MORE THAN A CENTURY LATER, the story of the Titanic still captivates the public. Over the many years since the ship was lost, it has lived on in many different forms of art, literature, and film.
The most famous film adaptation is Titanic, released in 1997. The story at the center of the movie was a fictionalized romance between Jack Dawson, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and Rose DeWitt Bukater, played by Kate Winslet. Directed by James Cameron with a production budget of $200 million, the film went on to gross more than $1.8 billion worldwide.1 More than a decade later, Cameron remade the film in 3-D for re-release in 2012—one hundred years after the sinking of the real-life ship.2
Cameron’s interest in the Titanic began while he was doing research for another film, The Abyss.3 It was about this same time, in 1985, that the wreckage of the Titanic was discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard and his crew. Ballard’s exploration revealed that the Titanic had broken in half before sinking. The two sections were found at the ocean floor almost two thousand feet apart.4
The tragic story of the Titanic has been featured in art, literature, and film. It was most popularly portrayed in the 1997 movie Titanic. This photo depicts a scene in which the film’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, run through the interior of the ship as it sinks.
Ten years later, Cameron filmed footage of the wreck for use in his famous film. Cameron described the experience of filming the wreckage as “sort of like going to Mecca” and “getting religion.” He went on to say:
While many recovered artifacts from the ship have been put on display in shows and exhibitions over the years, the wreckage itself will not likely survive much longer. Dr. Henrietta Mann observed: “In 1995, I was predicting that Titanic had another 30 years…. But I think it’s deteriorating much faster than that now. Eventually there will be nothing left but a rust stain.”6
On May 31, 2009, Millvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor, died at the age of ninety-seven. As a two-month-old infant aboard the ship, she was bundled in a mail sack and lowered into a lifeboat. Though her mother and brother survived with her, her father, Bertram Dean, was among those who died. Ms. Dean believed that her family’s working-class background played a part in her father’s death. The Dean family had been traveling in third class (steerage). Ms. Dean was among those who believed that upper-class passengers were shown favoritism in boarding lifeboats.
“It couldn’t happen nowadays, and it’s so wrong, so unjust,” she said in an interview just a month before she died.7
A view of the Titanic’s bow resting on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Salvage crews have searched the wreckage of the Titanic several times, studying the ship’s remains and recovering priceless artifacts.
In her final years, Dean struggled to pay the costs of living in a nursing home. James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet all contributed to the Millvina Fund to help Dean pay her bills.8
In 2011, the centennial anniversary of the launching of the Titanic was celebrated in Belfast. At 12:13 P.M., a single flare was fired as all the ships blew their horns and the crowd applauded for 62 seconds—the exact time it took the Titanic to roll down her slipway in 1911. In attendance was Susie Millar, great-granddaughter of one of the ship’s engineers. She said, “Today is a day when we can celebrate Titanic. When it comes to next year, 2012, it’s a time for commemoration and reflection and obviously the sadness of what happened to the ship, but now in 2011 we can look at the ship as a brilliant piece of engineering and celebrate the achievement of Belfast in building that ship.”9
On display in the traveling Titanic exhibit on March 23, 2006, is this piece of sheet music for the song “Put Your Arms Around Me Honey” that the doomed musicians played aboard the sinking ship. This precious artifact, along with hundreds of others recovered from the wreckage of the ship, keeps the Titanic’s memory alive.
A one-hundredth-anniversary cruise was planned for 2012. Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, whose parent company was Harland and Wolff, would provide their ship, the Balmoral, for the trip. It was scheduled to carry the same number of passengers as the Titanic had (1,316) and follow the same route used one hundred years later. Miles Morgan, managing director of the cruise, declared: