The most moving things in this exhibition are the tiny, battered, leather boots belonging to four year-old Louise Kink, a third-class passenger on the Titanic. Next door is a picture of sweet little Louise with her mother, wearing those same boots.

As with every photograph of a passenger in the show, you immediately ask yourself, “Did they make it or not?” What a relief to discover Louise survived – as did her Swiss parents, who were taking the Titanic to find a life in the new world. Little Louise lived to the grand old age of 84, dying in her adopted home of Milwaukee in 1992.

Every single one of the 200 objects on show – never seen before in Britain – is imbued with the agony of death or the thrill of life. Here is the immaculate hymnbook belonging to Velin Matilda Öhman, 22, a Swede in third class – she survived, dying in Chicago in 1966 at 76.

And what about Carl Robert Carlsson, 24, another Swede in third class? He sent an unwittingly melancholy postcard from the ship, with a picture of the Titanic on it, saying, “If I had known that it would go so smooth, then Anna may had come with me. Goodbye!” His sister Anna didn’t join him, thank God – Carl was one of the 1,500 casualties.

Objects like this never fail to wrench the heart strings – and make this show worth a visit. Still, they’re housed in rather a strange set-up. Dock X London is a great big steel container of a building in an unlovely corner of the Docklands. Those hallowed objects are scattered through rooms draped with black sheets. It all feels a bit rough and ready – and expensive.