Titanic Facts
by Joe Tracy, Publisher of Hollywood Lot Magazine

Facts About the Real Ship and Events:
Titanic was licensed to carry 3,500 passengers. There were approximately 2,227 aboard for the maiden voyage, including crew.

Titanic and its sister ship, the Olympic, were built at the same time, side by side, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Originally, in 1907 the White Star Line had commissioned the building of three ships known as Olympic, Titanic, and Gigantic. The latter was later changed to Brittanic and launched in 1914, sinking two years later after being commissioned as a hospital ship and striked a mine during World War I.

It cost approximately $7.5 million (1912) to build the Titanic. During the building and launching of the Titanic, two workers were killed.

Originally, the Titanic was to have 32 life boats. Because this many life boats made the ship look cluttered, it was lowered to 20.

The length of the Titanic was approximately 1/6th of a mile long (883 ft).

For publicity purposes, the White Star Line had a model of the Titanic built in 1911.

Prior to arriving at Southampton, the Titanic underwent a short sea trial. For these tests, the lookouts had binoculars. But sometime between these tests and the maiden voyage, the binoculars were misplaced. Had they not been misplaced, the Titanic tragedy may have very well been averted.

The Titanic was the first ocean liner to have a swimming pool and gym.

Prior to the Titanic leaving Southampton, none of the crew were given lifeboat drills or training.

A First Class ticket on the Titanic would cost you $4,500 in 1912. A Third Class ticket would only cost you $30. Interestingly enough, the Third Class cabins were much nicer than that even the first class of many other ships of the time. Even the Third Class Common Room had a piano, which was known to be a luxury for any ship.

While it is widely known that the gentlemen on Titanic had a Smoking Room, what is lesser known is that the ladies had a reading and writing room.

Prior to the Titanic voyage, Captain Smith called his 40-year career with ships "uneventful". Even so, when Smith was captain of an Olympic voyage (Titanic’s sister ship), the Olympic collided with another ship, the HMS Hawke. Smith was exonerated of any wrong doing in that collision, however, which slightly crippled the Olympic, but did limited damage.

Watch most Titanic movies and they show smoke billowing from all four of Titanic’s funnels (which were so big that you could run two trains through them simultaneously). The problem is that the fourth funnel was only for show with it’s primary use being ventilation for the kitchens.

Titanic was going around 20 knots before hitting the iceberg. That would be the equivalent of 25 miles per hour on land.

Even though Titanic did not have even close to enough life boats for all the passengers, the ship was still within and even exceeded regulations of the time for life boat numbers and capacity. The regulations quickly changed after the Titanic disaster.

Ironically, all but one of Titanic lifeboats were brought back to New York by the Carpathia, after the incident, they all disappeared from the docks in New York. After all, the demand for life-boat was never so great. They were probably repainted, and re-used on other ships.

Titanic was the first ship to use "S.O.S." Prior to "S.O.S." the emergency call was "C.Q.D." (Come Quick, Danger). That fateful night, Titanic used both.

From the time Titanic struck an iceberg, it took two hours and 40 minutes to sink.

While most people believe the final song the Titanic played was "Nearer My God To Thee", stronger evidence points to the final song being "Autumn".

Had the nearby California ship heard Titanic’s distress calls or understood the flares, they could have rescued nearly everyone on board.

The first newspaper reports in New York, Titanic’s destination, stated that all the passengers had been rescued from the sinking ship.

The surviving rate amongst women and children was extremely high (94% First Class, 81% Second Class, 87% Crew), except in Third Class where only 47% of the women and children on board survived.

While James Cameron’s Titanic shows a 17-year old female fictional character being the last one rescued, the truth is that a Titanic crew member, Charles Joughin, was the last one rescued from the freezing waters.

As a result of the Titanic sinking, all ships were required to have enough lifeboats for the amount of passengers on board. Even Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic, had to go in for a refitting, not just of lifeboats, but improvements to areas like the watertight compartments.

The White Star Line never believed that lifeboats for all passengers were mandatory (even after the sinking). They thought the only purpose that lifeboats on the Titanic would serve would be to ferry people to another ship should it become stalled.

The Bow of the Titanic is now buried in over 50-feet of mud, making it near impossible to raise even if someone wanted to.

A new theory, based on sonar studies of the sunken Titanic, states that the Titanic did not sink from a 300-foot gash, but rather by some "pinhole" cracks that allowed it to stay afloat for as long as it did prior to the final plunge at 2:20AM on April 15 1912.


Facts About the Movie:
Fox Baja Studios was mostly constructed in 100 days in order to be ready for the primary filming of Titanic.

Some of the scenes in the movie required a cast of extras number 1,000 people, all prepped for costume, hair, and makeup in a building the size of a football field.

For the movie Titanic, 12 deep sea dives were made to the actual grave of the Titanic. At the time, only five small submarines were capable of diving to the depth of Titanic’s final resting place. It took the sub two and a half hours just to reach the ship (from the surface of the ocean) and two and half hours to get back.

Titanic tied a record for the most Academy Awards ever won by a movie, hauling in 11 Oscars, including one for “Best Picture.”

Titanic is the highest grossing movie of all time, bringing in $1.8 billion dollars from theaters worldwide. To put that in context, the second highest grossing movie of all time is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which brought in $975 million worldwide.

The Titanic set built for the movie was nearly life-sized, coming in at 775 feet. The set was built to perfectly replicate all known interior and exterior details of the actual ship.

The 17 million gallon seawater tank, built for the sinking scenes in Titanic, is the largest shooting tank in the world and the largest ever constructed for a movie.