The Titanic Facts the Movie Didn’t Tell You

2. Titanic was the middle sized ship of White Star Line’s “three biggest ships ever built” project: The Olympic, the Titanic, and the Brittanic.

3. The Brittanic’s original name was Gigantic, but after Titanic’s sinking they changed it to Brittanic. They didn’t think it was a good idea to continue to call attention to the size of the ships.

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4. Titanic almost collided with the tender New York before setting sail while in Southampton harbor. Only quick thinking and the correct orders from the two ships’ captains prevented a collision.

6. Titanic carried enough food and beverages to feed 2,200 people three times a day. Her “cupboard” included 40 tons of potatoes, 38 tons of meat, 20,000 bottles of beer, 40,000 eggs and tons more of anything a passenger could possibly desire.

7. Third Class passengers on Titanic enjoyed accommodations comparable to Second Class on other ships.

8. Fourteen years before Titanic set sail, Morgan Robertson wrote a novella that many consider prophetic. It was called Futility and was about the Titan, the biggest ship in the world. The Titan sank on her maiden voyage and her details uncannily mirrored those of the Titanic. After Titanic sank, they re-released the novella, retitled as Wreck of the Titan.

9. Titanic’s maiden voyage was meant to be Captain Smith’s final voyage as a steamship captain. He planned on retiring upon his return to England at the conclusion of Titanic’s first transatlantic voyage.

10. Titanic’s fourth funnel was only used to vent cooking smoke from the kitchen.

11. The most-hated Titanic survivor was White Star Line’s Managing Director J. Bruce Ismay. It was believed he saved himself by taking a lifeboat seat that should have gone to a passenger.

12. A longstanding myth about Titanic was that she was a victim of the “champagne curse”: she sank because the champagne bottle used to christen her didn’t break. The truth is that there was no champagne curse because there was no champagne bottle. The White Star Line never christened their ships.

13. If the walls of Titanic’s watertight compartments had gone all the way up to A Deck instead of stopping at E, she probably wouldn’t have sunk, even with her first five compartments breached.

14. The sinking of the Titanic spurred the creation of the International Ice Patrol. Since then, in close to a century of Atlantic seafaring, not a single ship that heeded the IIP’s warnings has struck an iceberg.

15. Even though Dr. Robert Ballard’s 1985 discovery of the wreck confirmed that the ship had broken in two, a surviving Titanic crewmember testified in 1912 that he had seen the ship break in half and his account was published in the Witney Gazette. His report was, for the most part, ignored.

16. Another myth about the Titanic was that a worker had been trapped in the hull during construction and never recovered. The truth is slightly different. Newer hires were given the job of hammering in rivets in Titanic’s hull. The old-timers had to tap every rivet at the end of the day to make sure they were seated properly. They would taunt the newcomers by telling them that they would sometimes hear tapping back. Every one of the 3,000 men who built Titanic was accounted for. There was no worker trapped in the hull.

17. James Cameron depicted First Officer William Murdoch committing suicide on Titanic. His family said it wasn’t true. In 1998, Twentieth Century Fox issued the family an apology.

20. The April 15, 1912 edition of the New York Evening Sun reported: “All Saved From Titanic After Collision…Liner Is Being Towed to Halifax.”

21. In 1907, none other than Bram Stoker, author of the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula, visited the Belfast site where the Olympic and the Titanic were being built.

22. Titanic’s E deck ran the entire length of the ship. It had cabins for second- and third- class passengers; cabins for the crew; and “Scotland Road,” a corridor that stretched the length of the ship.

23. The Titanic offered its first-class passengers a heated saltwater swimming pool. The Titanic’s swimming pool was only the second swimming pool built into an ocean liner. The first was built on the Olympic, the Titanic’s sister ship.

25. Saved from the Titanic was the first Titanic movie, and it’s also the only one starring a survivor of the catastrophe. The movie starred Dorothy Gibson, who made this 10-minute silent film almost immediately after her rescue. It debuted on May 14, 1912, only 29 days after the Titanic sank. In the movie, Gibson wore the same dress that she wore on the Titanic.

26. The film A Night To Remember has two major errors: The ship is christened and the ship sinks in one piece.

27. The largest Titanic artifact is the “Big Piece,” which is the wall of two C Deck cabins, C79 and C81. It took two years to retrieve and is now on display at he permanent Titanic Artifact Exihibition at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas.

30. Titanic’s passengers and crew had a 32% survival rate. Two-thirds of those onboard perished.

From the May 2012 issue of FHM India.