Titanic museum has harrowing feature that lets you feel how those who went overboard felt

There's a chilling feature at the Titanic museum where people can get an idea of what it was like to be one of the passengers onboard when the infamous vessel went down.

The Titanic museum attraction, based in Tennessee, USA, is home to over 400 real Titanic artefacts that have been valued at over $4.5 million (£3.4 million). It's one of many around the world, though it is believed to be the biggest out there.

Shaped like the RMS Titanic, it is actually a half-scale of the original ship and features several quirky details to make your visit as authentic as possible.

You can find full-scale recreations of rooms on board and costumed cast members.

If you visit the attraction, you're even given a boarding pass with the name of an actual passenger that was on the ship, only finding out if they are dead or alive in the Titanic Memorial Room, where 2,208 names are honoured.

At over 22,000 square feet in size, a lot of history can be explored at the museum, but it's one feature that has made the headlines in the past couple days, as some visitors have gone viral on social media after trying the immersive feature out.

As it is a self-guided tour, you can take yourself around to look at and try out whatever you please, and this group focused on a feature that had a bucket of water that was temperature-controlled.

At the Titanic Museum you can find this basin filled with water, set to the exact temperature that the people in the surrounding waters would have had to swim in after the ship sank.

The ocean temperature was about 30°F.pic.twitter.com/38e9jjXjEh

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) September 11, 2024

The water in the bucket is at the exact temperature that the Atlantic Ocean was that fateful early morning on 15 April 1912, which was 28°F, or -2.2°C.

Three visitors decided to see how long they could put their hands in the beyond freezing water, which claimed the lives of more than 1,503 people.

In a video that has since gone viral, they each take turns in front of the camera, as the first woman simply said as she put her hand in: "Yeah that's bad. That's a little rough."

She lasted just 20 seconds, and a man followed up as he placed his hand in, calling the feeling a 'burning sensation', before pulling his hand out after eight seconds, saying 'I'm dead'.

The third woman bravely took her place, repeatedly saying 'oh my God' as she left her hand in, asking if it was becoming dangerous.

It's not clear if the man was joking or being serious, but she had $100 up for grabs if she could keep it in for two minutes, but she took it out soon after, saying it'd have to be at least $500 for her to consider it - though she did win out of the three, lasting an impressive 40 seconds.

It does put the tragedy into perspective and the unforgiving conditions that passengers were thrown into after the vessel collided with an iceberg at 11:40pm on 14 April 1912.

The ship fully sank at 2:20am on 15 April 1912, with only a reported 705 survivors on the vessel that was branded as 'unsinkable', as several passengers froze to death in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.