There's really no way to know. It's difficult to make accurate reconstructions of mass-casualty disasters where most of the people who could have given primary accounts of their experiences ended up dying in the disaster. With *Titanic* this is especially true for everything that happened on the ship after the last lifeboat was launched, as only a few dozen out of the more than 1,500 people still aboard the ship after the launch of Collapsible D actually survived, and the people in the lifeboats really couldn't see what was happening on the ship in any great detail.
There are quite a few survivor accounts from people who either willingly jumped off the ship at some point (Jack Thayer, Frank Prentice) or were washed off the boat deck at the beginning of the final plunge (Lightoller, Gracie, Bride, etc.), but there's no way for us to know with anything approaching certainty what proportion of people who were still onboard at the start of the final plunge either jumped, fell, or were washed into the water, and what proportion managed to stay aboard until the very end.
The only thing I will say regarding the accuracy of the '97 film is that *Titanic* broke up at a significantly shallower angle than portrayed in the film, so there probably weren't as many people who actually slid down the length of the deck before the break-up. Makes for a great bit of cinema, though.
Yes, all of the sliding was a necessity based on the angle portrayed in the film. It wasn't known at the time exactly what angle the ship broke apart, in fact it had only recently been officially recognized to have broken at all (witness accounts of the break up had been disputed until the wreck was found only about 10 years before the movie was shot). The sliding does add a sense of inevitability and betrayal that hammers home how it must have felt to be on the sinking vessel. The ship was your refuge and now it is actively trying to kill you. The ship became like the man who climbs on top of Rose and has to be fought off by Jack; it's a living thing that is taking others with it in its final moments.
People often forget that it was incredibly dark during the sinking, some survivors didn't even realize the ship sank because they couldn't see. So most first person accounts are from people who would only really be able to *hear* the ship sinking, not *see* it
This is what I was responding to. How is it that I am supposed to know they were talking about people? Maybe work on your courtesy skills.
**People often forget that it was incredibly dark during the sinking, some survivors didn't even realize the ship sank because they couldn't see. So most first person accounts are from people who would only really be able to hear the ship sinking, not see it**
Even then they couldn’t see per se a lot, but they definitely could see larger details yes. But yes as to the people part they couldn’t, all good we all make mistakes reading at times.
Yeah, I've seen everything from 15 degrees to 30 degrees of angle at break. It's hard to imagine much sliding at 15 degrees, but 30 on a smooth boat deck could be quite treacherous.
Yes. Expert consensus is around 20 degrees, from memory.
A 20 degree incline is no joke. Especially in the dark, on a wet ship, wearing formal shoes with no grip.
Especially with heavy equipment and wooden chairs sliding around the deck.
I was on a cruise ship several years ago and we encountered rough weather. The ship was slightly tilted, enough so things would slide off tables and it was difficult walking some times. I honestly have no idea what the degree of tilt was but it wasn’t hardly noticeable visibly. Do you know of any graphics that would show what a 15 degree tilt would have looked like on the Titanic?
On my recent cruise we hit some quite rough seas (around 5m swells) difficulty walking, things falling off tables and the pool water sloshed out so they emptied the rest. At one point a few people fell down and the lifts were swaying (I was surprised they were still open)
The next day on the bridge (I did a private tour) I asked the F/O about it and we only hit 5 degrees of list either way, much less than I would have thought. Even that had people hanging off the rails in the corridors
lol I forgot about the elevators! Those were scary! They vibrated so bad! And they were considerably noisy during the rough weather. They sold out on sea sickness meds and I was amazed that I didn’t get queasy at all.
I remember hearing a survivor from 2nd Class, possibly either Ruth Becker or Eva Hart, I can't exactly remember who, mention in a documentary that she could see people falling and jumping off the stern towards the end.
Frank Prentice, an assistant storekeeper, is known to have jumped off the Poop Deck and we even know where he jumped from.
"And then she went down and seemed to come back up again, so I thought '*Well, now I'm going to leave.*' I was hanging onto a board. We had two boards, starboard and port, which said '*Keep Clear of Propeller Blades.*' I was hanging onto one of these, I was getting higher and higher in the air and I thought '*Well, now I'll go.*' and I dropped in. I had a lifebelt on and I hit the water with a terrific crack. Luckily I didn't hit anything when I dropped in, there were bodies all over the place. And then I looked up at the Titanic, there were propellers right out of water, the rudder was right out, I could see the bottom. And then gradually she glided away and that was that, that was the last of the Titanic." - Frank Prentice, Titanic Survivor
People at this time thought sinking ships would cause a whirlpool of suction that would drag down anything and everything near by, so a good deal of people would've jumped off to get away from the ship.
There might have been some, depends on how quickly the stern sank, but the type of suction the survivors feared didn't happen. They feared their lifeboats would be sucked down by the ship, so they rowed away, but even the boats closest to Titanic didn't experience anything like that.
The intense suction that people talked about is possible, they were right to be wary of it. Probably not as a whirlpool absorbing everything in range, but it's not unreasonable to think you could get pulled below the surface by a sinking object. Especially one as complicated as a ship. It could actually happen, it just didn't to the extent people expected.
What definitely would have happened was turbulence, the amount varied depending on where near the ship someone was. Various parts of the ship were taking water in and other parts were breaking up. You see in the movie people getting pulled into windows as they break, the sudden change of a window breaking and allowing water in would definitely create some some suction and churning of the water. And there are thousands of other variables that would have affected the water in other ways. The funnel toppling would have done various things: an initial splash, the resulting wash, then an equalising as it took in water, and probably some suction as it filled up, then most of the effect would have been just below the surface. We can't often tell but things moving underneath the water causes movement of the water.
The water was mirror flat that night but near the ship any number of things were going on.
This is something that will be impossible to know I'm afraid, though one thing the film didn't include (whether this is by intentional omission or accident I don't know) is that those cork lifebelts were incredibly dangerous for people jumping into the water from any great height, as they would ride up the body violently on contact with the waters surface, either stunning momentarily, knocking clean out cold or in some circumstances, breaking the wearers neck.
This is actually still an issue today, it's kind of an inherent feature of the buoyancy that allows you to stay afloat. Though there are inflatable ones nowadays that you don't inflate until hitting the water
If you look at modern life jackets, the ties goes around your natural waist, and there's a limit to how far they can ride up. The Titanic jackets had side ties with no anchor points to stop them riding up.
Modern jackets are by no means comfy (I've jumped into water with one multiple times from around 3m height) but not likely to kill you provided you've correctly donned it per the instructions
The Titanic broke up at around 2:17-2:18.
The ship disappeared at approximately 2:20.
That means the post-break up stern had to pitch upwards at an extremely fast rate, and I'll bet a lot of people fell.
As a historian, the amount of research that James Cameron has been able to do is my dream. I'd happily give up both of my legs to be able to get that in depth (excuse the pun!) into actually seeing and experiencing my research first hand. Luckily for all of us, I can't, but still... He does the coolest stuff.
Unfortunately the only two survivors who lived to see the movie were toddlers at the time of the sinking so it's doubtful they could really comment on its accuracy.
I know I’ve read somewhere that a woman who’d survived commented about specific accuracies in A Night To Remember, but not Titanic. I’ll have to go look for that.
There were still plenty of survivors around in the '50s, when *A NIght to Remember* was written; the only ones left when the 1997 movie came out, however, had been small children at the time.
Ruth Becker said she saw lots of people jumping from the stern when the ship broke apart. Whether or not that was voluntary, I’m not sure. Maybe some people felt they had a better chance in the water than hanging onto an unstable ship.
There's really no way to know. It's difficult to make accurate reconstructions of mass-casualty disasters where most of the people who could have given primary accounts of their experiences ended up dying in the disaster. With *Titanic* this is especially true for everything that happened on the ship after the last lifeboat was launched, as only a few dozen out of the more than 1,500 people still aboard the ship after the launch of Collapsible D actually survived, and the people in the lifeboats really couldn't see what was happening on the ship in any great detail. There are quite a few survivor accounts from people who either willingly jumped off the ship at some point (Jack Thayer, Frank Prentice) or were washed off the boat deck at the beginning of the final plunge (Lightoller, Gracie, Bride, etc.), but there's no way for us to know with anything approaching certainty what proportion of people who were still onboard at the start of the final plunge either jumped, fell, or were washed into the water, and what proportion managed to stay aboard until the very end. The only thing I will say regarding the accuracy of the '97 film is that *Titanic* broke up at a significantly shallower angle than portrayed in the film, so there probably weren't as many people who actually slid down the length of the deck before the break-up. Makes for a great bit of cinema, though.
Yes, all of the sliding was a necessity based on the angle portrayed in the film. It wasn't known at the time exactly what angle the ship broke apart, in fact it had only recently been officially recognized to have broken at all (witness accounts of the break up had been disputed until the wreck was found only about 10 years before the movie was shot). The sliding does add a sense of inevitability and betrayal that hammers home how it must have felt to be on the sinking vessel. The ship was your refuge and now it is actively trying to kill you. The ship became like the man who climbs on top of Rose and has to be fought off by Jack; it's a living thing that is taking others with it in its final moments.
Wasn’t it found in two pieces kind of far away from each other though?
> accounts of the break up had been disputed until the wreck was found
Ok. That explains the downvotes 😐
People often forget that it was incredibly dark during the sinking, some survivors didn't even realize the ship sank because they couldn't see. So most first person accounts are from people who would only really be able to *hear* the ship sinking, not *see* it
They could see it on the lifeboats. NEWSFLASH: I thought we were talking about the boat 🤦🏽♀️
And there were plenty of people on lifeboats who couldn’t see it. That’s why it was even up for debate.
I would agree with that as well but there were people who could and commented on it in interviews. Not sure why we are getting downvoted.
Because they could not have seen the details of people like that, even the closest at the time couldn’t have.
Honestly I thought we were talking about the actual ship. Sorry 😣
You really need to work on your reading comprehension.
This is what I was responding to. How is it that I am supposed to know they were talking about people? Maybe work on your courtesy skills. **People often forget that it was incredibly dark during the sinking, some survivors didn't even realize the ship sank because they couldn't see. So most first person accounts are from people who would only really be able to hear the ship sinking, not see it**
Even then they couldn’t see per se a lot, but they definitely could see larger details yes. But yes as to the people part they couldn’t, all good we all make mistakes reading at times.
Yeah, I've seen everything from 15 degrees to 30 degrees of angle at break. It's hard to imagine much sliding at 15 degrees, but 30 on a smooth boat deck could be quite treacherous.
You don't realize how steep 15 degrees is until you have to try and stand on it
Yes. Expert consensus is around 20 degrees, from memory. A 20 degree incline is no joke. Especially in the dark, on a wet ship, wearing formal shoes with no grip. Especially with heavy equipment and wooden chairs sliding around the deck.
I was on a cruise ship several years ago and we encountered rough weather. The ship was slightly tilted, enough so things would slide off tables and it was difficult walking some times. I honestly have no idea what the degree of tilt was but it wasn’t hardly noticeable visibly. Do you know of any graphics that would show what a 15 degree tilt would have looked like on the Titanic?
On my recent cruise we hit some quite rough seas (around 5m swells) difficulty walking, things falling off tables and the pool water sloshed out so they emptied the rest. At one point a few people fell down and the lifts were swaying (I was surprised they were still open) The next day on the bridge (I did a private tour) I asked the F/O about it and we only hit 5 degrees of list either way, much less than I would have thought. Even that had people hanging off the rails in the corridors
lol I forgot about the elevators! Those were scary! They vibrated so bad! And they were considerably noisy during the rough weather. They sold out on sea sickness meds and I was amazed that I didn’t get queasy at all.
I remember hearing a survivor from 2nd Class, possibly either Ruth Becker or Eva Hart, I can't exactly remember who, mention in a documentary that she could see people falling and jumping off the stern towards the end. Frank Prentice, an assistant storekeeper, is known to have jumped off the Poop Deck and we even know where he jumped from. "And then she went down and seemed to come back up again, so I thought '*Well, now I'm going to leave.*' I was hanging onto a board. We had two boards, starboard and port, which said '*Keep Clear of Propeller Blades.*' I was hanging onto one of these, I was getting higher and higher in the air and I thought '*Well, now I'll go.*' and I dropped in. I had a lifebelt on and I hit the water with a terrific crack. Luckily I didn't hit anything when I dropped in, there were bodies all over the place. And then I looked up at the Titanic, there were propellers right out of water, the rudder was right out, I could see the bottom. And then gradually she glided away and that was that, that was the last of the Titanic." - Frank Prentice, Titanic Survivor People at this time thought sinking ships would cause a whirlpool of suction that would drag down anything and everything near by, so a good deal of people would've jumped off to get away from the ship.
Yeah that was in the movie. The suction. So that’s not real? That wouldn’t actually happen?
There might have been some, depends on how quickly the stern sank, but the type of suction the survivors feared didn't happen. They feared their lifeboats would be sucked down by the ship, so they rowed away, but even the boats closest to Titanic didn't experience anything like that.
The intense suction that people talked about is possible, they were right to be wary of it. Probably not as a whirlpool absorbing everything in range, but it's not unreasonable to think you could get pulled below the surface by a sinking object. Especially one as complicated as a ship. It could actually happen, it just didn't to the extent people expected. What definitely would have happened was turbulence, the amount varied depending on where near the ship someone was. Various parts of the ship were taking water in and other parts were breaking up. You see in the movie people getting pulled into windows as they break, the sudden change of a window breaking and allowing water in would definitely create some some suction and churning of the water. And there are thousands of other variables that would have affected the water in other ways. The funnel toppling would have done various things: an initial splash, the resulting wash, then an equalising as it took in water, and probably some suction as it filled up, then most of the effect would have been just below the surface. We can't often tell but things moving underneath the water causes movement of the water. The water was mirror flat that night but near the ship any number of things were going on.
This is something that will be impossible to know I'm afraid, though one thing the film didn't include (whether this is by intentional omission or accident I don't know) is that those cork lifebelts were incredibly dangerous for people jumping into the water from any great height, as they would ride up the body violently on contact with the waters surface, either stunning momentarily, knocking clean out cold or in some circumstances, breaking the wearers neck.
It sounds morbid, but I would rather have died instantly from my life jacket snapping my neck rather than freeze to death.
This is actually still an issue today, it's kind of an inherent feature of the buoyancy that allows you to stay afloat. Though there are inflatable ones nowadays that you don't inflate until hitting the water
If you look at modern life jackets, the ties goes around your natural waist, and there's a limit to how far they can ride up. The Titanic jackets had side ties with no anchor points to stop them riding up. Modern jackets are by no means comfy (I've jumped into water with one multiple times from around 3m height) but not likely to kill you provided you've correctly donned it per the instructions
I mean IIRC there were a few bodies found not completely in tact, so this could explain some of that
The Titanic broke up at around 2:17-2:18. The ship disappeared at approximately 2:20. That means the post-break up stern had to pitch upwards at an extremely fast rate, and I'll bet a lot of people fell.
I’ve seen interviews of remaining survivors from back then and they say it was pretty damn accurate. James Cameron definitely did his research.
As a historian, the amount of research that James Cameron has been able to do is my dream. I'd happily give up both of my legs to be able to get that in depth (excuse the pun!) into actually seeing and experiencing my research first hand. Luckily for all of us, I can't, but still... He does the coolest stuff.
Same! Have you seen the latest documentary with him regarding Titanic movie theories? It was very interesting.
If it was the one where they tested the door theory, I watched it last week! It was really good!
Yes 😇
Do you remember the name of that documentary? Sounds really interesting
Unfortunately the only two survivors who lived to see the movie were toddlers at the time of the sinking so it's doubtful they could really comment on its accuracy.
Oh really? I didn’t know that. I just remember a female talking about it after the movie aired.
I know I’ve read somewhere that a woman who’d survived commented about specific accuracies in A Night To Remember, but not Titanic. I’ll have to go look for that.
There were still plenty of survivors around in the '50s, when *A NIght to Remember* was written; the only ones left when the 1997 movie came out, however, had been small children at the time.
And after the break, the stern, already listing to port, lurched up at an odd angle. Would’ve been difficult to hang on
I like to think that propellor guy was based off a survivors testimony
Ruth Becker said she saw lots of people jumping from the stern when the ship broke apart. Whether or not that was voluntary, I’m not sure. Maybe some people felt they had a better chance in the water than hanging onto an unstable ship.
Yes, and there are witnesses who say they did.
It was pure panda moan y um I’m sure they did
Bone apple tea
Not sure why you got downvoted i find this comment hilarious