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?
lionhead
8th Apr 2020
Titanic (1997)
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.
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.
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.
27th Aug 2001
Titanic (1997)
Corrected entry: When trying to steer around the iceberg, they put the propellers in reverse. If they wanted the bow to turn left, they would have turned better and faster had they left the propellers in forward to push the stern to the right to force the bow to the left.
Correction: This mistake was actually made by the crew - the Officer of the deck in charge of the bridge that night directly contradicted everything that was taught to shipmasters when in peril of collision. He ordered the turn rather than just hitting the berg head on, he ordered the engines reversed as well, which they had been specifically taught would make the ship turn more poorly than normal. He should have steered straight for the berg and ordered "All Stop" on the engines. Titanic could have easily survived for many hours with her bow crushed because only one compartment, the bow, would have flooded, as opposed to the six..
That's not true. The bow would've been damaged so badly that the ship would've sunken even faster and probably everyone would've died. Titanic's sister ship Lusitania was hit by a torpedo in the war and suffered damage very much like hitting the iceberg directly would've made. The way the bow dented after hitting the bottom is similar to that.
Getting hit by a torpedo is nothing like hitting an iceberg. When Lusitania got hit an enormous explosion followed caused by a boiler or coal stack exploding, that's what caused her to sink so fast (in only 18 minutes). Got nothing to do with compartments, the entire interior of the hull was probably torn apart from the explosion.
The Lusitania was Titanic's rival, not her sister ship. Plus, the bow would not have crumbled to badly if the engines were stopped, and she hit head on. In fact, the 1912 inquiry stated it was likely she could've limped on to New York.
This is extremely inaccurate. Lusitania was hit by the torpedo on her starboard side just aft of the bridge, nearly 200 feet astern of the bow point of the ship. A stem on collision with the berg would have resulted in Titanic not sinking at all, and at the inquiry in 1912 this was actually discussed and found to be the case. Among other evidence they looked at ships that had hit ice bergs stem-on in the past and found that the majority stayed afloat and stable afterwards.
The Lusitania was owned by Cunard, not the White Star Line. You may be thinking of the Britannic, who was hit by a mine.
29th Jan 2005
Titanic (1997)
Corrected entry: When Jack is playing poker in the beginning of the movie with the Swedish guys and Fabrizio we can see a short shot of his cards. He then takes another card and wins by having a full house. However, there was no way to get a full house with the cards he had by just drawing one more card. (00:22:50)
Correction: You must have missed the part where he trades two cards with Sven (the one Swedish guy) before picking up the single card. Thus, it is possible to get a full house.
They didn't trade cards, even discards 1 card and Jack gives him a card off the top of the deck. They were playing 5 card draw. I don't know any form of poker that involves trading, unless 2 people are cheating.
That's the whole point of the scene - Jack and Sven are cheating.
No they are not. If you pause you can see he has the right cards. No cheating.
The cheating comment doesn't even make sense because Sven is playing against Jack and Sven loses. Plus, you're suggesting 2 people cheated over the table in plain sight of the 2 other players. In the scene, Jack is the dealer and the deck is to his left. When he gives 2 cards, they come from the deck and he takes the 2 cards and discards them next to the deck. Jack doesn't trade his own cards with anyone. He again gives 1 card from the deck and discards the 1 card. Then he takes his 1 card (which gives him the full house. Which is kind of pointless because his 2 pair was already the best hand).
27th Aug 2001
Titanic (1997)
Corrected entry: In the scene where Rose is looking at Jack on the bow of the ship, you can see a tiny bit of desert behind him. (01:19:25)
Correction: What you are seeing is cloud formations tinted gold from the setting sun. Not a desert.
Indeed. So funny to post a "mistake" like that. They shot it all inside a studio, nowhere near any desert. Why would there be a desert?
They quite famously built a full-scale replica of the Titanic at the Fox Baja Studios in Rosarito, Mexico, and a lot of shots were on that replica. Rosarito isn't exactly a desert but it's not lush and verdant either. The cloud formations were real clouds, outside.
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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