TheTitanic has played a prominent role in popular culture sinceher sinking in 1912, with the loss of almost 1,500 of the 2,224 lives on board. The disaster and theTitanic herself have been objects of public fascination for many years. They have inspired numerous books, plays, films, songs, poems, and works of art. The story has been interpreted in many overlapping ways, including as a symbol of technologicalhubris, as basis forfail-safe improvements, as a classic disaster tale, as an indictment of the class divisions of the time, and as romantic tragedies with personal heroism. It has inspired many moral, social and politicalmetaphors and is regularly invoked as acautionary tale of the limitations of modernity and ambition.
TheTitanic has been commemorated in a wide variety of ways in the century aftershe sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912. As D. Brian Anderson has put it, the sinking ofTitanic has "become a part of our mythology, firmly entrenched in the collective consciousness, and the stories will continue to be retold not because they need to be retold, but because we need to tell them."[1]
The intensity of the public interest in theTitanic disaster in its immediate aftermath can be attributed to the deep psychological impact that it had on the public, particularly in theEnglish-speaking world. Wyn Craig Wade comments that "in America, the profound reaction to the disaster can be compared only to the aftermath of theassassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy ... the entire English-speaking world was shaken; and for us, at least, the tragedy can be regarded as a watershed between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."[2] John Wilson Foster characterises the sinking as marking "the end of an era of confidence and optimism, of a sense of a new departure."[3] Just two years later, whatEric Hobsbawm referred to as "the long nineteenth century" came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War.[4]
There have been four major waves of public interest inTitanic in the later part of the 20th century. The first came immediately after the sinking, but ended abruptly a couple of years later due to the outbreak ofWorld War I, which was a far bigger and much more immediate concern for most people. The second came with the publication ofWalter Lord's bookA Night to Remember in 1955. The third came with the discovery of thewreck of theTitanic byRobert Ballard in 1985, which sparked a new wave of interest and has continued to the present day,[3] boosted by the release ofJames Cameron'seponymous film in 1997. The fourth came with thecapsizing of theCosta Concordia in 2012, just few months before the centenary of theTitanic disaster.
Even at the time, the high level of public interest in the disaster produced strong dissenting reactions in some quarters. The novelistJoseph Conrad (who was himself a retired sailor) wrote: "I am not consoled by the false, written-up,Drury Lane [theatrical] aspects of that event, which is neither drama, normelodrama, nor tragedy, but an exposure of arrogant folly."[5] However, as Foster points out,Titanic herself can be seen as a stage, with her rigid segregation between the classes and theersatz historical architecture of her interiors. The maiden voyage itself had theatrical overtones; the advance publicity highlighted the historic nature of the maiden voyage of the world's largest ship, and a substantial number of passengers were aboard specifically for that occasion. The passengers and crew can be viewed as archetypes of stock roles, which Foster summarises as "Rich Man, Socialite, Unsung Hero, Coward, Martyr, Deserter of Post, Stayer at Post, Poor Emigrant, Manifest Hero, etc."[3]
In such interpretations, the story of theTitanic can be seen as a kind ofmorality play. An alternative view, according to Foster, sees theTitanic as somewhere between a Greek and an Elizabethan tragedy; the theme of hubris, in the form of wealth and vaingloriousness, meeting an indifferent Fate in a final catastrophe is very much one that is drawn from classical Greek tragedies. The story also matches the template for Elizabethan tragedians with its episodes of heroism, comedy, irony, sentimentality and ultimately tragedy. In short, the fact that the story can so easily be seen as fitting an established dramatic template has made it hard not to interpret it that way.[6]
Describing the disaster as "one of the most fascinating single events in human history," Stephanie Barczewski identifies a number of factors behind the continuing popularity of theTitanic's story. The creation and destruction of the ship are symbols of "what human ingenuity can achieve and how easily that same ingenuity can fail in a brief, random encounter with the forces of nature." The human aspects of the story are also a source of fascination, with different individuals reacting in very different ways to the threat of death – from accepting their fate to fighting for survival. Many of those aboard had to make impossible choices between their relationships: stay aboard with husbands and sons or escape, possibly alone, and survive but face an uncertain future. Above all, Barczewski concludes, the story serves to jolt people out of hubristic complacency: "at its heart [it is] a story that reminds us of our limitations."[7]
The disaster has been called "an event that in its tragic, clockwork-like certainty stopped time and became a haunting metaphor"[1] – not just one metaphor but many, which the cultural historian Steven Biel describes as "conflicting metaphors, each vying to define the disaster's broader social and political significance, to insist thathere was the true meaning, the real lesson."[8] The sinking of theTitanic has been interpreted in many ways. Some[who?] viewed it in religious terms as a metaphor for divine judgement over what they saw as the greed, pride and luxury on display in the ship. Others[who?] interpreted it as a display of Christian morality and self-sacrifice among those who stayed aboard so that women and children might escape. It could be seen in social terms as conveying messages about class or gender relations. The "women and children first" protocol seemed[who?] to some to affirm a "natural" state of affairs with chivalrous men sacrificing themselves to protect more vulnerable groups. Some[who?] saw the self-sacrifice of millionaires like John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim as a demonstration of the generosity and moral superiority of the rich and powerful, while the very high level death toll among Third Class passengers and crew members was seen by others[who?] as a sign of the working classes being neglected. Many[who?] believed that the conduct of the mainly Anglo-American passengers and crew demonstrated the superiority of "Anglo-Saxon values" in a crisis. Still others[who?] viewed the disaster as the result of the arrogance and hubris of the ship's owners and the Anglo-American elite, or as a demonstration of the folly of putting one's trust in technology and progress. Such a wide range of interpretations has ensured that the disaster has been the subject of popular debate and fascination for decades.[9]
TheTitanic disaster led to a flood of verseelegies in such quantities that the American magazineCurrent Literature commented that its editors "do not remember any other event in our history that has called forth such a rush of song in the columns of the daily press."[10] Poets' corners in newspapers were filled with poems commemorating the disaster, the lessons to be drawn from it and specific incidents that happened during and after the sinking. Other poets published their own collections, as in the case of Edwin Drew, who rushed into print a collection calledThe Chief Incidents of the 'Titanic' Wreck, Treated in Verse ("may appeal to those who lost friends in this appalling catastrophe")[11] which he sent to President Taft and King George V; the copy now in theLibrary of Congress is the one that was sent to Taft.[12] Individual passengers were frequently memorialised and in several cases were held up as examples, such as in the example of the millionaireJohn Jacob Astor who was commended for the ostensibly heroic qualities of his death.[11]Charles Hanson Towne was typical of many in eulogising whatChamp Clark called "the chivalric behaviour of the men on the ill-fated ship":[13]
But dream not, mighty Ocean, they are yours!
We have them still, those high and valiant men
Who died that others might reach ports of peace.
Not in your jealous depths their spirits roam,
But through the world to-day, and up to heaven![13]
The poets' output was of highly variable quality.Current Literature called some of it "unutterably horrible" and none of it "magically inspired", though its editors conceded that some "very creditable" poems had been written. TheNew York Times was harsher, describing most of the poems it received as "worthless" and "intolerably bad". A key sign of quality was whether it had been written on lined paper; if it had, it was likely to be among the worst category. The newspaper advised its readers "that to write about theTitanic a poem worth printing requires that the author should have something more than paper, pencil, and a strong feeling that the disaster was a terrible one."[10] John Sutherland and Stephen Fender nominate Christopher Thomas Nixon's lengthy poemThe Passing of the Titanic (Sic transit gloria mundi) as "the worst poem to be inspired by the sinking of theTitanic":[14]
Through deep-sea gates of famed Southampton's bay,
A mammoth liner swings in churning slide
Her regal treat ridged opaline gulfs asway
And gauntlet flings to chance, wind, shoal and tide.
Ark wonderful! Palatial town marine,
Invention's flowe, rose-peak of skill-wrought plan;
The jewelled crown of Art the wizard, seen
Since Noah's trade in Shinar's land began.[14]
Established poets also addressed the disaster with mixed results.Harriet Monroe wrote what Foster calls an "upbeat hackneyed Victorian hymn" to the American dead:
Thomas Hardy's "The Convergence of the Twain" (1912), his "Lines on the Loss of theTitanic", was a considerably more substantial work. His poem setsTitanic in a pessimistic post-Darwinian contrast between the achievements and arrogance of man and the humbling power of nature.[11] The building ofTitanic in its unprecedented scale is contrasted with the origins of its nemesis, following a familiar nineteenth-century notion of the double ordoppelgänger (a theme most famously realised inStrange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde):[15]
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
By the time the "twain" (two) converge, they have become "twin halves of one august event" which sends theTitanic to the bottom while the iceberg floats on. Now the ship lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic, and
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls – grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
A number of other works of epic poetry were produced in later years.E. J. Pratt's authorship ofThe Titanic[16] (1935) reflected the great interest that the disaster had aroused in Canada, where many of the victims had been buried. The poem reflects a theme of tragic hubris, ending with the iceberg as the "master of the latitudes".[17] Pratt blames the ship's fate on the financiers responsible for commissioning it, whom he describes as "Grey-templed Caesars of the World's Exchange." After evoking the iceberg, "stratified ... to the consistency of flint," he gives a vivid view of the disaster inpentameter verse:
Climbing the ladders, gripping shroud and stay,
Storm-rail, ringbolt or fairlead, every place
That might befriend the clutch of hand or brace
Of foot, the fourteen hundred made their way
To the heights of the aft decks, crawling the inches
Around the docking bridges and cargo winches ...
As the ship sinks, Pratt describes the great noise heard by those aboard and in the lifeboats:[a]
then following
The passage of the engines as they tore
From their foundations, taking everything
Clean through the bows from 'midships with a roar
Which drowned all cries upon the deck and shook
The watchers in the boats, the liner took
Her thousand fathoms journey to the grave.
The German poetHans Magnus Enzensberger took apost-modernist approach inDer Untergang der Titanic ('The Sinking of the Titanic', 1978), a book-length epic poem. Whereas Pratt reflects the sinking of theTitanic as a definite historical event, Enzensberger simultaneously incorporates documentation – including original news wires from 15 April 1915 – while questioning the degree to which the event has become obscured by the accumulated myth-building of popular memory. As Foster puts it, in the poem "Titanic bears the weight of our belief and our disbelief, our desire for apocalypse and our fear of it, our fatigue, our talkative demise, the unbearable lightness of our being."[18]
The poem takes place within an autobiographical framework in which the poet becomes a character in his own poem and dies before the end, becoming merely one of a multitude of voices and perspectives. The iceberg appears as "an icy fingernail / scratching at the door and stopping short", but there is no real resolution, "no end to the end".[19] Enzensberger targets the commemorations by theTitanic memorabilia industry:
Relics, souvenirs for the disaster freaks,
food for collectors lurking at auctions
and sniffing out attics...
Something always remains –
bottles, planks, deck chairs, crutches,
debris left behind,
a vortex of words,
cantos, lies, relics –
breakage, all of it,
dancing and tumbling on the water.
Numerous songs were produced in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. According to the American folklorist D.K. Wilgus,Titanic inspired "what seems to be the largest number of songs concerning any disaster, perhaps any event in American history."[20] In 1912–3 alone, over a hundred songs are known to have been produced in the United States; the earliest known commercial song aboutTitanic was copyrighted just ten days after the disaster. Numerous pieces of sheet music and gramophone records were subsequently produced. In many cases, they were not simply mere commercial exploitation of a tragedy (though that certainly did exist) but were a genuine and deeply felt popular response to an event that evoked many contemporary political, moral, social and religious themes. They drew a variety of lessons from the disaster, such as the levelling effect of the rich and poor, good and bad dying indiscriminately; the rich getting what they deserved; a lack of regard for God leading to the removal of divine protection; the heroism of the men who died; the role of human pride and hubris in causing the disaster.[20] The disaster inspired what D. Brian Anderson refers to as "countless forgettable hymns".[21] Many of the more secular songs celebrated the bravery of the men who had gone down with the ship, often highlighting their high social status and wealth and conflating it with their self-sacrifice and perceived moral worth.[22] A popular song of the time proclaimed:
There were millionaires from New York,
And some from London Town.
They were all brave, there were men and women to save
When the greatTitanic went down.[23]
John Jacob Astor's death was highlighted as a particular example ofnoblesse oblige regarding his reputed refusal to leave the ship while there were still spaces in the lifeboats for women and children. The song "A Hero Went Down with the Monarch of the Sea" described Astor as "a handsome prince of wealth, / Who was noble, generous and brave" and ended: "Good-bye, my darling, don't you grieve for me, / I would give my life for ladies to flee." "TheTitanic Is Doomed and Sinking" was even more laudatory:
There was John Jacob Astor,
What a brave man was he
When he tried to save all female sex,
The young and all, great and small,
Then got drowned in the sea.[22]
The self-sacrifice of captains of industry such as Astor was seen as all the more remarkable as it was made not just to aid their own womenfolk, but to help save those of much lower social status. As one Denver columnist put it, "the disease-bitten [immigrant] child, whose life at best is less than worthless, goes to safety with the rest of the steerage riff-raff, while the handler[s] of great affairs, ... whose energies have uplifted humanity, stand unprotestingly aside."[24]
TheTitanic disaster became a popular theme forballadeers,blues,bluegrass andcountry singers in the Southern United States. BluesmanErnest Stoneman scored one of his biggest hits with his song "TheTitanic" in 1924, which was said to have sold over a million copies and became one of the best-selling songs of the 1920s.[25] The story of how his song was written illustrates the way the popular culture aroundTitanic cross-fertilised across different genres. According to Stoneman, he took the lyrics from a poem which he had seen in a newspaper. He "put a tune to it", most likely meaning that he adapted an existing tune with a suitable rhyme and meter. It subsequently emerged that the author of the poem was another country singer,Carson Robison, writing under the pseudonym "E. V. Body".[26] Other songs were written and performed byRabbit Brown,Frank Hutchison,Blind Willie Johnson and theDixon Brothers, who drew an explicit religious message from the sinking: "if you go on with your sins," you too will go "down with the old canoe."[27] In "Desolation Row", the final track of his albumHighway 61 Revisited (1965),Bob Dylan sings "praise be to Nero's Neptune, theTitanic sails at dawn"; the poets Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot are pictured as "fighting in the captain's tower," disregarded by spectators. Dylan would later write and record anentire song about the disaster for his 2012 albumTempest, interpolating images from the1997 film within the song's narrative.
British songwriters commemorated the disaster with appeals to religious, chauvinistic and heroic sentiments. Songs were published with titles such as "Stand to Your Post (Women and Children First!)" and "Be British (Dedicated to the Gallant Crew of theTitanic)", the latter referring to the mythical last words of Captain Smith.[28] "The Ship That Will Never Return" by F. V. St Clair proclaimed: "The women and children the first for the boats –! And sailors knew how to obey,"[29] while "Be British" urged listeners to remember the plight of the survivors and donate to the charitable funds set up to assist them: "Show that you are willing! with a penny or a shilling! for those they've left behind."[30]
Polish rock bandLady Pank released the songZostawcie titanica (Leave the Titanic alone) in 1988 as part of their hit albumTacy sami.
In May 2025, American singer and actressDove Cameron released the song "French Girls". The chorus references Rose's infamous line, "draw me like one of your French girls". However, she acknowledged that the general public quoted the line as "paint me like one of your French girls", and feeling that it sounded better than "draw", she used creative licence to change the wording.[31]
The sinking of theTitanic had a particular resonance for African-Americans, who saw the ship as a symbol of the hubris of white racism and its sinking as retribution for the mistreatment of black people.[32] It was commemorated in a famous 1948 song by the blues singerLead Belly, "TheTitanic (Fare thee,Titanic, Fare thee well)". Popular legend had it that there were no black people aboard.[b] Lead Belly's song portrays the black American boxing championJack Johnson attempting to boardTitanic but being refused by Captain Smith, who tells him: "I ain't hauling no coal."[c] Johnson remains on shore, bitterly biddingTitanic farewell, and dances the Eagle Rock as the ship goes under.[35]
The legend of theTitanic merged with that of a character in black folklore known as "Shine", a sort of trickster figure who was probably named aftershoeshine. He was converted into a mythical black stoker aboardTitanic whose exploits were commemorated in "Toasts", long narrative poems performed in a dramatic and percussive fashion which were a forerunner of modern-dayrapping.[36] He is portrayed as a central figure in the disaster, a person from "down below" who is the first to warn the captain about the water flooding in but is rebuked: "Go on back and start stackin' sacks, / we got nine pumps to keep the water back." He refuses, telling the captain: "Your shittin' is good and your shittin' is fine, / but there's one time you white folks ain't gonna shit on Shine."[37]
Shine is the only person aboard capable of swimming to safety and refuses, in revenge for the mistreatment of himself and his kin, to save the drowning white people. They offer him all manner of rewards, including "all the pussy eyes ever did see",[36] but to no avail; "Shine say, 'One thing about you white folks I couldn't understand: / you all wouldn't offer me that pussy when we was all on land."[38] He also receives marriage proposals from the wealthy women, in particular the captain's pregnant and unmarried daughter, but rejects them. In some versions another black man named Jim joins Shine in the water but is lost when he succumbs to the white people's allures and swims back to his death on the sinking ship. Shine swims all the way on to New York, outracing a whale or a shark along the way, although in some versions he goes off course and makes landfall in Los Angeles instead:[39]
He swimmed on till he came to New York town,
And people asked had theTitanic gone down.
Shine said "Hell yeah." They said, "How do you know?"
He said, "I left the big motherfucker sinkin' about thirty minutes ago."[8]
In the end, he finds a drink and a woman to keep him company, and as one version puts it,
When all them white folks went to heaven
Shine was in Sugar Ray's bar drinking Seagram Seven.[36]
The moral of the Toast is that neither the white man's money nor his women are worth the risk of acquiring them, therefore they should not be aspired to or coveted by black people. The unmarried pregnant captain's daughter is a sign that "even white nobility can transgress", as Paul Heyer puts it, and that white skin is not synonymous with purity. Also present in the Toast is the more general theme of a warning against overconfidence in the white man's technology.[40]
Many composers also tackled the subject of the ship's sinking. Concerts were a major part of the fund-raising effort after the disaster; a super-orchestra of five hundred musicians played to a packedRoyal Albert Hall under the direction of SirEdward Elgar to raise money for the families of the musicians lost whenTitanic sank. Other musical responses sought to evoke the disaster in musical form. Soon after the sinking a "Descriptive Musical Sketch (Piano, Chorus and Reciter)" was staged, and those wanting to re-enact the disaster at home could listen to the recording of "The Wreck of theTitanic", a "Descriptive Piano Solo, right from the scene where the ship's bell rings for departure to the pathetic 'burial at sea' ... reminiscent of the sad disaster which will live in history as long as the world rolls on." There was even aTitanicTwo-Step which was derived from a then-popular dance craze, though it is unclear how the dance steps were supposed to represent the sinking ship.[28]
Several musicals have been produced based on the story of theTitanic. Perhaps the best-known, as of its premiere in 1960, isThe Unsinkable Molly Brown, dramatised and with music and lyrics byMeredith Willson, who had drawn his inspiration fromGene Fowler's bookThe Unsinkable Mrs. Brown (1949). The Broadway musical presents a considerably embellished version of the real Margaret Brown's exploits; it portrays her taking command of aTitanic lifeboat and keeping the survivors in her charge going with bravado and her pistol. The writer Steven Biel notes thatMolly Brown plays on American stereotypes of resilience and exceptionalism with a hint of isolationism.[28] It was made into afilm of the same title in 1964, starringDebbie Reynolds.[41]
AnotherTitanic musical, calledTitanic: A New Musical,[42] opened in April 1997 in New York to mixed reviews.[28] John Simon ofNew York magazine admitted approaching it "with a bit of a sinking feeling" and concluded that it was "an earnest but hopelessly mediocre show", which was not so much hit-and-miss as "almost all miss."[43]People magazine was much more complimentary, saying that it took "guts to write a musical about the century's most infamous disaster, yet Broadway'sTitanic unflinchingly sails forth with its cargo of epic themes".[44] The lavish production incorporated a tilting stage to simulate the sinking.[41] It was a major box-office success; the musical won fiveTony Awards and played on Broadway for two years, with performances also held in Germany, Japan, Canada and Australia.[44]
In 2012,Robin Gibb'sTitanic Requiem was performed and recorded by theRoyal Philharmonic Orchestra, but met with little critical or commercial success.[45]
Various plays have featured the disaster either as their principal subject or in passing. One of the earliest directly addressing the sinking of theTitanic (albeit in a thinly disguised form) wasThe Berg: A Play (1929) byErnest Raymond that is said to have been the basis of the filmAtlantic.Noël Coward's highly successful playCavalcade (1931), adapted into an Oscar-winningfilm of the same name in 1933, has a romantic plot which features a shock ending set aboard theTitanic.[46]
In 1974, the disaster was used as the backdrop for the playTitanic, which D. Brian Anderson characterises as "a one-act sexual farce". The passengers and crew eagerly await the arrival of the iceberg but the ship fails to find it. WhileTitanic wanders the ocean looking for the iceberg, those aboard fill the time by making a series of sexual revelations, such as the disclosure by one girl that she "used to enjoy keeping a mammal in her vagina." When the collision does eventually come, it turns out to be a practical joke by the captain's wife. The off-Broadway production, whose cast included a youngSigourney Weaver, received what Anderson describes as "howling reviews".[47]
Jeffrey Hatcher's playScotland Road (1992) (the title refers to a passageway onTitanic) is a psychological mystery which opens with the discovery of a dehydrated woman found on an iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1992. She wears 1912-style clothing but can only say the word "Titanic". The great-grandson of John Jacob Astor investigates whether the woman is a genuine survivor from 1912, somehow projected forward through time, or is part of some bizarre hoax.[48] More recently the British playwrightsStewart Love andMichael Fieldhouse have written plays (Titanic (1997) andThe Song of the Hammers (2002) respectively) that address the often-neglected aspect of the views and experiences of the men who built theTitanic.[49]
There have also been a number of dance and multimedia productions. The Canadian choreographer Cornelius Fischer-Credo devised a dance work calledThe Titanic Days which, in turn, was adapted for the title track of an album by the singerKirsty MacColl. The Belgian dance company Plan K performed a work calledTitanic at the 1994 Belfast Festival in which a flotilla of refrigerators – in real life part of the cargo aboardTitanic – stands in for the drifting mass of ice that ultimately destroys the ship.
The British composerGavin Bryars created a multimedia work calledThe Sinking of the Titanic (1969), based on the conceit that "sounds never completely die but merely grow fainter and fainter. What if the music of theTitanic's band might still be playing 2,500 fathoms under the sea?"[50] The piece uses a collage of sounds, ranging from underwater recordings to reminiscences of survivors and morse code messages, to evoke the sounds of theTitanic. As Foster puts it,
We hear a muffled voice, like a drowned survivor giving testimony from beneath the waves, as it were, and the swaying music of the water, and at the section's end the ominous drips as of water that magnify into depth-soundings, the voice now silent or merged into ocean, abyss, the underwater echoes of our fate.[51]
The work was first issued on record in 1975, as the first release onBrian Eno's short-lived labelObscure Records (paired with Bryars' composition "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet").
In 2024, British Theatremaker, Russell Lucas made a show about Titanic survivor Edward Dorking called 'Third Class'. The show focuses on Edward's experience touring the Vaudeville circuit in 1912.
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Within days ofTitanic's sinking,newsreels and evenslide shows were playing in crowded cinemas and theatres in the United States and Europe. By the end of April 1912, no fewer than nine American companies had issued sets ofTitanic slides that could be bought or rented for public showings, accompanied by posters, lobby photos, lecture scripts and sheet music.[52] They were intended to be shown as part of a mixed programme combiningmagic lantern slides with short dramatic, comic and scenic films.[53] Charles A. Pryor of New York's Pryor and Clare was among the first photographers to make it aboard theCarpathia on her return from the scene of the sinking and took many pictures of Captain Rostron, theTitanic's survivors andCarpathia's crew. His subsequent advertising, published in theNew York Clipper, emphasised the likely level of popular interest:
MR THEATRE MANAGER
Pack your Theatre with the BIGGEST SENSATION OF THE AGE
"The GreatTitanic Disaster"
Mr. Chas. A. Pryor ... chartered a tug boat, and has the real genuine money getter ... [the pictures] are GREAT, showing all notable persons connected with the tragedy, the lifeboats, the life preservers, and have the last bill of fare that was served on theTitanic.[54]
Slide shows made less of an impact on British audiences, who seem to have preferred a more "artistic" approach. One of the most elaborate visual responses to the disaster was a "Myriorama" (aneologism meaning "many scenes") titledThe Loss of the Titanic performed by Charles William and John R. Poole, whose family had been staging such shows since the 1840s. It involved the use of a series of scenes painted on fine gauze sheets, manipulated in such a way that they would appear to dissolve from one scene to the next while music was played and a dramatic and emotive recital was performed in the foreground. According to the publicity material for theTitanic Myriorama, it featured "the spectacle staged in its entirety by John R. Poole, and every endeavour made to convey a true pictorial idea of the whole history of the disaster ... Unique Mechanical and Electric Effects, special music and the story described in a thrilling manner."[55] The "Immortal Tale of Simple Heroism" was performed through eight tableaux, starting with "A splendid marine effect of the Gigantic Vessel gliding from the Quayside at Southampton" and ending with praise for "the simple courage which remains for ever a proud heritage of the Anglo-Saxon race." According to contemporary reports, the show "often reduced audiences to tears."[56]
Newsreels on theTitanic disaster were hampered by the fact that hardly any footage of the ship existed. A few seconds of film ofTitanic's launching on 31 May 1911 were shot in Belfast by local company Films Limited,[57] and the Topical Budget Company appears to have had some footage – now lost – of the ship at Southampton.[58] Other than that, all that existed were photographs, which were of only limited use in a motion picture. Newsreel strands, such as theGaumont Film Company'sAnimated Weekly, made up for the lack of footage of the ship itself by splicing in newly shot material of the aftermath of the sinking. These included scenes such asCarpathia arriving at New York, theTitanic survivors disembarking and the crowds gathering outside theWhite Star Line offices inBrooklyn as lists of the casualties were being posted.[59]
Gaumont'sTitanic newsreel was hugely successful and played to packed houses around the world.[60] The firstTitanic newsreels appeared in Australia as early as 27 April, while in Germany the Martin Dentler company promised that itsTitanic newsreel would "guarantee a full house!". In many places, patrons were handed copies of "Nearer, My God, to Thee" to sing at the close of the film (according to German cinema owner Fred Berger, "much lusty singing took place at [the] screening") while in Britain a family of entertainers used theirGavioli organ to provide the Gaumont newsreel with an accompaniment of nautical tunes.[61] Even though Gaumont was a French company, itsTitanic did comparatively poorly in its home country; this was perhaps due to the local news being dominated not byTitanic but by the simultaneous capture of theBonnot Gang of anarchist bandits.[62]
Some movie companies tried to make up for the lack of footage by passing off film of other liners as being of theTitanic, or marketing the footage ofTitanic's launch as showing her sinking. The proprietor of one cinema on New York's34th Street was beaten up several times by angry customers who fell victim to one such scam. TheDramatic Mirror reported that "both eyes had been blacked and several teeth have been lost, and a blue-black bruise ... now covers almost the entire southern aspect of his face." He was defiant all the same: "Even after I pay the doctor and the dentist I'll clear five hundred dollars. And there isn't an untruthful word in those advertisements. There ain't nobody can say I ain't a gent."[63] InBayonne, New Jersey, a cinema was the scene of a riot on 26 April 1912 after it falsely advertised a film showing "the sinking of theTitanic and the rescue of her survivors." TheNew York Evening World reported the following day that the local police had to intervene after "the audience having been led to believe they were to see something sensational, uttered loud protests. Seats were torn loose in one theatre."[64] In the end, the local police chief banned the performance. Similar public outrage and disorder resulting from a proliferation of fakeTitanic disaster reels prompted the mayor ofMemphis, Tennessee to ban "any moving picture reels portraying theTitanic disaster or any phase thereof".[63] The mayors ofPhiladelphia and Boston soon followed suit.[65] However, theTitanic newsreel bubble soon burst, and by August 1912 trade newspapers were reporting that compilations of stock footage ofTitanic intercut with pictures of icebergs "don't attract audiences any more."[66]
There have so far been eight English-language drama films (not counting TV films) about theTitanic disaster: four American, two British and two German, produced between 1912 and 1997.
The first drama film about the disaster,Saved from the Titanic, was released only 29 days after the disaster. Its star and co-writer,Dorothy Gibson, had actually been on the ship and was aboardTitanic's No. 7 lifeboat, the first to leave the ship.[67] The film presents a heavily fictionalised version of Gibson's experiences, told inflashback, intercut with newsreel footage ofTitanic and a mockup of the collision itself.[68] Released in the United States on 14 May 1912[69] and subsequently shown internationally, it was a major success.[70] However, it is now considered alost film, as the only known prints were destroyed in a fire in March 1914.[71]
Gibson's film competed against the German filmIn Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice), directed by the RomanianMime Misu, who played theTitanic's Captain Smith. It was largely shot aboard the linerSSKaiserin Auguste Victoria. The fatal collision was depicted by ramming a 20-foot (6.1 m) model ofTitanic into a block of floating ice. The impact knocks the passengers off their feet and causes pandemonium on board. The film does not depict the evacuation of the ship but shows the captain panicking while water rises around the feet of wireless operatorJack Phillips as he sendsSOS messages. The ship's band is repeatedly shown playing musical pieces, the titles of which are shown on captions; it appears that a live band would play the corresponding music to the cinema audience. As the film ends, the waves close over the swimming captain.[66]
Although not strictly aboutTitanic, a number of other drama films were produced around this time that may have been inspired by the disaster. In October 1912, the Danish film company Nordisk releasedEt Drama på Havet (A Drama at Sea) in which a ship at sea catches fire and sinks, while passengers fight to board lifeboats. It was released in the United States asThe Great Ocean Disaster orPeril of Fire. The same company produced a follow-up film in December 1913, which was also released in the United States. TitledAtlantis, it was based on a novel of the same name byGerhart Hauptmann and culminated with a depiction of a sinking liner. It was the longest and most ambitious Danish film to date, taking up eight reels and costing a then-huge sum of $60,000.[72] It was filmed aboard a real liner, theSSC.F. Tietgen, chartered especially for the filming with 500 people aboard. The sinking scene was filmed in theNorth Sea.[73] TheTietgen sank for real five years later when she was torpedoed by a GermanU-boat. A British film company planned to go one better by building and sinking a replica liner, and in 1914 the real-life scuppering of a large vessel took place for the Vitagraph pictureLost in Mid-Ocean.[74]
The Britishsound filmAtlantic (1929) was clearly (though loosely) based on the story of theTitanic. Derived from Ernest Raymond's playThe Berg, it focuses on the sinking of a liner carrying a priest and an atheist author, both of whom must come to terms with their imminent deaths. Exterior scenes were shot on a ship moored on theRiver Thames but most of the film is set in an interior lounge, in a very static and talkative fashion. The ship's evacuation is depicted as taking place amid pandemonium but the actual sinking is not shown; although the director did shoot sinking scenes, it was decided that they should not be used.[75]
The Hollywood producerDavid O. Selznick tried to persuadeAlfred Hitchcock to make aTitanic film for him in 1938, based on a novel of the same name byWilson Mizner andCarl Harbaugh. The storyline involves a gangster who renounces his life of crime when he falls in love with a woman aboardTitanic. Selznick envisaged buying the redundant linerLeviathan to use as a set. Hitchcock disliked the idea and openly mocked it; he suggested that a good way to shoot it would be to "begin with a close-up of a rivet while the credits rolled, then to pan slowly back until after two hours the whole ship would fill the screen and The End would appear." When asked about the project by a reporter he said, "Oh yes, I've had experience with icebergs. Don't forget I directedMadeleine Carroll" (who, as Hitchcock was probably aware, had starred in theTitanic-inspiredAtlantic).[76] To add to the problems,Howard Hughes and a French company threatened lawsuits as they had their ownTitanic scripts, and British censors let it be known that they disapproved of a film that might be seen as critical of the British shipping industry.[77] The project was eventually abandoned as the Second World War loomed and Hitchcock instead madeRebecca for Selznick in 1940, winning an Oscar for Best Picture.[76] A similar plotline of a thief renouncing his life of crime after falling in love with a steerage woman aboard the ship was later used in the television miniseriesTitanic (1996).
The Nazi Propaganda MinisterJoseph Goebbels personally commissionedTitanic (1943), apropaganda film made during World War II. It was largely shot in Berlin with some scenes filmed aboard theSSCap Arcona. It focuses on a fictitious conflict between"Sir" Bruce Ismay andJohn Jacob Astor, reimagined as an EnglishLord, for control of the White Star Line. An equally fictitious young German First Officer, Petersen, warns against Ismay's reckless pursuit of theBlue Riband, callingTitanic a ship "run not by sailors, but by stock speculators". His warnings fall on deaf ears and the ship hits an iceberg. Several aspects of the plot are reflected in James Cameron's 1997Titanic: a girl rejects her parents' wishes to pursue the man she loves, there is a wild dancing scene in steerage and a man imprisoned in the ship's flooding prison is freed with the help of an emergency axe.Herbert Selpin, the film's director, was removed from the project after making unflattering remarks about the German war effort. He was personally questioned by Goebbels and 24 hours later he was found hanged in his cell. The film itself was withdrawn from circulation shortly after release on the grounds that a film portraying chaos and mass death was injurious to war morale, though it has also been suggested that its theme of a morally upright hero standing up to a reckless leader steering the vessel to disaster was too politically sensitive for the Nazis to tolerate.[78] It was also too sensitive for the British, who prevented it from being shown in the western zones of occupied Germany until the 1960s. East Germans had no such difficulty as the film accorded well with the anti-capitalist sentiments of their communist rulers.[79]
Barbara Stanwyck andClifton Webb starred as an estranged couple in the filmTitanic (1953). The film makes little effort to be historically accurate and focuses on the human drama as the couple, Mr. and Mrs. Sturges, feud over the custody of their children while their daughter has a shipboard romance with a student travelling on the ship. AsTitanic sinks the couple are reconciled, the women are rescued and Sturges and his son go down with the ship. The film earned an Oscar for its screenplay.[80] The film's lack of regard for historical accuracy can be explained by the fact that it uses the disaster merely as a backdrop for themelodrama. This proved unsatisfactory for some, notably Belfast-bornWilliam MacQuitty, who had witnessed the launch ofTitanic as a boy and had long wished to make a film that put the nautical events front and centre.[81]
A Night to Remember, starringKenneth More, was the outcome of MacQuitty's interest in theTitanic story. Released in 1958 and produced by MacQuitty, the film is based on the 1955 book of the same name byWalter Lord.[82] Its budget of £600,000 (equivalent to £15.8 million in 2023) was exceptionally large for a British film[83] and made it the most expensive film ever made in Britain up to that time. The film focuses on the story of the sinking, portraying the major incidents and players in a documentary-style fashion with considerable attention to detail;[82] 30 sets were constructed using the builders' original plans for RMSTitanic.[41] The ship's former Fourth OfficerJoseph Boxhall and survivorLawrence Beesley acted as consultants.[82] One day during shooting Beesley infiltrated the set but was discovered by the director, who ordered him off; thus, asJulian Barnes puts it, "for the second time in his life, Beesley left theTitanic just before it was due to go down".[84]
Although it won numerous awards including aGolden Globe Award forBest English-Language Foreign Film and received high praise from reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic,[85] it was at best only a modest commercial success because of its original huge budget and a relatively poor impact in America.[86] It has nonetheless aged well; the film has considerable artistic merit and, according to Professor Paul Heyer, it helped to spark the wave ofdisaster films that includedThe Poseidon Adventure (1972) andThe Towering Inferno (1974).[85] Heyer comments that it "still stands as the definitive cinematic telling of the story and the prototype and finest example of the disaster-film genre".[87]
In 1979, EMI Television producedS.O.S. Titanic, a television movie that tells the story of the disaster as a personal drama. Survivor Lawrence Beesley (played byDavid Warner) is presented as aromantic hero and Thomas Andrews (played byGeoffrey Whitehead) is also seen as a significant character for the first time.Ian Holm's J. Bruce Ismay is presented as the villain.[88] Warner went on to play Caledon Hockley's manservant, Spicer Lovejoy, in James Cameron'sTitanic in 1997.[89] The production was partially filmed aboard a real liner, theRMSQueen Mary.[90]
Raise the Titanic (1980) was an expensive flop. Based on the best-sellingbook of the same name by thriller writerClive Cussler, the plot involves Cussler's heroDirk Pitt (Richard Jordan) seeking to salvage an intactTitanic from her location on the sea bed. He aims to gain a decisive American advantage in theCold War by retrieving a stockpile of a fictitious ultra-rare mineral of military value, "byzanium", that the ship was supposedly carrying on her maiden voyage.[91] The film, directed byJerry Jameson, cost at least $40 million. It was the most expensive movie made up to that time but made only $10 million at the box office.Lew Grade, the producer, later remarked that it would have been "cheaper to lower the Atlantic".[92]
TheTitanic makes a morbid cameo appearance inGhostbusters II (1989). The negatively charged ectoplasm has reached the sunken remains of the ship and turned them into a Class V Phantom Vessel. Upon its arrival in New York Harbor, its ghostly passengers debark, appearing to shimmer, reflecting their demise in the sea. The ship has a gaping hole (though too far forward on her hull) where the iceberg punched her, and the top near the bridge appears to be split apart. Pier 34 dock staff stare in disbelief while the supervisor (Cheech Marin) quips, "Well, better late than never!"
James Cameron'sTitanic is the most commercially successful film about the ship's sinking.Titanic became the highest-grossing film in history nine weeks after opening on 19 December 1997, and a week later became the first film ever to gross $1 billion worldwide. By March 1998 it had made over $1.2 billion,[93] a record that stood until Cameron's next drama filmAvatar overtook it in 2009.[94] Cameron's film centres around a love affair between First Class passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Third Class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio).[95] Cameron designed the characters of Rose and Jack to serve as what he has termed "an emotional lightning rod for the audience", making the tragedy of the disaster more immediate. As Peter Kramer puts it, the love story is intended to humanise the disaster, while the disaster lends the love story a mythic aspect.[96] Cameron's film cost $200 million, making it the most expensive film ever made up to that time;[97] much of it was shot on a vast, nearly full-scale replica ofTitanic's starboard side built inBaja California, Mexico.[98] The film was converted into 3D and re-released on 4 April 2012 to coincide with the centenary of the sinking.[99][100] Cameron's film is the onlyTitanic drama to have been partially filmed aboard the vessel, which the Canadian director visited in two Russian submersibles in the summer of 1995.[101]
With the advent of television, the themes and social microcosm provided by theTitanic scenario inspired TV productions, from expansive serial epics to satirical animated spoofs. The list of genres relating to theTitanic grew to includescience fiction; and beginning with the first episode ofThe Time Tunnel in 1966, titled "Rendezvous With Yesterday", the RMSTitanic has become an irresistible destination for time-travelers.
In April 2019,BBC Radio 4 broadcastShip of Lies byRon Hutchinson, a five-part drama based on some of thelegends and myths about RMSTitanic.[102]
Thesinking of theTitanic has been the inspiration for a huge number of books since 1912; as Steven Biel puts it, "Rumor has it that the three most written-about subjects of all time are Jesus, the [American] Civil War, and theTitanic disaster."[103]
The first wave of books was published shortly after the sinking. Two survivors published their own accounts at the time:Lawrence Beesley'sThe Loss of the S.S. Titanic, andArchibald Gracie'sThe Truth about the Titanic. Beesley started writing his book shortly after being rescued by the RMSCarpathia and supplemented it with interviews with fellow-survivors. It was published by Houghton Mifflin within only three weeks of the disaster. Gracie carried out extensive research and interviews, as well as attending the US Senate inquiry into the sinking. He died in December 1912, just before his book was published.[104]
Titanic's former Second Officer,Charles Lightoller, published an account of the sinking in his bookTitanic and Other Ships (1935), which Eugene L. Rasor characterises as anapologia.[105] StewardessViolet Jessop gave a fairly short first-hand account in her posthumously publishedTitanic Survivor (1997).[106]Carpathia's 1912 captain,Arthur Rostron, published an account of his own role in his autobiographyHome from the Sea (1931).[107]
Various other authors of the first wave published compilations of news reportage, interviews and survivors' accounts. However, as W. B. Bartlett comments, they were "marked by some journalism of highly suspect and sensationalist variety ... which tell[s] more about the standards of journalistic editorialism at the time than they do about what really happened on theTitanic."[108] The British writerFilson Young's bookTitanic, described by Richard Howells as "darkly rhetorical ... [and] heavily laden with cultural pronouncement", was one of the first to be published, barely a month after the disaster.[109] Many of the American books followed an established form that had been used after other disasters such as the Galveston Storm of 1900 and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Publishers rushed out "dollar" or "instant books" which were published in great numbers on cheap paper and sold for a dollar by door-to-door salesmen. They followed a fairly similar style, which D. Bruce Anderson describes as "liberal use of short chapters, telegraphic subheadings, and sentimental, breezy prose". They summarised press coverage supplemented by extracts from survivors' accounts and sentimental eulogies of the victims.[110]Logan Marshall'sThe Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters (also published asOn Board the Titanic: The Complete Story With Eyewitness Accounts) was a typical example of the genre.[108] Many such "dollar books", such as Marshall Everett'sStory of the Wreck of the Titanic, the Ocean's Greatest Disaster: 1912 Memorial Edition, were styled as "memorial" or "official" editions in a bid to grant them a bogus degree of extra authenticity.[111]
The "second wave" ofTitanic–related books was launched in 1955 byWalter Lord, a New York advertising executive with a lifelong interest in the story of theTitanic disaster. Writing in his spare time, he interviewed around sixty survivors as well as drawing on previous writings and research.[112] His bookA Night to Remember was a huge success, selling 60,000 copies within two months of its publication. It remained listed as a best-seller for six months.[113] The book has never been out of print, reached its fiftieth edition by 1998, and has been translated into over a dozen languages.[113][114] It was adapted twice for the screen, first as a live TV drama broadcast byNBC in March 1956[114] and subsequently as the classic British filmA Night to Remember starringKenneth More.[87]
Lord's book was followed byThe Maiden Voyage (1968) by the British naval historian Geoffrey Marcus, which told the entire story of the disaster from the passengers' departure to the subsequent public inquiries. He blamed Captain Smith and the White Star Line for the failings that led to the disaster and castigated what he called the "official lie" and "planned official prevarication" of the British inquiry. It was well-received, with Lord himself describing it as "penetrating and all-inclusive."
In 1986, Walter Lord wrote a sequel to hisA Night to Remember titledThe Night Lives On, in which he expressed second thoughts about some of what he wrote in his previous work. AsMichael Sragow, writer and editor forThe Baltimore Sun, noted: "[Lord] wondered whetherLightoller had carried the chivalrous rule ofwomen and children first too far, to women and children only."[115]
The discovery of thewreck of theTitanic byRobert Ballard in 1985 spurred a fresh wave of books, with even more published following the success of James Cameron's filmTitanic and the centenary of the disaster in 1997 and 2012, respectively. Ballard told the story of his search and discovery of the ship in his 1987 bookThe Discovery of the Titanic, which became a best-seller;[116] Rasor describes it as "the best and most impressive" of the accounts of the search.[117] John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas producedTitanic: Triumph and Tragedy: A Chronicle in Words and Pictures in 1986, a 320-page illustrated volume telling the story ofTitanic in great detail from design and fitting-out, through to the maiden voyage, the disaster and the aftermath. The book takes a heavily visual approach with many contemporary photographs and pictures, and is described by Anderson as "encyclopedic [and] comprehensive" and "the consummateTitanic guide."[118]
Wyn Wade's bookThe Titanic: Disaster of a Century (1992)[119] attempts to re-tell the story of the ship from financing and construction all the way through to the rescuing of survivors by the RMSCarpathia. Then it takes the reader into the investigation of the disaster by the United States Senate, led by Michigan Senator William Alden Smith. The book concludes with a look at resulting legislation and its legacy in society. In trying to draw lessons from these events, Wade writes, "Titanic was the incarnation of man’s arrogance in equating size with security; his pride in intellectual (divorced from spiritual) mastery; his blindness to the consequences of wasteful extravagance; and his superstitious faith in materialism and technology. What is alarming is how much these pitfalls still typify the Western – especially the English-speaking – world of today in our continuing Age of Anxiety. As long as this self-same Hubris is with us,Titanic will continue to be not just a haunting memory of the recurrent past, but a portent of things to come – a Western apocalypse, perhaps, wherein the world, as Western man has known and shaped it, is undermined from within, not overcome from without; and ends not in holocaust but with a quiet slip into oblivion".
Don Lynch'sInside the Titanic (1997) presents an overview of the ship and the disaster, illustrated by the artistKen Marschall, whose pictures ofTitanic and other lost ships have become famous.[120] Susan Wels' bookTitanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner (1997) documents the salvage work of RMSTitanic Inc, while Daniel Allen Butler provides a scholarly examination of theTitanic story in his bookUnsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic. Robin Gardiner's booksRiddle of the Titanic andTitanic: The Ship that Never Sank, put forward aconspiracy theory that the wreck is actually that of theRMSOlympic, which supposedly the White Star Line had secretly switched withTitanic as part of an insurance scam.[121]
In 2012, to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking, historians Tad Fitch, J. Kent Layton, and Bill Wormstedt wrote and publishedOn a Sea of Glass: The Life & Loss of the RMS Titanic. The book follows the construction of the liner to its ill-fated maiden voyage as well as the rescue of the survivors by theRMSCarpathia and the inquiries held afterwards. It is considered to be one of the most well-researched, detailed accounts of the ship itself.[122]
A variety of novels set aboard theTitanic has been produced over the years. One of the earliest was the German author Robert Prechtl'sTitanic, first published in Germany in 1937 and subsequently in Britain in 1938 and in the United States in 1940 (translated into English). The main protagonist and hero of the novel is John Jacob Astor; the book focuses on the theme of redemption, though it takes a markedly anti-British stance.[123] It is considered the first seriousTitanic novel.[124]
One of the most famous novels associated with the disaster is a book written byMorgan Robertson fourteen years prior to theTitanic's maiden voyage,Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. Published in 1898, the book is noted for its similarities with the actual sinking. It tells the story of a huge ocean liner, theTitan, which sinks in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage after colliding with an iceberg. TheTitan is depicted as only slightly larger thanTitanic, both ships have three propellers and carry 3,000 passengers, both have watertight compartments, both are described as "unsinkable" and both have too few lifeboats "as required by law". The collision is described within the novel's first twenty pages; the rest of the book deals with the aftermath. The similarities between art and life were recognised immediately in 1912 and the book was republished soon after the sinking ofTitanic, with several editions being published since then.[125]
Thriller author Clive Cussler wrote the successfulRaise the Titanic! in 1976, which was made into a hugely expensive flop of a movie four years later.[126] The same theme was reflected inThe Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990) byArthur C. Clarke, which tells the story of two competing expeditions seeking to raise both halves of the wreck in time for the centenary of the sinking in 2012.[127][123] An earlier Clarke novelImperial Earth, (1976, but set in the late 23rd century AD) mentions that theTitanic has been raised and is now a museum exhibit inNew York City.
The ship becomes the backdrop for a romance inDanielle Steel's novelNo Greater Love (1991), in which a young woman becomes the sole caregiver for her siblings after her parents and fiancée die in the sinking.[128] In 1996, NBC adapted it into a television movie of the same name, which Anderson characterises as "rather sterile and perfunctory."[129]
Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, RMS Titanic, 1912 byEllen Emerson White is a fictional diary of a girl travelling on theTitanic – part of theDear America series, in which each book is a fictional diary set at a significant point in American history.
Various authors have also usedTitanic as the setting for murder mysteries, as in the case ofMax Allan Collins' novelThe Titanic Murders (1999), part of his "disaster series" of murder mysteries set amidst famous disasters. The writerJacques Futrelle, who perished in the disaster, takes the role of amateur detective in solving a murder aboardTitanic shortly before her fatal collision.[123][126]
In 1996,Beryl Bainbridge publishedEvery Man for Himself, which won theWhitbread Award for Best Novel that year as well as being nominated for theBooker Prize and theLos Angeles Times Book Prize. The title comes from some of the reputed last words ofTitanic's Captain Smith and features a fictional nephew of J. P. Morgan, the ultimate owner of the ship, who seeks to befriend and seduce the rich and famous aboard the ship. He accompanies Thomas Andrews as the ship sinks and makes his escape aboard a capsized lifeboat (like Sherlock Holmes). The book incorporates a number of myths and conspiracy theories aboutTitanic, notably Robin Gardiner's claim that she was switched for her sister shipOlympic.[130][131]
Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic (1997), written by ex-PythonTerry Jones from an outline byDouglas Adams, tells the story of a doomed starship launched before she was finished. The ship's architect, Leovinus, undertakes an investigation to find out why the ship underwent a Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure shortly after launch. A computer game based on the book was released in 1998.[132]
Connie Willis'sPassage (2001) is a story about a researcher who takes part in an experiment to simulate near-death experiences. During these experiences, instead of the classic images of angels, the researcher finds herself on theTitanic. The book details her efforts to understand the meaning of her visions and with history of the ship and its sinking.
InTimeRiders (2010) by Alex Scarrow, Liam O'Conner, afictional steward on theTitanic, is rescued during the sinking by a man named Foster, who brings him forwards in time toSeptember 11, 2001 in order to recruit him into an entity known as 'The Agency' which was set up to prevent destructivetime travel.
InJames Morrow's short story "The Raft of theTitanic", only nineteen people died in the sinking; the rest are saved.
That Fatal Night: The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton (2011), a book in theDear Canada series, is set after the disaster and features a fictional heroine trying to cope with the events.
InStephen Baxter's sequel toThe War of the Worlds (2017),The Massacre of Mankind, theTitanic is mentioned as having survived its encounter with the iceberg due to it being armored with aluminum developed fromMartian technology.
Alma Katsu's novelThe Deep (2020) is set partially on theTitanic and on its sister ship,HMHSBritannic.
Stacey Lee's young adult historical fiction novelLuck of the Titanic, about a Chinese teenager boarding the ship secretly, due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, was published by G.P. Putnam's Books for Young readers in May 2021.[133]
Charlotte Anne Hamilton's historical romance debut novel,The Breath Between Waves, about an Irish woman and a Scottish woman sharing a cabin on the ship and falling in love, was published by Entangled Embrace in 2021.
Unsinkable Cayenne, a historical novel in verse written byJessica Vitalis and published in 2024 by Greenwillow/HarperCollins, explores the discovery of theTitanic from the perspective of the twelve-year-old protagonist, who notes parallels between the social strata on the ship and her own life.
The RMSTitanic has appeared in some comic books by many different publishers. InDark Horse ComicsGodzilla's comics a group of time travel bandits used Godzilla to make time heists and in Issue 11 Godzilla sends up being sent back to 1912 where the Kaiju attacks and sinks the Titanic with the monster's giving off heat warming up the waters and as a result decreased the death count.
Since the discovery of the wreck, several video games have been released with an RMSTitanic theme for various platforms; most of these are either about the player being a passenger on the doomed ship trying to escape, or a diver exploring and possibly trying to raise the wreck.[134] One game,Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, was released in 1996 byCyberflix, one year prior to James Cameron'sfilm.
In the video gameDuke Nukem: Zero Hour (1999) the level "Going Down" features theTitanic.
In the video gameHamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak (2003) an unusedcutscene while notdirectly referencing theTitanic or its sinkingper se, does reference a famous scene from James Cameron's1997 film. In this cutscene which was originally intended for the boat trip in the "Sandy Bay" level, the playable charactersHamtaro and his girlfriend Bijou are shown at the front of the boat deck with Bijou in a "flying" pose and Hamtaro behind her with the cutscene reading "Fl...flying!" in a tribute to the "I'm Flying" scene from Cameron's film, though with Hamtaro instead of Jack and Bijou instead of Rose. Although the cutscene is still in the game's files, it can't be seen during normal gameplay and requires cheat codes and modification software to see.[135]
The 2021 mobile gameCookie Run: Kingdom references two scenes from James Cameron's1997 film in the tropical soda islands game mode. The first is the “I’m flying” scene with a durianeer in a “flying pose” being held by a coconutian. The second being from the “I won’t let go” scene. In this scene, there are two coconutians, one being in a raft made of watermelon skin, holding another coconutian in the water.
In the video gameNine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2010), the main characters were all put onto a sinking ship by a mysterious person named Zero. In their introduction, Zero references theTitanic's sinking in the line "On April 14, 1912... the famous ocean linerTitanic crashed into an iceberg. After remaining afloat for 2 hours and 40 minutes, it sank beneath the waters of the North Atlantic. I will give you more time. 9 hours is the amount of time you will be given to escape." It is later discovered that the "ship" they are on is a replica of one ofTitanic's sister ships, the Gigantic. In real life,Gigantic was rumored to have been the original name ofHMHSBritannic, which was one of theTitanic's sister ships.
In the video gameBattleBlock Theater (2013), a ship with two funnels bearing the nameTitanic is briefly seen during a cutscene.
Since 2012 a video game titledTitanic: Honor and Glory has been in development by Four Funnels Entertainment. According to the developers, the game will feature a fully interactive recreation of the ship and the port ofSouthampton, and will include a tour mode of the ship in port, and a story mode told mostly in real time.[136]
Titanic appears inLego Dimensions as a secret area in the tenth level of the story themed aroundGhostbusters, where the player can only go if they have the DeLorean or the Travelling Time Train fromBack to the Future. In the Ghostbusters 1984 World, the player can also see the skeletons of Jack and Rose doing the famous movie pose from the 1997 James Cameron film.
An independent video game,Fall of the Titanic, was in development in 2015. In August 2016, however, the creator disabled the ability to purchase it on Steam.[137][138]
The entirety of the RMSTitanic was recreated in a custom-made campaign forLeft 4 Dead 2 in 2013. The floorplans are accurate, but are split into four chapters (maps) for gameplay purposes (from F Deck to the Boat Deck).[139]
The Pokémon fan gamePokémon Uranium (2016) included a Pokémon called Titanice, an Ice type Pokémon whose design was based onTitanic, and the ice around its body being a potential reference to the ship sinking to an iceberg.
A level for the Zombies game mode in the video gameCall of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018) is set on a fictionalized version of theTitanic.
In the video gamePersona 5 Strikers (2021), there is a segment when the Phantom Thieves are sailing on a boat to get to their next part in road trip. While there, Futaba Sakura decides to use this opportunity to stand on Ryuji's back with her arms stretching out, saying "Feast your eyes on the splendor that is the classic movie poster pose". This line is a reference toTitanic, when Jack and Rose do the iconic pose at the front of the ship.
A company called Magellan created a game that allows players to pilot an ROV to the wreck of the Titanic. The early access of the game released on December 31, 2024.[140]
American artistKen Marschall has paintedTitanic extensively - depictions of the ship's interior and exterior, its voyage, its destruction and its wreckage. His work has illustrated numerous written works about the disaster including books and magazine stories and covers and he was a consultant on James Cameron's successfulTitanic film.[141]
In 1999, the websiteSnopes (which normally proves or debunks urban legends) posted a series of fabricated urban legends known as "The Repository of Lost Legends" (whose initials read "TROLL") asred herrings to test people's common sense with an outlandish story.[142] One of those Lost Legends dealt with theTitanic and claimed that when the iceberg hit the ship, a (nonexistent) film calledThe Poseidon Adventure released in 1911 and directed byD. W. Griffith (suggested to be the inspiration forthe 1969 novel of the same name) was playing in the ship's cinema. By sheer coincidence, the film is about a disaster on an ocean liner called thePoseidon. In reality, there is no record of a film with that name in 1912 and even if there was, it would be very unlikely that they would show a film on a ship with such a plot due to the possibility of causing panic.[143]
In the sharedalternate history ofIll Bethisad (1997 and after), an analogue of theTitanic called the "Gigantic" appears. This even larger alternate universe counterpart of theTitanic similarly sunk on its 1912 maiden voyage. The circumstances of the Gigantic is presented as more mysterious than those of theTitanic, as it had completely sunk by the time help came.[144] Ill Bethisad's version ofSigmund Freud was a passenger of the ship and he died in the disaster.[144][145]
Titanic Voyage RPG (TVRPG) is an eight-day-long real-time event in which internet usersroleplay as real or fictional passengers and crew aboardTitanic on her maiden voyage. The game starts whenTitanic leavesSouthampton on April 10, and ends whenCarpathia docks inNew York City on the 18th. It is the largestTitanic roleplay of its kind, with around 2,000 registered characters each year, many of whom are played by the same individual year after year. A great majority of players (over 75%) are Russian, highlighting the worldwide impact of Titanic disaster.[146]
The disaster prompted the production of collectibles and memorabilia, many of which had overtly religious overtones. Collectible postcards were in great demand in Edwardian England; in an era when domestic telephones were rare, sending a short message on a postcard was the early-20th-century equivalent of a text message or atweet.[147] A few postcards were published before the disaster showingTitanic under construction or newly completed and became objects of great demand afterwards.[148] Even more desirable to collectors were the small number of postcards that had been written aboardTitanic during her maiden voyage and posted while she was in the harbours atCherbourg andQueenstown.[149]
After the sinking, memorial postcards were issued in huge numbers to serve as relics of the disaster. They were often derived from 19th-century religious art, showing grieving maidens in stylised poses alongside uplifting religious slogans.[149] For many devout Christians the disaster had disturbing religious implications; theBishop of Winchester characterised it as a "monument and warning to human presumption", while others saw it as divine retribution: God putting Man in his place, as had happened to Noah. The final location ofTitanic, in the abyss 12,000 feet (3,700 m) down, was interpreted as a metaphor for hell and purgatory, the Christian Abyss.[150] One particular aspect of the sinking became iconic as a symbol of piety – the reputed playing by the ship's band of the hymnNearer, My God, to Thee as she went down. The same hymn and slogan was repeated on many items of memorabilia issued to memorialise the disaster.[151] Bamforth & Company issued a hugely popular postcard series in England, showing verses from the hymn alongside a mourning woman andTitanic sinking in the background.[152]
There was only a limited number of surviving photographs ofTitanic, so some unscrupulous postcard publishers resorted to fakery to satisfy public demand. Photographs of her sister shipOlympic were passed off as beingTitanic. A common mistake made in fake photographs was that of showing the ship's fourth funnel billowing smoke; in fact, the funnel was a dummy, added for purely aesthetic purposes. Photographs of the Cunard Line vesselsMauretania andLusitania were retouched and passed off as theTitanic, or even as theCarpathia, the vessel which rescued theTitanic survivors.[153] Other postcards celebrated the bravery of the male passengers, the crew and especially the ship's musicians.[148]
A variety of other collectible items was produced, ranging from tin candy boxes to commemorative plates, whiskey jiggers,[154] and even teddy bears. One of the most unusual items ofTitanic memorabilia was the 655 blackteddy bears produced by the German manufacturerSteiff. In 1907, the company produced a prototype black teddy bear that was not a commercial success. Buyers disliked the gloomy appearance of the black-furred bear. After theTitanic disaster the company produced a limited run of 494 black "mourning bears" which were displayed in London shop windows. They rapidly sold out, and a further 161 were produced between 1917 and 1919. They are today among the most sought-after of all teddy bears.[155] One pristine example was sold in December 2000 atChristie's of London after emerging from a cupboard where its owner, who disliked the bear's appearance, had kept it for 90 years. It sold for over £91,000 ($136,000), far more than had been expected.[156][157]
Books
Butler, Daniel (1998). Unsinkable: the full story of the RMS Titanic.
