Titanic 1997. Aibu to not realise how young Ruth was and that I don’t think Cal was that bad?

[phatt]

So it’s been a few years since I watched Titanic and always assumed that Ruth was in her 60s but she’s actually late 30s/early 40s. So she could have also got re-married (less likely but still a possibility.)

I know I’ll get flamed for this but I don’t think Cal was an outright villain. He did attempt to connect with Rose and love her but for his fiancé to be socialising with people in third class (when social standing was huge) and to blatantly cheat on him very openly then you can see why he’d be pissed off.

Also I’m judging him by Edwardian standards and not modern day. Obviously he did acts that made him a “bad” person as well.

I agree, op.

that's a decent summary although a couple of bits. As incredible as it sounds, the Titanic's surviving crew stopped being paid the moment it sank, so part of his motivation in sending them back to the UK asap was so they could start working again quicker.

That's true. Added to which, the whole of the trans-Atlantic route was being hampered at the time by coal strikes, so even securing alternative work would have been competitive and difficult.

Plus US immigration wouldn't let them land without identification papers, even in the circumstances. Apparently they were herded onto a Red Star Line Ship and pretty much impounded there until it sailed, at which point it was waylaid en-route so some of the crew could testify in the inquiry.

The UK media went somewhat easier on Ismay than the US did, but it still ruined him for life. Apparently he'd committed the cardinal sin of being alive.

Why did Stanly Lord come in for criticism? He came to the rescue, it wasn't his fault.

That was Arthur Rostron, who captained Carpathia. He was lauded as a hero. Edward Smith also wasn't found to be at fault: amazing though that might seem today, he was following the standard nautical practices of his day (reckless stupidity, it looks from where we are).

Stanley Lord was captain of Californian, which was apparently within sight of Titanic but hadn't come to her aid. There was a terse exchange between the Marconi operators in which Bride/Phillips told theirs to shut up with the ice warnings and get off their channel, or words to that effect. So the operators shut their communications down and went to bed.

The presence of a nearby ship was only mentioned for the first time at the US inquiry, but Lord's reputation never recovered.

Keep this to yourself, but there's a sequel coming out soon called 'Titanic Two The Rising '
🤫

Ah yes, I’ve watched the trailer. Looks like they have another hit on their hands.

@SerafinasGoose ah I didn't know that about the coal strikes. Interesting.

Ismay is an interesting character. I think the main thing in that era was acting "like a gentleman" and he fell short of those standards. I suppose his main "crime" is that he got off in a lifeboat - had he been on till the end and rescued like Lightoller etc, he might have escaped a lot of criticism. As it was, he was seen as a coward, as were plenty of other men who got off - there were rumours of men getting off dressed as women and at least one woman divorced her husband on the back of that, in part at least.

@SerafinasGoose I think the reason Lord ended up in front of the US inquiry that, pretty much as soon as the Californian docked in Boston, at least teo crew members gave interviews to the newspapers saying they'd been near enough to see the Titanic sinking and the captain had failed slash refused to act. That's what brought it to prominence, coupled with Titanic survivors saying they could see a ship a few miles off.

@QueenOfThorns managed to get the author's name wrong - it's Daniel Allen Butler.

The other book was called Titanic Voices, there's about 60 survivors profiled etc in there.

I also enjoyed Titanic: Death and Life of a Legend and Titanic Triumph and Tragedy. Robert Ballard's book about how he found the wreck, Discovery of the Titanic, is also great.

Hope that helps, let me know if there was anything in particular you were interested in.

@SerafinasGoose ah I got the wrong person. I thought Lord was capstan of the Carpathia.

Captain

If anyone quite likes a PC 'game' and is interested - there is a brilliant project to digitally recreate the ship as she was, when built - allowing you to walk around it and see it just as it was.

https://titanichg.com/project-401

They are about half done, but you can play the half they have done and it really is amazing (I think!).

Cal was an arsehole. Are we forgetting how he managed to get himself saved in the end? I watched it on TV last week too. Yes he was a product of his time but he thought he was above everybody else and only valued other people based on what he could take from them.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤜🤛

Did you never study literature at school?

Though how they never spotted her in films and other stuff she did later I don't know.

Why did this never occur to me before?!?!

I think the movie addresses in a voiceover when Rose is rescued that her mum and Cal die shortly after.

Cal took his own life after losing everything in the Wall Street Crash.

He was written as a massive baddie, possibly too overblown, precisely because some of his attitudes were normal for the time and yes, under normal circumstances you'd feel for a guy whose fiancee cheats on him. As it is, he's awful beyond what historical context can excuse and doesn't love Rose, just wants to own her and the social standing she can offer him. It's potentially a bit much, but then the whole film is epic.

I'm glad they made the baddie good looking. Would have been lazy if they'd tried to make you dislike him because he wasn't handsome.

I would recommend The Watch That Ends the Night. It's the story of the Titanic in verse. A very special book.

As an adult I just keep thinking "you met this bloke 3 days ago". It's just really a bit awkward and I know hormones and excitemen, but choosing to get off a lifeboat with your mother to run off to find a man you met a few days ago knowing you might die is slightly ridiculous. But alas, to be 17 I suppose.

I think while absolutely horrific, incidents like titanic have to happen in order for us to learn from them. It it wasn't the titanic it would have been a different boat under different circumstances which would change laws and health and safety regulations.

We learn things from a tragedy and hopefully more tragedies can be avoided. Very similar to how we build in this country changed after the great fire of London.

And Cal only gets nasty when Rose starts swanning off with other men.
If someone generally treated me and my family okay (he did buy her all those paintings just because she liked them) and ordered my food for me but came with absolute security, I'd take it.

Just searched for this out of interest. Have you got the title right as what's coming up is book by Hugh MacLennan about a very different plot?

And Cal only gets nasty when Rose starts swanning off with other men.

No. Before that, he dismisses her love of art, shuts her down at dinner when she's speaking, chooses and orders her food for her and makes his superiority complex clear when he gives her the jewel and says it's for royalty and they are royalty.

There's a deleted scene just before Rose runs out on deck and nearly jumps into the water, where she goes back after dinner to her lavish quarters and has a breakdown, screaming and destroying everything. It's a shame they didn't include it in the final cut because it really shows you how restricted and choked her life is at that point and what it will mean to marry Cal, even if it does make her rich. And while the characters don't know it, the Great Depression is on its way. Cal loses everything then, so even if she had married him, they'd still have been destitute then.

Watching the deleted scenes reminded me of how miscast LdeC was because he looks like a schoolboy, and how irritating old Rose's little squeal is when she drops the necklace into the sea.
But I just googled Heart of the Ocean and the good news is you can buy your very own from Amazon for a bargain £7.49! 😂