The fictional jewel – The Heart of the Ocean is a fictional jewel, which in the film allegedly came from Louis XVI’s crown. Even though the gorgeous Heart of the Ocean is only a fictional diamond, it steals the show in the end of the movie when Rose tosses it into the ocean, where its name suggests it belongs.
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Did they ever find the heart of the ocean?
Heart of the Ocean Diamond – We also know this diamond as Le Cœur de la Mer, The diamond is, in fact, a fictional diamond. There never was a real version of this remarkable blue diamond in existence. However, a lot of details from this diamond necklace is similar to those from the Hope Diamond, The Heart of the Ocean was probably based on the Hope Diamond.
Where is the actual Heart of the Ocean?
The Heart of the Ocean Diamond Necklace If you’re wondering what the necklace in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic is, it is called the ‘Heart of the Ocean’. The heart-shaped blue diamond necklace plays a silent leading role in the film and ultimately ends up at the bottom of the ocean. But did you know that this fictitious necklace is actually based on a piece of royal jewellery? Read on to learn all about what the blue Heart of the Ocean is and the appeal of heart of the ocean-inspired engagement rings and other jewellery. -Read more below- “> In the film, the jewellery allegedly came from Louis XVI’s crown. The precious stone was subsequently crafted into a 56-carat heart-shaped blue diamond in white gold and a colourless diamond setting. Had the ‘Heart of the Ocean’ been real, it would be valued at €300 million. For the motion picture, a zirconia and was made, worth €8000. To this day the prop is stored in the film studio’s archives. Naturally, several replicas of the stunning blue Heart of the Ocean were made and sold after the film was released. Inspired by the Heart of the Ocean, a 171 carat necklace with a real blue sapphire was crafted and ultimately sold for 1.4 million dollars “> In reality, the necklace that holds the record for being the most expensive necklace in the world is the, which is valued at US $55 million and features the flawless 407.48-carat yellow diamond and a 229.52-carat white diamond necklace intertwined with 18-carat rose gold branches. “> The most comparable diamond was a 56-carat diamond sold at Christies. This 56-carat diamond was worth up to £7.5 million. The Hope Diamond was not on the Titanic when it sank; it was owned by Washington socialite, Mrs Evelyn McLean, who didn’t even set sail on the infamous ship. When she died in 1947, it was sold to pay off her debts. “> The precious stone has its own narrative that is worthy of a film in itself. The story has it that the stone was cursed as it was stolen from an Indian statue of the goddess Sita. The stone has been housed at the Smithsonian Museum since 1958. At one time, the French king, Louis XIV also owned the Hope Diamond, or the Bleu de France, as it was also known by. “> Buying tailor-made jewellery is very easy at BAUNAT. Our experts help you design jewellery just as you want it, whether it’s a Heart of the Ocean engagement ring or a Hope diamond-inspired necklace. Once you have given the go-ahead, our experts will make an online 3D model, and then the actual item of jewellery. We always keep you up to speed, and you remain closely involved throughout the process. Another reason to buy your diamond jewellery at BAUNAT is the price. Thanks to our unique approach whereby we procure our diamonds directly at source, you can purchase our jewellery up to 30-50% less expensive than at a jewellery shop. However, lower prices do not mean we stint on quality, on the contrary in fact. At BAUNAT we work exclusively with the very best materials and craftspeople. Guaranteeing you an optimal price-quality ratio. “> You now know everything about the Heart of the Ocean, as well as a little about the Hope Diamond. However, there’s more to tell about the latter, likewise about a few other renowned diamonds. Glean all you need to know in the following blogs. In the 13th century, an act of Saint Louis (Louis IX of France, 1214-70) established a sumptuary law that reserved diamonds for the king based on their rarity and value that was conferred to them at that time. From that moment onwards, diamonds began appearing in royal jewelry for both men and women. From the 17th century, they were also seen with the greater European aristocracy and the wealthy merchant class. The earliest diamond-cutting industry is believed to have been positioned in Venice (Italy) somewhere around the 1330’s. It is estimated that diamond cutting found its way to Paris and Bruges around late 14th century and later to Antwerp. By 1499, the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to the Orient around the Cape of Good Hope, providing Europeans an end-run around the Arabic impediment to the trade of diamonds coming from India. Goa, on India’s Malabar Coast, was set up as the Portuguese trading center, and a diamond route developed from Goa to Lisbon to Antwerp. Diamonds are actually quite rare. Also it is true that the process of extracting diamond is quite laborious (mines move many tons of dirt per carat of diamond found) and that gem-quality diamonds are relatively few (only about 1 in 1 million diamonds are quality one carat stones, only 1 in 5 million are 2-carat; and 1 in 15 million are 3-carat). The prices of diamonds increase along with the inflation rate. In some periods, the demand is higher than the supply whilst in other periods this is reversed. In the end, there is always a balance. The sapphire is instantly linked to an intense sky-blue colour. In this colour, the gemstone is also the most beautiful and most valuable, But not all sapphires are blue. They exist in different colours, including yellow, purple and orange. All sapphires were formed from crystals of the mineral corundum. The presence of certain metals in the corundum determine, : The Heart of the Ocean Diamond Necklace
How did Cal get the heart of the ocean?
Rose DeWitt Bukater wearing the Heart of the Ocean. The Heart of the Ocean was a rather large, heavy diamond and as Rose DeWitt Bukater said an overwhelming necklace that disappeared on the Titanic, It is based off the real Hope Diamond. The origins of the necklace date back to revolutionary France when it was worn by Louis the XVI and was known as the Blue Diamond of the Crown,
When the revolution occured in 1789, Louis was executed and the French monarchy disestablished. From that point on it had disappeared and presumed destroyed. Also during this time, it went under significant changes. It was cut to be smaller, and fastened into the pendant it became to be in 1912. It’s name also changed to Le Cœur de la Mer, or The Heart of the Ocean.
By 1912, Nathan Hockley had purchased it for his son Caledon to give to his fiancee Rose DeWitt Bukater as an engagment present that Cal originally planned to give to Rose at their rehearsal gala. However, in order to ensure her meeting with him, he gave it to her after she nearly jumped off the stern of the Titanic; claiming it was symbol of his love for her, and that he could give her anything she desired.
- Later, Rose shows the diamond necklace to Jack and asks him to draw her naked while wearing it.
- Rose changed into her kimono robe and play-gived Jack a small payment.
- She then removed her kimono robe, and Jack sketched her nude pose with the necklace on the sofa.
- When it became clear Rose loved Jack, Cal managed to get it into Jack’s pocket, getting him arrested.
Cal then put the necklace in his coat pocket, but forgot it when he gave the coat to Rose. Rose then finds the necklace in the pocket after getting off the Carpathia, She keeps it for years, until Brock Lovett tried looking for it, only to find the nude portrait of Rose.
Rose and her granddaughter, Lizzy, then go to Lovett, where Rose tells her story to them. Rose then throws the necklace off the Keldysh, just above the Titanic, By throwing the necklace into the Atlantic ocean, Rose finally lets go, because she is ready to make peace with Jack and the other Titanic victims; she is finally ready to move on.
In the alternative ending, Lovett and Lizzy see Rose and confront her, until Rose says if they come any closer, she’ll chuck the necklace off the ship. Lovett then gets to hold it for a few seconds until it is thrown off the ship.
How much is the real Heart of the Ocean worth?
The Prop Costs A Fraction of The Real Thing – The prop necklace used in Titanic cost approximately $7610, according to the Capetown Diamond Museum, That’s not cheap for a beautiful necklace, but it’s nowhere near as expensive as the piece it’s based on.
- Haruni estimates that The Heart of The Ocean’s real-life counterpart, the Hope Diamond, is worth between $200-$250 million USD today, while other diamond experts bump that up to possibly $350 million.
- The Kardashians hire armed guards to protect their diamonds, but theirs are only worth about $30 million dollars.
To put the insane $350 million value of the Hope Diamond in perspective, buying it would cost as much as Beyoncé’s entire net worth (as reported by Forbes). THIS DIAMOND IS THE BEYONCE OF JEWELS.
Where is the Titanic diamond?
It was a dreadful heavy thing. Out of all the necklaces in the world, The Heart of the Ocean would have to be one of the most iconic. Even if you’ve never seen Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, we can guarantee you still think of this scene when someone mentions the necklace: 20 years after that dramatic shot, the necklace is still creating interest. Because as it turns out, that fictional diamond went on to sink a whole company into the watery depths of near-bankruptcy. Racked journo Elana Fishman ‘s interview with John Peterman, founder of The J.
- Peterman Company, is creating waves (no, that’s not the last of the water puns in this yarn) after he spoke about how selling reproductions of the Titanic prop landed his business in the drink.
- Peterman acquired the rights to sell replicas of the necklace as 20 th Century Fox certified authentic reproductions in the late 90s.
He bought one of the two necklaces jewellers Asprey & Garrard created for the film using blue cubic zirconias, an investment that cost him “way, way under $1000”. According to MissOcean.com, this version of the necklace apparently only featured in the movie “for a brief moment” when Billy Zane’s character removed it from the safe before the sinking. READ MORE: The best things people on Twitter have overheard this week As Fishman reported, the company sold more than $1.3million worth of Heart of the Ocean necklaces.
They cost about $250 and came with a certificate of authenticity. “I didn’t think we’d sell any of them,” Peterman told Racked, “Boy, was I wrong.” WATCH MORE: Boys’ choir tries to sing Christmas carol after eating ghost peppers The steep rise in sales prompted bold company expansions, but as Titanic fever faded it became clear that this staggering growth couldn’t be maintained.
Eventually the company plunged to the point of bankruptcy and was bought-out by Paul Harris Stores. The article pointed to a piece Peterman wrote for the Harvard Business Review back in 1999, in which he admitted selling the reproduction was a mistake. Eventually, the Heart of the Ocean became less coveted and seen as tacky, which perhaps contributed to Peterman’s ‘costly success’. WATCH MORE: The Italian family that doesn’t feel pain thanks to rare gene mutation But thanks to the movie, the necklace remains popular today.
A bunch of the reproductions are still available on eBay, with starting prices at about $500. As an aside, Peterman’s company also made replicas of the dragonfly hair clip Kate Winslet wore in the movie, one of which is currently on track to go for a little more than $2000 on eBay. In the end, Peterman was able to buy back his namesake, which is now up and running again,
But he said he doesn’t know where the original necklace – the one he bought from Fox all those years ago – is. The other necklace used in the film is rumoured to be owned by a private collector, but had been lent to Titanic director James Cameron for display purposes. #lookssoreal In 1998, Asprey & Garrard was commissioned to make another grander version of the necklace, This followed the same design as the oringal, but this time it featured a 171-carat sapphire from Sri Lanka and more than 100 diamonds. It was sold at auction to benefit the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and Southern California’s Aid For AIDS, fetching a price of roughly $1.8 million. This piece was apparently later donated to the Charlestown Shipwreck & Heritage Centre in Cornwall, England, where it went on display. But perhaps the grandest reproduction of the necklace was that of famed jeweller Harry Winston, who used a 15 carat blue diamond for his take on the classic. We can’t confirm what happened to this eye-wateringly expensive necklace, but we reckon it’s probably kept in a very safe spot.
Is the Titanic still underwater?
Wreck of the RMS Titanic | |
---|---|
Titanic ‘ s bow, photographed in June 2004 | |
Event | Sinking of the RMS Titanic |
Cause | Collision with an iceberg |
Date | 15 April 1912 ; 110 years ago |
Location | 370 nmi (690 km) south-southeast of Newfoundland, North Atlantic Ocean |
Coordinates | 41°43′32″N 49°56′49″W / 41.72556°N 49.94694°W Coordinates : 41°43′32″N 49°56′49″W / 41.72556°N 49.94694°W |
Discovered | 1 September 1985 ; 37 years ago |
The wreck of the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3,800 metres; 2,100 fathoms), about 370 nautical miles (690 kilometres) south-southeast of the coast of Newfoundland, It lies in two main pieces about 2,000 feet (600 m) apart. The bow is still recognisable with many preserved interiors, despite deterioration and damage sustained hitting the sea floor,
- In contrast, the stern is completely ruined.
- A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank.
- The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the sea bed, but have since been consumed by other organisms.
- Titanic sank in 1912, when it collided with an iceberg during its maiden voyage.
Numerous expeditions tried using sonar to map the sea bed in the hope of finding it, but were unsuccessful. In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
- The wreck has been the focus of intense interest and has been visited by numerous expeditions.
- Controversial salvage operations have recovered thousands of items, which have been conserved and put on public display.
- Many schemes have been proposed to raise Titanic, including filling the wreck with ping-pong balls, injecting it with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to encase it in an iceberg that would float to the surface.
However, the wreck is too fragile to be raised and is now protected by a UNESCO convention.
Who owned the blue diamond on the Titanic?
TRUE TITANIC LOVE STORY: THE REAL HEART OF THE OCEAN DIAMOND The tragic tale of the Titanic has been cemented in our hearts and memories by James Cameron’s classic film, centered on the doomed young love of Jack and Rose. The depiction is so moving and dramatic that many believe the story to be entirely Hollywood fiction, but they would be incorrect — even the Heart of the Ocean was based on a real necklace. The elegant gem belonged to nineteen year-old Kate Florence Phillips whose paramour Henry Samuel Morley, twenty years her senior (and Kate’s boss), bestowed the necklace upon her as token of his love. Henry had purchased second-class tickets under the pseudonym Mr.
- And Mrs. Marshall for the two lovebirds so they could elope to San Francisco.
- Henry was already married and had a young daughter back in England, but had fallen for his bewitching shop assistant.
- Ate proudly wore the in the dining rooms of the Titanic and even as the ship hit the iceberg and began its fateful demise, Kate was wearing her precious necklace.
Morley could not swim and he sadly drowned, but Kate survived with only the necklace. A heart-wrenching story, not unlike the Hollywood film! Many reproductions of the necklace have been made, some more expensive and desirable than others. The necklace seen throughout the film, and worn by the enchanting Kate Winslet, was a prop mainly composed of cubic zirconia.
However, after the film’s success, Asprey & Garrard were commissioned to create an authentic version of the necklace replete with a 171-carat heart-shaped Ceylon sapphire surrounded by 103 diamonds. Celine Dion proudly wore the necklace to the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony where she performed the film’s passionate and beloved theme song, “My Heart Will Go On.” Should you have a sparkling sapphire necklace from Tiffany & Co.
or a glittering blue diamond ring from Harry Winston, the fantastic team of loan officers at are thrilled to assist you. The certified gemological specialists can evaluate your exquisite emeralds and rubies or your gorgeous Cartier diamond bracelet to purchase or lend against.
Did they ever find the diamond from Titanic?
Inspired by the hope diamond – The fictional jewel was inspired by one-of-a-kind blue Hope Diamond, a real jewel carried by royals and wealthy socialites in the early 20 th century. The stunning blue diamond is approximately 45.52 carats and is kept at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC.
The Hope Diamond is the largest blue diamond in the world, with a fascinating story behind it. It was found in 1668 in India. After being circulated through the French nobility, it was stolen and disappeared, later to be found in England. However, the stunning piece of jewelry is surrounded with myths and superstitions.
It holds the reputation of being “cursed” to the effect that it brings misfortune and tragedy to whoever owns or wears it, though the stories could have been fabricated to enhance the allure and mystery of the stone. : Story of Titanic’s iconic heart of the ocean diamond necklace
Why did Rose let go of Jack?
Ultimately, Jack had to die. – Even filmmaker James Cameron agrees. In an interview with Vanity Fair (opens in new tab), Cameron was asked why Rose didn’t make room for Jack. His response was straightforward: “Because it says on page 147 that Jack dies.” And there you have it.
An unpopular but correct opinion. If Jack had climbed onto the furniture with Rose, they’d both be dead. Maybe you should follow her lead and let Jack go. I promise, your heart will go on. Alexis Jones is an assistant editor at Women’s Health where she writes across several verticals on WomensHealthmag.com, including life, health, sex and love, relationships and fitness, while also contributing to the print magazine.
She has a master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University, lives in Brooklyn, and proudly detests avocados.
Why is the Hope Diamond cursed?
Common Questions About the Hope Diamond – Q: How is the Hope Diamond cursed? The Hope Diamond is thought to be cursed as it was stolen from a Sita idol in India. The original thief was torn to pieces by dogs and everyone else who has been involved with the diamond met horrible deaths and bad luck.
Who has the Hope Diamond?
800 BC | Accounts report that diamond mining is active in India. | |
1600s | Indian mining towns are among the wealthiest cities in the world | |
1631 | Gem merchant Jean Baptiste Tavernier makes his first of six trips to the Orient. | |
1668 | Tavernier first reports possession of an incredible blue diamond (“the Tavernier Blue”) weighing 112 carats (nearly size of man’s fist), though he never mentions how he acquired the gem. | |
Tavernier sells the diamond to King Louis XIV of France. | ||
1673 | The Tavernier Blue is cut to just over sixty-seven carats by Sieur Pitau, the King’s jeweler and becomes known as the “Blue Diamond of the Crown” or the “French Blue.” | |
1749 | Louis XV orders court jeweler Andre Jacquemin to reset the French Blue into a piece of ceremonial jewelry for the Royal Order of the Golden Fleece. | |
1792 | The French Blue, as well as other crown jewels, are stolen from the treasury during the French revolution. | |
1812 | John Françillion writes a memorandum documenting the presence in London of a large blue diamond weighing over fourty-five carats. At about the same time an illustrated perspectus for the sale of the diamond is found, signed by the gem’s owner, Daniel Eliason. Because of its size and unusual color, it is speculated that the diamond was cut from the French Blue. | |
1822 | Sir Thomas Lawrence paints a portrait of George IV of England in which the King is wearing the insignia of the Royal Order of the Golden Fleece set with a large blue stone bearing a striking resemblence to the blue diamond. | |
1830 | George IV dies, his estate encumbered by great debt. | |
1839 | A large blue diamond, now called the “Hope Diamond,” appears in the gem catalogue of Henry Philip Hope, but no history of the stone is presented. | |
1841 | Following the death of Lord Hope and much litigation, the stone is passed on to Hope’s nephew Henry Thomas Hope. | |
1886 | Evalyn Walsh is born. | |
1902 | To pay his debts, Lord Henry Thomas Hope sells the Hope Diamond to Simon Frankel, a New York jeweler, for $148,000. The Hope Diamond remains in the safe of Joseph Frankel and Sons for six years. | |
1903 | The Walsh family moves into a mansion on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, DC. | |
1908 | Evalyn Walsh marries Edward (Ned) McLean, heir to the Washington Post newspaper fortune. | |
Turkish Sultan Abdul Hamid II purchases the Hope Diamond – reportedly for $400,000. | ||
1909 | Evalyn and Ned McLean depart on a worldwide honeymoon trip. While in Paris, Evalyn buys the Star of East, a 94.8 carat white diamond, from Cartier for $120,000. | |
The Turkish Sultan puts the Hope Diamond up for sale. | ||
Evalyn gives birth to Vinson, known in the press as “The Hundred Million Dollar Baby.” | ||
1910 | While on another trip to Paris, Evalyn Walsh McLean is visited by Pierre Cartier, who attempts to sell her the Hope Diamond. | |
1911 | After resetting the stone, Cartier, the “Prince of Jewelers” travels to Washington and sells the Hope Diamond to Evalyn for 180,000. | |
1913 | Evalyn’s mother-in-law dies of pneumonia. | |
1916 | The McLean family moves to their new country estate, called “Friendship,” where Evalyn hosts many extravagant parties for Washington society. | |
1919 | Evalyn’s son, Vinson, is hit by an automobile in front of his home and dies shortly thereafter. | |
1921 | May Yohe publishes a fanciful account of the diamond’s “dark past” in her book, The Mystery of the Hope Diamond. | |
1929 | Evalyn and Ned are separated. | |
1932 | The Washington Post is sold at auction for $825,000. | |
1941 | Ned McLean dies in a sanatorium from brain atrophy due to alcohol saturation. | |
1946 | Evalyn’s only daughter dies of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-five. | |
1947 | Evalyn Walsh McLean dies at the age of sixty. | |
1949 | New York jewler, Harry Winston, buys the estate jewelry of Evalyn Walsh McLean, including the Star of the East and the Hope Diamond. He sends the collection on a nine year good will tour of the United States. | |
1958 | Harry Winston donates the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution. | |
1962 | The Hope Diamond is exhibited for a month at the Louvre. | |
1965 | The Hope diamond is exhibited at the Rand Easter Show in South Africa. | |
1984 | The Hope Diamond is loaned to Harry Winston Inc. as part of the firm’s 50th anniversary celebration. | |
1998 | After extensive remodeling of the display area, the Hope Diamond is exhibited in the new Harry Winston Room in the Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals of the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. |
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Is Rose from the Titanic real?
You probably already knew that Jack and Rose, the main characters in the 1997 movie Titanic, weren’t real. Like all films “based on a true story,” the movie added its own fictional elements to historical events. But during the film, Jack and Rose do run into several characters based on real people—some of whom have far more interesting stories than the film addresses.
- The movie’s writer and director, James Cameron, “wanted to surround, particularly in first class, with real passengers,” says Paul Burns, vice president and curator for the Titanic Museum Attractions in Missouri and Tennessee.
- Don Lynch, the historian for the Titanic Historical Society who also served as the 1997 film’s historian, says Cameron picked out these people in advance when he wrote the script.
On set, Lynch advised the actors about their historical characters’ accents, behaviors, and personalities. Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kathy Bates in ‘Titanic’ directed by James Cameron. (Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Pictures/ScreenProd/Photononstop/Alamy Stock Photo) One of these real-life characters was Margaret Brown, who was played by Kathy Bates in the film.
Brown became known as the “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” because of her role during and after the Titanic disaster in April 1912. Once the Carpathia rescued the Titanic survivors who’d escaped in the lifeboats, Brown coordinated with other first-class passengers to help the lower-class survivors. In one of her most memorable scenes in the movie, she tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade her under-filled lifeboat to row back and save more people.
“There are true accounts saying that she did that,” notes Burns. Yet even with her large, vibrant role, she still “didn’t get to be as dynamic as history plays her to be,” says Lynch. WATCH: Full episodes of History’s Greatest Mysteries online now and tune in for all-new episodes Tuesdays at 8/7c.
After the shipwreck, Brown created and chaired a survivor’s committee, helped arrange burials for the bodies that rescue workers recovered, and presented an award to the captain of the Carpathia for saving them. “She was also vehemently upset that she was not able to testify at the Titanic hearings, at the inquest, because she was a woman,” he says.
(These were hearings the U.S. and Britain held to investigate what had happened.) Titanic survivor Margaret Brown alongside Captain Arthur Rostron, of the RMS Carpathia, who was awarded a silver cup for rescuing survivors of the shipwrecked Titanic. (Credit: DeAgostini/Getty Images) Another prominent historical figure in the movie is Wallace Hartley, the violinist played by actor Jonathan Evans-Jones.
Hartley is considered one of the heroes of the Titanic because, as the film shows, he kept his band playing as the ship sank to help people stay calm—most memorably with the song, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” READ MORE: Why Did the Titanic Sink? “There was no effort to save themselves,” Lynch says of the band members, who all died that night.
“They understood that the ship was sinking and that they were needed to keep people calm, and so they just kept playing.” We know one of the songs they played was “Nearer, My God, to Thee” because so “many people claimed to have heard it,” he says. (Hartley’s band likely played the British version of the song, while the movie features the American one.) The violin owned and played by bandmaster Wallace Hartley during the final moments before the sinking of the Titanic, displayed at a conservation studio in Lurgan, Northern Ireland, 2013. The violin was recovered along with his body 10 days after he and other band members played to calm passengers on the deck of the stricken ship after it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage.
- The instrument bears an engraved message from the musician’s fiance that reads: For Wallace, on the occasion of our engagement.
- From Maria.
- Credit: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images) Captain Edward John Smith, too, went down with his ship both in the movie and in real life.
- But historian Tim Maltin, who has written books and worked on documentaries about the disaster, argues it didn’t happen the way it does in the movie.
Scroll to Continue According to some accounts, “Smith actually took a header dive off of the front of the wheelhouse into the sea and then swam around helping people get to lifeboats,” Maltin says. “He was actually offered a seat on a lifeboat but he refused to get on board because he was helping people out.
- He was completely heroic.” The captain’s quick decision to seal the watertight doors, another real-life event portrayed in the movie, helped save lives, says Burns.
- Smith’s fast thinking “prevented the ship from sinking like it normally would,” he notes.
- If he hadn’t sealed the doors, the ship would’ve sunk towards the side where it hit the iceberg and then rolled over.
It also would’ve gone down a lot quicker. Purser Hugh Walter McElroy and Captain Edward J. Smith aboard the Titanic during the run from Southampton to Queenstown, England. The man who took the photograph, F.M. Browne, got off at Queenstown, three days before the ship hit an iceberg and sank. (Credit: Ralph White/Corbis via Getty Images) In addition to Brown, Hartley, and Captain Smith, the movie also features historical figures who, though they only appear briefly, had incredible stories in their own right.
Remember that famous scene where Jack and Rose climb up to the stern of the ship as it sinks? The couple latches onto the railing as people fall to their deaths—while the man above them nervously takes a drink from his flask. READ MORE: Letter Found on Titanic Passenger’s Body Sold for Record Amount That man, Charles Joughin, was the real-life chief baker on the Titanic,
He went into the water while holding onto the back rails of the ship just like he does with Jack and Rose in the movie (and before that, he’d snuck back to his room for a drink). But unlike Jack, Joughin survived. He was one of the lucky few who was able to get out of the water and onto collapsible lifeboat B, which had fallen into the water without anyone in it.
- And Joughin isn’t even the only real person in the movie with a remarkable survival story.
- Colonel Archibald Gracie IV was another background character in the movie who provided humor with lines like “Back to our brandy, eh?” Lynch says that Gracie was sucked down into the water with the ship, probably when the first part broke off, and then swam to collapsible lifeboat B.
Though Gracie survived, he suffered from hypothermia and died later that year; yet not before completing his book, The Truth About the Titanic, which detailed what happened to him that night. Benjamin Guggenheim (1865-1912) of the copper controlling family who was lost in the Titanic disaster. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images) And finally, there’s American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, who delivers one of the most memorable lines in the movie.
When offered a lifejacket, he refuses, explaining that he and his valet are dressed in their best suits and ready to go down with the ship like gentlemen. He then adds, “But we would like a brandy.” Astonishingly, Lynch says there is some truth to that, too. Guggenheim’s “steward claimed afterwards that he helped him get dressed warmly, and that later he was up on deck with his valet and they were both in tuxedos,” Lynch explains.
“And he said, ‘We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.'” The brandy line was something that Cameron added, and Lynch muses that because of it, “there are people who say today that he was overheard asking for a brandy.” To be clear, there is no historical record that Guggenheim requested a brandy before perishing.
What jewelry was found on the Titanic?
A satchel of jewels found among the wreckage of Titanic during a salvage and recovery expedition near Newfoundland in 1985 might have been his. A blue sapphire ring mounted in a setting surrounded by 14 diamonds, and a gold locket were just two pieces found among the wreckage.
Was Jack Dawson a real person on the Titanic?
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident or any sort worth speaking about. – Captain E.J. Smith, Captain of the RMS Titanic Questioning the Story: Were Jack and Rose based on real people? No. Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, portrayed in the movie by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, are almost entirely fictional characters (James Cameron modeled the character of Rose after American artist Beatrice Wood, who had no connection to Titanic history).
The movie’s love story is also fiction. It was created by Titanic screenwriter and director James Cameron. In addition to Rose and Jack, a handful of other characters associated with them are fictional as well. They include Rose’s fiancé Caledon ‘Cal’ Hockley (Billy Zane), her mother Ruth (Frances Fisher), Cal’s valet Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), and the third class passengers, who include Jack’s friends Fabrizio (Danny Nucci) and Tommy (Jason Barry).
Some of the third class passengers were modeled after real people. I heard there was a J. Dawson on board the Titanic, is that true? Yes. A man who signed his name J. Dawson did board the Titanic. However, the J. stood for Joseph, not Jack. Born in Dublin, Joseph Dawson was a member of the Titanic crew. He worked as a coal trimmer (it was his job to even out the piles of coal that were shoveled into the ship’s furnaces).
- James Cameron said that he was not aware of Joseph Dawson until after finishing his Titanic screenplay.
- Still, lovestruck fans of the 1997 movie ventured to J.
- Dawson’s grave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they left cinema stubs, personal photos, and pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio (the exact burial location is Grave 227 in Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia).
Another coincidental character created by James Cameron was Jack’s Irish friend Tommy Ryan (Jason Barry). The ship’s manifest lists a Thomas Ryan, a 27-year-old steward from third class whose body, if recovered, was never identified. Who sketched Jack’s drawing of Rose that we see in the movie Titanic ? Director James Cameron did the sketch of Rose (Kate Winslet) wearing the necklace. It is actually Cameron’s hand, not Leonardo DiCaprio’s, that we see sketching Rose in the movie. James Cameron also drew all of the pictures in Jack’s sketchbook. Were the movie’s underwater shots of the Titanic wreckage real? Yes.
Most of the underwater shots of the Titanic wreckage are real. In 1995, James Cameron hired the Russian vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh and its two submersibles. He made a total of twelve dives to film the underwater close-ups at a depth of 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic. Special cameras and housings were designed to withstand the 6,000 pounds per square inch of water pressure.
Minecraft Heart of the Sea EXPLAINED (How to Get It and What It Can Do)
Each dive lasted approximately fifteen hours, but the cameras could only store 500 feet of film, which meant that only twelve minutes of footage could be shot per dive. As a result, a few of the underwater shots had to be faked. Were any of Pablo Picasso’s paintings lost with the Titanic? No.
- After Rose (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in the movie, we see her displaying authentic paintings by the then barely-known painter, Pablo Picasso.
- Cal (Billy Zane) comments that the artist will never amount to anything.
- This is an obvious point of humor in the movie, but it also raises the question as to whether or not these paintings were in fact part of Titanic history.
The answer is no. One of the paintings shown in the movie is Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” ( shown here ), which depicts five prostitutes in a brothel. It is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Were there any black passengers on board the Titanic? Yes. Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche was the only black man to perish in the Titanic sinking. Laroche, shown on the right in a family photo, was on board with his pregnant wife Juliette and their two young daughters. The story of this interracial family did not become widely known until three years after the movie’s release, when the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and the Titanic Historical Society featured the information as part of a Titanic exhibit.
- Joseph Laroche was born in Haiti in 1889 into a powerful family — his uncle, Dessalines M.
- Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti.
- When he was fifteen, Joseph Laroche left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France.
- Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller.
The two eventually married. Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph’s skin color left him unable to find employment in France. The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship. Did Bruce Ismay really encourage Captain Smith to go faster? During the U.S. Senate’s Inquiry into the disaster, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, said the following, “I understand it has been stated that the ship was going at full speed.
The ship never had been at full speed. The full speed of the ship is 78 revolutions. She works up to 80. So far as I am aware, she never exceeded 75 revolutions. She had not all her boilers on. None of the single-ended boilers were on.” Ismay said that it was their intention to work the ship up to its full speed of 80 revolutions either on the next day (Monday) or two days later (Tuesday), depending on the weather.
Surviving passengers stated that they heard Bruce Ismay pressuring Captain Edward J. Smith to go faster, with one passenger even stating that he saw Ismay flaunting an iceberg warning during dinner. However, none of the surviving officers supported these accusations, and survivor testimony from some passengers was considered unreliable and at worst imaginative.
Bruce Ismay was crucified by the newspapers for leaving the ship, and he quickly became a common target upon which to place blame. Yet, it is also possible that the testimony from the surviving officers, exonerating Ismay, was given in the best interest of White Star Line. Did pieces of ice from the iceberg really land on the promenade deck? Yes.
Mrs. Churchill Candee, of Washington, said the following about the ice, “The first thing I recall was one of the crew appearing with pieces of ice in his hands. He said he had gathered them from the bow of the boat. Some of the passengers were inclined to believe he was joking. Yes.33-year-old Wallace Henry Hartley, a violinist, was the bandleader on the Titanic. Hartley (left) had a fiancée in Boston Spa, near Wetherby in Yorkshire, and he had spent time with her before leaving on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Wallace Hartley assembled his eight-man band, and they eventually ended up on the Boat Deck near the entrance to the Grand Staircase.
There, they played ragtime and waltzes. Specifically, survivors reported them playing “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “In the Shadows”. No one is certain what the last song was that the band played as the ship went down. Newspapers reported that it was “Nearer, My God, To Thee” while some survivors said the tune was “Song d’Automne”.
All of the band members perished in the Titanic sinking. Wallace Hartley’s body was recovered on May 4, 1912 by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett, Thousands of mourners lined the streets during his funeral procession in Colne, Lancashire, north-west of England. See a picture of Wallace Hartley’s funeral procession. Jonathan Evans Jones, the actor who portrayed Wallace Hartley in James Cameron’s Titanic movie, is a professional violinist. Were the third class passengers really locked below as the movie Titanic suggests? Yes, but not exactly in the way that the film implies. Titanic history tells us that gates did exist which barred the third class passengers from the other passengers. However, these gates weren’t in place to stop a third class passenger from taking a first class passenger’s seat on a lifeboat.
Instead, the gates were in place as a regulatory measure to prevent the “less cleanly” third class passengers from transmitting diseases and infections to the others. This would save time when the ship arrived in New York, as only the third class passengers would need a health inspection. At the time of the sinking, some stewards kept gates locked waiting for instructions, while others allowed women and children to the upper decks.
As a result of poor communication from the upper decks, the dire reality of the situation was never conveyed. The crew failed to search for passengers in the cabins and common areas, and the fact that some third class passengers did not speak English, also presented a problem. After the release of James Cameron’s 1997 movie Titanic, Officer William Murdoch’s surviving relatives, other historians, and people from Murdoch’s hometown of Dalbeattie, Scotland were angered over Cameron’s decisive portrayal of First Officer Murdoch (right).
In the film, he turns his gun on himself after shooting two passengers who are rushing a lifeboat. Based on witness testimony, historians are fairly certain that an officer did commit suicide, but it can’t be said with absolute certainty that it was First Officer Murdoch. Also, there is no evidence to suggest that Murdoch ever took a bribe.
James Cameron likely put the bribe in the film to show Cal’s (Billy Zane) lack of integrity rather than Murdoch’s. Studio executives flew to Murdoch’s hometown where they issued an apology and made an $8,500 donation to Murdoch’s memorial fund. Did one of Titanic’s giant funnels really crash down into the water? Yes.
This scene in the movie accurately depicts Titanic history. As the bridge of the ship sunk below the surface, the first funnel fell forward into the water, crashing onto some of the swimmers (in the movie, we see it crash down onto Jack’s fictional friend, Fabrizio). The rush of water from the funnel’s splash washed collapsibles A and B away, thrusting their occupants into the icy waters.
It is believed that millionaire John Jacob Astor was killed by the falling forward funnel. When his body was found, it was badly crushed and covered in soot. Authorities used the initials “J.J.A.” on the collar of his brown flannel shirt to positively identify him. See a collage of John and Madeline Astor. While traveling on their honeymoon, Madeline became pregnant with their son, and she wanted to return home to have the baby in the United States. They booked a first class passage on the RMS Titanic. Did some of the passengers choose to go down with the ship? Yes. Near the end of the movie Titanic, we see an old couple embracing in bed as water pours into their cabin. The couple is first class passengers Isador and Ida Straus (left). Isador was the co-owner of Macy’s department store. In real life, Isador and Ida were both offered a place on Lifeboat No.8, but Isador chose to stay on the Titanic so long as there were women who remained on the ship.
- Ida refused to abandon her husband.
- Witnesses on the deck and in Lifeboat No.8 heard Ida tell her husband, “We have been living together for many years.
- Where you go, I go.” The couple was last seen sitting on a pair of deck chairs (not lying in bed like in the movie).
- Only Isador’s body was recovered and identified.
Did Captain Smith really go into the bridge to await his fate? In Robert Ballard’s book, The Discovery of the Titanic, he claims that Captain Smith went into the bridge to await his fate at 2:17 A.M., three minutes before the ship went under completely. View a photo of Captain Smith. This may have been partially based on the account of Philadelphia banker Robert W. Daniel, who claimed that just before he jumped into the water, he saw Captain Smith on the bridge, which was slowly being swallowed by the icy sea.
James Cameron supports this account in his 1997 movie Titanic by showing Captain Smith enter the bridge and grasp the wheel as water crashes in. While some survivors testified that they saw Captain Smith enter the bridge, other Titanic survivors said that they saw Captain Smith in the water with a life jacket.
It is possible that he may have jumped from the bridge area as the ship went down. A boy who was one of the last children to leave the ship told Dr.J.F. Kemp, a passenger on the Carpathia, that “Captain Smith put a pistol to his head and then fell down.” Other witnesses reported having seen Captain Smith commit suicide as well. Did the Titanic’s lights continue to burn until just before the ship went under? Yes. Dr. Washington Dodge, a Titanic survivor who observed the ship’s final moments from a lifeboat, said the following in an April 20, 1912 San Francisco Bulletin article, “We saw the sinking of the vessel.
The lights continued burning all along its starboard side until the moment of its downward plunge. After that a series of terrific explosions occurred, I suppose either from the boilers or weakened bulkheads.” This account is nearly identical to what is shown in the movie. Did the Titanic really break apart as it sunk? Yes.
For years, whether the Titanic broke apart as it went under was a highly debated element of Titanic history. Some survivors testified that the ship did break apart as it sunk, while others said that it went under intact. Much of the uncertainty surrounding this was put to rest in 1985 when the wreck of the Titanic was discovered in two separate portions on the sea bottom. Yes. Only two of the sixteen lifeboats went back to pick up survivors, and they ended up saving six. The first was Quartermaster Perkis in Lifeboat 4, who was able to pull 5 people from the water but only 3 survived. The second boat was Lifeboat 14 headed by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe (right), who had gathered nearby lifeboats together to free up room in one of them.
When Lifeboat 14 returned to where the Titanic had sunk (approximately 150 yards away), Officer Lowe and a working crew of six men picked up four survivors from the water. One of the four men found in the water, a William F. Hoyt from New York, died in the lifeboat. A British Inquiry asked Officer Lowe why he didn’t return more quickly to help the people in the water.
In his testimony, Harold Lowe responded by saying, “Because it would have been suicide to go back there until the people had thinned out.” Lowe further stated, “.it would have been useless to try it, because a drowning man clings at anything.” Lowe feared that the large number of people in the water would have swamped or overturned the lifeboat.
It is Officer Lowe’s boat that saves Rose (Kate Winslet) in the film. How did Margaret Brown get the nickname “Unsinkable Molly Brown”? When the Carpathia arrived at New York’s pier 54, over 30,000 people, including reporters, clamored to interview the Titanic survivors. When reporters asked Margaret Brown to what she attributed her survival, Margaret replied, “Typical Brown luck.
We’re unsinkable.” Reporters began referring to her as the “Unsinkable Mrs. Brown”. See a photo collage of Margaret “Molly” Brown. The nickname of “Molly” was a Hollywood invention created years later in the 1930s. It was part of a highly fictional tale that became the basis for the 1960 Broadway musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, In the movie Titanic, we get a glimpse of the friendship between Margaret Brown and John Jacob Astor. On the night of the Titanic sinking, the temperature of the salt water was likely around 28° F. The human body loses heat to the water about 30 times faster than it does to the air. When the core body temperature falls to approximately 89° F, a decrease in consciousness occurs.
- If the core temperature cools to below 86° F, then heart failure becomes a major concern, as it is the most common cause of hypothermia-related deaths.
- The people in the bone chilling 28° water above the sinking Titanic would have had anywhere from several minutes to an hour to live, depending on their physical condition and how much they flailed.
Some people in the water might have believed that swimming would help their body to generate heat. In reality, people who swam or moved around a lot would have lost heat 35-50% faster and been susceptible to exhaustion. There were even several people who died from hypothermia in the Titanic lifeboats, because they were open and gave no protection against the cold. View a photo of the Titanic’s lifeboats approaching the Carpathia. In all, 711 passengers were rescued and over 1500 perished in the disaster. Among the passengers rescued were 58 men; all of whom came under public scrutiny after news broke that approximately 150 women and children died (mostly from Second and Third class).
- Titanic survivor Adolphe Saalfeld said of the Carpathia, “The Captain and Officers of the Carpathia did all that was possible to make us comfortable, and to those that were sick or injured; they gave their most tender care.
- The icebergs were huge and the weather extremely rough on the voyage to New York.” Did Bruce Ismay really sneak into a lifeboat like in the movie Titanic ? No.
There are no reports of Bruce Ismay disguising himself as a woman to sneak into a lifeboat as he does in the movie. However, First Class Passenger Jack Thayer said that he saw Bruce Ismay pushing his way into Collapsible C. Thayer “did not blame him,” because from what Thayer could see, “It was really every man for himself.” Of the 58 men who survived, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, received the most criticism, and in 1913, Ismay resigned from his job and from public life. No. The Heart of the Ocean diamond is a fictional device that James Cameron added to the plot in order to give Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) a reason to hear Rose’s story. The Heart of the Ocean is based on the famous Hope Diamond that King Louis XVI of France gave to Marie Antoinette to add to her jewelry collection.
- The Hope Diamond is currently on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C.
- It holds no place in Titanic history.
- As a result of moviegoer fantasies surrounding the fictional Heart of the Ocean, the Asprey & Garrard jewelry company decided to make a real Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace.
The 170-carat sapphire, surrounded by sixty-five 30-carat diamonds, was worn by Celine Dion during her performance of “My Heart Will Go On” at the 1998 Academy Awards Ceremony. The necklace later sold at a benefit auction for $2.2 million. Can I visit the Titanic movie set? Yes.
The set, located at Fox’s Baja Studios in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, still exists. The nearly full-scale Titanic replica created for the film was badly damaged when the filmmakers submerged it underwater to recreate the sinking. It was dismantled after filming wrapped. However, several of the Titanic interiors are still there, including Rose’s 1st class stateroom, Jack’s 3rd class stateroom, the purser’s office (where Jack was handcuffed to the pipe), the outside deck, and the Palm Court (dining) room.
Tours are available to the public. Like the original ship, the replica (when it existed) was 60 feet from the boat deck to the water. Certain repetitive lengthwise sections of the ship were omitted, which made it shorter than the original 882.5 foot ship.
The movie ship had only been completed on one side. As a result, there are several scenes in which the ship is reversed, such as in the “I’m the king of the world” scene where the crew galley skylight gives the reversal away. Very few of the ship’s interiors were built into the replica’s framework itself.
Most were built on neighboring sound stages. The set designs, costumes and the ship itself were meticulously recreated. View a comparison photo of Titanic’s Grand Staircase. In several cases, James Cameron even hired the original manufacturers to reproduce such things as carpets and lifeboat davits. Listen to Titanic Survivor Accounts: Survivors from Southampton, UK talk about their experiences on the night of the Titanic disaster. Edith Haisman, 7, Traveling to Canada with Parents – 3:32 “There was a lot of lifeboats and people on rafts, some of them frozen dead, it was terrible. You heard the screams, it was terrible, the screams of the people. I hoped my father would get off the ship. That’s all I was hoping for.” Eva Hart (7) Recalls Her Memories of the Sinking – 13:06 “We were offered a birth on the Titanic. My mother had this dreadful premonition. She never had one before and she never had one after. But she said, ‘No, we can’t do this. It’s quite wrong. Something dreadful will happen.'” Iris Lee, local resident, Southampton – 1:17 “.he wasn’t able to take his position on the Titanic, so that’s why my parents used to say they were thankful to God.” Video Footage of the Real Titanic In our first selection below, take a journey into history by watching a compilation of real Titanic video footage.
Survivor Testimony at the Titanic Inquiry Project Titanic Passenger List at Encyclopedia Titanica Read The Sinking of the Titanic by Logan Marshall Photos of the Titanic’s Interior, Exterior, and Construction Dr. Washington Dodge Gives Story of Rescue | Dodge’s Wife’s Account Letter From Survivor Mary Sloan to her Sister Letter Written from Richard Geddes to his Wife (Richard did not Survive)
When was the last body found from Titanic?
Five days after the passenger ship the Titanic sank, the crew of the rescue ship Mackay-Bennett pulled the body of a fair-haired, roughly 2-year-old boy out of the Atlantic Ocean on April 21, 1912. Along with many other victims, his body went to a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the crew of the Mackay-Bennett had a headstone dedicated to the “unknown child” placed over his grave.
When it sank, the Titanic took the lives of 1,497 of the 2,209 people aboard with it. Some bodies were recovered, but names remained elusive, while others are still missing. But researchers believe that they have finally resolved the identity of the unknown child —concluding that he was 19-month-old Sidney Leslie Goodwin from England.
Though the unknown child was incorrectly identified twice before, researchers believe they have now conclusively determined the child was Goodwin. After his recovery, he was initially believed to be a 2-year-old Swedish boy, Gösta Leonard Pålsson, who was seen being washed overboard as the ship sank,
This boy’s mother, Alma Pålsson, was recovered with the tickets for all four of her children in her pocket, and buried in a grave behind the unknown child. The effort to verify the child’s identity using genetics began a little over a decade ago, when Ryan Parr, an adjunct professor at Lakehead University in Ontario who has worked with DNA extracted from ancient human remains, watched some videos about the Titanic.
“I thought ‘Wow, I wonder if anyone is interested or still cares about the unidentified victims of the Titanic,'” Parr said. A name for the unknown child? In 2001, with permission from the Pålsson family, the unknown child’s remains were exhumed from Fairview Lawn Cemetery, one of the Halifax cemeteries where Titanic victims were interred.
Parr had hoped to investigate the identities of other victims as well, though decomposition interfered. Two of the coffins held only mud, and only a 2.4-inch-long (6 centimeter) fragment of an arm bone and three teeth remained of the unknown child. But this was enough. From these remains, Parr and his team extracted DNA from a section of mitochondria (energy-producing centers of the cells) that rapidly accumulates mutations, called HV1.
Mitochondrial DNA is passed from mother to offspring, so the team compared the unknown child’s DNA sequence with samples from the maternal relatives of the Pålsson child. These didn’t match. They broadened their search to include five other boys under age 3 who had died in the disaster. A photograph of the other members of the Goodwin family, all of whom perished when the Titanic went down on April 15, 1912. By comparing the unknown child’s HV1 with these other young Titanic victims, the researchers eliminated all but two of the boys — Eino Viljami Panula, a 13-month-old Finnish boy, and Sidney Goodwin.
- An expert analysis of the child’s teeth put his age somewhere between 9 months and 15 months — seeming to eliminate Goodwin, who was older.
- So, the researchers concluded the boy was Panula and, in 2004, published their results.
- A second try But doubts remained.
- Ultimately, a pair of leather shoes recovered from the unknown child and held in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic caused the researchers to question the identification.
The shoes had been saved by Clarence Northover, a Halifax police sergeant in 1912, who helped guard the bodies and belongings of the Titanic victims, according to the museum’s website. A letter from Northover’s grandson, Earle, recounts how the victim’s clothing had been burned to stop souvenir hunters.
Clarence Northover couldn’t bring himself to burn the little shoes, and when no relatives claimed them, he put the shoes in his desk drawer at the police station. In 2002, Earle Northover donated them to the museum. These shoes were too large for a 13-month-old to wear. Parr and his team attempted the identification again, this time with the help of the U.S.
Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory. They looked at another, less mutation-prone section of the mitochondrial DNA, where they found a single difference that indicated that Goodwin might actually be the unknown child. The Armed Forces lab confirmed this when they found a second, single difference in another section of the DNA.
- Luckily, it was a rare difference, so that is what gives you 98 percent certainty the identification is correct,” Parr said.
- The loss of a family Before he died, Sidney Goodwin was traveling on the Titanic with his parents, Frederick and Augusta, and five siblings from England to Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Carol Goodwin, a 77-year-old Wisconsin resident, heard about the ill-fated family from Frederick Goodwin’s sisters, one of whom was Carol’s grandmother. “I can’t say that it really startled me or amazed me,” Carol Goodwin said of the news that the unknown child was her relative.
- I guess maybe it had been so long in coming.” As a child, she learned about Frederick Goodwin’s family by eavesdropping on conversations between her grandmother and her great aunt.
- They didn’t talk about the children that much,” Carol Goodwin told LiveScience.
- It was their brother who was a favorite brother, how kind he was to them growing up.” Goodwin’s interest in family history didn’t spark until her 13-year-old granddaughter Becky saw a Titanic exhibit and wrote an essay for school.
When her teacher wanted to submit the article to the magazine “Junior Scholastic,” Goodwin wanted to check the facts first. Now Goodwin is working on two books on the subject, a smaller one about the unknown child and a larger book she has titled “The Goodwins Aboard the Titanic: Saga of a Third-Class Family.” (The family was traveling third class.) And, in a year, she and her husband plan to take a centennial cruise in memory of the Titanic.
On Aug.6, 2008, relatives of the Goodwin family held a memorial service in Fairview Lawn Cemetery where they now believe Sidney Goodwin was buried under the unknown child’s headstone. A cousin read the names of about 50 children who had also perished when the Titanic went down and a bell was rung for each, she said.
A soft, drizzling rain began to fall as the first name was read, and stopped when the list was finished, she recalled. Ultimately, the family left the headstone and the grave as it was. “The tombstone of the unknown child represents all of the children who perished on the Titanic, and we left it that way,” she said.
- The remains of the rest of the Goodwins family have never been recovered.
- From those (unidentified bodies) that were buried in Halifax, I have read the coroner’s reports for each of them, and nothing fits,” she said.
- An article describing the genetic analysis that led to the final identification of the unknown child’s remains is scheduled to be published in the June 2011 issue of the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics and is already available online.
You can follow writer Wynne Parry on Twitter,
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How long did Titanic victims survive in water?
How Cold Was The Water? – -2°C – the temperature of the sea water (around 28°F).15-45 minutes – the typical maximum life expectancy of the Titanic victims in the water.5mm – the minimum amount of movement that could occur between the steel plates of the hull before the wrought iron rivets used to join the curved sections would fail (see Did You Know? below).
How cold was the water when the Titanic sank?
Science – Education Guide – Titanic Museum Attraction Pigeon Forge Have students define buoyancy. Ask them why sailing vessels float. (They are supported by the weight of the water beneath them). Ask students why ice floats. (Ice is a crystal that, when it forms, forces the water molecules apart, resulting in very few water molecules per cubic inch.
In liquid water, water molecules are very close together, so there are many water molecules per cubic inch; therefore, liquid water is heavier than ice.) Ask students why Titanic sank. (Added to the weight of the ship and its passengers, the weight of the water it took on caused it to weigh more than the water underneath it.) To demonstrate how the Titanic sank, have students make a boat out of aluminum foil.
Put the foil boat into a plastic tub of water. Have students fill the boat with pennies one at a time and keep adding them until the boat sinks. Have students count the number of pennies it took to sink the boat. Why did the aluminum boat sink after students added these pennies? (The weight of the pennies was greater than the weight of the water beneath the boat.) The temperature of the water was -2.2 degrees Celsius when Titanic was sinking.
What would the temperature be in Fahrenheit degrees? (Fahrenheit equals 9/5 Celsius temperature plus 32 degrees.) At the Titanic Museum Attraction, students can feel just how cold the water was and find out how long they can keep their hands in it. For students to understand why the Titanic sank as quickly as it did, they need to understand the relationship between depth and pressure.
Under high pressure, water pushes through an opening faster. To demonstrate this, have students cut four holes in a quart-size milk carton. Put tape over all the holes and fill the container with water. Place the container in a large sink and remove the top piece of tape.
Have them mark the furthest distance the water stream reaches. Continue this with the second, third and fourth holes. Write a conclusion about why the water from the lowest (or deepest) hole went the greatest distance. Explain how this experiment relates to Titanic, Students should conclude that the deeper the water, the higher the pressure, causing water to push faster through any openings and rapidly flood the ship.
At the Titanic Museum Attraction, students will see Titanic as it looks today at the bottom of the North Atlantic. They’ll also see a 26-foot model of her bow, built for and used in Jim Cameron’s 1997 feature film Titanic. : Science – Education Guide – Titanic Museum Attraction Pigeon Forge
Why did it take 73 years to find the Titanic?
Seventy-three years after it sank to the North Atlantic ocean floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic, The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface. READ MORE: Why Did the Titanic Sink? Efforts to locate and salvage the Titanic began almost immediately after it sank. But technical limitations—as well as the sheer vastness of the North Atlantic search area—made it extremely difficult. American oceanographer and former Navy officer Robert D. Ballard, who was based out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, led his first search expedition in 1977, which was unsuccessful. In 1985, along with French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, Ballard again set out to locate the wreck, this time with an experimental, unmanned submersible called the Argo, developed by the U.S. Navy. The Argo traveled just above the ocean floor, sending photographs up to the research vessel Knorr, In the early morning of September 1, Argo was investigating debris on the ocean floor when it suddenly passed over one of the Titanic ‘s massive boilers, lying at a depth of about 13,000 feet. The next day, the body of the ship was discovered nearby. It had split in two, but many of its features and interiors were remarkably well-preserved. Hundreds of thousands of bits of debris were scattered in a 2-square-mile radius around the ship. The wreck was subsequently explored by manned and unmanned submersibles, which shed new light on the details of its 1912 sinking. READ MORE: The Real Story Behind the Discovery of the Titanic The Titanic is now routinely explored, and several thousand artifacts have been recovered. Ballard—who was celebrated as a hero after the discovery—has led several more high-profile search expeditions, including of the RMS Lusitania and the USS Yorktown. More than just facts and figures, these statistics highlight the massive scale of Titanic’s ambition—and of its tragic sinking. It took just two hours and 40 minutes for the ‘unsinkable’ RMS Titanic to sink.Did it take 3 hours for the Titanic to sink?
Why can’t they bring the Titanic up?
Microbes And Other Obstacles – So far, salvaging expeditions haven’t been able to bring back anything bigger than the hull slab that is part of a major Titanic exhibit at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Oceanographers have pointed out that the hostile sea environment has wreaked havoc on the ship’s remains after more than a century beneath the surface.
- Saltwater acidity has been dissolving the vessel, compromising its integrity to the point where much of it would crumble if tampered with.
- Microbes responsible for the rusty stalactite growths on much of the hull and particularly visible on the deck railings have also eaten away at the ship, further weakening the structure.
The ship’s interior is just as bad, with decks collapsing on every ship level. Passageways once accessible to robotic mini-subs have since broken down, and cabin compartments have all but deteriorated over time. It gets worse. In 2016, scientists discovered an organism called extremophile bacteria that’s been more aggressive in destroying what’s left of Titanic, leading some to conclude that the entire ship will be dissolved by 2030.
Who has the real Heart of the Ocean?
Titanic: The true story of the real ‘Heart of the Ocean’ necklace VIENNA, Va., April 12, 2012 — Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction and vastly more interesting. Viewers of the movie “Titanic” remember the beautiful diamond and sapphire necklace and the scene where Kate Winslett, playing the lovely Rose, has her portrait painted by Jack, played by Leonardo di Caprio, wearing only the necklace.
- Though it seemed like a pretty piece of fiction created by James Cameron, it turns out that there was a diamond and sapphire necklace on board that fatal night, given to a young girl, Kate Florence Phillips, 20, by her married paramour, Henry Samuel Morley, 40.
- Ate was an assistant working for Morley in one of the “Purveyors of High Class Confectionery” shops, which he owned in London, and the two were secretly sailing on the Titanic as second class passengers to begin a new life together in America, under the names of “Mr.
and Mrs. Marshall.” Original sapphire and diamond necklace Before the sailing, he had sold two of his shops and given the money to his wife and 12-year-old daughter. And he had given Kate Phillips the necklace, slightly different in design than the one in the movie but quite lovely and expensive.
- When the star-crossed ocean liner slipped beneath the waves on April 15, 1912, Morley, who could not swim, was one of those lost.
- Ate finally got into Lifeboat No.11, where she would spend the next eight hours, wearing nothing but a long nightgown, until one of the sailors gave her his jacket.
- As the couple left their cabin for the lifeboat area, Henry had quickly put the necklace around Kate’s neck.
According to the story, she went on to New York after the rescue and lived there for three or four months with a couple who had taken her in. By that time, she had discovered that she was pregnant, but the couple did not want to take on a baby. Kate then returned to Worcester, England to the home of her grandparents.
- When the baby girl was born on January 11, 1913 (you can do the math), she was not particularly loved by her widowed mother, and it was left to the grandparents to raise the little girl who was named Ellen Mary.
- Ate later remarried.
- Ate Phillips with her daughter Ellen It was always assumed that the mother Kate suffered some sort of mental instability from the night of the sinking, and today we would probably term her bi-polar at the very least.
She took her traumatic reminiscences of the tragedy out on the little girl, treating her almost as a servant, and she was never told of her father until much later. When little Ellen was grown, she worked for years trying to have Henry Morley’s name added to her birth certificate, but she was never successful.
- The necklace was shown in a Titanic display in Belfast for some years.
- When Ellen Mary Walker fell into hard times in the 1990s, she sold it to a lady in Florida who still possesses the Heart of the Ocean.
- Ellen (R) with granddaughter Beverly (L) and “Heart of the Ocean” The great-granddaughter of Kate has always encountered disbelief when her story is known, but she believes she has the complete facts, and that is sufficient.
Ellen died in 2005 in Worcester, England where she spent most of her life, always wishing she could prove that her father was Henry Morley. Ellen was 92 at her death and she too was a survivor of that fateful night. Click to
Was the Hope Diamond ever found?
History of the Hope Diamond | Smithsonian Institution The history of the stone which was eventually named the Hope Diamond began when the French merchant traveler, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, purchased a 112 3/16-carat diamond. This diamond, which was most likely from the Kollur mine in Golconda, India, was somewhat triangular in shape and crudely cut.
Its color was described by Tavernier as a “beautiful violet.” Tavernier sold the diamond to King Louis XIV of France in 1668 with 14 other large diamonds and several smaller ones. In 1673, the stone was recut by Sieur Pitau, the court jeweler, resulting in a 67 1/8-carat stone. In the royal inventories, its color was described as an intense steely-blue and the stone became known as the “Blue Diamond of the Crown,” or the “French Blue.” It was set in gold and suspended on a neck ribbon which the king wore on ceremonial occasions.
King Louis XV, in 1749, had the stone reset by court jeweler Andre Jacquemin, in a piece of ceremonial jewelry for the Order of the Golden Fleece (Toison D’Or). In 1791, after an attempt by Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to flee France, the jewels of the French Royal Treasury were turned over to the government.
During a week-long looting of the crown jewels in September of 1792, the French Blue diamond was stolen. In 1812, a deep blue diamond described by John Francillion as weighing 177 grains (4 grains = 1 carat) was documented as being in the possession of London diamond merchant, Daniel Eliason. Strong evidence indicates that the stone was the recut French Blue and the same stone known today as the Hope Diamond.
Several references suggest that it was acquired by King George IV of the United Kingdom. At his death, in 1830, the king’s debts were so enormous that the blue diamond was likely sold through private channels. The first reference to the diamond’s next owner is found in the 1839 entry of the gem collection catalog of the well-known Henry Philip Hope, the man from whom the diamond takes its name.
- Unfortunately, the catalog does not reveal where or from whom Hope acquired the diamond or how much he paid for it.
- Following the death of Henry Philip Hope in 1839, and after much litigation, the diamond passed to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope and ultimately to the nephew’s grandson Lord Francis Hope.
In 1901 Lord Francis Hope obtained permission from the Court of Chancery and his sisters to sell the stone to help pay off his debts. It was sold to a London dealer who quickly sold it to Joseph Frankels and Sons of New York City, who retained the stone in New York until they, in turn, needed cash.
- The diamond was next sold to Selim Habib who put it up for auction in Paris in 1909.
- It did not sell at the auction but was sold soon after to C.H.
- Rosenau and then resold to Pierre Cartier that same year.
- In 1910 the Hope Diamond was shown to Mrs.
- Evalyn Walsh McLean, of Washington D.C., at Cartier’s in Paris, but she did not like the setting.
Cartier had the diamond reset and took it to the U.S. where he left it with Mrs. McLean for a weekend. This strategy was successful. The sale was made in 1911 with the diamond mounted as a headpiece on a three-tiered circlet of large white diamonds. Sometime later it became the pendant on a diamond necklace as we know it today.
- Mrs. McLean’s flamboyant ownership of the stone lasted until her death in 1947.
- Harry Winston Inc.
- Of New York City purchased Mrs.
- McLean’s entire jewelry collection, including the Hope Diamond, from her estate in 1949.
- This collection also included the 94.8-carat Star of the East diamond, the 15-carat Star of the South diamond, a 9-carat green diamond, and a 31-carat diamond which is now called the McLean diamond.
For the next 10 years the Hope Diamond was shown at many exhibits and charitable events world wide by Harry Winston Inc., including as the central attraction of their Court of Jewels exhibition. On November 10, 1958, they donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution, and almost immediately the great blue stone became its premier attraction.
The Hope Diamond has left the Smithsonian only four times since it was donated. In 1962, it was exhibited for a month at the Louvre in Paris, France, as part of an exhibit entitled Ten Centuries of French Jewelry. In 1965, the Hope Diamond traveled to South Africa where it was exhibited at the Rand Easter Show in Johannesburg.
In 1984, the diamond was lent to Harry Winston Inc., in New York, as part of the firm’s 50th anniversary celebration. In 1996, the Hope Diamond was again sent to Harry Winston Inc., in New York, this time for cleaning and some minor restoration work. The weight of the Hope Diamond for many years was reported to be 44.5 carats.
In 1974, it was removed from its setting and found actually to weigh 45.52 carats. It is classified as a type IIb diamond, which are semiconductive and usually phosphoresce. The Hope Diamond phosphoresces a strong red color, which will last for several seconds after exposure to short wave ultra-violet light.
The diamond’s blue coloration is attributed to trace amounts of boron in the stone. In the pendant surrounding the Hope Diamond are 16 white diamonds, both pear-shapes and cushion cuts. A bail is soldered to the pendant where Mrs. McLean would often attach other diamonds including the McLean diamond and the Star of the East.
The necklace chain contains 45 white diamonds. In December of 1988, a team from the Gemological Institute of America visited the Smithsonian to grade the great blue stone using present day techniques. They observed that the gem shows evidence of wear, has a remarkably strong phosphorescence, and that its clarity is slightly affected by a whitish graining which is common to blue diamonds.
They described the color as a fancy dark grayish-blue. An examination on the same day by another gemologist using a very sensitive colorimeter revealed that there is a very slight violet component to the deep blue color which is imperceptible to the naked eye.
Was Jack Dawson real?
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident or any sort worth speaking about. – Captain E.J. Smith, Captain of the RMS Titanic Questioning the Story: Were Jack and Rose based on real people? No. Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, portrayed in the movie by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, are almost entirely fictional characters (James Cameron modeled the character of Rose after American artist Beatrice Wood, who had no connection to Titanic history).
The movie’s love story is also fiction. It was created by Titanic screenwriter and director James Cameron. In addition to Rose and Jack, a handful of other characters associated with them are fictional as well. They include Rose’s fiancé Caledon ‘Cal’ Hockley (Billy Zane), her mother Ruth (Frances Fisher), Cal’s valet Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), and the third class passengers, who include Jack’s friends Fabrizio (Danny Nucci) and Tommy (Jason Barry).
Some of the third class passengers were modeled after real people. I heard there was a J. Dawson on board the Titanic, is that true? Yes. A man who signed his name J. Dawson did board the Titanic. However, the J. stood for Joseph, not Jack. Born in Dublin, Joseph Dawson was a member of the Titanic crew. He worked as a coal trimmer (it was his job to even out the piles of coal that were shoveled into the ship’s furnaces).
- James Cameron said that he was not aware of Joseph Dawson until after finishing his Titanic screenplay.
- Still, lovestruck fans of the 1997 movie ventured to J.
- Dawson’s grave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they left cinema stubs, personal photos, and pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio (the exact burial location is Grave 227 in Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia).
Another coincidental character created by James Cameron was Jack’s Irish friend Tommy Ryan (Jason Barry). The ship’s manifest lists a Thomas Ryan, a 27-year-old steward from third class whose body, if recovered, was never identified. Who sketched Jack’s drawing of Rose that we see in the movie Titanic ? Director James Cameron did the sketch of Rose (Kate Winslet) wearing the necklace. It is actually Cameron’s hand, not Leonardo DiCaprio’s, that we see sketching Rose in the movie. James Cameron also drew all of the pictures in Jack’s sketchbook. Were the movie’s underwater shots of the Titanic wreckage real? Yes.
Most of the underwater shots of the Titanic wreckage are real. In 1995, James Cameron hired the Russian vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh and its two submersibles. He made a total of twelve dives to film the underwater close-ups at a depth of 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic. Special cameras and housings were designed to withstand the 6,000 pounds per square inch of water pressure.
Minecraft Heart of the Sea EXPLAINED (How to Get It and What It Can Do)
Each dive lasted approximately fifteen hours, but the cameras could only store 500 feet of film, which meant that only twelve minutes of footage could be shot per dive. As a result, a few of the underwater shots had to be faked. Were any of Pablo Picasso’s paintings lost with the Titanic? No.
After Rose (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in the movie, we see her displaying authentic paintings by the then barely-known painter, Pablo Picasso. Cal (Billy Zane) comments that the artist will never amount to anything. This is an obvious point of humor in the movie, but it also raises the question as to whether or not these paintings were in fact part of Titanic history.
The answer is no. One of the paintings shown in the movie is Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” ( shown here ), which depicts five prostitutes in a brothel. It is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Were there any black passengers on board the Titanic? Yes. Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche was the only black man to perish in the Titanic sinking. Laroche, shown on the right in a family photo, was on board with his pregnant wife Juliette and their two young daughters. The story of this interracial family did not become widely known until three years after the movie’s release, when the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry and the Titanic Historical Society featured the information as part of a Titanic exhibit.
Joseph Laroche was born in Haiti in 1889 into a powerful family — his uncle, Dessalines M. Cincinnatus Leconte, was the president of Haiti. When he was fifteen, Joseph Laroche left Haiti to study engineering in Beauvais, France. Several years later, he met Juliette Lafargue, the 22-year-old daughter of a local wine seller.
The two eventually married. Despite having an engineering degree, Joseph’s skin color left him unable to find employment in France. The Laroches decided to return to Haiti and booked second-class reservations on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and children onto a lifeboat and he went down with the ship. Did Bruce Ismay really encourage Captain Smith to go faster? During the U.S. Senate’s Inquiry into the disaster, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, said the following, “I understand it has been stated that the ship was going at full speed.
The ship never had been at full speed. The full speed of the ship is 78 revolutions. She works up to 80. So far as I am aware, she never exceeded 75 revolutions. She had not all her boilers on. None of the single-ended boilers were on.” Ismay said that it was their intention to work the ship up to its full speed of 80 revolutions either on the next day (Monday) or two days later (Tuesday), depending on the weather.
Surviving passengers stated that they heard Bruce Ismay pressuring Captain Edward J. Smith to go faster, with one passenger even stating that he saw Ismay flaunting an iceberg warning during dinner. However, none of the surviving officers supported these accusations, and survivor testimony from some passengers was considered unreliable and at worst imaginative.
Bruce Ismay was crucified by the newspapers for leaving the ship, and he quickly became a common target upon which to place blame. Yet, it is also possible that the testimony from the surviving officers, exonerating Ismay, was given in the best interest of White Star Line. Did pieces of ice from the iceberg really land on the promenade deck? Yes.
Mrs. Churchill Candee, of Washington, said the following about the ice, “The first thing I recall was one of the crew appearing with pieces of ice in his hands. He said he had gathered them from the bow of the boat. Some of the passengers were inclined to believe he was joking. Yes.33-year-old Wallace Henry Hartley, a violinist, was the bandleader on the Titanic. Hartley (left) had a fiancée in Boston Spa, near Wetherby in Yorkshire, and he had spent time with her before leaving on the Titanic. After the ship struck an iceberg, Wallace Hartley assembled his eight-man band, and they eventually ended up on the Boat Deck near the entrance to the Grand Staircase.
- There, they played ragtime and waltzes.
- Specifically, survivors reported them playing “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and “In the Shadows”.
- No one is certain what the last song was that the band played as the ship went down.
- Newspapers reported that it was “Nearer, My God, To Thee” while some survivors said the tune was “Song d’Automne”.
All of the band members perished in the Titanic sinking. Wallace Hartley’s body was recovered on May 4, 1912 by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett, Thousands of mourners lined the streets during his funeral procession in Colne, Lancashire, north-west of England. See a picture of Wallace Hartley’s funeral procession. Jonathan Evans Jones, the actor who portrayed Wallace Hartley in James Cameron’s Titanic movie, is a professional violinist. Were the third class passengers really locked below as the movie Titanic suggests? Yes, but not exactly in the way that the film implies. Titanic history tells us that gates did exist which barred the third class passengers from the other passengers. However, these gates weren’t in place to stop a third class passenger from taking a first class passenger’s seat on a lifeboat.
- Instead, the gates were in place as a regulatory measure to prevent the “less cleanly” third class passengers from transmitting diseases and infections to the others.
- This would save time when the ship arrived in New York, as only the third class passengers would need a health inspection.
- At the time of the sinking, some stewards kept gates locked waiting for instructions, while others allowed women and children to the upper decks.
As a result of poor communication from the upper decks, the dire reality of the situation was never conveyed. The crew failed to search for passengers in the cabins and common areas, and the fact that some third class passengers did not speak English, also presented a problem. After the release of James Cameron’s 1997 movie Titanic, Officer William Murdoch’s surviving relatives, other historians, and people from Murdoch’s hometown of Dalbeattie, Scotland were angered over Cameron’s decisive portrayal of First Officer Murdoch (right).
In the film, he turns his gun on himself after shooting two passengers who are rushing a lifeboat. Based on witness testimony, historians are fairly certain that an officer did commit suicide, but it can’t be said with absolute certainty that it was First Officer Murdoch. Also, there is no evidence to suggest that Murdoch ever took a bribe.
James Cameron likely put the bribe in the film to show Cal’s (Billy Zane) lack of integrity rather than Murdoch’s. Studio executives flew to Murdoch’s hometown where they issued an apology and made an $8,500 donation to Murdoch’s memorial fund. Did one of Titanic’s giant funnels really crash down into the water? Yes.
This scene in the movie accurately depicts Titanic history. As the bridge of the ship sunk below the surface, the first funnel fell forward into the water, crashing onto some of the swimmers (in the movie, we see it crash down onto Jack’s fictional friend, Fabrizio). The rush of water from the funnel’s splash washed collapsibles A and B away, thrusting their occupants into the icy waters.
It is believed that millionaire John Jacob Astor was killed by the falling forward funnel. When his body was found, it was badly crushed and covered in soot. Authorities used the initials “J.J.A.” on the collar of his brown flannel shirt to positively identify him. See a collage of John and Madeline Astor. While traveling on their honeymoon, Madeline became pregnant with their son, and she wanted to return home to have the baby in the United States. They booked a first class passage on the RMS Titanic. Did some of the passengers choose to go down with the ship? Yes. Near the end of the movie Titanic, we see an old couple embracing in bed as water pours into their cabin. The couple is first class passengers Isador and Ida Straus (left). Isador was the co-owner of Macy’s department store. In real life, Isador and Ida were both offered a place on Lifeboat No.8, but Isador chose to stay on the Titanic so long as there were women who remained on the ship.
Ida refused to abandon her husband. Witnesses on the deck and in Lifeboat No.8 heard Ida tell her husband, “We have been living together for many years. Where you go, I go.” The couple was last seen sitting on a pair of deck chairs (not lying in bed like in the movie). Only Isador’s body was recovered and identified.
Did Captain Smith really go into the bridge to await his fate? In Robert Ballard’s book, The Discovery of the Titanic, he claims that Captain Smith went into the bridge to await his fate at 2:17 A.M., three minutes before the ship went under completely. View a photo of Captain Smith. This may have been partially based on the account of Philadelphia banker Robert W. Daniel, who claimed that just before he jumped into the water, he saw Captain Smith on the bridge, which was slowly being swallowed by the icy sea.
- James Cameron supports this account in his 1997 movie Titanic by showing Captain Smith enter the bridge and grasp the wheel as water crashes in.
- While some survivors testified that they saw Captain Smith enter the bridge, other Titanic survivors said that they saw Captain Smith in the water with a life jacket.
It is possible that he may have jumped from the bridge area as the ship went down. A boy who was one of the last children to leave the ship told Dr.J.F. Kemp, a passenger on the Carpathia, that “Captain Smith put a pistol to his head and then fell down.” Other witnesses reported having seen Captain Smith commit suicide as well. Did the Titanic’s lights continue to burn until just before the ship went under? Yes. Dr. Washington Dodge, a Titanic survivor who observed the ship’s final moments from a lifeboat, said the following in an April 20, 1912 San Francisco Bulletin article, “We saw the sinking of the vessel.
- The lights continued burning all along its starboard side until the moment of its downward plunge.
- After that a series of terrific explosions occurred, I suppose either from the boilers or weakened bulkheads.” This account is nearly identical to what is shown in the movie.
- Did the Titanic really break apart as it sunk? Yes.
For years, whether the Titanic broke apart as it went under was a highly debated element of Titanic history. Some survivors testified that the ship did break apart as it sunk, while others said that it went under intact. Much of the uncertainty surrounding this was put to rest in 1985 when the wreck of the Titanic was discovered in two separate portions on the sea bottom. Yes. Only two of the sixteen lifeboats went back to pick up survivors, and they ended up saving six. The first was Quartermaster Perkis in Lifeboat 4, who was able to pull 5 people from the water but only 3 survived. The second boat was Lifeboat 14 headed by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe (right), who had gathered nearby lifeboats together to free up room in one of them.
When Lifeboat 14 returned to where the Titanic had sunk (approximately 150 yards away), Officer Lowe and a working crew of six men picked up four survivors from the water. One of the four men found in the water, a William F. Hoyt from New York, died in the lifeboat. A British Inquiry asked Officer Lowe why he didn’t return more quickly to help the people in the water.
In his testimony, Harold Lowe responded by saying, “Because it would have been suicide to go back there until the people had thinned out.” Lowe further stated, “.it would have been useless to try it, because a drowning man clings at anything.” Lowe feared that the large number of people in the water would have swamped or overturned the lifeboat.
It is Officer Lowe’s boat that saves Rose (Kate Winslet) in the film. How did Margaret Brown get the nickname “Unsinkable Molly Brown”? When the Carpathia arrived at New York’s pier 54, over 30,000 people, including reporters, clamored to interview the Titanic survivors. When reporters asked Margaret Brown to what she attributed her survival, Margaret replied, “Typical Brown luck.
We’re unsinkable.” Reporters began referring to her as the “Unsinkable Mrs. Brown”. See a photo collage of Margaret “Molly” Brown. The nickname of “Molly” was a Hollywood invention created years later in the 1930s. It was part of a highly fictional tale that became the basis for the 1960 Broadway musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, In the movie Titanic, we get a glimpse of the friendship between Margaret Brown and John Jacob Astor. On the night of the Titanic sinking, the temperature of the salt water was likely around 28° F. The human body loses heat to the water about 30 times faster than it does to the air. When the core body temperature falls to approximately 89° F, a decrease in consciousness occurs.
If the core temperature cools to below 86° F, then heart failure becomes a major concern, as it is the most common cause of hypothermia-related deaths. The people in the bone chilling 28° water above the sinking Titanic would have had anywhere from several minutes to an hour to live, depending on their physical condition and how much they flailed.
Some people in the water might have believed that swimming would help their body to generate heat. In reality, people who swam or moved around a lot would have lost heat 35-50% faster and been susceptible to exhaustion. There were even several people who died from hypothermia in the Titanic lifeboats, because they were open and gave no protection against the cold. View a photo of the Titanic’s lifeboats approaching the Carpathia. In all, 711 passengers were rescued and over 1500 perished in the disaster. Among the passengers rescued were 58 men; all of whom came under public scrutiny after news broke that approximately 150 women and children died (mostly from Second and Third class).
Titanic survivor Adolphe Saalfeld said of the Carpathia, “The Captain and Officers of the Carpathia did all that was possible to make us comfortable, and to those that were sick or injured; they gave their most tender care. The icebergs were huge and the weather extremely rough on the voyage to New York.” Did Bruce Ismay really sneak into a lifeboat like in the movie Titanic ? No.
There are no reports of Bruce Ismay disguising himself as a woman to sneak into a lifeboat as he does in the movie. However, First Class Passenger Jack Thayer said that he saw Bruce Ismay pushing his way into Collapsible C. Thayer “did not blame him,” because from what Thayer could see, “It was really every man for himself.” Of the 58 men who survived, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, received the most criticism, and in 1913, Ismay resigned from his job and from public life. No. The Heart of the Ocean diamond is a fictional device that James Cameron added to the plot in order to give Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) a reason to hear Rose’s story. The Heart of the Ocean is based on the famous Hope Diamond that King Louis XVI of France gave to Marie Antoinette to add to her jewelry collection.
The Hope Diamond is currently on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. It holds no place in Titanic history. As a result of moviegoer fantasies surrounding the fictional Heart of the Ocean, the Asprey & Garrard jewelry company decided to make a real Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace.
The 170-carat sapphire, surrounded by sixty-five 30-carat diamonds, was worn by Celine Dion during her performance of “My Heart Will Go On” at the 1998 Academy Awards Ceremony. The necklace later sold at a benefit auction for $2.2 million. Can I visit the Titanic movie set? Yes.
The set, located at Fox’s Baja Studios in Rosarito Beach, Mexico, still exists. The nearly full-scale Titanic replica created for the film was badly damaged when the filmmakers submerged it underwater to recreate the sinking. It was dismantled after filming wrapped. However, several of the Titanic interiors are still there, including Rose’s 1st class stateroom, Jack’s 3rd class stateroom, the purser’s office (where Jack was handcuffed to the pipe), the outside deck, and the Palm Court (dining) room.
Tours are available to the public. Like the original ship, the replica (when it existed) was 60 feet from the boat deck to the water. Certain repetitive lengthwise sections of the ship were omitted, which made it shorter than the original 882.5 foot ship.
- The movie ship had only been completed on one side.
- As a result, there are several scenes in which the ship is reversed, such as in the “I’m the king of the world” scene where the crew galley skylight gives the reversal away.
- Very few of the ship’s interiors were built into the replica’s framework itself.
Most were built on neighboring sound stages. The set designs, costumes and the ship itself were meticulously recreated. View a comparison photo of Titanic’s Grand Staircase. In several cases, James Cameron even hired the original manufacturers to reproduce such things as carpets and lifeboat davits. Listen to Titanic Survivor Accounts: Survivors from Southampton, UK talk about their experiences on the night of the Titanic disaster. Edith Haisman, 7, Traveling to Canada with Parents – 3:32 “There was a lot of lifeboats and people on rafts, some of them frozen dead, it was terrible. You heard the screams, it was terrible, the screams of the people. I hoped my father would get off the ship. That’s all I was hoping for.” Eva Hart (7) Recalls Her Memories of the Sinking – 13:06 “We were offered a birth on the Titanic. My mother had this dreadful premonition. She never had one before and she never had one after. But she said, ‘No, we can’t do this. It’s quite wrong. Something dreadful will happen.'” Iris Lee, local resident, Southampton – 1:17 “.he wasn’t able to take his position on the Titanic, so that’s why my parents used to say they were thankful to God.” Video Footage of the Real Titanic In our first selection below, take a journey into history by watching a compilation of real Titanic video footage.
Survivor Testimony at the Titanic Inquiry Project Titanic Passenger List at Encyclopedia Titanica Read The Sinking of the Titanic by Logan Marshall Photos of the Titanic’s Interior, Exterior, and Construction Dr. Washington Dodge Gives Story of Rescue | Dodge’s Wife’s Account Letter From Survivor Mary Sloan to her Sister Letter Written from Richard Geddes to his Wife (Richard did not Survive)
Who has the original Heart of the Ocean?
The Heart of the Ocean (also known as Le Cœur de la Mer ) is the name of a fictional 56-carat blue diamond featured prominently in the 1997 Film Titanic, Heart of the Ocean prop It is said to originally be owned by Louis XVI and shortly after his execution in 1793, the diamond disappeared and was recut into a heart-like shape, known as “The Heart of the Ocean.” Caledon Hockley purchased the diamond for his fiancée, Rose and presented it to her.
Later, Rose shows the necklace to Jack Dawson and requested that he drew her with only the necklace. After undressing, a naked Rose wearing the necklace posed on the sofa in front of Jack, who drew a sketch of her pose. Once the drawing was finished, they put the sketch and the necklace into Cal’s safe.
When Rose and Jack return to her suite after having fled Spicer Lovejoy he meets them outside the door, chastising them, taking hold of Jack’s arm and stealthily dropping the necklace into Jack’s coat, undetected. As they enter the room they are confronted by Cal, who claims Jack has stolen the necklace.
- In a short search of Jack, the diamond is found in the coat he is wearing.
- Jack’s pleas of innocence are thrown in doubt when it is discovered that he has “borrowed” the coat he is wearing to sneak into first class, and he is branded a thief.
- During the evacuation of the ship, Cal opened his safe to take valuable stuff, including the necklace which he put in his pocket.
When they found Jack and Rose, Cal put his top coat on Rose, faking a show of care for her, forgetting that the necklace was in its pocket.