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This is a supercut of the final moments of the Titanic as represented in various films and TV shows, from 1912’s La Hantise to a 2012 British TV series written by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes. It also doubles as a demonstration of the increasing capabilities and aspirations of filmmakers and their special effects teams throughout the years, although in terms of budget and effort, James Cameron’s effort in 1997 marks the high point.
In 1986, a team led by Bob Ballard went down in a submersible to explore the wreck of the Titanic, marking the first time since its sinking in 1912 that the ship was seen by human eyes. When some of the photos and video footage they shot were released to the public, it caused a sensation. But much of the video footage has never been seen by the public — the video above is 1h 21m of “rare, uncut, and unnarrated footage” from that initial dive. (via open culture)
James Cameron is not one for half-measures. When making Titanic, he used every image and description of the ship he could lay his hands on to build accurate sets & models and financed 12 dives to the ship’s actual wreckage on the bottom of the ocean floor to gather footage to use in the film. For the mega-blockbuster’s 25th anniversary, Cameron has returned his attention to Titanic, to scientifically test the fan theory that there was enough room on the door for Jack at the end of Titanic (see the video above).
In order to reexamine Jack’s final moments, Cameron enlisted help from a team of scientists and two stunt people to test four different scenarios to examine whether two people could have shared the door.
“Jack and Rose are able to get on the raft, but now they’re both submerged in dangerous levels of freezing water,” Cameron explains as the stunt people prove it.
Meanwhile in another example, Cameron details, “Out of the water, violent shaking was helping him and projecting it out, he could’ve made it pretty long, like hours.”
If you can stand the forced-cheer morning show banter, there’s a bit more footage of Cameron and the testing from Good Morning America:
Cameron’s ultimate conclusion: “Jack might’ve lived, but there’s a lot of variables.”
What if Titanic, but with a cat in a leading role alongside Leonardo DiCaprio? This is pitch-perfect, right down to the post-credits scene.
See also Paddington in Film. (via waxy)
As an unapologetic fan of James Cameron’s Titanic, I really enjoyed Evan Puschak’s video love letter to the film and the genre it embodies: melodrama.
The term “melodrama” literally means drama accompanied by music, which is why film is maybe the best most natural medium for it — aside from opera. What’s important to note is that the moral core of melodrama doesn’t intellectualize the story; it adds to the emotion by giving it the flavor of virtue. You know that Rose and Jack should be together, so when they get together it feels right and righteous. And when Jack dies at the end, it’s a heartbreak that makes the whole universe seem wicked.
Miiight be time for a rewatch.
In 1979 the BBC aired an interview with Frank Prentice, who was an assistant purser on the Titanic who survived the sinking of the ship in 1912. I’m not sure what to expect when I started listening, but I was completely captivated by Prentice’s tale.
#OnthisDay 1979: Frank Prentice, an assistant purser on the Titanic, described how he survived the sinking of the ship. For more archive on the Titanic, you can visit - https://t.co/fYwWoNhuBT pic.twitter.com/9Qi8zw5g0L
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) October 27, 2020
More information on the Mrs. Clark from his story is available here.
Mrs Clark left Titanic with Mrs Astor in lifeboat 4. She recalled Mrs Astor insisting that the lifeboat be turned around to rescue more people; the lifeboat eventually pulled around eight crewmen from the water. When the ship eventually founded Mrs Clark recalled the “heartrending moans and cries” of those struggling in the water.
There are many other interviews with Titanic survivors on YouTube, including this 40-minute feature of seven survivors telling their stories and this 1970 British Pathé clip:
(via @daniel_beattie)
Within the last couple of days, I’ve learned two things about the sinking of the Titanic and I’m going to share them with you. The first is that the discovery of the wreckage of the Titanic by ocean explorer Bob Ballard was actually a cover for the top secret investigation of two nuclear submarines during the height of the Cold War.
In 1985, Ballard’s mission was to dive to depths of 9,800 feet using a towed camera system called Argo to find and document the imploded remains of the Scorpion. The objective of the mission was to locate the submarine’s nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons and to gain evidence to help determine what led to her loss. After concluding his successful investigations of the Scorpion, Ballard used the final 12 days of his expedition to discover the RMS Titanic at a depth of 12,540 feet.
Ballard, you tricksy bastard!
The second thing is that the Titanic was on fire for days before it hit the iceberg, possibly causing damage that contributed to its quick sinking.
The work of Molony in his documentary is compelling and seems to make logical sense. The hidden fire caused damage to a bulkhead in the ship. The increased speed of the ship was due to the excess burning of coal to fight the fire. Also the failure of the bulkhead was due to the incredible heat generated by the coal fire, which was right against the bulkhead. In Molony’s opinion if the bulkheads held, the passengers on the ship may have been rescued. There was a ship hailed and on the way. If the Titanic could have stayed afloat for a few hours longer, a historic tragedy may have been averted.
Update: The coal fire thing has been a theory for years. After Molony’s documentary aired last year, a group of maritime historians who have studied Titanic extensively, wrote a thorough article debunking the idea that the coal fire contributed to the disaster in any way.
When hard evidence is factored in, there is only one viable conclusion: the coal bunker fire aboard Titanic was not a primary factor in her contact with the iceberg, or in causing her to sink after the she struck the ice. It played no part in the significant loss of life.
(thx, andrew)
Update: A group of enthusiasts used a video game engine called Unreal Engine 4 to build a fantastically detailed model of the Titanic that you can (virtually) walk though:
(via @mejum)
Kevin Wisbeth, who runs a new YouTube series called A Quick Perspective that compares things like the Space Shuttle and the Megalodon (biggest shark ever) to more familiar objects like buildings and cars. Here’s the Shuttle video:
Wisbeth shared some comparison images deemed unworthy for full videos on Imgur. The examples I’ve included above are a) the Titanic resting comfortably on the deck of a US aircraft carrier,1 b) the Death Star floating just over Florida, and c) the Sears Tower resting at the bottom of one of the world’s largest mines.
Reminds me of BERG’s now-defunct BBC Dimensions project and Manhattan Elsewhere. (via colossal)
And aircraft carriers aren’t even the biggest ships out there. Here’s a photo of the Titanic compared to the Allure of the Seas, one of the largest cruise ships in the world.↩
When the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912, it took the ship 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink. I don’t necessarily know why you would want to, but now you can watch a highly detailed animation of the ship sinking in realtime, all 2h 40m. I can’t quite figure out if this is appropriate or not, although when I think about the inevitable realtime 9/11 version, perhaps it isn’t.
Did you know that there’s an alleged photograph of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic? I did not. This is the sonovabitch right here:
The picture was taken the morning of April 15th, 1912, by M. Linoenewald, Chief Steward of the German liner Prinz Adalbert a few miles south of where the Titanic had gone down taking 1,517 souls with her just hours earlier. The news of the disaster hadn’t reached the liner yet, but the Chief Steward noticed red paint on the iceberg and took the photo out of interest.
In a statement by Linoenewald and three other crew members, they said “on one side red paint was plainly visible, which has the appearance of having been made by the scraping of a vessel on the iceberg”.
But a photo of another iceberg with a red gash was taken by the captain of a ship searching for bodies in the vicinity a few weeks later. So maybe this is the bastard:
Anyway, ship-sinker or not, a copy of the first photo recently sold at auction for £21000.
I was under the impression that not many photographs of the Titanic existed…especially those taken on the ship. But amateur photographer Francis Browne was aboard the Titanic from Southampton to Cobh, Ireland and captured many images of the ship’s interior, exterior, and voyage. The photos were widely known in the aftermath of the sinking but have been little seen since then.
Browne took this as he was boarding the ship:
The infamous deck chairs:
Browne traveled on a first class ticket…this is a view of some passengers on the second class promenade:
This was taken shortly after the ship dropped anchor in Cobh. Browne obviously did not take this photo because he was still aboard the ship…he acquired it from a photography friend after the fact:
And this is one of the last photos taken of Titanic before Bob Ballard and his team found the wreckage in the mid-80s:
These photos will be a big blow to the remaining folks who believe that the Titanic was fictional:
The SOS signal celebrates 100 years of official use today.
It took the tragedy of the Titanic to reveal just how vital a universal system was. After the collision in April 1912, the ship’s radio operators sent out both the old CQD and the new SOS signals, but some ships in the area ignored both, thinking that they were having a party. They soon learnt otherwise, as international headlines told how Jack Phillips, the Titanic’s first radio operator, and 1,500 others had been lost along with the “unsinkable” ship. The new SOS distress signal was rarely ignored after that.
Guglielmo Marconi gave testimony to the panel investigating the loss of the Titanic about the emergency signals.
Mr. Marconi explained the distress signals in use in vessels equipped with wireless telegraphy. “C.Q.” meant “All stations” and “C.Q.D.” was the distress signal. According to the regulations that signal must not be used except by order of the captain of the ship, or other vessels transmitting the signal. Since 1908 the distress signal had been “S.O.S.” This and the “C.Q.D.” were simply three letters, but they could be interpreted as meaning “Come quickly, danger,” and “Save Our Souls”.
Here’s a simulation of the message that the Titanic sent out that night.
The last meal for the first class passengers on the Titanic. The meal comprised 10 courses in all, paired with wine and as many after-dinner cigars as you could smoke.
Netflix, the online DVD rental company, recently released a bunch of their ratings data with the offer of a $1 million prize to anyone who could use that data to make a better movie recommendation system. On the forum for the prize, someone noted that the top 5 most frequently rated movies on Netflix were not particularly popular or critically acclaimed (via fakeisthenewreal):
1. Miss Congeniality
2. Independence Day
3. The Patriot
4. The Day After Tomorrow
5. Pirates of the Caribbean
That led another forum participant to analyze the data and he found some interesting things. The most intriguing result is a list of the movies that Netflix users either really love or really hate:
1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. Lost in Translation
3. Pearl Harbor
4. Miss Congeniality
5. Napoleon Dynamite
6. Fahrenheit 9/11
7. The Patriot
8. The Day After Tomorrow
9. Sister Act
10. Armageddon
11. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
12. Independence Day
13. Sweet Home Alabama
14. Titanic
15. Gone in 60 Seconds
16. Twister
17. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
18. Con Air
19. The Fast and the Furious
20. Dirty Dancing
21. Troy
22. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
23. The Passion of the Christ
24. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
25. Pretty Woman
So what makes these movies so contentious? Generalizing slightly (*cough*), the list is populated with three basic kinds of movies:
Misunderstood masterpieces / cult favorites (Royal Tenenbaums, Kill Bill, Eternal Sunshine)
Action movies (Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Fast and the Furious)
Chick flicks (Sister Act, Sweet Home Alabama, Miss Congeniality)
The thing that all those kinds of movies have in common is that if you’re outside of the intended audience for a particular movie, you probably won’t get it. That means that if you hear about a movie that’s highly recommended within a certain group and you’re not in that group, you’re likely to hate it. In some ways, these are movies intended for a narrow audience, were highly regarded within that audience, tried to cross over into wider appeal, and really didn’t make it.
Titanic is really the only outlier on the list…massively popular among several different groups of people and critically well-regarded as well. But I know quite a few people who absolutely hate this movie — the usual complaints are a) chick flick, b) James Cameron’s heavy-handedness, and c) reaction to the huge success of what is perceived to be a marginally entertaining, middling quality film.
BTW, here are the movies on that list that fit into my “love it” category:
The Royal Tenenbaums
Lost in Translation
Napoleon Dynamite
The Day After Tomorrow
Kill Bill: Vol. 1
Titanic
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Top 10 nitpicked movies of all time. Titanic and Jurassic Park top the list.
Top 10 (somehow expressed in 11 items) revolutionary special effects movies of all time. Twister? Where’s Titanic?
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