Titanic’s 83rd Anniversary Marked by Artifacts Exhibit : Disaster: Many with emotional ties were drawn recently to the display of souvenirs taken from the wreck. Eight survivors of the ship’s sinking are alive.

Frank Aks was wrenched from his mother’s arms and hurled over the side of the sinking Titanic. His grieving mother was certain he was one of the more than 1,500 who perished when the great ship went down.

But 10-month-old Frank landed in the arms of a rescuer, and he was reunited with his mother aboard a rescue ship after the Titanic made its final, groaning lurch under the waves, the orchestra playing “Nearer My God to Thee” on the flooded deck.

His rescue was always Frank Aks’ favorite story, even though he remembered none of it, says his widow, Marie.

She and several Titanic experts came to Fredericksburg recently for a special exhibition of artifacts pulled from the wreck, which sank 83 years ago Friday, on April 14, 1912.

“He really did feel he was a lucky person--special,” Marie Aks said. “Sometimes I asked him why he thought he was saved from the Titanic. And he said, ‘I know. It was because my children had to have a father.’ ”

Until his death in 1991, Frank Aks lectured about the Titanic and collected souvenirs of the voyage--many of them bequeathed to him by some of the other 704 survivors. Titanic historian John P. Eaton said eight survivors are still living.

The Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, as the gilded jewel of its age.

It took 300 master carvers five years to carve all the heavy oak woodwork. Two enormous first-class staterooms with working fireplaces and such unheard-of luxuries as double-bowl sinks in the bathrooms cost more than $5,000 to rent for the transatlantic passage.

But there were only 16 lifeboats for 2,228 passengers, and the Titanic took 1,523 souls with it when it hit an iceberg off Newfoundland and sank 2 1/2 miles to the bottom of the freezing Atlantic.

Leah Aks was one of the few passengers in third-class, many of them immigrants like herself, who found a spot in the lifeboats.

The wreck was discovered a decade ago, the mighty hull split between the third and fourth of its towering smokestacks.

The exhibit at Fredericksburg Historical Prints includes a crystal wine decanter from the vast, opulent, first-class section of the ocean liner, a glass serving dish and a $10 bill discovered by divers.

Behind the artifacts hangs a 10-foot red-and-white flag--the pennant of the White Star line that proudly heralded the Titanic as “unsinkable.”

An identical pennant was to be a gift for Capt. Edward Smith when the Titanic reached New York.