Historical

Unsinkable ship sinks and people die leaving those left to question their greatness in believing to have created a perfect boat when really a little scratch sunk it.THIS LIST IS NOT AUTHORITATIVE

First Class Titanic Passengers
Second Class Titanic Passengers
Third Class Titanic Passengers

Hollywood Movie

Star crossed lovers from different social classes go aboard the boat. Rich one tries to commit suicide, poor one saves her. Love. Boat sinks and it ends in tragedy.

What was almost more impressive was the (false) media take on the movie that it was so impressively accurate. The movie made bad guys out of good guys and claimed some people were killers with no proof that even hinted such a thing BUT the brass shiny knobs on the deck were an exact replica!

It wasn't a tribute to the dead souls of that "termoltuous journey" (sic, TV Guide), it was a money hungry machine that realised long ago the dance around the movie is almost far more important that the movie itself. Which sucked. For the record. Still, it did earn more than any movie ever.

Directed by the same guy that did Terminator 2, James Cameron.

I was watching TV with my roommate last night and while flipping through the channels we landed on VH1's Top 50 Soundtracks. I like soundtracks so we watched it for a while. The number six (or eight, it's not important) pick was Titanic. So we began a discussion about the movie Titanic. The dialogue started out much like all Titanic Dialogue, "God, I hate this song." "God, I hate Celine Dion." "You know, the movie wasn't that great either."

Aside from the literal pain in the ass of sitting in a theater for so long, Titanic had some real shortcomings. We both decided that it rather glamorized the life of the have nots. It seems it's a lot more fun to be poor and Irish. They get to dance around and drink beer all night whilst the stuffy rich people eat that horrible fancy food and sleep in private rooms. Oh gosh, those wealthy people are so boring and snobby, why they all treat their women horribly. It would be so much nicer to be with a dirty poor man, he would never treat a woman like property.

My roommate decided that the horror of the sinking was not properly treated in the film. "Two hours of floating corpses and screaming survivors would have been more realistic", he claimed. That boat took a long time to sink. Although I realize that certain conditions had to be met to make the film marketable to a non corpse watching audience, we agreed that the aftermath of the iceberg impact was a little too soft.

My chief complaint was the action and characters. There just weren't enough robotic ninjas for my taste. Whenever I'm watching a movie and it gets a little boring all I can think is "Gee, a few robotic ninjas would sure spice up this drama". Like in Driving Miss Daisy. "Where's my can of salmon?"

"I borrowed a can for my supper Miss Daisy, but I brought a can to replace the one I used"

"That is unacceptable, face my robotic ninjas."

"No Miss Daisy, I didn't do nothing wrong!"

"Talk is cheap, now fight or die!"

That would have been so cool.

Oooooh, they built the ship Titanic
To sail the ocean blue
'Cuz they thought they had a ship that the water couldn't go through
But the Good Lord raised his hand
Said "THAT SHIP WILL NEVER LAND"
It was sad when the Great Ship went down.

(chorus)
Oh it was sad, so sad
It was sad,too bad
It was sad when the Great Ship went down to the bottom of the seeeeeaaaaaaaa
It was sad when the Great Ship went down.
(end of chorus)

They were near the English shore
When the water began to pour
And the rich refused to associate with the poor
So they put them down below where they'd be the first to go
It was sad when the Great Ship went down.

(repeat chorus)

So the moral of the story
As you can plainly see
Is to not boast about your infalibility
'Cuz the Good Lord raised his hand
Said that ship would never land
It was sad when the Great Ship went down

(repeat chorus)

Camp song sung at Chippewa Trail Camp for Girls, Michigan
Thanks to Shorty

actually it wasn't near the english shore at all. The titanic sank a little ways southeast of Newfoundland not too far from the Grand Banks. In another day or two she would have been in New York. Of course, maybe the newfoundland shore wouldn't have fit in the song ;)

As far as the film, I liked it for it's stunning detail in recreating the ship but was rather bothered by the "artistic liberty" taken by its makers. But ignoring the totally untrue or glamourized parts there really were some touching moments that actually happened. The ship's string quartet springs to mind. The only problem with ignoring the untrue parts is that you have to know the untrue parts. Most people don't.

Which happens to be another thing that annoyed me about the movie was that it had the effect of making nearly everyone who saw it a "titanic historian." A large number of people started quoting "Titanic facts" they saw in the movie when much of it is untrue. Speaking as someone who has read and studied the wreck and its leading events, freelance of course, yet still quite extensively for many years the movie made a mockery of history. But, hopefully it did inspire a few people to go out and read the big number of great studies and books about the subject and be enlightened.

The Titanic was built by Harland & Wolf shipbuilders in Belfast at a time when the British Empire was at the height of it's powers. It was built for the White Star shipping company.

It was a fantastically opulent ship and the most luxurious liner ever constructed.

Two critical mistakes were made, both caused by arrogance. The boat was designed to have bulkheads that would section the hull into separate parts. If one section were to be sustain a leak it could fill without leaking into the other sections and the boat would remain afloat. This is why it was considered unsinkable.

In order to extend the size of some luxury cabins these bulkheads were altered. When the ship was struck by the ice-berg water leaked from one compartment to the next.

The boat had the capacity to hold enough lifeboats for all of the passengers. This would have meant having life-boats on some of the upper class decks. these were removed as the ship was unsinkable and didn't need them (doh!). This is the single reason why so many perished at sea.

After the sinking maritime law was introduced to measure that all ocean going vessels carry enough lifeboats to accommodate the entire itinerary of passengers.

There is a memorial park to some of the survivors on Broadway and 107th in New York.

A much better film portrait of the sinking is given in the film "A night to remember" a classic black and white English film from the 50's, stiff upper lip and all that.

In 1902, the International Mercantile Marine Company (headed by J.P. Morgan) purchased the White Star Line for £10,000,000.

5 short years later, the managing director of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, attends a dinner party hosted by Lord James Pirrie, a partner in the firm of Harland & Wolff. The two discuss the possibility of the construction of three luxury liners, the likes of which had never been seen. They were to be the grandest ships to ever grace the seas.

Plans were established to construct the first two ships, and leave the third for later. Blueprints are drawn up for construction of three "Olympic Class" ships. Special considerations had to be made for construction of ships such an enormous size, so three of the construction slips at the Harland & Wolff shipyards were refitted, and converted into two larger slips.

Construction of the first ship began on December 16, 1908, laying the keel for the steamer "Olympic." On March 31, 1909, during construction of the Olympic, construction began on the second steamer, "Titanic."

Construction of the two ships is not unnoticed by the town of Belfast, as their tremendous outlines become the largest part of the landscape. Construction continues until October 20, 1910, when the Olympic's hull is launched, and towed to the fitting-out basin.

At 12:13PM on May 31, 1911, the 26,000 ton hull of the Titanic is towed to the fitting-out basin, just 15 days shy of the launch of her sister Olympic.

The Titanic, now nearly finished, is dry-docked in the Thompson Graving Dock for her finishing touches on February 3, 1912. Titanic is fitted with three propellers, the Marconi Radio is installed, tested, and assigned the call letters "MGY", a final coat of paint is applied to the ship's hull, and finishing touches begin on the interior. 4 funnels are added - three of which are active. The fourth funnel is simply for aesthetic value, and ventilation.

By March 31, 1912, the Titanic is complete, at a cost of $7.5 million. The maiden voyage is scheduled for April 10, and is to be commanded by Captain Edward J. Smith. The crossing of the Titanic would be Smith's last command before his retirement.

Dimensions

Features

Compliment

For technical reasons behind the sinking, please see Why the Titanic Sank.

For a transcript of the radio communications during the time of the disaster, please see CQD MGY.

By far the worst dramatic license in this movie is the magic property that water which is freezing cold outside the ship, causing rapid hypothermia and death, does not act the same way when it is inside the ship.

And just where do they suppose all that water came from?

Somehow this is lost on the moviegoing audience, most of whom have never been in freezing cold water, and probably figure you just get awfully chilly.

Lemme tell you a story: this past Thanksgiving our Big Family Gathering/Dinner was held in Boston, and my cousin lives just outside Boston on a lake in Natick. We all grew up water skiing (he is extremely serious and has a national ranking now) and he has usually taken the boat out by then for winter, but this year he left it in so we could help out. Somehow one of us gets the idea that we should go for one last post-holiday end-of-the-season ski. The air temperature is just above freezing, so the water temperature is probably just a hair above that. Someone else comments that this is probably very foolish, and then we all agree that It Must Be Done.

My cousin has lots of cold-weather ski equipment, including "drysuits", which is essentially a giant watertight rubber wetsuit, so all that's exposed to the water are your hands, feet and (if you fall) your head. I went for one loop of the lake, which felt like 20 minutes but was probably more like 5. It was, as expected, damn cold. But a hell of a lot of fun: as we're doing this we're imagining all the families on the lake having their midday Thanksgiving meal, looking out their window, and wondering who those idiots are that are water skiing in late November.

So here's the thing: when I got back in the boat, after just having my hands and feet exposed for maybe five minutes, I was completely helpless. I couldn't move my fingers at all, nor could I really wiggle my toes much. Gradually the feeling came back, but it took several minutes of warming up before I had the dexterity to put my socks back on. And that water was not nearly as cold as, say, the North Atlantic at night in the dead of winter with big hunks of ice floating around in it.

So as Kate and Leo go traipsing around waist-deep in seawater through the middle third of the film, realize that it is not a question of whether they can make it up to the top, avoid the bad guy and get on a lifeboat, it is more a question of will they be able to move their fingers enough to pick up objects and turn the first doorknob they come across, not to mention the fact that they're not wearing drysuits, so their whole body, vital organs included, is affected. The answer is: nope, they would be paralyzed in minutes1.

But it's a much shorter movie that way.


1The most insulting part of this is that Leo's character actually explains all of the nasty effects of hypothermia to Kate (and to us in the audience) in the scene where he talks her out of jumping to her death early in the movie. Then they proceed to spend a good half an hour later in the film frolicking around in the water-filled ship as if it were just another day at the pool.

May I point out that the movie has one humongous flaw in the plot, in terms of period social etiquette? Namely, 17-year-old girls could not properly accept as a gift from a suitor large cut stones. She couldn't even wear them.

The primary reason for this was often given as aesthetic: extravagant jewelry connotes maturity and married life, to do otherwise would distract from a younger girls' dewy freshness. The real reasons were more utilitarian: it's ostentatiously reckless to allow into the hands of a relative child large sums of money.

Also, while many respectable women of the time wore extravagant amounts of jewels, the very largest stones were often given to the prostitutes known as "les grandes horizontales" by their clients as publicity for both of them. To give such a gift as an engagement present (even rings weren't all that common at the time, and they were, many times, not diamond, either) would have been considered a deep insult to her family. Only later did De Beers promote the idea of diamond engagement rings, the larger the better, as de rigeur, ironically enough by offering preferential rates to actors in Hollywood.

Of course, to point this out would have made the First Class passengers seem a little less mercantile...

Ti*tan"ic (?), a.

Of or relating to Titans, or fabled giants of ancient mythology; hence, enormous in size or strength; as, Titanic structures.

 

© Webster 1913.


Ti*tan"ic (?), a. [Cf. F. titanique.] Chem.

Of or pertaining to titanium; derived from, or containing, titanium; specifically, designating those compounds of titanium in which it has a higher valence as contrasted with the titanous compounds.

Titanic acid Chem., a white amorphous powder, Ti.(OH)4, obtained by decomposing certain titanates; -- called also normal titanic acid. By extension, any one of a series of derived acids, called also metatitanic acid, polytitanic acid, etc. -- Titanic iron ore. Min. See Menaccanite.

 

© Webster 1913.

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