James
Cameron’s film Titanic has been so successful that criticism has been muted,
at least criticism of a certain kind. Certainly there were critics who hated the film, and
critics who loved it. There were nitpickers who pointed out that the wrong kind of pipe
fasteners were used for the third-class bunks and those who claimed that the ship’s
wheel was turned the wrong way (which, by the way, Cameron got right. At the time, the
wheel of a ship was turned right to turn to port and left to turn to starboard, so Murdoch
correctly orders “Hard a starboard!” when he wants to turn the bow of the ship
to port).But there has been little or no
criticism of several glaring and indeed in some cases libelous mistakes made by Cameron.
This includes his treatment of J. Bruce Ismay, the head of the White Star line who was
along for the maiden voyage, his character assassination of Colonel Archibald Gracie, his
hysterical portrayal of Second Officer Lightoller, his belief that if the ship had hit the
iceberg head on the accident would have actually been worse (!), some features of his
portrait of John Jacob Astor, what the band played at the end, and his version of the
ship’s breakup. I will deal with these here.In these days J. Bruce Ismay is a
convenient villain. He, after all, saved himself when 1500 passengers and crew aboard his
ship drowned. This obviously was a flaw of character. Ismay clearly lacked the physical
courage displayed by Captain Smith and shipbuilder Thomas Andrews, who both went down with
the ship. But this lack of courage is no reason to paint Ismay as a capitalist twit
practically ramming the Titanic into the iceberg himself. There is no compelling
evidence that Ismay ordered Captain Smith to increase the speed of the ship. The
suggestion he was trying to set a speed record is in itself ridiculous. The Titanic
simply lacked the horsepower to set such a record. Unlike Cunard’s Mauretania
and Lusitania, which were quadruple screw, turbine propelled ships capable of
speeds well over 25 knots and intended to serve as auxiliary cruisers in time of war, the Titanic
was a triple screw ship fitted with two of the old-fashioned reciprocating engines and a
low-pressure turbine that drove the center screw. Titanic would have topped
out well under 25 knots (her design top speed was 23.5 knots, but most ships are capable
of a knot or two above this). Credible evidence suggests that Ismay spent most of his time
on board as a passenger, not giving orders that in any case it would not have been his
place to give.Once the ship strikes the iceberg,
again Ismay is portrayed as an idiot, demanding to know when the ship can get underway
again. There is no evidence to suggest Ismay behaved in this manner. In fact, he
immediately began assisting the ship’s officers to prepare and load the boats (a
little too enthusiastically, according to the later testimony of Fifth Officer Lowe). One
survivor, Edith Russell, wrote in her diary in 1934, “Bruce Ismay certainly saved my
life and I don’t doubt he saved many more.” Ismay himself testified that when he
stepped into the boat he left the ship in, there were no passengers around. This is not
impossible. Many of the passengers had moved aft as the bow of the ship continued to sink.
Bruce Ismay was certainly not perfect, but he does not deserve the kind of treatment he
received at the hand of James Cameron. In any case, Ismay’s true culpability lies
with the change in the lifeboat arrangements alluded to in the film by Victor Garber as
Thomas Andrews. The original plans for the Olympic class liners featured a total of 24
pairs of davits, 12 on each side of the ship. The foremost set of davits were to be fitted
with three boats, the others with two boats each, for a total of 50 boats. White
Star did indeed feel that this “cluttered” the boat deck with way too many
boats. The ships were delivered with 16 davits, 8 per side, and 20 boats. We know the end
result.In his script, Cameron refers to
Colonel Archibald Gracie as a “blowhard” and he is portrayed throughout as an
arrogant ass, hanging out with Billy Zane’s Cal Hockley. In fact, one suspects Cal
Hockley would have attracted only contempt from Gracie. Gracie was a graduate of West
Point and a retired Army officer who had just finished writing a book called The Truth
About Chickamauga. After the disaster, Gracie wrote a book about his experiences
aboard the Titanic. Rather than hanging with Cal Hockley, Gracie offered his
services to a number of unattached ladies traveling on board as a kind of
“protector,” spent time with Ida and Isidor Strauss, and generally had a good
time. When the ship hit the iceberg, Gracie immediately set to work making sure the ladies
he had promised to help found their way to lifeboats and then helped the ship’s
officers with the collapsible boats. Gracie never tried to get into a boat and was sucked
down when the Titanic sank. He came to the surface after many struggles and climbed
onto the upturned collapsible boat where he spent the long night waiting for rescue.
Gracie testified at the American Senate inquiry and then set about writing his book The
Truth About the Titanic, which stands up well today, incidentally. Colonel Gracie died
in December 1912, possibly of aftereffects from his ordeal. Archibald Gracie was neither a
blowhard nor a twit. He was a brave man. His portrayal by Cameron remains insulting in the
extreme.Another bizarre characterization in the
film is that of Second Officer Charles Lightoller, who seems to be continuously on the
edge of hysteria after the accident. Lightoller in fact was a bit of a hard case; he had
been at sea for years and seen a lot before the Titanic sank, and there is no
evidence of any hysterical behavior on his part during the sinking. During the sinking he
loaded lifeboats and made no effort to escape; he was sucked down against
the stokehold vents at the base of the forefunnel as the Titanic sank and only by a
miracle was he blown free by a sudden burst of hot air from somewhere deep within the
ship. He made it to the upturned collapsible boat. In 1940, the elderly Lightoller took
his 60-foot yacht to Dunkirk and rescued dozens of British soldiers from the beaches. Once
again, Cameron cannot recognize a brave man when he is faced with one.In typical Cameron form, John Jacob
Astor comes in for contemptuous treatment. Astor was a rather interesting man, far from
the simple-minded millionaire portrayed in the film. He wrote an early science fiction
novel and with his own money equipped a unit for service in the Spanish American war.
Cameron even ignores history by dressing Astor in what Cameron evidently feels is the
uniform of the upper class, evening clothes, for the sinking. Unfortunately for Cameron,
Astor’s body was recovered after the sinking (crushed and soot-covered;
evidently Astor was involved in the collapse of one of the funnels) and we know what he
was wearing, a blue suit, a brown flannel shirt, and brown boots with rubber soles;
not fancy but a good choice for a chill evening and definitely not evening wear. The fact
that Astor’s body was recovered and its condition also indicates Cameron erred, no
surprise, in placing him in the Grand Staircase when that part of the ship flooded. If
such was the case, his body would have been trapped within the ship and never found (this
also is an argument against Cameron’s portrayal of the last moments of Ida and Isidor
Strauss, who are last seen in their cabin in one another’s arms. Isidor Strauss’
body was found; had he and his wife been inside the ship, chances are
their bodies would still be in the wreckage today).In an interview published as part of Titanic:
James Cameron’s Illustrated Screenplay, Cameron displays a startling ignorance of
naval architecture by claiming that if the Titanic had hit the iceberg head on, the
bow would have failed in exactly the same manner that it failed on impact with the bottom
(the Titanic’s bow is currently broken right in front of the bridge) and the
ship would have sank in 15 minutes. This not only ignores the fact that the angle of
impact was different (the bow did not hit the bottom straight on but went in at an angle)
but years of experience with large ships ramming things head on. In the 1870s, a large
liner of its day, the Arizona, slammed head-on into an iceberg. Although its bows
were smashed, it survived. The Titanic’s sister ship Olympic ran down a
German U-boat in WWI and later a lightship and survived both incidents with very little
damage. During WWII, the Cunard liner Queen Mary, traveling at high speed, cut a
British cruiser in half during a mistaken zigzag maneuver without even slowing down. In
the 50s, the Swedish liner Stockholm rammed the Andrea Doria;
the Doria sank, the Stockholm got a new bow and went back into service
(in fact, I believe she is still in service today, under another name). Ships are
structurally pretty well suited to take a head-on impact; this is taken
into account when they are designed. Had Titanic hit the berg head on, certainly
many people in the front part of the ship would have been badly injured or even killed,
but the ship would have survived the incident and been back in service as soon as Harland
& Wolff could put a new bow on her. This is confirmed in Tom McCluskie’s recent
book The
Anatomy of the Titanic. In it, McCluskie, an employee of Harland & Wolff and
the shipyard’s liaison to Cameron, writes, “In recent years Harland & Wolff
have carried out extensive computer simulations to attempt to determine what would have
happened had Titanic actually struck the iceberg a more direct blow. From this
research it has been determined that had this been the case, the damage would have been
confined to the forward end and Titanic would not have sunk.” To paraphrase
a line from the film, thank you for that fine forensic analysis, Mr. Cameron.As Titanic sinks, Cameron has
bandleader Wallace Hartley, after dismissing the rest of the bandsmen, play Nearer my
God to Thee on his violin. This has been for years one of the greatest mysteries of
the Titanic; what did the band play? Harold Bride, the assistant
Marconi operator, claimed that the last thing he heard the band play was Autumn.
There has been some question as to whether Bride was referring to the Episcopal hymn Autumn
or a currently popular waltz, Songe d’Autumn, or whether he was just mistaken
(in his interview in Titanic: James Cameron’s Illustrated Screenplay Cameron
refers to Bride as a “braggart;” once again Cameron can’t recognize courage
when he sees it. Bride and the senior Marconi operator, Jack Phillips, stayed at their
post to the last, even after Captain Smith released them from duty, and Bride was so
affected by the tragedy that he spent the rest of his life in utter obscurity, hardly the
act of a “braggart.”). Other survivors did claim to hear Nearer my God to
Thee. But there’s a problem here, too. There are two popular renditions of Nearer
my God to Thee, one used primarily in America and the other used in British churches
and by the Methodists. Wallace Hartley was both British and a Methodist. He was reported
to have told a friend that if he was aboard a sinking ship he would play Nearer my God
to Thee as it was his favorite hymn (and traditionally played at funerals of members
of the musician’s union, as indeed it was played at Hartley’s). But Cameron uses
the American setting of Nearer my God to Thee. No matter what the band
played, it was not that version.Finally, it has to be said that
Cameron’s sinking of the Titanic is just spectacular; the
huge ship breaking in half, the stern plunging down…except it could not have happened
that way. After the Titanic sank, although there were several survivors who were
convinced the ship had broken in half, there were just as many survivors who said that it
hadn’t. The mystery really wasn’t solved until Robert Ballard and his team found
the ship in 1985 and found that the ship was in two pieces. Two things seem pretty
certain; first, when the Titanic broke in half, the area of breaking must have been
underwater or nearly underwater. Had there been a spectacular break with showers of
sparks, everyone would have universally agreed that the ship broke up. Secondly, had the
stern come plunging down from such a great angle, the wave it created would have swamped
all of the lifeboats. No such thing happened. It looks great, but it didn’t happen
that way.James Cameron claims to be a historian
of the Titanic disaster. Well, he is one…just like Oliver Stone is a student
of the JFK assassination. Certainly his ignorance is well on display throughout. He also
obviously does not recognize courage, no surprise from a man who after the filming of Titanic
left his wife and children for another woman. The beautiful, tragic Titanic and the
people who sailed aboard her deserve better.
�1999 Susan J. Paxton