 The 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has rekindled interest in the history and romance of ocean liners. A new exhibit at the USM Ocean Map Library presents a variety of photographs, brochures, posters and artifacts that capture the spirit, glamour and adventure of transatlantic sailing from 1870 to 1970s. Brian Nobleck spoke with guest curator Lincoln Payne about this golden age of travel. Lincoln, there's a lot of history in this exhibit, but let's talk a little bit about the history of the exhibit first. The exhibit is the selections of about 5% of a collection of 2,800 documents that were donated to the Ocean Map Library in 2009 by Norman Morse, who had collected them over the past 70 or 80 years. He began collecting when he was about 10 in 1929, and he continued to collect basically up until the 70s, which was really the end of the transatlantic ocean liner, which was the focus of his interest. And what timeframe does the exhibit span? The exhibit spans from about 1870 onwards. The latest material we have actually includes material from the Queen Mary II, which Norman sailed on shortly after its launch, I think, in about 2004 or 2006. And what kind of material can people see when they come to the exhibit? We have many ships plans. We have photographs of the ships themselves, covering the whole chronology from 1870 forward. We have posters. We have menus, ships, folders, advertising various ships and shipping lines. We have maps. We have material objects from various ships like the Belgian land and the Queen Mary II. We have photographs of the Titanic, a whole assortment of things. And some of the exhibits are quite colorful and intricately designed? Yes. Well, one of the interesting things to me is the graphic design element of the materials and how that evolved from the 19th century when really going across to Europe or coming from Europe, ships were your only choice. And then, of course, later in the 1950s, as the jet passenger plane took off and took away all of the passenger traffic, Cunard came up with the slogan of the only way to cross. But in the interim, they had developed some very, very high aesthetics in terms of the booklets that they would pair as they tried to compete with their rivals. The ships we're looking at now are about from the 1870s period. What was the transatlantic crossing like at that period? Well, it was very unreliable. As you can see, the ships in this frame all have auxiliary rigs. This is really the second generation of transatlantic ships. The first generation were driven by side wheel paddles. And those were very dangerous and exposed to the weather. And as soon as they came up with the screw propeller, they began to use that exclusively. But still, the engineering was very unreliable, so they continued to be built with auxiliary sailing rigs up until the 1880s. And this was transportation. These were not luxury cruises at this point. It was strictly transportation, but there was a difference between the people who could afford their own cabins, which were not terribly good. Charles Dickens has some very funny letters he wrote to his brother when he came to America for his first book tour. But the conditions for people in steerage, as the lowest class was called, were appalling. They were cramped quarters, very open spaces, very little segregation of sexes and the families. Disease was rampant early on. The Germans actually were the first people to legislate that ships had to provide food and water for the passengers. And that was in 1840, but the British didn't follow suit until several decades after that. And this is the way shipping had gone on for millennia. You brought your own food and you had to figure out how much food you would need for a six-week crossing. Lincoln, we're now in the Gilded Age, the Gilded Age in the 1930s with the Normandy and the Aquitania. What was the crossing like on one of these ships? Well, it was pretty nice, actually. They went all out in terms of interior decoration and comfort. The Aquitania is from about before World War I and had a very long career on the transatlantic line. But it had more sort of old-fashioned tastes in terms of its interior decoration. One of the great things about the Normandy, which was really a tremendous engineering achievement, it was the longest ship of its time. It had huge, tremendous open spaces thanks to the fact that these funnels, instead of going up through the middle of the ship, actually were split so that the exhaust would go flanking the ship. And so they had interior spaces where if you stood on the center of the stage here and you kept all the doors open, you could see daylight 500 feet astern. So really unbelievably beautiful, spacious things and incredibly ornate decorations, particularly in the Normandy. How long has the exhibit been up for? The exhibit will run until August 23rd. And if people want more information about it and the times, that's our thing, where can they go? Oshermaps.org