'Titanic' spectacular recreates life aboard doomed liner

The public will this week get the chance to become a "passenger" on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic when a blockbuster exhibition opens at the Science Museum in London.

In one of many dramatic flourishes, visitors to the show will each be issued with a "boarding card" bearing the name of one of the 2,200 people aboard the "unsinkable" cruise liner when it struck an iceberg and went down on 15 April 1912.

From there they will move through reconstructions of first- and third-class cabins, before arriving at a replica of the ship's bridge. Only when they emerge at the other side of the exhibition will they learn whether the person whose guise they have adopted survived the tragedy.

The wall of biographies detailing the "fate" of each visitor is just one of several striking, occasionally macabre, features. Among others are a 2.5-ton section of the Titanic's hull salvaged from the Atlantic floor and a 9ft by 6ft "refrigerated iceberg" which visitors will be able to touch – as well as the bell that was rung three times by the ship's lookout, Frederick Fleet, when he spotted the real thing.

Among the first visitors will be 91-year-old Millvina Dean, one of three remaining survivors of the disaster. Ms Dean, from Southampton, who was nine weeks old when she embarked on the voyage, hopes to open the show – provided her hip is not playing up. "My father died when [the ship] hit the iceberg, so my mother would never talk about it," she said. "But then I started getting involved in Titanic conventions and in societies in later life."

Titanic is just the latest in a succession of ambitious exhibitions that have helped turn Britain's museums into some of the country's most popular tourist attractions. Among recent sell-outs have been Tate Modern's Matisse-Picasso, The Aztecs at the Royal Academy, the National Gallery's smash hit Titian show and the Science Museum's James Bond show.

In the new exhibition there will also be 200 items recently recovered from the wreck. James Rudoni, the manager of the exhibition, commented: "The Science Museum is showing real artefacts and real stories of those aboard a ship, which will always be a significant part of Britain's industrial history, but which is also the starkest reminder of what happens when people put total faith in technology."

'Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition' opens at the Science Museum on Friday; pre-book on 0870 870486