lionhead

28th Apr 2020

Titanic (1997)

Answer: I think she wanted people to stop focusing on this valuable necklace. She wanted them to care more about love, and the Titanic passengers who died.

Answer: The necklace is called "The heart of the Ocean." While in the middle of the ocean, Rose had her heart captured by Jack Dawson. Rose returned the diamond to the ocean in the exact place where her heart was taken by Jack. As she says at one point, "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets"

Ssiscool

Answer: She basically gave it back to the ship. It was a symbolic gesture towards Jack as basically he died because of it.

lionhead

8th Apr 2020

Titanic (1997)

Question: Would everyone have been saved if the lifeboats had been filled to capacity properly? Mr Andrews yells at one of the officers about the boats not being full and how they were tested with the weight of 70 men, so won't buckle under the weight of only 15 or 20 people. So since women and children don't weigh as much as men would, if they had filled the boats properly, would everyone have been saved in the actual tragedy?

Answer: Not everyone, no. Even with all the boats at full capacity they still couldn't hold all of them. It had 20 lifeboats in total that could carry a maximum of 1178 people, at full capacity. The ship was carrying 2208 people (passengers and crew). Even if you would cram as much people in them, you still couldn't fit them all in and there will be risk of sinking. The 2 major problems were that they measured lifeboat capacity in cubic meters rather than number of people, if the ship was in full lifeboat capacity (64 instead of only 20) it could take everybody twice over. Secondly it wasn't considered necessary according to the safety regulations to have more lifeboats because of the tonnage of the ship, regulations that maxed ships at 10,000 tons (whilst the Titanic was over 46,000 tons). Eventually only 710 people were saved, because of incompetent evacuation procedures and panic. Almost all first and second class women and children were saved, third class and crew were not so lucky.

lionhead

Answer: In a word, no. More lives would have been saved, but as an earlier scene points out (and accurately reflects what happened in real life), there was only enough lifeboat capacity for roughly half the people onboard, even if they were filled to capacity.

Answer: There were not enough life boats for all passengers, and it was because it was never believed everyone needed to be in them at once during an emergency. While it's true that cruise lines didn't want too many boats blocking passengers' view, their intended use was to ferry passengers in turn from a stricken vessel to a rescue ship. After the disaster, new maritime regulations were enacted, including enough lifeboats for all passengers.

raywest

Answer: Also, even if there were enough boats, there was not enough time to get all the boats filled and lowered.

Yes there was. It took over 2 hours for Titanic to sink. Plenty of time to get everyone on the lifeboats, if they had known the urgency.

lionhead

In one of James Cameron's documentaries that he did after making the movie, they timed him lowering a lifeboat, and it took him twenty minutes to get it swung out and lowered while it was empty. Add additional time to actually fill them would bring launching one to at least 30 minutes. So no, even if they had enough lifeboats, there wouldn't have been time to launch them all. They didn't even launch all the ones that they did have.

They weren't launched one by one, you know.

lionhead

29th Jun 2019

Titanic (1997)

Question: Where any charges ever brought up against the White Star line after so many people died?

Answer: From Wikipedia: In the United States and Britain, more than 60 survivors combined to sue the White Star Line for damages connected to loss of life and baggage. The claims totalled $16,804,112 (appr. $419 million in 2018 USD), which was far in excess of what White Star argued it was responsible for as a Limited liability company under American law. Because the bulk of the litigants were in the United States, White Star petitioned the United States Supreme Court in 1914, which ruled in it's favour that it qualified as an LLC and found that the causes of the ship's sinking were largely unforeseeable, rather than due to negligence. This sharply limited the scope of damages survivors and family members were entitled to, prompting them to reduce their claims to some $2.5 million. White Star only settled for $664,000 (appr. $16.56 million in 2018), about 27% of the original total sought by survivors. The settlement was agreed to by 44 of the claimants in December 1915, with $500,000 set aside for the American claimants, $50,000 for the British, and $114,000 to go towards interest and legal expenses.

lionhead

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