Raise the titanic


Okay, I know that they didn't find the Titanic until 1985 and this movie was made in 1980, but didnt they know that it had split in half the night it sunk?Why did they make this movie?

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I really don't know. I've thought that myself as I've watched this abortion of a movie. Maybe they didn't know it actually cracked in half at the time of the sinking, but they sure as hell would have known that the steam-stacks would have collapsed as the ship went down, but when the "Titanic" is shown pulling into New York, the stacks are still standing.

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Hell the paint job on that ship was supurb. I gotta find these people to paint my car, maybe it won't rust very much either in 90 years! Seriously though, the whole raised part was a load of crap. The ship under pressure that long that deep down, would it be able to handle the depressurisation process, or lack of one in the movie? Would all those wooden furniture pieces not be eaten away, and glass in all the windows? Ropes still intact!? What the hell were these people on?

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"Maybe they didn't know it actually cracked in half at the time of the sinking"

AFAIR, until the Titanic was actually found, the general consensus was that it sunk in one piece.

"they sure as hell would have known that the steam-stacks would have collapsed as the ship went down"

I may be mistaken, but I think that was mentioned in the novel, so it was probably just another screwup by the people who made the movie.

What I hadn't realised was that they apparently had a $40 million budget. What the heck did they spend it on?

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Until they found the wreck in 1985, there were conflicting opinions on whether the ship had sunk in one piece or had split. Even though many of the survivors thought the ship had split, many of the "experts" insisted that the ship was too strong to split in half. If I remember, one of the official inquiries flatly ignored any reports that the ship had split.

Since raising the ship would have been impossible if it was in 2 pieces, Cussler decided to go with what was the accepted version, that the ship had remained intact. In the book, the raising is somewhat more plausible, but even he got it wrong when it came to how corroded and damaged the ship would be. However, the funnels are definitely gone; even if they hadn't fallen off during the sinking, the salvage crew removed them and capped the boiler casings with a kind of moldable plastic steel they use to cover all the openings to make the ship air & water tight.

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The whole problem with the inquisitions that went on after the Titanic sunk was that they took the information from the reputable over the information from the majority. Although it was always a majority opinion from the survivors that the ship cracked in half, some of the more reputable surviviors claimed that it didn't, J. Bruce Ismay (the owner of the Titanic) being one of them. On top of that, the power went out a few minutes before it sank, and it was a new moon, so no one could really see what was going on. The Titanic was the first ship to split in half as it was going down, so nobody imagined it possible.
There, I think that's enough overkill of the subject. In regard to the issue of the smoke stacks still standing up, it was not entirely impossible. It is a rare occurance, but ships (like the Titanic's sister ship the Britannic) have landed on the Ocean floor with the funnels upright. However, even the inquisitions did conclude that at least the forward funnel collapsed. Many survivors witnessed it, and John Jacob Astor (the richest man on the ship) was crushed by it.

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Cussler has said his stories take place in a different Reality then the one we live in so in that Reality the Titanic went down in One Piece so they were able to Raise the Ship. Also Cussler still talks about Dirk Pitt Raising the Titanic in his Newer books.

But the Ship being in one Piece or two???? Two Great Authors have different opinions Aurther C. Clarke has the Titanic Being Raised and made into a Museum of some Sorts in one of his books. Then on the Other had in the Book "A Night To Remember" By Walter Lord, He is the leading athority and Researcher on the Titanic and has Written Two book on the Subject "A Night To Remember" and "The Night Lives On" In those two book he has Quotes by some who think the Ship broke in Two as she went down.

On a Personal Note Was Kind of sad when they found the ship in Two Pieces so they could never Raise the Ship.

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They did still make attempts to raise it though. I seem to remember reading about someone who tried filling it with ping pong balls to get it to float. Unfortunately, it's too old to raise even just the front part now, and the back has always been in too much disarray to raise. The front is decomposing at such a rate that there may not be much left in a decade or two.

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That ping pong ball theory is one that was circulated in the press in 1912

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No one has actively tried raising the ship. There have been many proposals and theories floated (pun) around, but no one has actually tried anything. And the public would cry bloody murder (pun again, someone stop me) if anything *did* try.

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Ismay didn't own the Titanic. Ismay was the director of International Mercantile Marine, which owned the Titanic. IMM was owned by JP Morgan, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, so technically, JP Morgan owned the Titanic. The survivors that stated that the Titanic broke in half, such as Jack Thayer and Eva Hart, were in the minority. The surviving officers stated in the inquiry that the ship went down in one piece. There testimony is what was accepted. And White Star Lines was very adamant that the ship did not break in two, as it would give the impression that its ships were flawed.

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such as Jack Thayer and Eva Hart, were in the minority

And Eva Hart's story changed after they found the wreck.

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What you say about the sinking is very true.

It's been shown that the break up occurred at a very shallow angle.

Given this fact and all that occurred, its easy to see why survivors forward and aft of the break were convinced that the ship went down intact.

Personally, I also feel there were other factors at work. Besides the issues that you mention (especially White Stars eagerness to salvage what it could of its reputation) I would say this:

The Titanic sinking was a blow to the western world's pride. Here was a supposed modern, technological wonder. It went down on its maiden voyage taking with it over 1500 souls.

It was the final indignity and assault on the western world's pride to think that the mighty ship somehow broke up on the surface.

It was just the final straw. Most people of the time and even decades later clung to the idea of the majestic liner sinking intact to finally arrive at the bottom in pristine condition.

It was just a balm to the collective ego to give the event some sense of dignity.

Additionally, Jack Thayer was only 17. Most likely, his story was dismissed easily as that of an inexperienced boy. Sadly, Jack Thayer committed suicide in the early 1940's a few months after learning of the death of a son killed in action during World War II.

AE36

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When the book was written by Clive Cussler there were a few details that were not yet known. For one, there are conflicting reports of the ship breaking in half and of it staying in one piece; new computer simulations proved that no one would have actually seen the ship break in half (apparently, much of that happened underwater - it's believe people heard the sound and their imaginations filled in the rest).

When the book was written it was ten years before the Titanic was found, so they were unaware that the funnels had been torn off and the ship had broken in half. The Britannic, one of Titanic's sister ships went to the bottom with its funnels intact and in place...

The second funnel is shown to have broken off because there are witness accounts that support it, but the last two were still attached to the ship when it disappeared beneath the waves. Clive Cussler (who is the head of the National Underwater and Marine Agency - NUMA - and therefore "knows his stuff")assumed that at the depth where the Titanic lay the lack of oxygen and harmful marine creatures would have 'preserved' the ship - they did not expect the ship to rust (rusticles etc.) the way it did.

When you think about it, the story works much more effectively and seems more realistic if the ship is in once piece; imagine if they had to drag the two sections together, spin the stern around and weld them back into one piece underwater - not very realistic...

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>assumed that at the depth where the Titanic lay the lack of oxygen and harmful
>marine creatures would have 'preserved' the ship - they did not expect the
>ship to rust (rusticles etc.) the way it did.

That's one of the key parts of the book. I'm not so sure it was just the depth, though. As I recall, there was something about it being in the path of an underwater flow that actually preserved the wreckage. Perhaps it had something to do with the salinity (or lack thereof), but I do recall that there is a section of the book where they discuss this as they were originally assuming that the ship would be almost completely rusted away until this came up.

As for the breaking in half, I think the majority of people were unaware that it broke in half until James Cameron's movie came out. It only became known as a definite fact when the wreckage was discovered as reports from eyewitnesses varied greatly. I also believe many of the survivors were far more interested in saving their own lives than keeping tabs on the sinking of the ship... that and it was nighttime, so visibility would have been limited. I don't think we should fault Cussler for keeping the ship in one piece for this story.

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It's a simple matter of physics, plus just about everyone who survived stated that the ship split before it sank.

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The worst and most unreliable stories usually comes from the eyewitnesses. Ask a cop!

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What? The ship, in the movie, did break into two pieces, more or less. When they found the Titanic (in the real world) they knew it was in two pieces, and the movied formulated a theory on how that happened.

As for eyewitnesses: If you have 100 people witness something, then question all 100 of them, you will receive 100 very different stories. They aren't reliable individually. You have to sift through all the testimony to find the truth.

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I'm sure Rajastheleopard meant "tugboat," but I was glad to see that typo. All day I've been smiling at the image of a goat in a tub beng raised by ping pong balls. :)

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Going back to the original question, the consensus in 1980 was that the ship had sank intact because of the testimony of Lightoller and Lawrence Beesley and some others. The "broken in two" argument was largely looked down upon, especially because of a drawing attributed to the descriptions of survivor Jack Thayer that had the forward end floating again after it went down (in effect showing the bow sticking up above) that was so absurd (though it was not an accurate characterization of how Thayer remembered things) and because the testimony of Lightoller who was partly dragged down with the ship seemed so persuasive at the time.

The film I would note botched in having the second funnel missing rather than the first funnel, because if an intact Titanic still had three funnels then everyone would have known it was the first funnel missing, which the eyewitnesses did see fall off as the ship took the final plunge. There also was apparently no Titanic historian that helped them out on other strange things in the script that weren't in the novel. In the novel, Brewster has Bigalow take him down to an authentic location, Cargo Hold #1, G-Deck. In the movie script this becomes the fictitious "D-Deck, Cargo Hold #9."

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Actually no. There were conflicting reports about whether the ship split in two and I believe, those witnesses saying it did were in the minority.

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There was reports that the ship broke into Jack Thayer who was very close said the ship broke into as others did but most though the ship went down in one

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Actually, the Titanic split into three pieces, not two. The third piece was discovered by the scientist and it was mentioned in a documentary on Discovery Channel.

Also, the stern is so badly crushed (since it was full of air when it sank so it then imploded), that it would be impossible to weld it to the other two parts.

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you care to elaborate that theory of yours that it broke into 3?

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There is no 3rd piece, just many pieces of the hull in the debris field between the bow and stern.

Raising the Titanic makes about as much sense as raising the Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

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Back in the 2004, two more major pieces of the hull were found on the ocean bottom, which were once one piece. It is though that that piece was the first major piece to separate from the ship during the break-up, and that subsequently lead up to the major break-up between the bow and the stern.

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as Kram Sacul said, there are many pieces of scattered debris between the bow and the stern. You could classify anything that fell off the ship and call it a piece. (in which case, the Titanic split into millions of pieces) however, it has been proven that when the ship was still above water, it split into two. as it plunged to the ocean floor, hundreds and hundreds of pieces flew off, especially after the bow mast collapsed onto the bridge.

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Actually, nothing has been "proven". I just watched a 2015 Discovery Channel Show called Drain The Titanic, in which they hypothesize that the ship didn't separate until after it left the surface. They argue that the debris field would have covered a larger area had it split at the surface, as the debris would have had a longer time to disperse.

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what the hell?
movies are made to entertain us,they dont have to be realistic thats what documentations are for.but raise the titanic is not one.ok it could have been done a little bit better and the condition of the titanic might be a little bit to unrealistic.but after all its not a bad movie,i like watching it,and i give a damn *beep* if a movie is realistic or not aslong its entertaining,and this movie was.
i really hate nitpickers that just have nothing better to do than rip a movie in pieces just for the dinky details.
GUYS! GET A LIFE!

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The answer to this question is simple. At the Titanic Inquiry in England, Second Officer Charles Lightoller testified to the British Board of Trade that the ship sank in intact. Because of his testimony, The board declared that the ship "sank intact". The Producers of the film obviously went ahead with the film knowing the conclusions of the 1912 Inquiry.

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The mentioned "3rd" piece that was reffered to is actually a piece of the keel of the ship with part of the double bottom intact . It has both port and starboard sides (as well as the line that runs along them, it protrudes off the hull slightly. It was said on the documentary that found this piece, but not knowing much of ship design and building I don't know it's name). It was fairly large and was theorised that as the ships steel hull buckled and warped because of the iron rivets (this theory was tested and proven under stress testing and this is what did the ship in really according to that documentary) unable to take the stress that this section under the weight from the bow, was strechted and ripped off and sank to the bottom a few minutes before the ship started to descend. But because of this missing peice the weight was jsut to much and the ship ripped in half with the front pulling the back end down and nearly vertical and then snapping off and sinking minus the stern. Then the stern sank and because of the force of air landed with the same force as an a bomb nearly, thus ruining her completely. This could never have been theorised due to the keel of the ship being covered in sand and most likely crushed like so many parts of the enginering levels. The documentary is repeated on Discovery UK every few weeks or so still. It was found something like 1.5 miles away in the debris filed. I base my own judgement however basing it on all the documentaries I have watched and books I've read, but I agree with what people have said here, in the fact that the officals paid attention to the more reputiable people than the passengers.

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GODAMN IT.

Who cares....its a flamin film. I also love this film from the day it was released...because it shows us something that will never be.

Remember...a film...this film is not a documentary. Its fiction, you guys know what that is? Jeesh!

Who cares what I think...

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when the ship sank, people said that it broke in two, but people did not believe them because it cant possibly happen and they turned down every thought from every survivor that was saying it broke in two, and it was easier for the movie's sake that the ship appear intact.

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When the ship went down some passengers claimed there was a loud noise as it went down. It was pitch black so none could say what they saw. After the ship was found, experts concluded what they heard was the ship ripping in half.

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