Lawrence Beesley's 'girlfriend'

There's a more practical reason why the Leigh Goodwin character was invented. She's there to give Beesley someone to talk to so that in a conversation, we can hear in dialogue many of the observations about the Titanic Beesley made in his book. For instance, when they both see the young man in steerage and speculate that he's really a rich boy not used to being in those surroundings, that's something that Beesley actually observed. But the only way you can dramatize that is for him to talk to someone about that, and logically you might assume a woman he meets aboard ship. Because they don't show them in a romance, I think this kind of fictionalization is fair game to communicate a broader truth as it were.