The world was stunned in 1912 by the loss of the liner Titanic on her maiden voyage and 86 years later the world remains fascinated. Each generation seems to find new meanings in the tragedy; witness the recent spate of mini-series and a huge Hollywood film. The new exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Titanic: The Unsinkable Ship and Halifax, presents a fresh Nova Scotian perspective on the disaster. Halifax arguably has one of the most moving and intimate connections with the Titanic tragedy, playing a key role during the sinking and becoming the final resting place of her victims and wreckage.

Using many recently acquired artifacts and unpublished photographs, the exhibit traces Titanic's creation, as the hoped-for trump card in the technological race to control Atlantic travel. Promoted as unsinkable even as the first reports of her destruction arrived in Halifax, Titanic brought the term "floating palace" into the language. Lavishly carved oak panelling recovered with her victims attest to the luxury in First Class. A feature that stood out in survivors' memories was her magnificent oak and bronze grand staircase. The museum brings the staircase back to life with an almost life-size photograph matched with a delicately carved newell post face that miraculously survived the fatal deluge. An elegant but empty Titanic deckchair, one of the only intact Titanic deckchair in the world, attests to the fate of two thirds of the 2200 people aboard her.

Even as Titanic sank, her electric lights shone through the water, a moment captured in a new diorama that presents a "lifeboat view" of Titanic's final moments. Those moments were also recorded on paper as they happened by wireless operator Robert Hunston on duty at Cape Race, Newfoundland and his original transcript of Titanic's distress calls is displayed for the first time.

Titanic was a virtually microcosm of society in 1912 and the exhibit tells the story of victims from all classes. The doomed Halifax millionaire George Wright and the gloves believed to be those of railway tycoon Charles Hays attest to the glamourous rich who died, but more telling still is the Swedish immigrant family the Pålssons, wiped out, despite the myth of women and children first. Tragedy also mixed with intrigue with the mysterious Michel Navratil, a fugitive and kidnapper whose body, found with its loaded revolver, was buried under his secret identity and it was many years before his children learned of his resting place.

The recovery of bodies left a grim and profound impression on the Halifax crews and undertakers who braved ice and waves to recover the victims. Their letters, "The Dr. and I are sleeping in the midst of 14 coffins", attest to the grim work. They also expressed themselves with "wreckwood souvenirs" such as the cribbage board on display, carved from floating debris, showing that the tragedy was being commemorated even as it unfolded.

Halifax became, in the words of one doctor "a city of funerals" as over 200 bodies were landed, a few to be claimed by relatives but most to be buried in three Titanic cemeteries. An unexpected legacy of the mass death was the skilfully improvised system of identifying bodies that proved invaluable in 1917 when the city itself suffered almost 2000 deaths in the Halifax Explosion.

Titanic's popularity was boosted in recent years by its discovery in 1985 and subsequent exploration. Visitors can relive the discovery experience viewing a model of the Titanic wreck though a careful replica of a submersible port as first glimpsed by Robert Ballard. Halifax scientists have led the way in researching parts of the Titanic wreck including Henrietta Mann who has explored the microscopic jungle inside the "rusticles" that are literally eating away the wreck and pose questions about how long Titanic has left.