Titanic Artifacts Authenticator
In my persona as an Authenticator, in 1998 I was commissioned to examine three artifacts that were alleged to be part of the floating debris from the wreckage of the Titanic. (This had been purportedly picked up by the cable steamer Minia.) My authenticating analysis-including examination of an attached paper tag, ink, handwriting, and so on-is given at length (chapter 15) in my Real or Fake: Studies in Authentication (2009). It also appears in the Italian magazine Query (spring 2012). The photograph of me, apparently on the deck of the ill-fated cruise ship, was made using a replica deck chair in a display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I did research on the Titanic. I also visited the cemetery in Halifax where many victims of the 1912 tragedy were buried).
