Director James Cameron’s historical mistakes sank the Titanic a second time

It is one of the world’s favourite films, but Titanic, released 20 years ago this weekend, got some of its history wrong

Actors Leonardo DiCaprio (Jack) and Kate Winslet (Rose) in a scene from James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic.

TWENTY years ago this Sunday, director James Cameron premiered his epic romance-disaster film Titanic. Unlike its subject the film didn’t sink, but after its release on December 17, 1997, it steamed on to become one of the biggest box office smashes of all time.

Still a favourite of cinemagoers, one of its most impressive aspects was its detailed depiction of one of the most famous disasters in history. Cameron went to great lengths to make it historically accurate, even diving in a submersible to study and film the wreckage at the bottom of the ocean.

The Titanic exhibition, currently showing at Byron Kennedy Hall, Moore Park, has sets and other items from the movie that show the lengths the filmmaker went to to accurately recreate the ship. However, historians found enough holes in his Titanic to sink the ship a second time. Some examples include fudging events for the sake of the fictional story, speculating on what happened, which has since been proven wrong, and simply ignoring evidence.

The majestic Titanic, as depicted in James Cameron’s film of the same name, on its maiden voyage in April 1912.

Cameron himself recognised the shortcomings saying he was tempted to correct some of the problems while turning the film into a 3D version in 2002, but left his much-loved work of cinematic art to stand complete with its flaws. “I didn’t change a frame. The ship still sinks. Jack still dies.”

The ship does indeed sink, just as it did after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912. But the way it sank in the film was based on evidence available at the time. Evidence now shows that although the bow stood up vertically for a brief time, it didn’t go straight down as shown in the film when Jack (Leonardo di Caprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) cling to its railings.

Jack’s death was not part of history, as is well known, the American was invented for the love story at the heart of the film. Although there is a grave for a Titanic victim named J. Dawson in Nova Scotia, he was Joseph from Dublin, not Jack from Chippewa Falls.
Although Jack’s memory of his home town is dodgy. At one point he recalls ice fishing on Lake Wissota, which didn’t exist until 1918 when it was dammed for the construction of a hydro-electric dam.

Chairman and managing director of Titanic owner White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, was incorrectly portrayed in the film Titanic as a villain.

Titanic First Officer William Murdoch, considered a local hero in his native town of Dalbeattie, Scotland, was incorrectly portrayed as a murderer.

The scene where third class and steerage passengers making their way to the upper decks to the lifeboats are stopped by locked gates, is also wrong. The inquiry into the sinking found that the gates were not locked. They were never meant to be used in the event of a sinking; only if there were outbreaks of disease, particularly in steerage.

J. Bruce Ismay (played by Jonathon Hyde), managing director of White Star Line, which owned the Titanic, is portrayed as a villain. He is seen ordering the captain to get the engines up to full speed to break the record for crossing the Atlantic. At the time the Titanic sank the engines had never reached full speed because not all of the boilers had been fired up. However, a test of all boilers had been scheduled for a day or two after the sinking.

There is also no evidence Ismay sneaked aboard a lifeboat, like Cameron’s movie suggests. In fact there is evidence he helped load women and children on lifeboats and was ordered to get on a boat by an officer, because the lifeboat was undermanned and at the time it was believed that men were needed to row the boats.

A scene from the movie Titanic.

Passengers scramble into lifeboats in a scene from the 1997 film Titanic.

Director James Cameron (right) with actors Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio on set in the Titanic in 1997.

Another historical character who comes off poorly is First Officer Murdoch, played by Ewan Stewart, who is shown shooting passengers who try to get into a lifeboat and then commits suicide. Some witnesses claimed to have seen an officer killing himself but there is no specific evidence that it was Murdoch. The film also shows Murdoch taking a bribe, which was to highlight how dubious the character Cal Hockley (Billy Zane) was and not based on anything that was known to have happened. The only available evidence on Murdoch’s actions suggest he behaved heroically in the ship’s final moments. In 1998 the producers gave
an official apology to the family.

Some of the knowing historical references made in the film, usually for comic effect or to depict a character as progressive or well informed, were also off the mark. In one scene we see Rose’s collection of paintings, one of which she bought from a relatively unknown young artist named Picasso, to which her fiance Cal remarks that he’ll never amount to anything. But the painting is actually Demoiselles D’Avignon, which didn’t go down on the ship and is still on display in New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Rose also makes reference to one
of pioneering psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’s theories about men’s obsession with penis size that wasn’t published until 1920.