From the archives | Explorers discover fragrant relic of the sea

Tim Friend
·2 min read

This story originally published on Aug. 4, 2000. It is being republished as part of the commemoration of USA TODAY's 40th anniversary on Sept. 15, 2022.

ABOARD THE AKADEMIK MSTISLAV KELDYSH -- A leather case containing more than 40 small ampuls of perfume oil was retrieved late Wednesday from the sunken Titanic -- and the fragrance is still sweet after nearly a century.

The oils apparently belonged to first-class passenger Adolphe Saalfeld, a businessman from Manchester, England, who survived the North Atlantic disaster that claimed more than 1,500 lives on April 15, 1912.

Members of an expedition being conducted by RMS Titanic Inc., a company with salvage rights to the wreck, found the oils.

The company has retrieved more than 5,000 artifacts in five previous expeditions.

It originally planned to seek objects from the interior of the ship, which provoked charges of grave robbing from critics, including Robert Ballard, who discovered the shipwreck 15 years ago.

A court order Monday blocked the removal of interior items, so the expedition is recovering objects only from the debris around the ship.

Glassware and other dining items recovered from the sunken ship Titanic.
Glassware and other dining items recovered from the sunken ship Titanic.

Mike Harris, expedition leader, and Dave Walker, the company's operations manager, found the leather case about 200 feet from the Titanic's mangled stern section during a dive in a three-person submersible. The submarine pilot retrieved it with a robotic arm.

Once exposed to the air, the case exuded the scent of perfume. It contained four sections with four rows of 1.5-inch vials, some encased in gold tubes and each labeled "A. Saalfeld & Co., Manchester."

Handwriting identifying several vials was still legible: Geranus, C.P. Carnation, Perganol, Geranisol I and Salicylate of Methyl.

"If I had to guess, I would say they would have been used to create new fragrances," says the expedition's artifact curator, Michelle Turman. "Maybe they were being taken to New York to be sold."

"To smell something that smells the same as it did on the Titanic before it went down is simply incredible," says Graham Jessop of Paris, a shipwreck artifact retrieval expert.

Michelle Turman, artifacts curator for the RMS expedition, examines perfume bottles, still intact, which were brought up from the wreck of the Titanic Wednesday, August 2, 2000.
Michelle Turman, artifacts curator for the RMS expedition, examines perfume bottles, still intact, which were brought up from the wreck of the Titanic Wednesday, August 2, 2000.

Turman says the oils and the leather case will be conserved after the expedition ends late this month and will be displayed at one of RMS Titanic's public exhibits. The company has exhibits in Chicago, Orlando and Atlantic City.

Meanwhile, an address book that disappeared from a Titanic exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry was found undamaged, officials said. The security guard who reported it missing, Joshua Jackson, 22, was charged with felony theft. Officers found the book at his home Wednesday.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sinking of the Titanic: Bag of fragrances retrieved from sunken ship