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.

The whole thing pissed me right off. If Rose hadn't been such a dick she'd have stayed on the lifeboat, he'd have had the door and everything would be fine. All her stupid selfish fault.

Ahh, he's good-looking enough that his technique wouldn't matter ... I could 'dine off' the experience by myself for years after

@Skinnermarink @SideEyeSally Actually there is a fair bit of evidence - including from the two inquiries into the disaster - that the captain of the Californian did precisely that, ignore the distress signals and refused to investigate/go to the Titanic's aid. He was closely questioned about it, several members of his crew said as much and it ruined his career.

It's the drawing at the end. Gets me every time. <wells up>

Yep, all of this. It's annoyed me for years, it's totally her fault he died!

And also yes to Cal being hot. Bad boy too 😉

Did she realise he wasn't on the float with her? She was quite ready to die with him...jumped off the lifeboat, stayed with him when he was cuffed to the table, etc. I think she was so cold and scared by that point that she just didn't really know what was going on. You could see when she realised what had happened, she considered just succumbing to death, but then thought she had promised him not to do that.

Its a rather lame joke about Kate Winslet and Leonardo doing another movie together. Revolutionary road is a great movie, set in 1950s or early 60s US. Excellent book too.

it wasn't the Californian that didn't come to help.

They reviewed this in the 90's it was actually a ship called "Mount Temple"

They realised after documents from WW1 were discovered, and they used them in a revised inquest along with the position of the wreck.

In the inquest right after the sinking an experienced sailor on the Titanic who survived said the mystery ship had "masts close together"

Documents from a German sailor during WW1 described a ship as "masts very close together, Mount Temple"

Once the Titanic wreck was found, they calculated that the Californian was miles away and although could see the rockets and flares in the distance, they were not in a position to be "the mystery ship"

The captain of the Californian was an experienced navigator he knew where he was, as he had halted the ship in the ice field, meaning he had time to exactly pin point his naval position.

The Titanic however when it originally first marconied it's distress call and position continued to travel forwards with engines at speed, meaning it had travelled out of it's distress call area by the time the ship actually sunk. Don't forget it took the ship 2hours to sink, it still had it's engines on for a while till they became flooded.

The passengers onboard the mount temple, were disgusted when they disembarked and some did go to the press, they found these recollections later from the passengers of the Mount Temple who said they could hear the screams of the passengers of the Titanic. But the captain of Mount Temple refused to push through the ice field, as he felt he would personally be liable for any cost or damage to the ship.

However once the captain of the Californian had notification from his wireless operator onboard the Californian who returned in the morning to check the radio signals received realised what had happened, the Californian navigated the ice field ASAP to reach the Titanic, but the original coordinates delivered (due to the Titanic continuing with engines on for 2 hours) ment the Californian was late to the rescue.

It's a fascinating story. But the Californian was exonerated as The mystery ship in a revised inquest, 80 odd years too late for the poor captain though.

In one of James Cameron’s documentaries about the Titanic, he sets out to test whether having more lifeboats would’ve made a difference. They had a replica of a lifeboat and the davits used to launch it and timed each stage required to get it swung out off the deck, loaded, and lowered into the sea. The conclusion was that they just wouldn’t have had time to launch any more boats, particularly as they were struggling to get the previous ones out of the way to launch the next one.

Also, I think I vaguely remember something about them having looked at the two remaining lifeboats that are still attached to the wreck and found a fault with one of them that meant it was stuck in place and couldn’t be launched

Another vote for Mr Andrews! I looked up the actor who plays him the other day and i was devastated to find out he is gay in real life 😭

Virtually none of that is true. What revised inquest are you talking about? There's loads in there that's just not accurate. The Californian and its captain have never been exonerated. There's been various attempts but none have been successful. There was no inquiry in the 1990s.

Mount Temple was one of the ships that came to the aid of the Titanic. It was about 50 miles away when it got the distress call.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Mount_Temple

The stuff about the engines isn't true either. The Titanic stopped almost immediately after it hit the iceberg. The position given in its SOS call is about 10 miles away from where it sank, but that was due to an error in the calculations of its position, not the engines still being on.

The stuff about the wreck isn't right either - it wasn't where they expected it to be yes, but that actually puts it closer to the Californian, not further away. Furthermore, the position the Californian gave is highly likely to be inaccurate, as the back-up log book was mysteriously destroyed and the only person who had access to the logbook was the captain, who of course had an interest in saying he was nowhere near the scene.

There's a fairly straightforward way of sorting this out. If the Californian wasn't within sight of the Titanic, who was the ship firing the eight white rockets all the crew members, including the captain, reported seeing?

Have to say this is one of the most interesting threads I’ve been on for a while - thanks op!

I think one of the most interesting things about the whole Titanic tragedy is how inevitable it seems in hindsight. They'd basically got away with extraordinarily cavalier approaches for years as there'd been no (serious) accidents on the north Atlantic line. As a result, they were unbelievably careless - not enough lifeboats, no evactuation procedures, no system for ensuring ice warnings from other ships got through to the captain/bridge, no real idea of how wireless could be used, and of course, piling into huge icefields at pretty much full speed. It's absolutely horrifying really and amazing it took so long for it to come to a head.

A 1992 re-examination by Britain’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch partially exonerated Californian, finding that her officers likely saw Titanic’s distress rockets, but declaring Californian could not have arrived in time to save lives

Aaahhh!!! It's not that lame. Now that I know the joke, I admit I laughed pretty hard.

But then, my DH and I will do this with characters on different shows. Like one will star in a crime drama as a villain and then a year later, as a police officer or prosecutor. We then joke, "Oh look! He turned his life around and has given up his criminal ways".
Yeah, maybe that is lame. LOL!

I think the opposite. I think they were two young people who fancied each other a lot but whose different worlds of origin would have been an insurmountable obstacle. Sexual chemistry would have brought them together, but I don't think it'd be enough to keep her happy when he's still an impoverished artist and she wants a new Worth gown or whatever.

And that's not to say I think she's a gold digger. I just think it's a lot easier to think you'll be poor but happy than it is to BE poor but happy.

I am just putting this here......

Love MN. Differing interpretations of whether they had sex or not (cough cough.. they did) a discussion on the chronological inaccuracy of the freud reference; a return to the discussion about if there was room on the door; a slight segue into smuttiness about the glorious Victor Garber.....

What a brilliant place this can be.

So many things that irritate me about the Titanic movie. Just a few:

1. The fact that the tragic deaths of so many real people, sometimes appear to be treated as a backcloth to the story of the fictitious ones. There are lists of all the actual passengers and crew on board, with their names and stating whether 'lost' and 'survived'. Making up people we know were never there, seems disrespectful of the real victims to me.

2. The depiction of First Officer Murdoch - he was depicted as shooting one of the passengers then shooting himself. There is absolutely no evidence this happened; he was a real person and in reality he (alongside the other crew) spent the hours before the sinking loading the lifeboats with passengers. Working to save as many lives as possible whilst knowing you are likely to lose your own - that is as good a definition of heroism as any I can think of. So Murdoch did not deserve to be traduced.

3. The script. In particularly some of the clanking lines put in the mouth of Rose:
   'To me it was a slave ship, taking me back to America in chains'. When barely a century earlier, real slaves had crossed the Atlantic. And in real chains, not in a first class cabin. I think even in 1997 they should have known better;
   (referring to the people in the lifeboats after the sinking) 'Waiting for dawn, waiting for absolution which never came'. So the survivors were supposed to feel guilty about surviving then?

The re-examination you refer to didn't partially exonerate the Californian at all - quite the opposite. The only real point of difference from the original inquiriesin 1912 was the distance between the two ships, and even that they couldn't agree on - one expert said it was 5-7 miles, the other 17-20. The rest of that re-examination was absolutely damning for the Californian and the captain - it found the ship had seen the rockets, should have taken action and that the officers and most of all the captain had completely failed in their duty.

Also worth pointing out the re-examination only came about after prolonged pressure from the board of trade's general secretary, who believed his own credibility and reputation depended on proving the original inquiries wrong. To that end, he deliberately ignored any evidence that disagreed with his point of view and there were examples of survivors reporting him pressuring them to change their statements, so not exactly a man desperate to get to the truth.

Where you are right is the ship definitely couldn't have arrived in time to save everyone on board the Titanic - it would have had about 90 minutes to navigate through 10 miles of heavy ice towards a sinking ship. That said, it could definitely have been on the scene around the time of the Titanic's sinking and it's hard to argue that wouldn't have meant more people being saved.

@Livingtothefull you and me both! I think the big thing is that the story is fantastical enough without needing to further dramatise it! That and the basic factual errors.... don't get me started! The script is a shocker as well.

On Murdoch, weren't there several reports of an officer shooting themselves and he was the most likely candidate? Far from conclusive, obviously, and pretty sure Cameron had to apologise to his descendants.

'Rose!' 'Jack!' 'Rose! Rose! Rose!' 'Jack! Oh Jack!' 'Rose!'

Not just you

swoons

@Batfunk as far as I know I think there were some reports of gunfire from the side of the ship where Murdoch was working - but absolutely no evidence it was connected to him or indeed any member of the crew. So this was a made up story to add to the movie drama.

Which is extremely distasteful imo considering this was a real person who died horribly. And yes I did hear that Cameron had to apologise though not sure about this.

I would have loved to see it with a better script. I think some of it sounded clunky and cringey even in 1997. And Jack teaching Rose to spit…why 😂

The filmmakers had to do something to undo the image they'd initially set up of Rose as a spoiled, imperious brat. She had to come out of her fragrant shell and appear more like a woman with a sense of humour and a bit more human spirit.

Why precisely they chose a gobbing contest to drive that particular point home, I confess escapes me.

I did like the third class party scene though, she comes into her own a bit there.