“The one thing I’ll remember about Titanic artifacts until the day I die is when the Saalfeld perfume vials came up. When you recover stuff from the Titanic it’s wet, it’s rusty, and it’s rotten. The smell that comes off it is perfectly alien, perfectly fetid, you know it’s a kind of death you have never experienced. So the lab is kind of unpleasant. And then all of a sudden somebody opens up this satchel, and out comes the fragrance of Heaven. It’s all these flowers and fruit flavours, and it’s delicious! It was just a complete overwhelming experience, like all of a sudden this fragrance from Heaven kind of goes through the room. Instead of being surrounded by all of these dead things, those few minutes the ship was alive again.” - Bill Sauder, Director of Research, RMS Titanic Inc.