ah, well. Good night and sail on, Titanic! The RMS Titanic did sail on, for about five more days until it hit an iceberg. The great lady who had been dubbed "unsinkable" sank about 450 miles off the shore of Newfoundland, 1,517 people lost their lives, and today, more than nine decades later, the Titanic legacy stays afloat.

When I heard that "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition'' was docking at the Carnegie Science Center for a few months, I thought I would get on board. I admit I wasn't expecting much; I assumed the best Pittsburgh could do would be to throw together a relic rehash of a top-notch Titanic exhibition I had seen in Boston several years ago.

Boy, was I wrong.

I enter with my "boarding pass," in this case that of Joseph Bruce Ismay. It's a gimmick that works -- each pass offers information on an actual passenger, and at the end of the exhibition you can check the name to see if "your" passenger survived.

Once you've passed over the gangplank and onto the ship, it's a fascinating and frightening journey, so well executed that disconnecting from the real world and traveling back to back to 1912 is hardly a titanic effort.

And although the outcome is already history, the feeling of doom and despair hangs heavy in the air-conditioned air.

That's where the artifacts come in. There are more than 260 of them, each lifted gently from the ship's graveyard, some 2¹/₂ miles down in the depths of the frigid Atlantic. Each tells a story, each is real and restored as best as it could be, sitting in climate-controlled acrylic cases.

I couldn't help but stare at the various rotting bank notes (including a $5 and $10 note from the Bank of Pittsburgh, nice touch!) and handful of coins, wondering if the money came from the bankroll of first-class passenger Isidor Straus, the man who co-founded Macy's.

Perhaps the money was part of the life savings of Harvey Collyer, a second-class passenger who was taking his ill wife, Charlotte, and their 8-year-old daughter, Marjorie, to live in Idaho. Or perhaps it was money so preciously saved by one of the third-class passengers or some of the crew, gambling on a new and better life in America.

We will never know. We will never know who owned the suitcase, the leather shoe, the eyeglasses, the sheet music, the makeup tin, the hand mirror, the hairbrush.

And then ... iceberg right ahead!

I don't want to know how they did it, but the geniuses behind this exhibit have created an iceberg smack-dab against the star-riddled blue-black night sky. OK, so it's not quite the real thing, but it is a huge chunk of ice, the same temperature as the waters were that night to remember. Reach out and touch it, the science center taunts, and see how long you can take the big chill.

I last about 12 seconds. Then something happens. The combination of eerily garbled music, cool blue lighting, handprints left on the iceberg leave me overwhelmed with sadness. I envision the early morning ocean so calm that some say it "looked like a mirror." I press my hand again against the iceberg. I last 25 seconds. I try again. And again. Thirty-three seconds, 40 seconds. I press and the stars overhead twinkle. This is the same night sky witnessed by those drowning, freezing, drifting in lifeboats, fighting to hold on.

They twinkle, illuminating the iceberg and the history of human spirit.

My heart will go on.