The Sinking of the RMS Titanic and other ships.

[louisa]

I hate it when I hear somebody say "Well things couldn't possibly get any worse". I always want to say "Of course they can!". It's like tempting fate.

[Adam Went]

One of my pet hates is people who bemoan comparitively small and trivial bad happenings in their day to day lives when there's so much violence, starvation, disease and death in other corners of the globe amongst people who would give anything to enjoy a semblance of the life we have. It drives me absolutely up the wall.

As for the Titanic, we've probably mentioned it before but there was a number of superstitious circumstances surrounding it from the beginning which some claimed were a bad omen before it even sailed. Like its dockyard number reading "No Pope" when reflected in the water, or premonitions in the dreams of passengers, or the near miss with the New York as she first left Southampton. Or the doomsayers who preached at sailing.

Some could even argue that fate was being tempted, and the warning signs of it were there, before the ship ever set sail.

Cheers,
Adam.

[louisa]

If that message had read 'NO HOPE' it would have made more sense.

After a tragedy people tend to have 20/20 vision and can find all kinds of 'signs' where none really exist.

There are probably numerous times when aircraft or ships set sail and problems have arisen before and en route - but the vessel gets there fine. Because a tragedy didn't happen, the public never gets to know about them.

[Adam Went]

Hi Louisa,

Very true, anyone can make such claims after the disaster has happened, but there was certainly a few odd premonitions before the ship ever sailed as well. Any such major event always has the doomsayers.

I think the suggestion with "No Pope" was that the ship was unholy, or "flying in the face of God" as i've heard it put - and contrary to popular belief, she was never christened with the traditional smashing of the wine bottle across the bow at launch.

Cheers,
Adam.

[louisa]

It wasn't just the Titanic that didn't have the champagne bottle smashed against her bows. I understand that the White Star Line had long since abandoned the practice.

[Adam Went]

Louisa:

Yes I think you're right, and the Titanic class liners were certainly ill-fated. We of course know what happened to Titanic and then a few years later the Britannic, and then Olympic narrowly escaped being sunk on several occasions, was damaged plenty of times.

I remember A Night To Remember having the non-existent scene of smashing the wine bottle on the bows at the beginning of the film.....

Cheers,
Adam.

[louisa]

Hi Adam

'A Night To Remember' is still my favourite Titanic movie. There are inaccuracies, yes, but not nearly as many as in all the subsequent movies.

[Adam Went]

Hi Louisa,

Yes, very true. ANTR is still the benchmark for other Titanic films.

Also, it is the 70th anniversary of Peal Harbour....remembering all those who fought and died and the legacy that event has left.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Hi Adam and Louisa,

Yes it is the 70th Anniversary, and I was saddened to hear that it may be the last time they will have any survivors turn out - there are only a handful of servicemen left. One of them was quoted as being shocked about how the young don't know anymore - he was invited to lecture and while being introduced to talk about the attack on Pearl Harbor, one of the female students near him asked a friend, who is this Pearl Harbor, does she attend this school. This was not apparently a joke.

We lost over two thousand men in the attack, the Arizona taking down somehing like 1100 alone. Not quite the Titanic or Lusitania, but close to it. By the way, since we are on this anniversary, about the same time the British lost HMS PRINCE OF WALES and REPULSE near Malaysia from arial attack.

By the way, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is (despite some errors) my favorite Titanic movie too. It gets the basic story down pat, and unlike the 1953 and 1997 TITANIC films, it concetrate on what happened to the ship, not to fictional socialites (Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck in 1953) or young lovers in 1997.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Mild trivia question:

These films deal with Titanic (and are not the whole list):

1) ATLANTIC (1929)
2) CAVALCADE (1933) - one memorable scene's fade-out.*
3) TITANIC (German UFA film) - (1943)
4) TITANIC (1953)
5) A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958)
6) THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN (1965)
7) TIME BANDITS (gag sequence) (1982?)
8) TITANIC (1997)*

There were also several television films and a famous live actor dramatization in the middle 1950s. It has also been used as a reference or plot point in both UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS (remember Lady Marjorie Bellamy's death), and the first episode of DONSTON ABBEY.

Lusitania has not appeared frequently. There seems to have been a British film for television about it (You Tube has some sequences). Windsor McKay, the cartoonist who did the splendid series LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND did one of the first animated cartoons abou the disaster entitled THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA (it is on You Tube, and I recommend it to you). In the so-called film biography of Jerome Kern, 'TIL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, Robert Walker tries to get to the "Lusy" to speak to Charles Frohman before it sales, but sees it leaving the dock. It appears as a newspaper headline only in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (where the wrong ship's picture appears on the newspapers) and in the Cole Porter "biography" NIGHT AND DAY, and is mentioned in an episode of UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS.

Films about the cruises and ends of Bismarck and Graf Spee were made in England in the early 1960s. SINK THE BISMARCK also deals with the fate of HMS Hood. PURSUIT OF THE GRAF SPEE ends with the scuttling of that craft by Captain Landsdorff.

No films seem to have been made of the EMPRESS OF IRELAND, or the ANDREA DORIA, or the EASTLAND, or the SULTANA. But one film began with a fairly accurate depiction of the destruction and carnage of the burning of the GENERAL SLOCUM at Hell's Gate in June 1904. Do any of you know the film?

[Errata]

Wasn't it the one with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy that I only ever saw because It was supposedly the last movie Dillenger saw?

[Adam Went]

Hi Jeff,

For all the carnage it caused, the attacks on Pearl Harbour missed a lot of key targets and did not fully utilise the element of surprise - I watched a docco last week where it stated how furious and upset Admiral Yamamoto was with this - while his fellow officers were celebrating a "successful" mission, he was brooding over what might have been.

As for the Titanic films, I actually kind of liked 1980's "Raise The Titanic", despite the fact that it's panned by most. And do you remember the mini-series from 1996 starring Catherine Zeta-Jones? Most people have forgotten about it already because:

a.) It was awful; and
b.) It came out literally months before Cameron's blockbuster which totally overshadowed it

There was a film made once about Britannic - named the same and from around 2000 or 2001, I think. I saw it once and refused to watch it again, it's barely even remotely factual and is just generally rubbish right the way through and devotes about 10 minutes at the end of the film to the actual sinking.

Naturally there'll be more Titanic films coming out on and around the centenary.

Funny you should mention General Slocum.....an acquaintance of mine, Jim Kalafus, has written an interesting and in depth account relating to that. Here's the link if you'd like to have a read:

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/general-slocum.html

Cheers,
Adam.

[Mayerling]

Hi Jeff,

For all the carnage it caused, the attacks on Pearl Harbour missed a lot of key targets and did not fully utilise the element of surprise - I watched a docco last week where it stated how furious and upset Admiral Yamamoto was with this - while his fellow officers were celebrating a "successful" mission, he was brooding over what might have been.

As for the Titanic films, I actually kind of liked 1980's "Raise The Titanic", despite the fact that it's panned by most. And do you remember the mini-series from 1996 starring Catherine Zeta-Jones? Most people have forgotten about it already because:

a.) It was awful; and
b.) It came out literally months before Cameron's blockbuster which totally overshadowed it

There was a film made once about Britannic - named the same and from around 2000 or 2001, I think. I saw it once and refused to watch it again, it's barely even remotely factual and is just generally rubbish right the way through and devotes about 10 minutes at the end of the film to the actual sinking.

Naturally there'll be more Titanic films coming out on and around the centenary.

Funny you should mention General Slocum.....an acquaintance of mine, Jim Kalafus, has written an interesting and in depth account relating to that. Here's the link if you'd like to have a read:

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/general-slocum.html

Cheers,
Adam.

Hi Errata and Adam,

Errata is right - the film is MANHATTAN MELODRAMA with Gable, Loy, Wiliam Powell, and Thomas Jackson (the actor who usually played cops - here a crooked one - Jackson is best recalled as the Police Detective who finally nails Edward G. Robinson in LITTLE CAESAR). The fim begins with the burning of the Slocum (Quite well done). It is an odd film - not one of the greatest of MGM films of the 1930s - but has a number of trivia points in it. Besides mentioning the Slocum, it was the film that brought Dillinger out of hiding (he loved Myrna Loy films) to the Biograph Theater in Chicago, where he was set up by "the lady in red" and gunned down in an alley. There is a nightclub number in it with a tune by Rogers and Hart - the tune's words later were changed and it became a standard (I'm sorry I can't recall the tune's name). It was the second or third film Powell and Loy appeared in together, and the next one was THE THIN MAN.

Adam mentions a two-parter with Catherine Zita Jones. I think the actor who was Dr. Frankenheimer in THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW film was in this movie too. David Warner, who appeared as the villain's valet in Cameron's TITANIC was in an earlier film in the late 1970s with Ian Holm as J. Bruce Ismay. There was also a Titanic television film with George C. Scott as Captain Smith.

I saw the "Britannic" film - it was okay but no more. You Tube has the sinking scene in several excerpts.

It's not quite the same thing, but the Tay River Bridge Disaster of December 1879 appears in HATTER'S CASTLE with a sleezy Emlyn Williams being one of the victims.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Adam, thank you for the sitation on the Slocum in Encyclopedia Titanica. Quite interesting.

Oddly enough the Slocum tragedy on the East River, near North Brother Island, in June 1904 (it is mentioned in James Joyce's ULYSSES, which occurs in Dublin on the next day), has managed to hide a tragedy on the Hudson at Hoboken in 1900 that killed several hundred German crew members when three liners caught on fire. I don't think that any book on that was ever written (although there are at least two on the Slocum, two on the Sultana, one on the Eastland, and many on the Titanic, the Lusitania, the Empress, the Morro Castle, and the Andrea Doria.

Jeff

[louisa]

I would think that the reason nobody has made movies about other ships that sank is because - despite the loss of life - no other 'sinking ship story' has the romantic elements of the Titanic on her maiden voyage.

The timeline of events leading up to the loss of the Titanic, the people involved, the dramatic event itself and the aftermath - are all elements that have captured peoples' imaginations and continue to do so.

No other sinking comes close.