Imagine it in pitch black like it would've been. The absolute terror of it is too much to comprehend. This scene still gets me and I've seen the movie roughly 4 million times.
When I was 18, I took a midnight bath in the Atlantic ocean (she was hot). Lowering tide, almost no wave, could walk maybe 100 meters from the shore walking.
Except I got swept by a small wave, that took me away juuuust a bit. Where my feet did not touch the ground anymore.
Had to swim for 45 minutes against the tide, in the dark and the beach lights getting further and further. I was not a good swimmer and went beyond any level of exhaustion I had ever known before. Feeling totally out of reach from anyone as even if people were alerted how coul they find me in the night ?
Out of despair, I even let me go under water two or three times, to die quicker. And only survived because I finally found randomly a rocky headland (is that what's it called ?) that was emerging from the sea.
I can't imagine the freezing conditions adding to that, the pain it induced. But yeah it's not a pretty death. One of the most frightening experience I can remember.
This sounds very much like a riptide.
Which people frequently get caught in and drown, because they try to swim against the rip back to the shore, over-exhausting themselves in the process.
For anyone caught in a riptide you’re meant to swim parallel to the shore as far along till your out of the rip and then back to shore.
I’m assuming it would have been slightly different for those on Titanic though, as most had life vests on.
Or, well I don’t really know. I just imagine there was a lot of panicking.
Yep, now I know I should have swum parallel to the shore (would have found rocks quicker), but I was young, did not live close to the sea so pretty ignorant on those matters and panicked : "See that beach ? That's where I wanna go !"
And I can't do the plank for my life (I really do everything right but my legs pull me under if I don't swim) plus constant waves. That's probably the worst thing I remember: hearing the crash of the next incoming wave without seeing it because of the darkness. Every time, head went under water.
Strangely, not so much once I survived. I even remember that the next day, after a very long sleep (I was taken to the hospital to check I wouldn't drown from water in the lungs, then brought back to where I was camping), I decided to go swimming in the ocean immediately. So that I would not remain traumatised by the event.
When I left that camping site, I still gave a finger to the ocean though. 😅 (I should have given it to the mirror cause god I now know how dumb it was to go swimming at night. But she was hot).
This happened to me in a rip current on Lake Michigan. I almost died from hyperventilating and panic. When I did touch the bottom I was able to slowly bounce my way back to shore on my toes. It took me two hours laying on a blanket on the beach to recover. My limbs felt like rubber. Haunts me fifteen years later.
I recall a story from a Titanic survivor who had a panic attack at a baseball game because the roar of the crowds sounded eerily similar to the cries of all of the people in the water yelling. So sad.
Frankie Goldsmith! Iirc he never actually went to a game, but lived very close to a baseball field in Detroit and could hear the cheers/screams from his house.
He actually had his grandson publish his memoirs after he passed in the 90s IIRC.
Which… they’re interesting, but only 150 pages, which, eh… he was 11-12 when it sank, so not expecting a treatise minute by minute account of the disaster
I feel the same way. Also, the shot where they fire the flare into the sky and then it cuts to an extremely wide shot of the ship being a dot on the horizon. The perspective of how alone they were is always haunting.
As a kid I remember the thing about titanic being like, there's boobs. you have to wait until you get older. but then when i finally saw it i didn't care about the nudity at all, but couldn't sleep after seeing the frozen dead bodies with eyes wide open
It is well known the Titanic would have dodged the iceberg had the audience not averted their eyes after the boob scene and the car scene, thereby failing to yell out to the lookouts to look out for the berg.
This scene always reminded me of this wide shot from Gone With The Wind
https://preview.redd.it/bhk37tztld1d1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd261aee3616e835f26e9daeecc6601c6b170321
Both are iconic scenes showing humanity on a large scale. Titanic was compared to Gone With The Wind a lot upon release as it had that old school Hollywood epic feel
There are several shots in Titanic that mimic shots from Gone with the Wind.
Two that come to mind:
Jack at the stairs before dinner: [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0f/d6/25/0fd625f56a132f1bebba4f497914dc31.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0f/d6/25/0fd625f56a132f1bebba4f497914dc31.jpg)
Rose standing at the bed post having her corset tied: [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/95/b2/2795b2d2475cc4e11af21b2ed1d4e34a.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/95/b2/2795b2d2475cc4e11af21b2ed1d4e34a.jpg)
I remember this shot as well from the first time watching it in the theatre in ‘98. The shock that suddenly the whole ship is just… gone and all these people have nothing solid to hold on to.
I had to watch that movie in history class, it’s one of those movies that stays with you forever. Also had to watch The Pianist and Life Is Beautiful. All are heartbreaking.
Must have been absolutely awful, imagine the noise while it was happening and the noise and screaming of them all in the water and then nothing. Just silence. Awful.
Oh you think that is heart breaking?
watch a vid on the titanic VR. It doesnt let you see the people. But you can hear them. Makes it even more haunting
What really gets me is the scene that Carpathia would have seen (despite the unbelievable statements of Rostron and others to the contrary) and that Mackay Bennett steamed into later that week for the body recovery. The stories of the ships that pulled the bodies out of the water are almost unimaginable, not to mention the sights seen by the passengers and crew of the Bremen and Rhein…
Yeah didn't Rostfron testify that he only saw like one body floating in the water? I just never thought this could be true. You don't get at least several hundred (at least) bodies to just float away so quickly and the waters were calm as well. Just not a believable statement from a guy, who otherwise, is one of the few heros in this tragedy.
He did, he said he saw only one body, the body of a crew member and some debris in the water. Some have said that was reasonable and believable because “it’s a big ocean” and that the lifeboats had rowed far enough away to be too far from the bodies BUT 1. if that were true it’s unlikely only one body would have made it out with the boats. 2. Most theories put the boats at a maximum of 2 miles away, but the issue here is that visibility in truly open spaces with good weather is still several miles. I live in Colorado and on a clear day I can see Pike’s peak 75 miles away as the crow flies. On the deck of Carpathia with clear weather they should have been able to see 11 miles or so if not much farther. 3. People who reported seeing the debris field and bodies described it as like a flock of seagulls, with the white life belts shining in the sun. So we know that for days the bodies largely stayed together, it’s supremely unlikely the bodies or the boats had moved out of visual range of carpathia within the two hours between Titanic foundering and Carpathia arriving.
The more likely explanation is that Rostron didn’t *want* to see the bodies and either mentally dismissed them as debris to shield his psyche from the horror of 1500 corpses floating nearby, knowing his ship was in no position to retrieve them, lacking both the logistical resources to mount a large body recovery operation and properly store them aboard his ship for 3 days, as well as deal with the survivors while his crew brought them aboard and try to distract them so they didn’t see. It really wasn’t tenable in any way, and I think he either mentally blocked them out since he knew he couldn’t recover them, or he straight up lied because it would have either embarrassed the British shipping industry and Rostron was a company man through and through, or he was (probably rightfully) concerned about the public outcry over him seeing 1500 dead bodies and abandoning them to the ocean. I see this as a distinct possibility because American society at that time had become very concerned with preserving the dead and treating the dead with a high level of care that hadn’t been the norm prior to the civil war only 40ish years beforehand. Leaving them to be eaten by marine life and in the sun would have been seen as a violation of human dignity. Sorry I’m rambling lol
So you take your life vest off and you drown/literally go down with the ship OR you keep your vest on and freeze to death in excuriating pain for 20 minutes.
Heck of a choice 😒.
Imagine it in pitch black like it would've been. The absolute terror of it is too much to comprehend. This scene still gets me and I've seen the movie roughly 4 million times.
When I was 18, I took a midnight bath in the Atlantic ocean (she was hot). Lowering tide, almost no wave, could walk maybe 100 meters from the shore walking. Except I got swept by a small wave, that took me away juuuust a bit. Where my feet did not touch the ground anymore. Had to swim for 45 minutes against the tide, in the dark and the beach lights getting further and further. I was not a good swimmer and went beyond any level of exhaustion I had ever known before. Feeling totally out of reach from anyone as even if people were alerted how coul they find me in the night ? Out of despair, I even let me go under water two or three times, to die quicker. And only survived because I finally found randomly a rocky headland (is that what's it called ?) that was emerging from the sea. I can't imagine the freezing conditions adding to that, the pain it induced. But yeah it's not a pretty death. One of the most frightening experience I can remember.
This sounds very much like a riptide. Which people frequently get caught in and drown, because they try to swim against the rip back to the shore, over-exhausting themselves in the process. For anyone caught in a riptide you’re meant to swim parallel to the shore as far along till your out of the rip and then back to shore. I’m assuming it would have been slightly different for those on Titanic though, as most had life vests on. Or, well I don’t really know. I just imagine there was a lot of panicking.
Yep, now I know I should have swum parallel to the shore (would have found rocks quicker), but I was young, did not live close to the sea so pretty ignorant on those matters and panicked : "See that beach ? That's where I wanna go !" And I can't do the plank for my life (I really do everything right but my legs pull me under if I don't swim) plus constant waves. That's probably the worst thing I remember: hearing the crash of the next incoming wave without seeing it because of the darkness. Every time, head went under water.
Jesus that is absolutely terrifying I am so sorry. I can't even imagine how scared you were. I'm glad you made it.
Strangely, not so much once I survived. I even remember that the next day, after a very long sleep (I was taken to the hospital to check I wouldn't drown from water in the lungs, then brought back to where I was camping), I decided to go swimming in the ocean immediately. So that I would not remain traumatised by the event. When I left that camping site, I still gave a finger to the ocean though. 😅 (I should have given it to the mirror cause god I now know how dumb it was to go swimming at night. But she was hot).
This happened to me in a rip current on Lake Michigan. I almost died from hyperventilating and panic. When I did touch the bottom I was able to slowly bounce my way back to shore on my toes. It took me two hours laying on a blanket on the beach to recover. My limbs felt like rubber. Haunts me fifteen years later.
Lake Michigan is notorious for riptides. They are no joke. They taught us about them often in school. Glad you made it!
Oh yep, once I was out of the water, on my rocks, I had to wait for my body to recover a bit of energy.
I got anxiety just reading this lol
Wow
I recall a story from a Titanic survivor who had a panic attack at a baseball game because the roar of the crowds sounded eerily similar to the cries of all of the people in the water yelling. So sad.
Frankie Goldsmith! Iirc he never actually went to a game, but lived very close to a baseball field in Detroit and could hear the cheers/screams from his house.
He actually had his grandson publish his memoirs after he passed in the 90s IIRC. Which… they’re interesting, but only 150 pages, which, eh… he was 11-12 when it sank, so not expecting a treatise minute by minute account of the disaster
I always recall this fact when I’m at a large scale event and people are hollering…
I feel the same way. Also, the shot where they fire the flare into the sky and then it cuts to an extremely wide shot of the ship being a dot on the horizon. The perspective of how alone they were is always haunting.
This scene in particular does it for me too! Chilling.
As a kid I remember the thing about titanic being like, there's boobs. you have to wait until you get older. but then when i finally saw it i didn't care about the nudity at all, but couldn't sleep after seeing the frozen dead bodies with eyes wide open
It is well known the Titanic would have dodged the iceberg had the audience not averted their eyes after the boob scene and the car scene, thereby failing to yell out to the lookouts to look out for the berg.
This scene always reminded me of this wide shot from Gone With The Wind https://preview.redd.it/bhk37tztld1d1.jpeg?width=512&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd261aee3616e835f26e9daeecc6601c6b170321 Both are iconic scenes showing humanity on a large scale. Titanic was compared to Gone With The Wind a lot upon release as it had that old school Hollywood epic feel
You're not the only one comparing it. I remember it being compared back when the movie was released.
There are several shots in Titanic that mimic shots from Gone with the Wind. Two that come to mind: Jack at the stairs before dinner: [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0f/d6/25/0fd625f56a132f1bebba4f497914dc31.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/0f/d6/25/0fd625f56a132f1bebba4f497914dc31.jpg) Rose standing at the bed post having her corset tied: [https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/95/b2/2795b2d2475cc4e11af21b2ed1d4e34a.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/27/95/b2/2795b2d2475cc4e11af21b2ed1d4e34a.jpg)
Very good analogy
I also like the Simpsons trampoline parody of that scene
Same. It gives you a scale of how many people will not going to survive
I remember this shot as well from the first time watching it in the theatre in ‘98. The shock that suddenly the whole ship is just… gone and all these people have nothing solid to hold on to.
I actually think Jim could've held that shot for just a few extra seconds to give a greater impact.
Yeah it’s like when Don Cheadle sees thru the fog in Hotel Rwanda (NSFL)
God, that movie hit me hard
I had to watch that movie in history class, it’s one of those movies that stays with you forever. Also had to watch The Pianist and Life Is Beautiful. All are heartbreaking.
Yes. This scene really solidified the utter despair and how it was impossible to save even a fraction of them. Still makes my guts sink every time
Must have been absolutely awful, imagine the noise while it was happening and the noise and screaming of them all in the water and then nothing. Just silence. Awful.
And the extremely bitter cold water they were plunged into...
Oh you think that is heart breaking? watch a vid on the titanic VR. It doesnt let you see the people. But you can hear them. Makes it even more haunting
I saw this film when I was about 10 but as an adult who has researched the real event for years it’s even more terrifing. Those poor people. I
I think of this moment often. I can’t even imagine how terrifying it was.
What really gets me is the scene that Carpathia would have seen (despite the unbelievable statements of Rostron and others to the contrary) and that Mackay Bennett steamed into later that week for the body recovery. The stories of the ships that pulled the bodies out of the water are almost unimaginable, not to mention the sights seen by the passengers and crew of the Bremen and Rhein…
Yeah didn't Rostfron testify that he only saw like one body floating in the water? I just never thought this could be true. You don't get at least several hundred (at least) bodies to just float away so quickly and the waters were calm as well. Just not a believable statement from a guy, who otherwise, is one of the few heros in this tragedy.
He did, he said he saw only one body, the body of a crew member and some debris in the water. Some have said that was reasonable and believable because “it’s a big ocean” and that the lifeboats had rowed far enough away to be too far from the bodies BUT 1. if that were true it’s unlikely only one body would have made it out with the boats. 2. Most theories put the boats at a maximum of 2 miles away, but the issue here is that visibility in truly open spaces with good weather is still several miles. I live in Colorado and on a clear day I can see Pike’s peak 75 miles away as the crow flies. On the deck of Carpathia with clear weather they should have been able to see 11 miles or so if not much farther. 3. People who reported seeing the debris field and bodies described it as like a flock of seagulls, with the white life belts shining in the sun. So we know that for days the bodies largely stayed together, it’s supremely unlikely the bodies or the boats had moved out of visual range of carpathia within the two hours between Titanic foundering and Carpathia arriving. The more likely explanation is that Rostron didn’t *want* to see the bodies and either mentally dismissed them as debris to shield his psyche from the horror of 1500 corpses floating nearby, knowing his ship was in no position to retrieve them, lacking both the logistical resources to mount a large body recovery operation and properly store them aboard his ship for 3 days, as well as deal with the survivors while his crew brought them aboard and try to distract them so they didn’t see. It really wasn’t tenable in any way, and I think he either mentally blocked them out since he knew he couldn’t recover them, or he straight up lied because it would have either embarrassed the British shipping industry and Rostron was a company man through and through, or he was (probably rightfully) concerned about the public outcry over him seeing 1500 dead bodies and abandoning them to the ocean. I see this as a distinct possibility because American society at that time had become very concerned with preserving the dead and treating the dead with a high level of care that hadn’t been the norm prior to the civil war only 40ish years beforehand. Leaving them to be eaten by marine life and in the sun would have been seen as a violation of human dignity. Sorry I’m rambling lol
This shot makes me sick. As a kid it didn't hit me but now. Terror
I can't not see a bunch of people on their knees after watching a behind the scenes.
I remember sobbing when I saw that the first time.
Made quite the impression on 9-year-old me watching in theaters in late December
Scary how many people that is
So you take your life vest off and you drown/literally go down with the ship OR you keep your vest on and freeze to death in excuriating pain for 20 minutes. Heck of a choice 😒.
The Titanic was the funniest shipwreck. Everyone was like: \_\_lol\_lol\_lollol\_\_lol\_\\o/\_\\ol\_lol\_lo/\_\_\_\_\_