First Class Carpet

One day while Titanic was docked at Harland & Wolff Shipyard in Belfast for her outfitting, dining room steward Frederick Dent Ray was wandering the ship after delivering lunch to lead shipbuilder, Mr. Thomas Andrews. Mr. Ray came across some carpet layers at work in a first class stateroom on C-Deck and observed that they has discarded several scraps in a corner. He asked if he could keep one of the pieces as a memento, and to show his wife back home what beautiful carpeting they were using onboard. As the piece was too small to be of any use elsewhere, permission was granted and Mr. Ray tucked the scrap into his bag. After later surviving Titanic's sinking, Mr. Ray set to building a music stool for his wife and found that the carpeting he took off Titanic made sufficient padding for the seat when doubled up. Later, in his 90's, Mr. Ray was moving from his home into a small apartment nearer to his family when he found the old stool and remembered the Titanic carpeting he had hidden inside. The stool was broken open and the Titanic carpeting was donated to the Titanic Historical Society.

This small piece of green carpeting is a cutting from the original music stool piece.