Grossing over $1.8 billion, James Cameron’s 1997 movie Titanic had an enormous impact on
popular culture. With a script largely comprised of non-historical figures,
Cameron’s Titanic was more fiction
than fact. Through his lead characters’ love story, Cameron did manage to spark
a passionate popular interest in the Ship and her demise.
As ubiquitous as Cameron’s Titanic
is, other cinematic versions of Titanic
are less known, but compelling nonetheless.
The first Titanic film was a
German silent feature called In Nacht und Eis ("In
Night and Ice"). Filming started on In
Nacht und Eis the summer after the springtime shipwreck. The movie premiered
in the winter of 1912.
Historically, this first Titanic
film is incredible to watch, as the clothing and style are not based on
reproductions, but are completely authentic of the period.
Thirty-one years later, Herbert Selpin and Werner Von Klingler
directed the first movie named after the Ship. Selphin and von Klingler’s 1943 Titanic was a Nazi propaganda film made
during World War II in Berlin. The
film painted the British and Americans on board as seedy capitalists, and
lionized German men as brave, valiant, and trustworthy.
While directing the Nazi version, co-director Selphin ran into massive
political trouble. He was overheard insulting some of the German Kriegsmarine
officers hired as on-set maritime consultants. The Kriegsmarine officers were frequently
harassing actresses working on the film, and Selphin found this behavior
inappropriate. Selphin was reported to the Gestapo for his remarks about the
officers, arrested, questioned by Joseph Goebbels (who controlled German media
at the time), and put in jail. Selphin was found hanging in his jail cell. His
death was ruled a suicide.
Von Klinger finished as a stand-in director, but the film never made
it with the German public: Goebbels banned Titanic
during the Allied raids for inciting panic during war time.
Next in Titanic’s cinematic history is 1958’s A Night To Remember, a docu-drama lauded for its historical
accuracy. Filmed in the United Kingdom A
Night To Remember won the 1959 Samuel Goldwyn International Award at the
Golden Globes. The set was based on blueprints from the RMS Titanic, and, although some of the
details weren’t correct, it is still often regarded as the most historically
accurate telling of Titanic’s
sinking.
Read more on our Stories from the Titanic blog...
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Last Titanic Survivor
Millvana Dean was the last survivor of the RMS Titanic when she died in May of 2009. In 1912, Her family decided to emigrate to Kansas from the United Kingdom in the hope of opening a tobacco shop in Witchata. The Deans were originally scheduled to travel on a different ocean liner, but were transferred to the RMS Titanic when their ship’s schedule was complicated because of a coal strike. This minor scheduling change, which her parents probably thought of as fortunate luck at the time, would change Millvana’s life forever. Her ship would sink, her father would drown, and her mother’s world would unravel.
Read more about Titanic on our Stories From The Titanic blog...
Millvana, her mother Ettie, and her two-year-old brother were sleeping in their cabin when her father felt the ship strike the iceberg. Bertram Frank Dean was a 25 year old farmer, and he was a cautious man. After leaving his room to investigate the alarming sound of the collision, he returned and instructed his wife to go on deck and try to find a lifeboat. Ettie woke her babies and dressed them. Bertram walked his family to the deck of the enormous ocean liner where they were sent to Lifeboat 10. Once in the lifeboat, Ettie called out for her husband to pass her son over the railing, but Betram had walked away with the toddler, and Ettie was forced to leave with out them. Ettie assumed that her husband and son would be rescued together. In the frantic attempt to load women and children first, the toddler was saved on another lifeboat. Millvana and her mother were among the first of the third-class passengers to escape the doomed ship.
Before she left him, Bertram told his wife he would follow them on another lifeboat. His body, if it was found, was never identified.
With two young children, Millvana’s mother couldn’t stay in America after losing her husband. She returned to England on theRMS Adriatic and lived with her parents there. Ettie didn’t tell her daughter that she had been aboard the RMS Titanic until Millvana was eight years old and her mother decided to remarry.
Millvana died in 2009.
September 1, 1985: The Navy, Robert Ballard, and Titanic
In 1985, Robert Ballard was a Marine archaeologist on a search for the RMS Titanic. A former Navy commander involved in the development of unmanned submersibles, Ballard spent years exploring the ocean before he set his mind to finding lost vessels. Ballard and his team were the first human beings to discover the deep-sea vents: a finding that lead to the discovery of boundless new species capable of thriving in the extreme pressures and temperatures of the ocean’s deep black waters.
Ballard first used side scan sonar (or SAR) to search for the Titanic wreckage on the French ship Le Suroît. When the French research mission ended, Ballard transferred to the Research Vessel Knorr.
What the public didn’t realize at the time was that Ballard was not actually just on a mission to discover the lost Titanic. Ballard’sTitanic mission was being funded by the US Navy, who had previously told Ballard that they couldn’t justify searching for the lost ship. To the Navy, however, Ballard’s intimate knowledge of underwater robots was of extreme value. During the Cold War, the US lost two nuclear submarines, the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, near the Titanic wreck site. It was critical for the Navy to find these lost vessels. Ballard negotiated with the Navy — the search for Titanic would be a cover story for finding the lost nuclear submarines. The government was interested in determining the state of their nuclear reactors, but didn’t want the public to know. If Ballard successfully completed the submarine mission, he would then be allowed to use the Navy’s resources to hunt for Titanic.
Ballard found the submarines in a matter of weeks.
On September 1, 1985, Ballard and his team found the RMS Titanic after following a trail of debris. Since Titanic’s discovery, Ballard has discovered the Bismark, the RMS Lusitania, the USS Yorktown, John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, as well as many ancient ship wrecks in the Black Sea.
Today, Ballard spends his life advocating ocean exploration, and makes the case that 72% of the planet has not been adequately explored.
Read more about Titanic on our Stories From The Titanic blog...
The Aftermath, Part II
When the British Inquiry was questioning the parties involved the night of the sinking of Titanic, management and regulators did everything they could to rationalize their way out of any blame the press was throwing at them. At the investigation, Charles Lightroller had been the senior surviving officer aboard the Ship. Lightroller was taken to task for not filling the Number 6 Lifeboat to capacity. He stated that he believed the mechanisms designed to lower the lifeboats into the ocean were not strong enough to hold the boats had they been filled completely. Lifeboat Number 6 was designed to carry 65 people, but left with just 40.
It’s chilling to think of the panic and the pressure Lightroller could have been under knowing that the Ship was about to go down. In his testimony, Lightroller claimed that he noticed the Ship lilting for the first time while he was loading Lifeboat Number 6. He didn’t count the passengers as he filled the boats, and no one will ever really understand exactly why. It might have been panic, or it might have been negligence. During his testimony, Lightroller insisted that he filled Number 6 to what he believed was a safe capacity as he felt the Ship sinking under him.
Titanic's Lifeboats
Titanic’s lifeboat capacity was governed by the British Board of Trade’s rules, which were drafted in 1894. By Titanic’s maiden voyage in 1912, these lifeboat regulations were badly out of date. Titanic was four times larger than the largest legal classification considered under the British Board of Trade’s rules. By law, Titanic was not required to carry more than sixteen lifeboats, regardless of the actual number of people onboard.
In this age, it’s difficult to grasp why a magnificent vessel like the RMS Titanic ever had a shortage of lifeboats. At that time, society had a much more casual attitude about what was safe. Child labor laws were new and not terribly strict. Upton Sinclair had recently written The Jungle, a novel detailing the miserable conditions of the American meat packing industry, which came out just six years before Titanic sailed. People weren’t concerned with warnings, seatbelts, or helmets. Britain’s regulatory bodies were, for the most part, more established than America’s were, but both countries were industrializing. Technology was too young to govern because people didn’t understand the problems that would arise.
With Titanic, the world would learn a difficult lesson.
Industry insiders understood that the lifeboat regulations would change because of the major advances in shipbuilding at the turn of the century. In fact, Titanic was designed to hold enough lifeboats to carry each passenger on board. The White Star Line, however, felt like holding off on the implementation in policy change until the law actually went through. Deck space was at a premium, especially on the first- and second-class decks where the boats were to be housed. On top of that, the lifeboats themselves were expensive and bulky.
The shipbuilders were also concerned with public perception: if they had built a ship that was practically unsinkable, what would people think if they saw her lined with lifeboats?
ELLEN BIRD AND THE STRAUS FAMILY
Ida Straus was a wealthy wife and mother in 1912. She and her husband Isidor Straus co-owned Macy’s department store, and Isidor worked as a U.S. Representative for the state of New York. The couple was traveling in Europe when they hired Ellen Bird to sail as their personal maid on the RMS Titanic.
On the night of the disaster, Isidor, Ida and their maid Ellen were standing near Lifeboat 8. When pressured by the crew to board the Lifeboat, Mr. Straus refused to leave Titanic with other women still on board. Ida gave up her spot to Ellen in order to stay with her husband.
When Ellen was boarding the boat, Ida handed over her fur coat to the girl and told her she wouldn’t be needing it.
The couple did not survive the disaster, but Ellen lived to tell their story.
Ida’s bravery in the face of death, her husband Isidor’s chivalry, and their loyalty to each other became legendary.
Later in life, Ellen Bird worked as a maid for the Spedden family, who were also Titanic survivors.
Read more about Titanic on our Stories From The Titanic blog...
Titanic and the SS Californian
At 7 p.m., the SS Californian’s wireless operator, Cyril Evans, called RMS Titanic to warn them of three potentially dangerous icebergs to Titanic’s slight north. Being nervous about the icy conditions, Captain Stanley Lord ordered the SS Californian to stop for the night. His Ship was small, more than ten years old, and, in Lord’s mind, no match for the ice field around her.
Later that night, Captain Lord retired to the deck below, but noticed Titanic out of the porthole window. He had members of his crew wire Titanic to warn them again of the icy conditions. He kept an eye on her bright decks glowing in the dark.
When Titanic received Cyril Evans’ warning, her wireless operator was overwhelmed with other work. While Californian was transmitting, Titanic wireless operator Jack Phillips was furiously trying to hear another signal for routine work on the Ship. Frustrated by the bleeding, unintelligible signals, Phillips demanded that Evans “shut up.”
Evans went to bed, and ten minutes later, RMS Titanic crashed into an iceberg.
Thirty-five minutes after that, Titanic sent out her first wireless distress call, but no one was awake to hear.
Down below, Captain Lord was still considering Titanic, and his crew tried to signal her via Morse lamp to no avail. The crew of Californian watched Titanic fire off distress rockets, but only responded with Morse lamp and never checked the wireless. They discussed the peculiar angle of the Ship, the strange distress signals, and the lack of response they were getting. They never checked the wireless. At 2 o’clock in the morning, the crew of Californian thought they saw Titanic sail away.
The next morning, panic ensued. Evans checked the wireless and realized Titanic had gone under in the night. Fearing the repercussions, they passed the rescue ship Carpathia, and took a longer course to the wreck site. They didn’t want their position during the disaster known.
As RMS Titanic sent wireless transmissions, distress rockets, and begged for help, The SS Californian sat ten miles away, wondering.
Read more about Titanic on our Stories From The Titanic blog...
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