Headscratchers / Titanic (1997)

Goodbye, priceless diamond I could have sold.

• The Heart of the Ocean. Why does Rose drop it in the ocean? WHY!?!?
  • This is just one you’ll have to experience. It doesn’t require the insane situation Rose goes through to have these emotions.
  • She's incredibly old and the money won't do her much good. Either that or she's senile. And it's called the Heart of the Ocean. What did you expect?
  • She knew that if she gave it away, the meaning would be lost. It was her one connection to Jack since he touched it and drew her wearing it but it was also a gift from Cal so she probably was torn in terms of meaning. Give Cal's gift away or keep Jack's symbol? It was, in a way, a symbol of everything she loved and hated about Titanic.
  • That she give it to her granddaughter maybe?
  • Start an Art School in Jack's memory?
    • Either that, or give it to the Chippewa Falls School Corporation. Jack Dawson High School has a nice ring to it.
  • Even though it's worth a lot of money she probably didn't want to be reminded of her Jerkass of a fiancé Cal who had given her the necklace in the first place. It was just her way of saying "Screw you, you bastard." Or perhaps it was because Cal had basically been treating her like a possession rather than a person, and had given her the necklace to mark her as such. By getting rid of the thing it was also her way of saying "I'm not some porcelain doll that you own."
    • She can get rid of it just fine by selling it.
  • She didn't want to earn money from the best/worst time of her life. This is why Bill Paxton's character has the discussion with her granddaughter. "But I never got it". Rose knew he and his crew were only interested in earning money from their expeditions rather than realizing the loss of life behind the tragedy. It's made rather clear about a million times throughout the film that Rose doesn't give a toss about money, status or wealth.
  • The symbolism of "her heart goes on", I think. It shows that her heart truly belonged to Jack her whole life, and giving the Heart of the Ocean back symbolized this. Of course, if you think about it, it means that she spent her whole life in true love with a boy she knew for a week, rather than the man she married. Kinda sad, and it doesn't excuse her throwing away a priceless artifact like that.
    • Of course! She didn't have time to learn Jack's faults. She had plenty of time to learn her husband's.
    • She shouldn't be expected to live alone her entire life because her soulmate died when she was 17. Really. People remarry all the time after losing their initial partner.
    • But once she marries she has to assume her husband is now her soulmate; she promised. At least she should have told him about Jack. And while no one can be expected to keep their feelings under control all the time, making the theme song about emotional adultery with a dead man is a little creepy. Besides her heart is obviously not really "going on".
    • But what the hell kind of ending would that be if, after 3 hours of watching her meet, fall in love with, fight for, and tragically lose Jack, she gets to the afterlife and meets up with some guy we've never seen? This might be a good time for the MST3K Mantra.
    • When people get old and senility begins their memories revert to earlier and earlier points in their lives. Both my grandmothers started thinking everyone in the room was their parents in the last days of their lives, so that could explain why she started thinking about Jack more. Also, I would assume it would be relatively easy for the salvage crew to find the diamond now that it's on top of the ship and not inside the ship.
    • I'd assume otherwise, personally; it's a tiny dark blue jewel that can easily get caught up in a current and swept hundreds of miles away or, even if it does land near the ship, will be difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish from all the other dark, jagged things lying on the bottom of the ocean floor. At least when they thought it was inside the ship they had a roughly good idea of where it was likely to be — now, it could be almost anywhere.
    • Except Rose was most definitely not senile. A little forgetful, perhaps, but dementia is a whole other thing entirely. Dementia does cause a person to regress but if she were that far gone she wouldn't have a clue that it has been 84 years since the Titanic sank.
    • I'm not sure what the headscratcher is here, though; that's life. All the time, people end up getting married to someone while secretly carrying a torch for someone else, whether a tragic lost love or not. Sad for the other person, I suppose, but hardly unheard of. As for emotional adultery, there's nothing to suggest that she didn't love the man she married at all or end up being happy with him regardless; just that she still loved Jack.
    • Not the OP, but "That's life"? It might just be the stuff I watch and read is different than you, but I've never heard of this in any work of fiction other than Titanic and possibly The Great Gatsby. Haven't heard of this in real life either. It seems to me that Rose is not very good at moving on. Why carry a torch for a dead man? It makes no sense.
    • There's innumerable Edgar Allan Poe short stories and poems on that very theme (the inability of the living to get over the dead). See also: Poe's life.
    • See also; Queen Victoria, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and hundreds of thousands of people who've ever tried to use a psychic to communicate with a dead loved one. Plus, you know, there's billions of other people on the planet, and not everyone is as capable of compartmentalizing and moving on from grief as you claim to be. They might indeed not be good at moving on, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
    • It's also perfectly possible that she had well and truly put Jack behind her (as much as you can put a formative first love behind you), but was put into a nostalgic mood by the circumstances.
    • This is absolutely what was depicted. Her involvement began when she saw the recovered drawing Jack made, one heck of a personal artifact. The ONLY memento she had connected to Jack was previously the diamond, and that’s why she never sold it.
    • The other person doesn't even have to be dead; there's the whole idea of The One That Got Away which is endemic in romantic narratives and real-life examples. How many people have had a failed romance they never quite got over? A boyfriend or girlfriend who they parted ways with that they still carry a torch about? A secret crush that was never consummated, a one-night-stand they can't quite stop thinking about, or something along the lines? Romance and relationships are complicated; it doesn't matter how marriage vows are worded, not everyone is capable of instantly throwing a switch and completely wiping away any and all feelings they may have had for their previous partners.
    • We're kind of getting a bit hung up on the idea of "soulmates" here. Is it not possible — and hear me out, 'cause this might get a bit crazy — that Rose simply might be capable of loving two people? That she might have loved her husband and been happy with him, and also have room in her heart for a boy she fell in love with at a difficult time in her life who was suddenly taken from her? Where is it said that human beings are capable of loving one and only one person ever and if they have feelings for one person, they are utterly incapable of loving another?
    • Definitely agree with the idea that "exactly one soulmate per person" is very unrealistic as I get older. It does happen, definitely, but even the Christian idea of marriage gives you an out by going "TILL DEATH DO WE PART," and as we see in the chaotic lifeboat evacuation, a LOT of married men were left to their deaths. It's inevitable that some of the hundreds of widows left behind would remarry for all sorts of reasons, and their choice is just as valid as the ones who couldn't leave their husbands on the ship, or decided not to remarry.
  • I always had the interpretation that Rose, before she passes away, throws the diamond into the ocean to return it to the Titanic (which is underneath the boat from which she does this); the place that she felt it truly belonged.
    • It might also have been her way of honoring the people who'd died on the ship, whose memory was arguably being insulted by the salvage team's profiteering quest for artifacts. In effect, by letting the diamond fall to rest with the wreckage, she was giving them back something precious to make up for all the other mementos that were being removed from what's essentially an underwater graveyard. And by dropping it in secret, she ensured that no one else would know to look for it again.
    • Possibly she thinks of it as a fitting replacement for the drawing, which was with Titanic for more than eighty years. A monetarily-priceless item being sent down to take the place of a sentimentally-priceless one, in effect.
  • She kept that enormous diamond hidden away someplace through the Great Depression WHY, exactly?
    • Well, she didn't see it as an object with monetary value. It was a precious memory of a major point in her life, and she probably treasured it more than any wealth. Besides, maybe times weren't quite as hard for her during the Great Depression as they were for others- perhaps she struggled, but not so much that she had to beg for food or anything. And (assuming she married her husband before the Great Depression) she said that she never mentioned Jack to her husband, so it's more than likely that she was hiding it from him as well (if he had known about it, he would have eventually asked what the story was behind it and how she came to own it, which would almost certainly include her mentioning Jack- and he didn't know about Jack). So he wouldn't have known of the diamond's existence and thus couldn't have taken it and sold it.
  • More to the point, how could she afford the upper class lifestyle shown in her photographs WITHOUT selling the diamond?
    • The guy with the beard mentions at the beginning that she used to be an actress (which was partially why he thought she was a liar). She probably struggled for a while before hitting a streak of luck and launching her career as an actress, then married her husband who was probably rich.
  • More the point, since she mentions Cal's father collected on the insurance, she can't sell it because it's STOLEN PROPERTY. Highly identifiable stolen property. The minute they paid out if it reappeared it belongs to the Hockley's insurance company. She'd have to find a diamond cutter/fence willing to cut it down into small diamonds (which is basically how what was the French Blue became the Hope Diamond. Cutting apparently doesn't cure curses.) Not to mention a diamond like that suddenly appearing on the open market would have been a great big honking signal to Cal and his father that either Rose or Jack had survived.
  • In the deleted ending, she explains that the reason she didn't sell it was that it was from Cal, and she didn't want him to have "helped" her - she got to where she was on her own. And she always felt that it belonged with the Titanic. Still, that doesn't explain why she didn't give it to her granddaughter or something.
  • Possibly she was, in part, giving the diamond to the Titanic itself. For all that human carelessness might have made it a tragedy, it was the ship that brought her and Jack together, and seeing the scene of her happiest memories reduced to a ruin in the mud might've made her sorry for it, enough to offer up the diamond.
  • As for why she didn't give the diamond to her granddaughter, remember that Rose knew plenty of wealthy people in her early life, and virtually all of them were complete jerks. She wouldn't have wanted her family to become self-satisfied, superficial creeps like Cal.
• The whole point of the movie is that personal connections between people are infinitely more valuable and rewarding than material wealth, no matter how much. Rose keeping the Heart would be a monumental undermining of that point. Ergo, she gets rid of it.
• This may indeed be one you just have to experience. The diamond is her only tangible connection to Jack, and that connection is built on one of the most horrific and memorable experiences. Trust me, it's just hard to state how valuable that item is, whatever its market value. You might as well ask how much you would sell your brain or heart for. Ultimately, she knows her life is at end and is content to return the diamond to where she believes it belongs.

Little girl lost?

• Since someone put an all encompassing answer under What Happened to the Mouse? ("Read the script"), I wonder what happened to the little girl that Cal used to get on a lifeboat? Did he keep her, and raise her as his own daughter? Or did he drop her off at the first orphanage he could find?
  • Once in the lifeboat Cal hands the little girl to a black-haired woman and almost immediately loses any interest in her. If you pay attention to the boat when the deck sinks and the boat nearly capsizes, throwing many passengers into the water, both the woman and the girl manage to stay in it by grabbing the opposite side. The girl appears again in the original longer cut of the Carpathia scene accompanied by the same woman, but Cal doesn't accompany them. It's presumed the woman adopts her afterwards.
  • Pay close attention to the original longer cut of the Carpathia scene. You'll see an unidentified set of male hands gesture for the woman to give him the girl, possibly meaning that he is her father.
  • She most likely has other relatives who weren't on board the ship. Assuming she's old enough to know her own name, she'd presumably be sent to live with her grandparents or aunt and uncle.
  • Interestingly, another deleted scene shows her in a steerage hallway with her parents and a whole tribe of siblings. It's possible that she is meant to be part of the Goodwin family, all of whose members are thought to have died in the sinking (though only the baby's body was found, and was identified by DNA years after the movie came out).
  • She is seen at the end of the movie. She's the little girl at the top of the Grand Staircase next to the post.
    • That only implies she's dead. It doesn't necessarily imply she died in the sinking; odds are, she died of old age some time ago, and appears as a child because that's how old she was when Rose might've seen her on the Carpathia.
    • Not necessarily. An entry further down this page pointed out that only the people who died in the sinking were visible in the Grand Staircase scene, as the survivors Rose befriended (Col. Gracie and Mrs. Brown, for example) were not there.
    • It can also be noted in Behind the Scenes photos that the girl by the post of the Grand Staircase is Cora's actors sister, who only appears to briefly appear in this scene and potentially at the stern when Jack first sees Rose.

Waterproof Charcoal Sketch

• How the hell did that drawing hold up all those decades? Even if you disregard the fact that the paper itself should have disintegrated in that waterlogged safe, please consider that materials like charcoal and graphite can smudge very easily, and this was well before artists had spray fixative to keep this from happening. 85 years underwater should not have kept that drawing in near-pristine condition.
  • Except letters and such things HAVE been found at the wreck of the Titanic (found in similar places to the picture, like in a leather wallet or the like), and are still pretty legible and in decent condition. Sure, the picture was an exaggerated case, but it's not completely impossible.
    • Wouldn't those letters have been written in ink? Or at least a relatively hard pencil? Both are reasonably permanent. Jack appears to be drawing with either a piece of vine charcoal or a very soft graphite stick. Both of those smudge like crazy. Just blowing on a vine charcoal drawing can smudge it. I can buy that, safely inside a leather portfolio, the drawing could be preserved for decades... but then they show someone using something like a Water Pik to to wash the mud off of it... and it's not even slightly smudged.
  • This one's ultimately just Rule Of It's A Movie Go With It. Something needs to happen for both Brock to find a clue towards Rose's existence and for Rose to recognise when she's watching the news report. So the filmmakers just drew upon the existence of actual letters retrieved from the Titanic, decided it would be more fitting to make it a sketch, fudged some of the more unlikely details (such as using charcoal that doesn't smudge) and decided that the audience likely wouldn't notice or care too much about it.
  • Also, it's very likely that Jack just went over it again in ink. We only see him sketch in charcoal because that's what Rose remembers, but most artists would have SOME sort of backup medium since everyone knows charcoal smudges like hell, and is prone to breaking if you drop/shake it too much.

Cheated On In Heaven

• Putting speculation aside, let's say that Rose died and went to Titanic heaven at the end where she spends eternity with Jack. That's sweet and all, but what about Rose's husband? We assume she loves him, too, so do the two guys just share her? Or does she ditch her husband for Jack?
  • Jesus was actually asked that question in The Bible (about a hypothetical widow with the Cartwright Curse). He said that marriage (and presumably romance) was an earthly thing and presumably that love works a different way in heaven. However, he was asked this as an attempt to trap him into admitting the afterlife didn’t make sense as a concept... He was speaking in relation to marriage as a legal, childbearing institution, rather than in relation to one’s soulmate.
  • Just because they went to heaven doesn't mean her husband did. Maybe he's in the other place.
  • Ever heard of settling? Jack was her soulmate.
    • Not any more he wasn't.
    • Yes, he was, apparently; marriage vows aside, no one ever said love was simple.
  • Who's to say that her husband didn't have memories of his own, from another shipwreck?
  • It wasn't really heaven, it was just a dream she had so she could die peacefully.
    • James Cameron said that he won't say whether the ending was her dying or dreaming since he prefers to leave it to the audience's interpretation, so it's still up for speculation.
  • There's no reason why her husband couldn't have been a fellow Titanic survivor. She just refuses to talk about it.
  • Do we even know for sure her husband is dead? For all we know, she robbed the cradle and her husband is a hale-and-hardy septuagenarian.
    • "Now Calvert's dead and from what I hear Cedar Rapids is dead." Her husband is dead.
  • Maybe time works differently in heaven. Her seventeen-year-old self is on the Titanic with Jack and her older self is off somewhere reuniting with her husband.
  • Maybe she got divorced sometime in last eighty years.
    • She does say to Lizzy 'I never even told your grandfather', saying 'your grandfather' and not 'my husband' which could be an extremely subtle indication of this.
    • That seems like a stretch. As you say, she was speaking specifically to her granddaughter at that point, it would surely be weird if she didn't refer to him the way she did. When one of your parents are talking to you about your other parent they generally say 'your mother' or 'your father' especially when the conversation is an emotional one, as it emphasises the closeness of the bond you all have and the intimacy of the subject matter, and the reason you should be invested in what is being said. In this scene, she is letting her granddaughter into a family secret that even the rest of her family don't know. Referring to him as 'my husband' in that situation would have been an emotionally distant way to speak, if anything.
    • Jack got Rose pregnant in that car on the night of the sinking. She didn't realize it until after she arrived in New York and got morning sickness. Jack is Lizzy's grandfather.
    • That is never confirmed in the movie.
    • How could that be? Secret necromantically adulterous obsession is such a ''great'' thing to have in a marriage.
    • 'Necromantically adulterous obsession'? Really? There's nothing (outside of the extremely subtle possible-hint mentioned above) to suggest Rose didn't love her husband or wasn't a perfectly faithful and loyal wife to him, or that she spent the years pining over Jack to the point where it destroyed her relationships; just that a secret part of her always loved Jack as well. Which, granted, maybe sucks for the other guy, but that's love — no one said it was simple.
    • I always assumed that the scene at the end was not so much about her returning to Jack as it was about her returning to Titanic itself. All the others who died on the ship are there, so obviously Jack would be there too.
  • Look, let's be real here; it wouldn't be a very romantic ending for the movie if Rose and Jack's climactic reunion in heaven or her dreams or whatever was interrupted by some gonk we'd never even seen or heard throughout the previous three hours interjecting himself between them and going "Hello Rose! I, your husband, am also here!" I think we gotta chalk this one up to the demands of the story here, people.
    • Yes. This is correct. It would be the worst ending ever if we watched for 3 hours as Rose used the story of her tragically doomed romance to weave a beautiful tapestry of words, finally imparting the humanity of this catastrophe to a group of hitherto cavalier treasure hunters, only for her to walk into a house in Iowa and give...I dunno...Ed Begley Jr. or somebody a peck on the cheek.
  • Or it's just the first "Stop" she made in Heaven because she and Jack and the people of the Titanic have been waiting almost 90 years to see each other, whereas the other people in her life she had seen not quite as long ago, and had spent significantly longer with each other. I mean say you have the ability to see whoever you want who's also dead in Heaven. Are you going to see your more recent deceased friends or people that died more than half your life ago first?
  • Power of suggestion is also to be considered here. Immediately before she died (if she died), Rose spent the last couple of days of her life not only talking nonstop about her experience with Jack, but doing so on a boat in the same place where the Titanic sank. Surely that experience would be first and foremost on her mind in those final moments, so of course when she gets to heaven, the first thing she wants to do is see Jack. There is no indication that she's going to spend eternity with him, particularly not given the setting (does she really want to be constantly reminded of both the disaster AND the fact that she nearly committed suicide just before it?). Her husband has already been waiting a few decades for her, most likely; he can wait one more day.
• To be honest, I have a sister whose life reminds me of Rose and Jack: when she was seventeen, she was in love with one of the local boys, let’s call him James, who’d recently moved to our area. He tragically lost his life in a workplace accident before they were able to have a proper relationship. She was able to find love and start a family several years later with another man, but the entire family knows that my sister is patiently waiting for the day when she’s able to be reunited with James, she just doesn’t want to be deprived of the joys of life.
  • Another case like this I can think of is Lyudmila Ignatenko, whose husband Vasily was one of Chernobyl’s firefighters and ultimately died as a result of radiation. Lyudmila admitted in a book that she didn’t want to move on from Vasily, as she states that he would always be her one true love, but she also wanted to have a child, so she had to move on.
  • The thing is, people tend to try and reduce Jack and Rose’s relationship to a mere fling, but the truth is he quite literally changed her life for the better: before him, she was trapped in a loveless relationship that was so awful that she thought that her only escape was to die; it was her relationship with Jack that gave her the strength to escape and take control of her life. If it weren’t for him, Rose would never have become the woman we see her be in old age. Jack was Rose’s soulmate, she may have been able to find happiness with another man, but there is a difference between being able to love a person and the emotional connection with a soulmate. There were things in the extended script, such as her mentioning that she could still feel the touch of his hands, that make it clear that Rose was still in love with Jack, even after 84 years. When you lose a soulmate, a part of you dies along with them, and it’s honestly no surprise to me that Rose would want anything that was a connection to her time with Jack, such as the diamond or his artwork; and it’s no surprise that when she died, she’d want to be reunited with him in death, as he’d given her strength and gave her some of the happiest days of her life.
  • Perhaps Calvert was a widower when he and Rose met? He might have lost the love of his life to childbirth or disease or an accident, and thus what brought him and Rose together was the fact they'd both lost loved ones and they were able to comfort each other through their grief (granted, Rose says she never told Calvert about Jack, but she could have still said she was a widower without going into details). It'd mean that it's not that she's forgotten Calvert at the end, just that he's off with his Lost Lenore while she's with hers. Up to the viewer to decide if they'd be Amicable Exes or Polyamorous from there.

Cedar Rapids Lives!

• What is "From what I hear, Cedar Rapids is dead" supposed to mean? The only thing about Cedar Rapids that could be considered "Dead" is Westdale Mall, and even that's geared for a major redevelopment.
  • He doesn't mean Cedar Rapids is literally dead. He means that the place is 'dead' in the sense that there's nothing fun or exciting to do there, not so much in the sense that it's a failed city. Having never been to Cedar Rapids personally, I can't comment on whether this is true or not, but given that Lewis only says that he heard it was dead, evidently he got the info second hand. Presumably the person to whom Lewis spoke about Cedar Rapids about had an incredibly boring time there.

Hiding From Cal

• Why did Rose hide from Cal at the end of the movie, instead of giving him back his jacket and the priceless diamond that was his to begin with? If he'd had it, he could have sold it during the Great Depression and wouldn't have killed himself.
  • The diamond was insured, and a claim was filed (and presumably the money given to the Hockleys) after the sinking. So they weren't exactly deprived of the financial aspect of the diamond. Rose, knowing Cal and his family will know that everything was insured and that everything that went down with the ship will eventually have been paid for.
  • Why would she go back with an abusive, controlling, condescending man who treats her like a possession? Especially when she's free of her mother's control and can now make her own decisions. Also remember, she's only 17. Cal would be pretty terrifying to her.
  • She didn't remember she had the diamond then. Plus she didn't want to show herself 'cause she hates the guy.
    • She didn't even know she had the diamond at the time she was hiding from him on the Carpathia. She didn't discover it until later, when they were arriving in America.
  • Besides, even assuming he could find a buyer after the Crash, he couldn't possibly have regained his entire fortune just from selling one diamond. He'd still be ruined, just slightly less ruined than he might've been.
  • To be fair, he did in fact give it to her. Even the excavators comment it was bought as a gift to her. If you think about it, Cal killed Jack by framing him for stealing that diamond. If he hadn't been handcuffed below deck, he might have made it out alive. As such, why give it back to Cal? Why does he deserve it? She also risks him taking possession of her again and forcing marriage if she reveals her identity.
    • Wouldn't the right thing to do then be to at least return the diamond to Cal's family after his suicide? Also, if you dump your fiancee aren't you supposed to give back your expensive engagement ring/giant ass blue diamond?
    • Maybe, but that way they'd know she was still alive somewhere, she obviously doesn't want them to know that, and as far as they're concerned anyway it's at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere, so presumably she reasoned that as long as she's not actually profiting from possessing the Heart there's no harm, no foul.
    • Plus as far as returning a fiancee's gift, most people who do so haven't essentially faked their death and adopted a new identity.
    • She might also not have learnt that Cal committed suicide until well after it happened; broke and ruined investors killing themselves after losing everything in the Crash was an oft-heard story in those days, and having abandoned everything she had ever known to get away from him, Rose probably wasn't in too much of a hurry to keep up-to-date with news about how he was doing.
  • Actually it seems like she doesn't know she has the necklace until several hours later. The scene where she hides from Cal is in the daytime, we then see her finding the necklace at night while the ship is passing the Statue of Liberty.
    • Try "days". The scene with Cal searching the deck of the Carpathia (and presumably everywhere else in their third-class section that survivors were housed) appears to be daytime on the 15th, the day they were rescued. Carpathia arrived in New York on the evening of April 18th, in the accurately-depicted rainstorm. (Now, why Rose STILL has the coat on at that point, and hasn't taken advantage of the fresh clothes given up by Carpathia's passengers and crew, who knows. Maybe she deliberately kept more or less hidden until they arrived, hence them having missed her for three days while getting names of survivors...)
    • Maybe she did change into clean, dry clothes as soon as possible, the better to make sure Cal wouldn't recognize either her or the coat itself. Once they arrived in New York and the upper-class passengers were lining up to be the first ones off, she was free to put on the coat she'd been keeping discreetly folded up, at which point she discovered the diamond.
    • Considering she was pretending to be one of the lower-class passengers, she probably would've removed the coat in any case, to avoid answering awkward questions of where she'd gotten it. It was obviously a man's coat, and a very expensive one, after all.
    • That wouldn't be too hard to answer, considering the circumstances. She could've just claimed one of the brave first class gentlemen gave it to her when the ship was sinking and resigned to his fate with dignity. That could've been believable enough.
    • Continuing from the previous point, it is much easier to pretend that the coat was donated by a kind first class passenger in a lifeboat/on the Carpathia (no one said that the clothes were all given to the same gender and class as the donors) than it would be to explain why a steerage passenger is wearing an evening gown that fits like a glove that she can't get out of herself. A deleted scene on the extended DVD edition shows her attempting to take off her red/black gown just before her attempted suicide and failing utterly. She probably insists she is fine with what she has because she knows she can't undress herself and she can't ask for a lady's maid without revealing her true identity.
    • This one's fairly easily resolved with a knife, a pair of scissors, or something else reasonably sharp, though. She claims some new (lower class) clothes, palms a knife from the dining room, goes into a private place to dress, and cuts herself out of her uncomfortable expensive ballgown as necessary. It's not like she's planning on wearing it again.
    • Also, that coat must have really deep pockets to stop the diamond just falling out at any point.
    • That's just basic Rule of Drama, though.
    • I'm guessing that there was also a limit on exactly how many clothes were available to the survivors of the Titanic from the passengers of the Carpathia; no doubt she did managed to change into some dry clothes, but wasn't able to replace the coat.
  • Because to hell with Cal? She had no interest in him whatsoever after these events.

All Aboard The RMS Wood Panel

• Jack's death never broke my heart, even as a kid, because neither he nor Rose made more than one measly attempt to get on the piece of driftwood. It was well big enough for both of them. It's a particularly maddening example of Artistic License – Physics when both of them pull on it from one side and tip it over. Derrr, there's no possible way it'd work if we both climbed on at the same time from opposite sides, pull each other up, and balance the weight by sitting indian-style in the middle. Or take turns if you absolutely must sit on it one at a time.
  • I think that Jack, after the initial attempt to get onto the driftwood, got scared of making another attempt. If he tries to get on it, even in a logically sound way, and it sinks or flips or whatever, someone else might grab it, it might break or sink, Rose could fall into the water and drown...he decided it wasn't worth the risk and only cared that Rose survived.
    • Sounds pretty spot on. After they first try both getting on it and it nearly sinks, there's a cut to Jack's face as he realises what this means. You can see the gears turning in his head as he decides "Right. This isn't gonna work. One of us is going to have to stay in the water and freeze. And it sure as hell ain't gonna be Rose." So even if Rose offered to take turns on the door, I don't think Jack would have let her get back in the water; no matter what, he was going to make sure she had the better chance of survival.
  • Yeah, in that situation they're not likely to be thinking clearly. They're in a lot of pain, their muscles are seizing up from the cold making it difficult to swim and they know that every second they spend in the water is less time for them to live. If they'd tried to plan it out like 'ok, you swim around that side, then on the count of three we both try to get on etc' it would have, as mentioned above, made it more likely that someone else would take the door or that Rose would die. Remember, she was a sheltered high society girl. She wasn't used to strenuous physical activity. And she was wearing heavier clothes. And being female, she's just physically weaker to begin with. She wouldn't have lasted nearly so long in the water as Jack did, so he wasn't going to take any chances with her safety. Also, it may not be so much that the door would flip, it could also be that their combined weight would make it sink. What bugs me, is that there is no argument about who gets the door. She doesn't even try to convince him to take it instead of her.
    • Probably because she knew he would not have it and order her onto the driftwood. Besides, like you said, every second in the freezing water equals a lesser chance of them surviving.
    • When Rose was on the piece of driftwood, the driftwood almost tipped over because it was so imbalanced. Jack had to hold onto that part of the driftwood to keep Rose's part from tipping over. It was a combination of a stupid sacrifice and a Heroic One.
    • Next time you're in the shower, put the water temperature to freezing and see how coherent and sensible your decision making is. Chances are the only thing you'll be thinking is "GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT" as you rush to turn the tap off. Times that by about a thousand, add in 1500 other people freezing to death around you and a decent amount of shock mixed with exhaustion, not to mention Rose's almost drowning just seconds before. I went to a Titanic exhibition and they had a real iceberg set up and was kept at the temperature it would've been back then. You could touch it and let me tell you, it hurt. Bad. I can only imagine swimming in it in a flimsy dress.
    • But, person above me, Rose was completely fine the LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNGGGGGG time she was splashing around in the bowels of the ship in that same "freezing" water. Didn't faze her in the slightest. I mean from the evidence presented in those scenes, it's clear that the ocean water was only about the temperature of a lukewarm bathtub. When Jack says "it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think. At least, not about anything but the pain," he's just exaggerating to keep her from jumping. All that agonizing screaming from the other passengers in the water was just people beings drama queens. Splish splash, I was taking a bath. Long about a Saturday night...◊
    • A) They were both running on adrenaline, at which point you tend to not notice freezing cold water; B) the water and air traveled through the whole ship thus was probably slightly warmer than the air and water outside; C) the air drying the water on your body is what makes you colder thus after going outside they were in far worse shape than before; D) they were moving a lot, which causes your body to create heat as opposed to sitting on a board; E) everyone in the water was drowning or being drowned, panicking or looking for people, so of course they were shouting; and F) the water that night was below FREEZING, Jack wasn't overexaggerating, even water that is just cold hurts to be submerged in, not to mention the height she would have fallen.
    • Also, Rose was very close to death just before the lifeboat came around. She was beginning to freeze over. If the boat hadn't come at that exact time (remember she had to wake herself up and her hearing was off, too) they both would've died even if they had managed to float on the door somehow. The air itself was freezing. They both essentially had no hope.
    • Which is a good theory, except it doesn't really take into account the 30 survivors who were retrieved from the overturned lifeboat Collapsible B and the 11 survivors pulled from the half-swamped Collapsible A. Almost no one was retrieved from the water itself which means Jack's situation was pretty dire, but Rose's seems to have been exaggerated slightly for drama because if 41 people were able to survive several hours in the freezing air after being pulled from the water, she likely would have too.
    • But they were given blankets after they got in the boats, which treats for both shock and hypothermia, something she didn't have till she was rescued and "pulled from the water", so until they were in the boats, the other 41 people were probably only better off because they were in groups and could share body heat.
    • A deleted scene shows that Jack did in fact try to get on to the piece of wood, only to have it nearly tip over. Jack decides not to make another attempt in order to keep Rose safe and in that moment, is seen realizing that he will likely die, staying in the frigid water.
    • Time and time again people make this assumption that it was the size of the wood that was important. The reason they couldn't both get on it is because the wood was simply not buoyant enough to support the weight of two adults, hence the tipping and sinking the way it did.
    • Interestingly, although the prevailing thought at the time was that women are weaker, it's a proven fact these days that women have a higher resistance to exposure to cold water than men do, because of their thicker layers of body fat. (The female divers of East Asia and Polynesia have exploited this advantage for centuries.) Rose very possibly would have outlasted Jack, although given the amount of time they were left unrescued, she would still have been doomed without the door.
    • I think the very fact that this thought was the "prevailing" thought at the time explains it even more.
    • It must be said though that Rose is built like a twig. A beefier woman may or may not outlast a man but I doubt that applies to her and Jack.
  • I assume Jack was already losing sensation in his legs and didn't want to live life as a cripple.
  • It's probably actually more likely that both would have survived if they both had gotten on the wood. Huddled together, their shared body heat, however little of it there was, would have been able to keep both of them warmer.
    • Not if their combined weight forced it down so that they'd both be kneeling in a few inches of ice water. Its edge is just shy of being submerged with Rose alone; double the weight would've probably dunked it entirely, even if they could keep it balanced.
  • MythBusters put this to the test in the Season 11 premiere - with James Cameron himself guest starring. They determined that the film had it right: the makeshift raft wouldn't have held both of them and Jack would've frozen in the water long before help came. But they did determine that if Rose had used her life jacket to give the raft more lift, they both could've ridden it to rescue. Though that solution would've required creativity and clarity of thought they might not have possessed at the best of times. (Cameron also points out, after hearing their findings, that the script calls for Jack's death and one way or another he was going to go down, even if that means he should've made the board smaller or adjusted some other contributing details in the scene as filmed.)
  • As for taking turns, that wouldn't have worked either—even if Jack had agreed to such a thing, by the time they deemed it time to switch he probably would have been too frozen/his limbs too weak for him to climb onto the door. Plus they both would have been worn out and numb from the cold so their movements would have been more sluggish, and repeatedly switching places would lead to repeated dunkings that would only make the cold and frozenness worse. Also, remember that in the movie Rose was on the driftwood entire time and yet she made it only barely, so her being in the water even so slightly more than she had to be would end up getting her killed too.

Soaking Wet Clothes

• Yes, Jack froze to death in the water at the end, but don't you think that going into and getting out of the water several times before the ship sank, and running around the freezing air in those soaking wet clothes should have hampered their movement a little?
  • You'll be surprised at how long adrenaline can keep you going.
  • For what it's worth, the fact they'd previously gotten wet while still on board might've helped diminish the shock of going into the water at the end. Those who died immediately upon submerging did so because of the sudden transition in temperature, whereas anyone who'd already been soaked would have already undergone the physiological changes necessary to endure.

Bye Mum. Die of Guilt For Me

• So Rose survives the sinking, and then gives a fake name to one of the crew members of the Carpathia. She says she never sees Cal again, but what about her mother? I know they had a terse relationship, but Ruth went the rest of her life thinking her daughter died AND feeling guilty for not having a great relationship with her?
  • Or better yet: How the hell did Rose avoid eye contact with her mummy on the Carpathia? She calls herself "Rose Dawson" while her mother thinks her girl "Rose Whateverthehell" died. You'd think Mumsie wouldn't be just a tad suspicious that there's a Rose Dawson walking around after she just lost her girl named "Rose"? Oh, and that Cal had apparently decided to not chase her down anymore?
    • Survivors on the Carpathia were separated by class, and her mother had already demonstrated how reluctant she was to mingle with the lower classes. It also took several days to compile a complete list of the names of the survivors, which is why Rose didn't even give her name as "Rose Dawson" until they had already arrived in New York.
    • Additionally, you're attributing Agatha Christie sleuthing to a couple of high society idiots. Rose's mother is implied as presuming Rose was lost in the sinking of the ship. Cal looks for Rose amongst the survivors, but since he doesn't see her, he, too, presumes she was lost at sea.
    • In fairness to Cal that's a pretty fair assumption, given the last he saw the idiots were running DOWN into a sinking ship in freezing waters, and as he doesn't see her anywhere (he at least bothers to go look; charitable assumption is her mother's still in shock) even among the steerage passengers, his choices are 1. she's dead or 2. she's on another boat. Once they get back and it's clear there were no survivors picked up by other ships, the reasonable assumption is she died. No reason to keep reading survivor lists if he already looked on Carpathia and didn't find her. Really morbid question would be if Cal or her mother went to see the bodies brought to Canada by the search vessels to see if Rose was among them. There were many who were never found, and others who were identified but unclaimed and buried in the cemetery there.
    • Even if her mother did see the name on a list of survivors later on, and put two and two together, she'd surely also have realized that Rose must've been deliberately avoiding her on the Carpathia. If so, she probably wouldn't have chosen to make contact with her possible daughter, whether for reasons of anger or guilt. As for Cal, he'd already written off their relationship because she ran off with Jack, so would have no reason to look for Rose once she'd had a chance to sell the diamond (or so he'd assume she did).
    • "You'd think Mumsie wouldn't be just a tad suspicious that there's a Rose Dawson walking around after she just lost her girl named "Rose"?" There were over two-thousand people on the Titanic, and the name "Rose" was a fairly common one for ladies at the time. It's hardly entering the realm of the impossible that there be at least two women called 'Rose' on the ship.
    • For that matter, if Rose's mother saw "Rose Dawson" on the survivor list and did make the connection, she might well assume that Jack survived also and the pair had eloped or just shacked up together. In which case, she'd keep clear to avoid the scandal.
  • Pretty much, yeah. It's clear that Rose, for several reasons, wants to create a new life for herself and wants nothing more to do with her mother or that particular circle, and if ever there's an opportunity to fake your death and start again, it's the sinking of the Titanic. Harsh, maybe, but there you are.
  • It's possible that years later she wrote her a letter saying "I made it, but you won't see me" after she established herself/married someone else. I could see her character doing that several years down the road. Pure speculation.
  • Did she even know that her daughter was having an affair? All she likely knew was that her daughter was becoming irritable and childlike, then poof! She's gone. She would not have any need to conduct a search because she likely would've thought her daughter was still loyal enough to return to her. If she checked the survivor list, saw Rose Dawson, she would've thought just like anyone else would in her shoes: "Ah, must be another Rose. My daughter has died."
    • ...Yes? She specifically forbids Rose to see Jack during the corset-lacing scene, and I'm pretty sure she was there during the big confrontation where Jack is arrested with the diamond in his pocket.
    • For all we know, Rose's mother may not even have remembered Jack's full name. (She did refer to him merely as "that boy", after all.) In which case, "Rose Dawson" wouldn't have meant anything special to her.
    • She only ever addresses Jack as 'Mr. Dawson', so yes.
    • To be fair, she also only ever encounters him in person once or twice. She remembers his name when conversing with him at dinner because that's just good manners, but who's to say she doesn't forget his name once he's out of sight?
    • Possible explanation is that she was very distraught and couldn't bear to look through the lists of survivors herself searching for Rose's name, so someone else did that for her. And that someone didn't see anything worth mentioning about some Dawson girl who just happened to share her first name with Rose Dewitt Bukater.
    • the above tropers are also assuming that Ruth Dewitt Bukater will see a passenger list and know that 'Rose Dawson' is a young girl. I doubt the lists were giving real specifics (except in the cases of children, survivor and deceased lists don't usually mention ages). Ruth knows that Jack's surname is Dawson but she doesn't deign to speak to him long enough to find out if he is onboard with a sister, mother, cousin or even (shock horror) a wife who happens to be called Rose and share his name. Most of the steerage folks on the ship are going to new lives in America, taking as much of their old life as they can with them. Seeing a Rose Dawson might illicit a hysterical wail, but as soon as she sees Jack Dawson ISN'T a survivor, Ruth knows that Rose went down with him. Which, hey, she did.
  • For what it's worth, there's a deleted scene in the script where Cal does find Rose, and she basically tells him to fuck off and act like she's dead or she'll spill the beans on his various dishonorable deeds during the sinking.
  • Also, getting back to the main point, considering that Darling Mummy was essentially a cold, uptight snob clearly established to be much more concerned with making sure Rose was married off to some rich guy part for her own security and comfort more than, well, her daughter's happiness and well-being, we really can't blame Rose too much for basically doing the genteel Edwardian equivalent of telling her to get fucked. She's not exactly mother of the year material we're discussing here.

Did I Fire Six Shots Or Only Five...

• Towards the end when Cal is shooting at Rose and Jack. Why do they keep going down after they stopped hearing shots? Jack, at least, should know how many bullets that gun could hold, and keep count of how many were shot. The two of them probably could have gotten past Cal by force to get back up on deck.
  • Um, how would Jack possibly know how many bullets that gun could hold? Also, I think he was too busy trying to get himself and Rose somewhere away from the gun-toting lunatic to count the shots. As to why they kept running down? Simple. They were scared and thought Cal was still chasing them, loading his gun up again. As for them being able to fight Cal? Somehow I doubt it because Cal still has the gun and could pistol whip them if they charged him.
    • It should be noted that the Colt M1911 was still a new weapon at that time. And since Jack was more concerned with surviving one day to the next, he wasn't too keen on looking up new firearms. Also remember, that people tend to think that magazine-fed firearms can hold an enormous amount of ammunition. You have to know quite a bit about a firearm to know its magazine capacity, and the signs of empty/jam. Besides, both Jack’s and Rose’s Fight/Flight response was in full flight mode, which meant that they wanted to put as much distance between them and that gun as they possibly could.
    • They tend to think that because of movies, though. The sinking and shootout took place well before action movies popularized Bottomless Magazines.
    • Movies are also the reason one would assume someone like Jack would know enough about guns to have any sense of whether Cal ran out of bullets. Despite what we see in Western movies, most Americans didn't own guns back then (not to mention Jack is from the Midwest, not the West).
    • Jack and Rose don't know that Cal/the valet of doom don't have ANOTHER gun or more ammunition. And if a person is shooting at you and running after you, it is reasonable to assume that they might not stop just because they ran out of bullets. This troper guesses that, if they had been running around on dry land, Cal would have followed to assert his masculinity on them. He is just too afraid of his own life to bother. Rose might guess he is too cowardly to pursue, but Jack doesn't and I don't think I would stop to ask...
    • While I can't guess Jack's ability as a survivalist of gunfighting, it's generally recommended you DON'T try counting the shots. Too many things can go wrong or even change the number in the firearm, assuming you can accurately tell how many it is holding at the time in the first place. Your average person wouldn't waste time trying to anyway, being more concerned with staying alive.
  • A deleted scene reveals that once Cal remembers Rose has the diamond with her he then tells Lovejoy he can keep the diamond for himself if he can get it back from Rose; Lovejoy follows them into the flooding dining room where he fights it out with Jack before Jack and Rose escape into the galley and run down the flight of stairs while they wait for Lovejoy to go up the adjacent flight of stairs. This is why Jack's hair is wet all of a sudden and why he signals for Rose to be quiet. (Lovejoy's fight with Jack also explains why his head is suddenly bloody in his death scene when the ship breaks apart.) They're certainly not going to follow Lovejoy up the stairs and they're not going to try to go back through the dining room because at this point it is now mostly flooded with the main entrance to the dining room underwater. In any event, they then hear the little boy screaming.
  • If you hear shots and then they stop, even if you somehow know for sure the gun is empty, you still don't know if it's truly spent or if the shooter's just reloading. Or tricking you into coming out.
    • Or, for that matter, if they're carrying more than one gun. Lovejoy seemed like the type to keep a spare.
  • Plus, even if they did know how many bullets are in the gun and keep accurate count, why would they stop running from the guy who's trying to kill them? If someone's trying to shoot you, you get as far away from him as possible whether or not the gun runs out, because even if the gun runs out, he's still trying to kill you. And he's just as likely to try find another method of doing it rather than give up.

Jack Was Unpersoned

• Bearded Guy says at the end of Old Rose's story "We never found anything on Jack. It's like he never existed at all." Um...found anything when? Jack pretty clearly signed the drawing with his initials, and until however long ago Old Rose started telling this story, they had no idea Jack Dawson existed. They flat-out say that, and until they heard Old Rose's story they had no reason to look for him. And this is 1997—what, did they make an expensive satellite phone call to the mainland while Old Rose was talking and dispatch researchers to (mostly non-digitalized) archives, and have them jump on Alta Vista and Yahoo to run a search?
  • Rose didn't tell the story in a single sitting. This is not too clear in the final film but the uncut version has at least one scene where she stops to be taken to sleep and continue the next day (it's easy to see why it was cut). It's still implied because they're wearing different clothes between scenes. It's not that far-fetched that they would try to check her story in the meantime, or at least had some book aboard with a list of Titanic passengers (they were investigating the Titanic - obviously they would have done some research on the ship before).
  • Actually, Jack and Fabrizio were traveling with Sven and Olaf's tickets, therefore traveling under their names. That's how they would have shown up on both the passenger list.
    • Yep. Jack was never officially listed as a passenger, and with him likely being a nobody and records not being as well kept back then, in addition to anyone who knew Jack prior to Titanic likely being long dead, and he could easily have been lost to history.
• This is arguably a minor mistake, although not for the reasons suggested here. There really was a Joseph Dawson who died on the Titanic, a trimmer in the engine room, and his grave in Halifax reads "J. Dawson". If the crew of the boat really knew enough about the Titanic and its passengers to be aware of whether or not one person was aboard the ship, they would probably have guessed Jack was the J. Dawson who was known to have been on the ship. (James Cameron didn't learn about Joseph Dawson until after the movie was out.)
  • That being said, Rose probably specifically said that Jack was a passenger, which would rule out the crew member.

"You're so stupid, Rose!"

• Why didn't Rose just stay on the lifeboat once she'd been forced onto it? I know, the whole 'true love' thing, but Jack told her he's a survivor. We see from the following scenes that he has a pretty good instinct for what to do. If she'd just stayed on the lifeboat, he wouldn't have had to look after her, and there's a better chance that he would have been able to survive. Plus, when he found the door floating in the water, he wouldn't have had to put her on it and stay in the water. And even if he didn't survive, the end result would still be the same, except with less hypothermia.
  • Rule of Drama. She wanted to be with the one she loved and ride it out with him. There is some reported Truth in Television to this if you listen to the Historian's commentaries of the film where they cite studies of women who would do the same thing.
  • There is actually cited source where an elderly couple, Ida and Isidor Strauss (Mrs. Strauss gave her fur coat to her maid and saw her off on lifeboat 8, but refused to board herself), said that they'd rather die on board the ship together, rather than spend a lifetime apart. They perished that night. They're the ones shown in bed during the "Nearer My God to Thee" scene.
    • A lot of the women in the lifeboats who survived said that if they had known their husbands were going to die, they would have opted to stay with them.
  • That particular scene was filmed, but cut by Cameron, however the Strauses appear later in the film as the old couple huddling in bed together as the water rushes in.
  • A deleted scene showed that there was competition for the door. One of the nearby men wanted to get on the door instead, and Jack had to threaten him with immediate death to keep him from pushing Rose off. If Rose hadn't been there, Jack probably would have died fighting for it, or else given it to a woman or child. No matter what Rose did Jack was going to die that night.
  • This still doesn't make sense in light of several other scenes. Rose did not love Jack. The two may have had lust for each other but there were several scenes where Rose treated Jack more like her toy than like someone she loved. Rose was a spoiled brat throughout the whole movie including casually letting go of Jack after vowing to stay with him. She pushes him off the door with a casual "oops" and not the slightest bit of remorse. So to say that she wanted to be with her love does not fit who she was. It makes more sense that she did it because she was a selfish brat who treated the whole Titanic scenario like a game.
    • While it could be argued that their emotions weren't as deep as to be true love, and there were a few scenes where Rose looked down on Jack or treated him like just a dalliance, all of those were early on in their relationship. By the time she leaves the lifeboat and the scene with the floating door, Rose is no longer mistreating or misjudging Jack, and she's clearly gone beyond anything casual—even if her emotions are running high and she's only acting on desperation to escape Cal and her mother, to her at the time it felt genuine, and she would truly be panicking over losing him and yearn to be with him, as well as do all she could to save him. How she speaks to Mr. Andrews and everything up to where they hang off the stern can hardly be construed as "treating it like a game", and as for the scene on the door—it's very obvious that Jack has frozen to death. Once she has accepted this, why would she vainly try to keep him there, however she felt about him? Not to mention at that point she had to move, to be able to get the whistle and get attention, but she and Jack were stuck together by ice—so the minute she broke free, he started slipping/sinking off anyway. The timing of it may have sucked, but I actually saw it as more of a bitter irony...that even as she tells him she'll never let go of him emotionally, she's forced to let go of him physically.
    • "Rose did not love Jack" OH FOR FRICK'S SAKE! It's a love story! They made it extremely clear that the both of them were in love. What the frick do you mean "She pushes him off the door with a casual "oops" and not the slightest bit of remorse."??? Did you not watch the film??? It's very clear that this is a heartwrenching moment for her. She begs him to come back to life and she's overwhelmed with grief when she realizes that he's dead. The only thing that stops her from bawling her eyes out is sheer exhaustion. She only lets go of his corpse because she promised him that she'd survive and she couldn't survive without leaving him behind and fetching the whistle!
• The actually parodied this in How It Should Have Ended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkiaJxa0UCg
• I assumed she was incensed by Cal standing up there beside Jack and she KNOWS that Cal is lying about helping Jack. She decides, basically, "to hell with that", refusing to obey Cal.

Giving Her All She's Got, Captain!

• Why did the ship's crew (including Thomas Andrews) make such a big deal of the fact that five watertight compartments are flooded, instead of only four? The explanation given is that with five compartments flooded, Titanic's bow would be pulled downwards, allowing water to pour into the rest of the ship. But if water could flood the rest of the ship, that means that the bulkheads weren't watertight. And if they weren't watertight, then the ship would have sunk no matter how few compartments were flooded. Any thoughts?
  • The watertight bulkheads only extended up to a certain point. If the first four flooded, it would weigh the front of the ship down, but not to the point that the water could get over the watertight bulkheads. Flooding the first five compartments dragged the front of the ship down far enough that the water could leak over the tops of the watertight compartments, dooming the ship.
    • That was the problem with the bulkheads. If the bulkheads had reached all the way up then water would have been unable to keep pouring in, because of that design oversight water kept on rushing in
    • Thanks, but that doesn't answer my question. Since the ship's watertight compartments weren't sealed at the top, they were essentially useless. So why did Thomas Andrews think that the ship would have survived if only four compartments had been breached?
    • It does answer the question. With any four compartments flooded, the water level could not rise above the level of the watertight doors (that is, the top of the watertight doors would still be above the waterline). Five compartments, especially the five forward compartments, flooded with water would drag the bow down far enough for the tops of the watertight doors to dip below the waterline allowing water to spill over causing a chain reaction (the more water spills over the more the ship goes down by the bow, the more watertight doors end up below the waterline, and so on). Ironically, this means the Titanic would have likely survived a head-on collision with the iceberg; she sank because the crew tried to avoid it.
    • Actually, the bulkhead problem was not as big as you are making it out to be. The ship could handle having any two compartments flooded or the first four, which were smaller than the other compartments. Standard operating procedure was to try to pump water out of flooded compartments, which was done surprisingly well on Titanic. At least one boiler room was pumped dry before the wall holding back water in the adjoining room gave out. I'm not quite sure how the whole 'not sealed at the top' thing worked, but I imagine that, assuming sealing off the area with the watertight doors was not enough, the pumps could keep up with the flooding if the damage was not rated as catastrophic. Unfortunately for the Titanic, it was.
    • The best way to explain this is with a practical example. Take a plastic cup and cut a hole in the bottom, and hold it in water so that part of it is submerged. The water will fill the inside of the cup only to the point that it is level with the water outside the cup. With Titanic, if the first four compartments flooded, the extra weight on her bow would not be enough to drag Titanic down to the point that the tops of her bulkheads were below the water line. The water would have equalized with the tops of her bulkheads dry. Add in a fifth compartment, and the extra weight pulls the ship down further, and submerges the tops of her bulkheads, allowing water to spill over.
  • Titanic was a real ship, with two sister ships, Olympic and Britannic. The specification of the watertight compartments in the movie is accurate to the blueprints the first two of these ships was built to (Britannic's watertight compartments were modified during construction in light of what happened to Titanic). They were built to specific specifications that protected the ship against the accidents that her builders were able to imagine. More precisely, the floodability specifications for Titanic were that she was able to remain afloat with any two compartments flooded (which protected the ship against being T-boned by another ship at the junction between compartments), or all of her first four compartments flooded (protecting the ship against a head-on collision). A glancing blow against an object that scraped against the hull for a third of its length was not an eventuality that the builders considered, because it seemed so far-fetched as to not require protecting against. And honestly? They were right. No ship prior or since Titanic has been sunk by a glancing blow from an iceberg, and floodability specifications for modern ships are in fact still pretty similar to the ones Titanic was built to. Why didn't the watertight bulkheads extend higher and why weren't they topped off with watertight decks? Money, Dear Boy. A highly compartmentalized hull has no room for grand staircases or extensive dining saloons or Turkish baths or squash courts, and the crew would be kept from moving easily from one compartment to the next, making shift changes a long, drawn-out procedure. There was a ship that was built with far more compartmentalization than Titanic, the SS Great Eastern. This ship was extremely robust, but the compartments heavily compromised the amount of usable space below decks and made it difficult to move around inside the hull. She ended up being a financial disaster for her builders. The bulkheads were intended to prevent a single hole from allowing water into the entire length of the hull, and in that goal they were watertight. The layout of watertight compartments was demonstrated as effective in 1911, when Olympic was T-boned by the HMS Hawke, puncturing her hull at the junction of two watertight compartments, resulting in two compartments flooding. She didn't sink, and was able to make it back to port for repairs. Olympic survived several more collisions during her career (the deliberate ramming and sinking of a U-boat during World War I and the unintentional ramming and sinking of the Nantucket lightship in the 30s).
    • Another ship from the 1950s also proves that bulkheads aren't everything. The ship, light on ballast (meaning she was sitting high in the water and thus was not at optimum stability) got t-boned by another ship, rolled onto its side, and sank. Despite extra precautions, such as bulkheads up to B deck, she tipped over with only one of her compartments was partially flooded. Apparently you really can't plan for everything.
    • It sounds like you're talking about SS Andrea Doria. The situation with that ship was its fuel tanks (which were on either side of the hull) were nearly empty due to the ship being at the end of its voyage. Officially, the crew were meant to ballast the empty tanks with seawater, but in practice this wasn't done because the tanks would need to be very carefully flushed and washed clean of salt water before they could be used again, increasing operating costs and increasing turnaround time. When Andrea Doria was hit, the tank on her starboard side was breached and filled with water. The tank on the port side was full of air. This caused the ship to take on an unmanageable list within a matter of minutes that couldn't be corrected, as the seacocks for the empty air-filled tank were lifted out of the water by the list. Had the ship been operated according to the shipbuilder's specifications, she wouldn't have listed and might not have even sunk. To be fair to Andrea Doria, it did take a lot longer for her to actually sink than Titanic did (more than a day), and aside from those killed in the collision everybody escaped alive.
    • And of course we now have the Costa Concordia as another demonstration of a sinking. In that case, 3 watertight compartments were breached, and she was designed, like Titanic, to float with two breached. In that particular case though, it was actually capsizing rather than sinking that did for Costa Concordia.
  • And as for why the Titanic didn't just ram the iceberg head on? Two reasons:
  • Newton's Second Law of Motions. If she had struck the iceberg, the iceberg would be striking her with the same impact. "Any object that exerts force on another object; the object exerts the same force as the initial object". Paraphrased, but that's how it goes. It's like ramming your car into a tree at 50 MPH. That tree will hit you back at 50 MPH on point of collision.
  • The officers were all trained specifically to not aim at large objects in their way. We can't fault them for not doing what they were taught was the correct course of action.
    • The theory is that it's better to miss the object entirely-but, being a pioneer in its size class AND speed class (therefore providing unprecedented amounts of mass and velocity, and what's the FIRST law of motion?) and built for cruising around with luxury passengers (the ship designers built it for maximum cruising speed in a straight line-but not the ability to pull a turn that would throw everybody aboard onto the nearest bulkhead. While the ability to pull hairpin turns may be desirable in a warship, we're rather expecting that the crew of a luxury liner would put a higher priority on being where obstacles are not, rather than depending on agile dodging. Enter rogue iceberg.) it couldn't turn nearly as well as the helmsman was hoping for.
    • Newton's laws of Motion: 1) An object at rest tends to stay at rest unless enacted by an outside force. 2) Force is the change of Momentum (commonly known as F=MA) 3)For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The person who was talking about the 2nd law means the 3rd. The person who was talking about the first law probably meant the second law considering they married the law of motion to mass and velocity. The more you know. As for the question at hand: The way I always thought of the bulkhead problem (and I could be wrong) is that the bulkheads were sealed at the top, but if you weigh the bow down enough, water's going to flow over *something*. If the bulkhead only rises to steerage, then the water will flow into steerage. If the bulkhead extends up to the deck (doubtful) then at some point, if the ship is weighted down enough, the water will start flowing onto the deck.
  • I'd just like to point out that the 300-foot (91m) long gash was mentioned. The damage was actually six holes that in total were 12 to 13 square feet (1.1 to 1.2 m) large but spaced out along a 300-foot line. The ship could stay afloat if water was just entering either any 2 compartments, certain combinations of 3, or specifically the first 4 compartments (i.e. if all 4 of the ones filling up weren't the first four, the ship would sink). However, not only was the water coming in several times faster than it could be pumped out (which means the bulkheads would've probably filled up and then started the ice cube tray effect, sinking the ship anyway), but water was entering 5 compartments at once, so really all that could be done was to slow the inevitable sinking as much as possible.

Pollinating Rose

• Wasn't Rose - a young, fertile, healthy woman extremely lucky not to get pregnant after having sex with young, fertile, healthy Jack in the back of that car in an age before contraception and abortion? You know; unwanted pregnancy was the main reason besides religion women tried not to have casual sex back then and considering she was fully aware that her husband-to-be was a violent dick and her mother would probably disown her she would have realized the risk of an illegitimate child would have probably been a bad move. It's blatant that this scene, and the infamous art scene beforehand, exist solely to feature the two most desirable Hollywood stars of the age having a Fanservice scene together rather than anything realistic or intelligent.
  • It is strongly implied at one point that Rose's relationship with Cal was a sexual one. (He describes them as being married "in practice" if not yet officially.) That being the case, the fact she was not already pregnant suggests she had some familiarity with the contraceptive methods available at the time, and if she had indeed conceived with Jack, most people would likely assume that the father was her fiancé. While that wouldn't have been socially acceptable in that era, it wouldn't have been anywhere near as scandalous to be pregnant by the respectable man she was already engaged to versus a penniless drifter she'd just met. Cal could of course deny paternity, but he'd have no way to prove the child wasn't his.
  • I had the impression that he was looking to take her virginity on the trip. In a deleted scene he makes a slight joke about getting in the sheets "for the first time" and later on he was mad she didn't visit him after the dinner. He also a couple of times asks her to "open her heart" to him. Meaning she was, for a lack of a better word, pretty frigid.
  • I'm curious as to how you know Jack was fertile, since he never had children, and I don't recall a portion of the film where he gets a sperm motility test done. It's hardly unlikely when a single instance of sexual intercourse fails to result in pregnancy. I mean, planned pregnancies rarely come that easy! 1912 was not "before the age of contraception"; in fact, condoms were a commercial product in the 19th century, and contraception of one kind or another has existed all through human history. And "before the age of . . . abortion"? I think you mean legal abortion. Is the characters' behavior irresponsible? A touch so, perhaps, but unbelievable? Unrealistic? Hardly. Not for a dashing bohemian wanderer who has clearly been around the block a few times and a repressed society girl struggling against the confines of her station and in the passionate blush of first love. It would be unrealistic if they said let's wait! the way the good children of abstinence-only education pamphlets might.
  • Truth in Television: Whilst it's certainly possible to become pregnant from a single act of intercourse, it's not as common as most people think. I seem to recall reading once that the probably of becoming pregnant from a single sexual encounter was around 30-50%, so instant pregnancy from anything you do without protection is far from certain. They certainly took a risk, and there certainly was an element of luck at play there, but not as much as you might think. Besides, they were young, in love and caught up in the moment, they probably weren't giving much thought to the long-term consequences of what they were doing.
    • A woman typically ovulates only once per cycle, and if she isn't in that fertile period, then pregnancy cannot take place. Whether intercourse happens once or a dozen times, if there's no egg for the sperm to meet, then pregnancy will not occur.
  • One might further suggest that being doused with freezing North Atlantic water may not be conducive to conception.
    • Congrats, that entry is Made of Win.
    • Occurring only a few hours after their sexual encounter, it's incredibly unlikely that Rose's exposure to the cold North Atlantic water would have done anything to decrease her odds of fertilization. A woman's internal sex organs cannot be reliably "washed clean" of sperm by any non-surgical means. Had she been a few weeks into a potential pregnancy, the shock may have caused a spontaneous abortion, but even intense physical shock will do nothing to decrease the odds of fertilization within the first few hours. The cold would also have no effect, as by the time her own core body heat had dropped to that point she'd have died long before.
    • I am no physician but I am given to wonder: given that fertilization can take days after intercourse, and implantation some time even after that, does the overall state of the mother's body have no bearing on whether or not pregnancy occurs? I've heard it suggested (rightly or wrongly) that drinking to drunkenness in the aftermath of intercourse can reduce the odds of pregnancy (not that this is a recommended birth control technique, I'm not saying that!); does it stand to reason the kind of overall systemic shock that would result from the hypothermia Rose was certainly going through not even diminish the chances of this hypothetical pregnancy going forward?
  • This whole section is a testament to the importance of proper science-based sexual education in schools...:
    • Two perfectly healthy people having normal coital sexual intercourse without contraception will only result in conception if a number of biological factors line up along with a healthy dose of luck. Typically, 2.5% of sexual acts without any contraception lead to pregnancy. Assuming perfectly optimal conditions, it's at best in the 60% range.
    • Jack's age and appearance of physical health are completely unrelated to his fertility. Or his health, for that matter. Starving artists tend to die of things like starving, and we don't know how well he ate before getting on the ship.
    • As already stated, condoms had been readily available since the 19th century. It's not impossible that Jack had one, being the strapping young bohemian he was.
    • Debatable, since it was implied he was a virgin.
    • When?
    • Rose points out that he's trembling just after his hand went splat on the window, and he has the look of someone whose head is going "omigoshicantbelieveitthisisreal". If this wasn't his first time, he'd probably be less overwhelmed at the moment. Thrilled and happy, yes, but not in awe.
    • I thought that's because he was meeting his soulmate or maybe it was his first time having sex that wasn't in a brothel, and that was clearly her hand on the window
    • As someone who had the habit of trembling well after my first sexual encounter (though, thankfully, not any longer), I find it vaguely charming that you believe you can proclaim this with such certainty.
    • Eh, was just going off what Wikipedia used to have on a since-deleted "Titanic (Characters)" page. I suppose I couldn't rely on that editor's theory, thus.
  • Combining this Headscratcher with the one about Rose meeting Jack in Heaven, I have a WMG answer: Jack did in fact get her pregnant, and so when she found out, she got married ASAP. That's why she went to Jack in the end: she didn't care so much about her husband, just that she had a husband prior to giving birth. But,hey. That's just a theory. A Film Theory!

I Pay You To Not Recognize Me!

• Okay, so Cal failed to barter passage into a lifeboat, so what does he do? Grab a random child and go to the same officer who just rejected him seconds ago, says, "I'm all she has left in the world..." and he gets in. Um, pardon me, Mr. Officer, but I think you just grabbed a Titanic-sized Idiot Ball. The officer never stopped to think, "Now since when were you a father? Just now? Yeah right! Get lost! Let me put the kid in the lifeboat, but you're not getting in!" He can't be corrupted, or else he'd have accepted Cal's offer of money to get in the lifeboat.
  • It was pretty chaotic at that point.
  • It wasn’t even the same officer: Cal tried and failed to bribe Murdoch, who committed suicide shortly before the Cal-and-kid scene. The officer that let Cal in was Wilde.
  • The 'all she has left in the world' comment doesn't necessarily have to mean she's his daughter, could be her impromptu guardian. Let's face it, there's a lone child wandering around, what are the chances you'll find her parents in time? As for putting her on the boat and leaving him, is it really the best idea to put a small child with nobody to accompany her on a boat in the hopes someone will cling to her?
    • Just let the Officer prove, at that exact moment, that he wasn't going to adopt her in the future when he was somewhere a bit dryer and less lethal...

Cool! Found This Awesome Diamond!

• Rose hid the diamond from Brock by throwing it overboard, but, presuming it landed on or near the wreckage, what if a future expedition finds it accidentally?
  • By that time, she'll be long dead, and hopefully Brock will have understood it and not gone after it again once found.
    • I highly doubt Brock would change his commercial instincts or scrap his massive investment in time or money because he was moved by some old lady's story. She just made him work for it.
    • Character Development, dude. For what it's worth, a deleted ending involves him literally doing just that.
    • Brock throws his and his crew's livelihooods away just because he was moved by Rose's story? I think the larger question is why we're expected to be sympathetic to someone who throws a valuable object away that could help anyone (i.e. her granddaughter, Brock, her favorite charity).
    • The whole point of the movie is that material wealth, no matter how much, is ultimately meaningless when compared with the value of forming connections to other people.
  • By a future expedition, I meant one led by someone else. We know from real life that there have been plenty of other dives to the Titanic wreckage since 1997.
  • Lucky for them, I suppose. Likely Rose would be dead by then, though, and future expeditions have been more scientific than treasure hunting orientated, partly thanks to this movie.
  • Assuming it doesn't get caught up in a current and swept hundreds of miles away and falls right back down into the wreckage (which, given how it could easily be caught and swept away on a current, is a fairly unlikely event to begin with), it's a fairly small blue jewel in pitch darkness surrounded by rocks and jagged, rusting metal. Given how finding the ship itself — a massive hunk of metal — was for a long time considered near-impossible and was apparently almost as much down to good luck as skill, the chances of someone actually managing to see and find a tiny trinket on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean must be literally astronomical.
    • It was near-impossible to find the Titanic but once they found the Titanic, the salvage trips to the Titanic haven't stopped since.
    • Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a still tiny dark blue jewel on the vast darkness of the ocean floor. It's very difficult to spot, is the essential point.
    • And that would be even without it being covered by sand, drifting under something, or being obscured any other number of ways.
  • Wasn't Brock's expedition expecting to find the diamond among the wreckage? If it's discovered later, the finder would presumably assume it had gotten to wherever it ended up being found as the ship broke up and sank.
  • To address the original question, in the off-chance that someone eventually does manage to find the jewel after Rose throws it into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean (which, as discussed, is a pretty big 'if' to begin with), I'm not really sure that Rose has or really needs an endgame beyond that. She doesn't feel anyone should possess the Heart, has taken the best steps she can to ensure they don't and as hiding places go, the depths of the North Atlantic ain't the worst. In the unlikely event that someone does happen to eventually stumble across the Heart, well, she tried, but there's not much else she can do, and she has better things to concern herself with now. Que sera sera.
• The oceans cover 3/4 of the Earth. They are trying to find valuables on Titanic — which itself took decades to find. Finding that diamond would be like searching Nebraska.
• Titanic's debris field is 15 square miles. That's a very large area to search for such a tiny object. That's why they searched for things easier to find where it might be, like the safe in Cal's stateroom.

Jack Is Bohemianese

• What nationality was Jack in the movie? Apparently he went ice fishing in Seattle once, but I'm not sure if it was ever stated what country he is. An above troper stated he was from Bohemia ('...bohemian traveler' they said)
  • This sense of bohemian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemianism
  • OH! Now I get it. For his nationality...is it safe to say he's American as his actor, Leonardo DiCaprio is American?
    • He is from Chippewa Falls, WI.
    • I disagree that he is American. His second name, Dawson, is an English name and he boards the ship in Ireland. This would point towards him being British or Irish. There is also the fact that, back then, only the rich and members of the navy could travel the Atlantic due to the cost. Where did Jack get the money to travel there from America?
    • No, he boards the ship in Southampton. Also, America was founded by immigrants. There's no reason why there couldn't be an American named Dawson in 1912.
    • I'm sorry, what? Does your copy of the film omit the scene where he talks about being from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin? And no, lower-class people crossed the Atlantic all the time — Ellis Island processed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants to the United States each year up till World War I. Those passenger ships were not going back to Europe empty, either; as you can see here, even second class accommodations in some cases adjust to only just over a thousand dollars today, something you'd have to save for but within the buying power of all but the most destitute, especially if they were willing to sell all they own: http://www.gjenvick.com/HistoricalBrochures/Steamships-OceanLiners/1910-TravelGuide/LowestTransatlanticOceanRates.html#axzz2GIGjP2mY
    • Jack won his ticket on the Titanic in a card game. It's hardly impossible that previously he might have similarly managed to wrangle a ticket on a ship leaving America in a similar fashion.
    • Not to mention the fact that Jack could have easily worked a menial job at some point in the past (bartender; coal miner; heck, even a shipboard stoker) and might have saved enough money to buy a third class ticket to Europe. Heck, maybe he even worked as a stoker or even a sailor on an earlier ocean liner and made his way from America to Europe that way.
    • He didn't even buy it himself; the film explicitly shows him winning it in a card game. He might've lost a bit of money during the game before those tickets were wagered, but still.
    • A card game at which, having won the tickets, he excitedly shouts "I'm going home!". He's American. This is an indisputable fact.
    • Titanic's own second officer had once given up the sea to hunt gold in the Klondike and when that didn't pan out he worked his way east across Canada as a cowboy and earned a crossing home on a cattle ship. If a sailor from the Lancashire mill country can manage to scrounge up passage as a cowhand in rural Canada, Jack could have figured out how to earn money to get to Europe.
    • What would Dawson being an English last name have to do with his nationality? America is a former British colony, it's loaded with people with English and Scottish surnames.
    • Don't forget when John Jacob Astor asks if his family are the Boston Dawsons. He replies, "No, the Chippewa Falls ones."

Cal's Guard Disappears

• What happened to Cal's bodyguard? He just kind of disappears after the whole trying to shoot Jack and Rose scene. He obviously dies, but a scene showing his demise would have been nice - the man is a Karma Houdini.
  • He's practically standing at the breakup point when the ship, well, breaks apart. What more do you want done? He's abandoned by his employer and gets to die unpleasantly. There's not much more you can do to the man.
  • Even if we hadn't seen it, over 1300 men died on the Titanic. Men formed about 89% of the casualties. It's hardly a stretch to imagine that he might have been one of them even if the filmmakers hadn't made it abundantly clear.
  • The clue is surely in the question - he's a speaking-part bodyguard to the antagonist. No chance he will survive!
  • Assuming you mean Lovejoy. There is a deleted scene where Jack beats the crap out of him, which is why he is so bloody when he is shown when the ship is breaking apart. At that point he pretty clearly dies (though it's unshown) since he is right at the split.

Planning the Hockley Trip

• The Hockleys were on a shopping spree in Paris (Rose has acquired several paintings and the latest French fashions, and Cal bought a diamond with a French name, "La coeur de la mer") before boarding Titanic in Southampton. Why did they cross the Channel to go to Southampton when Titanic was going to make a stop in Cherbourg anyway? Surely it would have been a lot easier to board there, instead of hauling that vast amount of baggage they were traveling with across the Channel, only to go across it again.
  • They're kind of snobby, proud and arrogant; they might have simply wanted the prestige of being part of the maiden voyage of the biggest ship in the world all of the way across rather than jumping on part of the way.
  • They were American tourists in Europe. If you have the chance between seeing Paris only and seeing Paris and London before sailing back home, what would you take?
    • Expanding on the above, trips across the Atlantic were, due to the logistics and expense involved, quite long. Today, people would consider spending a week taking a trip to be quite a long time. In 1912 Rose and company would have spent a month or so on a trip, especially since repeating the experience in the near future would be quite unlikely.
    • Fair enough, if you're in the neighborhood you'd want to see both if possible. So why not do London first, then Paris? The big shopping spree mentioned in the movie was in Paris, and while the money involved in shipping all their purchases to the UK before putting them on a ship that's going past France again anyway is obviously not going to be an issue (including insurance for the trip, etc), it's still a big hassle from a logistics standpoint. A little planning ahead to minimize the distance you have to travel with all your paintings and diamonds and other stuff wouldn't have gone amiss. I know it's a minor point, but still...
    • They probably wanted to show off all their fancy Paris stuff to any friends they might have visited or been staying with in London.
    • "Why not do London first, then Paris?" Who says they didn't start in London, travel across the channel to Paris, and then return to London? It's not like that's a particularly difficult, long or infrequent journey even in 1912.
    • We don't really know what their itinerary was. A "Grand Tour of Europe" was very popular with wealthy Americans (especially the nouveau-riche) during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Cal could've planned the Europe-bound trip aboard one of the French liners, which catered to the American clientele even more than their British competition due to their very ostentatious interiors and such novelties as casinos and coffee shops. The ship would've docked at either Le Havre or Cherbourg, and Cal's party would've taken a train to Paris to begin their vacation. After several stops around such fashionable cities as Vienna, Amsterdam, Geneva, Venice, and maybe even St. Petersburg, they would've ended their trip in London and then taken a train to Southampton to board the brand new White Star Liner Titanic, which would take them to New York, and then home to Philadelphia by train. These types of trips were very common among the cream of East Coast high society. The first leg of the trip would begin in either England, France, or Germany (where major transatlantic hubs were located) and end back in New York via one of those ports as well.
  • Brock also mentions that Cal bought the diamond a week before they sailed on Titanic. That's plenty of time for it to be a last-minute surprise purchase before they took a cross-channel journey back to London for the last part of their trip. In addition, it could also be that they had originally booked to sail on another ship, which was cancelled because of the 1912 coal strike.

Why did Rose go out in the first place?

• Would they really go through all the trouble of bringing the elderly Rose out to the ship if they didn't even believe her yet? Especially given that's she's a centenarian and the stress might kill her at that age? Why would the granddaughter risk her grandmother's life and waste a bunch of time taking her out to the middle of the ocean if she's skeptical of her claims? ("You actually believe this is you, grandma?") Why is she skeptical if she's seen all those pictures Rose carries around of herself as a young woman? Why doesn't Rose show Bill Paxton any of those pictures as proof?
  • He says in the movie, "Everyone who knew about the diamond is either dead or on this boat, but she knows!" Remember, the thing that gets him interested in the first place was her mentioning the Heart of the Ocean by name.
  • I'm not sure why Brock would take the financial risk of chartering a helicopter to pick 100-year-old Rose up if he didn't believe her, but there's nothing inherently dangerous or unhealthy about being on a plane whether you're 1 or 100. Older people and their family are generally hesitant about flying but that's generally out of inconvenience. You have a good point that Rose's granddaughter should know what her grandmother looks like, but it's a drawing which could be stylized and look different than pictures. Also, pictures from that era are likely very very grainy and don't look very good.
  • Brock does believe her, or at least is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt; that's why he flies her out. It's the other guy who's skeptical, but since Brock's running the show he doesn't have a lot of say in whether she gets flown out or not. As for why Rose's granddaughter is a bit skeptical that it's her grandma in the picture, it's a fairly generic drawing of a naked woman with few instantly distinguishing features. It could have been Rose as a younger woman — but then, it could also have been hundreds of thousands of other attractive young brunette women of the time as well.
  • In further defense of Granddaughter, let's face it, it's hard for a lot of people to picture their grandparents as young people. She may have seen pictures of her grandmother as a young woman, but they won't be as immediately recognizable as the very elderly woman she sees on a regular basis, so she might not immediately make the connection. Plus, this is apparently a picture of her grandmother as a young woman naked — my guess is that Granddaughter probably doesn't want to spent too much time picturing grandmother in her birthday suit, as a young woman or not.
  • Also, this is apparently the first time that Rose has mentioned to anyone in her family that oh, by the way, I survived the sinking of the Titanic. Given that that's a pretty big thing to leave out of a person's biography, one perhaps can forgive Granddaughter for being a little skeptical that this hasn't come up before at some point in the preceding eighty years.
  • To add to which, this is also apparently the first time Granddaughter is learning that her grandmother apparently had a whole secret life that she faked her death to get away from, a secret life which included being rich as balls, finding true love that crossed the class barrier and any number of other adventures, on top of surviving the sinking of the Titanic. That's a lot to digest at once, and it's not that hard to believe that Granddaughter might need a little bit more than a waterlogged sketch of a naked chick to completely get on board with that story at first.
  • As to why they brought a centenarian to the ship instead of just interviewing her over the phone or sending somebody to her house, I think we can assume that Rose insisted on it. She probably said "I want the chance to see how the recovery work is going first-hand. It's all so fascinating!" and the crew figured, hey, if that's really what the old lady wants, why not do it? She's their best lead on finding the diamond, so they might as well do her a favor in return. Of course Rose's actual motivation is to get as close as she can to the exact spot where Jack died so she can drop the diamond in that same spot, in a final tribute to their love.

The Safe.

• Does abusive, jealous, misogynistic Cal seem like the kind of guy who gives his fiancee, that he doesn't trust and has his valet following, the combination to his safe?
  • He seemed like the sort of materialistic jerk whose idea of a "romantic" gesture would be having a safe's combination set to his fiancee's birthday, then boasting about it to charm her.
  • The safe is in her stateroom (Rose, Ruth and Cal all have one each) or an adjoining room between hers and his and contains, as well as his items, things of hers. Cal is all kinds of abusive and controlling ("You like lamb, don't you?") but for practical purposes, he is going to give her the combination to the safe so he doesn't have to be there every time she wants to change her necklace. The thing about Cal's control over her is: he has no fear that she will steal his money. Why would he? She will be his wife, his money will be hers to use and he clearly wants her to be well dressed to show off his status. He wants her to be pampered with physical objects (he hates the Monets, she loves them, so they bought them). The safe probably contains the petty cash he is likely to need on arrival in America for paying cabs and getting drinks in their hotel before he can go to the bank, and he has so much in the bank that he won't care if Rose were to put a little in her purse for spending money. As for the idea of her running away with his diamond and money (before Jack enters the scene), it's ridiculous! Where would she go, and how would she live on a few hundred or thousand pounds? Rose is a pampered society girl with a mother to support. Ironically, Cal trusts Rose with the combination to his safe, and probably access to a spending account, more than he trusts her with the contents of her own underwear because he has LOTS more money but he doesn't have another fiancee...
    • And it's quite possible that the money is there for Rose to use when she needs some.

Doesn't the Heart legally belong to Rose?

• It's on record that the diamond was bought as a present for Rose Dewitt-Bukater. At the beginning of the film, she is legally dead, not having come forward after the sinking. So the Heart - if it was on the wreck - would presumably count as salvage, with no legal owner to claim it. But as soon as Rose Calvert contacts Lovett and reveals she in fact is the person who legally owns the diamond, wouldn't Brock Lovett's quest immediately be rendered fruitless? Even if they found it, it still belongs to Rose, not the finder, presumably? So the moment Lovett is convinced of who Rose Calvert really is - and he seems to be the first to believe her - you'd expect him to realize he's lost all claim to the diamond and have some kind of reaction. He hasn't yet been humbled by Rose's wider story so you'd expect something of a tantrum upon realizing this!
  • Brock isn't just in it for money, he's in it for glory as well. Being the guy who found a legendary jewel hidden in the Titanic and brought it back from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean comes with it a certain amount of prestige and glory (and probably money as well from interviews, speaking engagements, etc.). A consolation prize maybe, but it's not nothing either. Besides which, never mind about crying over spilt milk, he hasn't even found the milk at that point, so what's the point of throwing a tantrum? Why get pissed about losing a treasure he hasn't even found yet? His only lead about the Heart has proven to be bust at that point, another one's just fallen into his lap, so he might as well follow it up and see where it goes. If it leads him to the Heart, then he can sort out the issue of ownership after he finds it, but if it doesn't then he's no worse off than he currently is anyway.
  • Besides which, at that point he doesn't have any conclusive proof that she is the legal owner of the diamond; she's a woman who claims she is, but it's not like the evidence at that point is overwhelmingly on Rose Calvert's side either (that whole 'living as Rose Dawson since 1912' thing would be unlikely to help her in any legal proceedings). But she might know something that'll help him find the diamond, so might as well hear her out.
  • First, no it wouldn't belong to her. It would belong to the insurance company that paid off the claim to Cal's father Nathan. Since they paid off the claim, they would legally own it just the same way that insurance companies own cars that are totaled and paid off. Second, under marine salvage laws, this would seem to be high order pure salvage. Brock undertook the trip at his own expense and put his life and money on the line in order to hopefully find the diamond. The diamond would go to him.
    • There is real-life precedence for this. A salvage team recovered a pocket watch from the wreck site: its owner was identified and it turned out his daughter had survived the sinking and was still alive. The watch was loaned to her "for life" in 1991 but when she died in 1997 the salvage company reclaimed it.
  • And on top of that, Brock might figure that if she is telling the truth, well that obviously shows that she left her old life behind and adopted a new identity. Perhaps he figures she wouldn't want it.
  • Also at this point Brock is, to put it nicely, kind of a smug dickhead. He presumably thinks that he can sweet-talk and swindle someone he presumes to be some senile old bat out of her rightful property if there are any legal issues surrounding the Heart. He's not expecting her to be as sharp as he is or to be so touched by her story.
  • The Heart was bought as a present for Rose. It's never specifically stated that Cal gave it to Rose yet; most likely, he intended to give to her after the wedding.
  • Well, it's just a shiny MacGuffin, but this would be one hairy legal matter. A personal claim to an artifact salvaged from a decades old British wreck in international waters by an American crew onboard a Russian ship!

One piece wood in the entire ocean...

• Ink has been spilled about how it would have been all but impossible for both Jack and Rose to be on the door in the water at the same time, but my question is why that Jack couldn't have just found another piece of wood nearby to use for himself? Sure, Jack might have frozen to death before the lifeboats showed up anyway, but I find it hard to believe that with all the wreckage floating around that that one piece of wood was the only thing either of them could've used.
  • Well, clearly it was the largest and most supportive piece of wreckage within their general vicinity, otherwise he probably would have gotten on something else, so QED. There was probably all sorts of wreckage nearby, but if it wasn't big enough, sturdy enough or buoyant enough to support both or either Rose and Jack then it wasn't very useful. As for why he didn't go looking further afield, he probably didn't want to leave Rose all alone (in case anyone else came by and shoved her off so they could get on), and his body was rapidly beginning to shut down from hypothermia, meaning he probably lacked the energy to go too far away anyway.
    • This. In a deleted scene, Jack has to tell a random person to leave or he'll kill him where he floated. In the released film, you can even see Jack think about it for a second before accepting that he's not getting out of this alive himself. And her best chance was for him to stay there and guard her until he couldn't any longer.
  • From a realism standpoint, they were lucky to find a piece at all. The Titanic sank on a moonless night, which means that it would have been a LOT darker than was depicted in the film (but a pitch black 10 minutes after the ship’s lights go out wouldn’t have been very interesting to the audience). Tests have been done to see how easy it would be to find a piece of floating wood, get on, and stay on, in pitch black, with limited time available due to hypothermia, and in a panic. It’s almost impossible.

Rose calling Brock

• Old Rose calls Brock Lovett at the beginning of the film to tell him about the drawing. But how did she know his number? The only guess I can come up with is that there was a "If you know anything about this picture, please call..." notice in the news story she sees, but this doesn't make much sense. If there was such a notice, Brock would have been happy that they got a call so quickly rather than being annoyed about being interrupted. Also, I doubt the phone number for Russian research vessels is publicly listed anywhere. So...how did she know his number?
  • Brock was specifically annoyed because they were about to go under in the submarines, which isn’t an easy task, so he wouldn’t want delays if he could avoid it.
  • I doubt the news story had anything as garish as a posted phone number. Brock and company didn't believe there was anyone that could give them information they didn't have. What probably happened was Rose called the tv station, said she was a survivor and would like to talk to the crew, a claim that doesn't come every day. Enough that they gave her the info to call the Keldysh. She wasn't directly routed to Brock, she was connected to his underling who had to convince Brock to take the call.

Jack letting Lovejoy believe he tried to rape Rose

• Why didn't Jack explain what really happened when Lovejoy accused him of attempted rape?
  • He didn’t want them to know that Rose attempted suicide.
  • Do you mean when Lovejoy noted that Jack had time to remove his jacket and shoes? I didn't take that as accusing Jack of rape, just that Lovejoy knew the story didn't add up. I doubt Lovejoy would have let it go with just a snide comment if he really suspected Jack of that. I think he suspected hanky-panky. Jack wisely didn't respond at all.

Whereabouts of Molly Brown's son

• Molly Brown lends Jack her son's coat for the dinner party. Where is her son? Is he on the ship with her? And if not, why did she take his clothes with her?
  • Per real life, her son Lawrence Palmer Brown was not abroad the ship.
  • As for why she had her son's suit, it was probably a gift she was bringing back from France.

Lookouts

• When Jack first saved Rose's life and got mistakenly arrested for raping her, wouldn't there be lookouts who could confirm his side of the story?
  • They probably did not bother to station lookouts at the stern in such a clear part of the ocean. No rocks, no icebergs, no other ships in visual range, nothing to worry about.
  • Or they would've been too busy while the ship was sinking to deal with some young couple.
  • The crow's nest, where lookouts are stationed is at the bow. Rose tried to jump off at the stern. There's little need to put lookouts at the stern because they'd just be looking at stuff the ship's already passed.
  • I don't know if the civilian ships of the day had aft watches or not, but on a ship with a lot of people, I don't think it would be unheard of to have an aft watch to be on the lookout for someone falling off the ship. I know that's the case with military (Navy) ships, but someone else who has worked on civilian ships might know.
  • I'm no expert, but I'd imagine that military ships also need aft lookouts because they're on alert for more potential threats — enemy vessels can come from behind them as well as in front of them. Managing to spot people who fall overboard towards the back of the ship is an added bonus, but (again, I imagine) isn't the primary goal of having a lookout posted there. Conversely, a civilian passenger liner isn't expecting to be attacked from behind, so why would they need to keep a watch for things coming at them from behind?
  • If the diagrams and plans I've just checked are to be believed, the Titanic didn't have a lookout post facing the stern — hence, no lookouts.
  • The three men are part of the aft watch, but they're stationed in the well deck, which was just below the poop deck so they didn't see what was happening at the stern.
  • Even if lookouts had seen the entire event, there was no reason to call them because Rose herself very quickly admitted Jack saved her.

Can they hear you?

• How did Officer Lowe know who was dead and who was alive when he brought the lifeboat back to look for survivors? Most people at that point were unconscious or near unconscious. Yelling "Is anyone out there?" is not an effective way of determining who's still alive.
  • Actually, it’s a very effective method. It is one extra chance that someone might answer his calls and lets any survivors know that there is a boat nearby. In real life they didn't even have those lights with them. Poking everyone with an oar would have taken far too long.
    • Far too long? The boat had already sank and the Carpathia hadn't yet arrived. It's not like they had anything better to do than look for survivors for the time being.
    • Far too long for any potential survivors. They can try poking those nearby if they like, but within thirty minutes or so nothing they do will matter. If they're in the water, they're dead at that point. Anyone relatively out of the water (i.e. Rose) would hopefully still be conscious and able to answer Lowe's calls. The clock was ticking so they had to keep moving in hopes of finding anyone in time.
    • The water temperature was about 28°F or −2°C. Some drowned or died almost instantly from heart attacks (from the shock of falling into freezing cold water). If you weren't young, healthy, and uninjured because of debris or whatever from the sinking, you would've been lucky to survive more than 30 minutes. The few lifeboats that went back waited until most of the people in the water stopped crying out, i.e. died, presumably to prevent their lifeboats being swarmed and capsized. If you didn't have the energy to get their attention (calling out, waving your arms, etc.) when they came back, you were a goner even if they did pull you out; few people were pulled from the water, and very few of them survived.
    • It's about as effective as any other option he has under the circumstances. It lets anyone still alive know help is coming, gives them a chance to respond and, well, what else is he supposed to do? Seriously, what's a more effective solution under the circumstances? It's easy to harp on and criticise from the sidelines when you're not actually there.

Why the diamond?

• Wasn't there plenty of gold and valuables on the Titanic that was salvaged and sold for millions? Why would Brock be singularly focused on that Heart of the Ocean?
  • I don't think there was really that much super-valuable stuff on Titanic that would still be valuable if it had not been on Titanic. Brock's obsession with the diamond has more to do with the fact that it is a famous item, even more so since it is rumored to have sunk with the Titanic. It would be the ultimate salvage find. The fact that it would be worth a huge sum of money, even if sold to a museum, was just a really nice bonus.
  • Not just that, but he has definitive evidence that it was there, who owned it, and where it was likely to be. Titanic salvage rules state that anyone attempting salvage can't damage the ship itself. He could spend days at a time searching individual rooms for things that may or may not be there, which may or may not have survived 85 years under water, and which may have been taken. Or he can look for something extremely valuable, that is readily salable, and that he has a very good idea of its location.
  • Almost nothing salvaged from the wreck has been sold - salvage law is fairly complicated, particularly for a wreck in international waters, but in general random people that dive a shipwreck can’t just take things from it. After many years of legal fights, one company became the legal salvager of Titanic and as a US company, they’re bound by a US law that allows artifacts to be recovered for exhibit only, not sale on the private market. The only thing that company has ever sold were a bunch of individual lumps of coal, and even that was controversial. No other artifacts are known to have been recovered. It’s not out of the question that someone plundered the wreck, but they would have to sell anything they took on the black market.

First class men

• Cal was first-class passenger. The captain's infamous 'Women and children' order didn't apply to men from first class. Shouldn't he have been able to get to the lifeboat without even needing to bribe the crew member?
  • Where is it said that the order didn't apply to men from first class? Smith's orders were "women and children first", not "women and children and first-class men first". In any case, this was spottily applied — some of the crew took it to mean "Women and children only", others interpreted it as "woman and children first, then men once all the women and children are safely aboard".
    • A detail: Charles Lightoller is a controversial figure due to being part of the first category; once he found a lifeboat full of male passengers and crew he ordered the men off at gunpoint (after chewing them out), loaded it with women and children then launched the half-empty boat rather than allow any man on. Note; this wasn't a second-hand account, Lightoller himself admitted he did that in an interview after the sinking.
  • Also, "infamous"? "Women and children first!" is pretty much a standard for evacuating, well, just about anything.
  • Only because it wasn't clarified, which led to a lot of confusion and deaths. As noted above, crew members didn't really know what exactly the order meant. Some thought it meant no man could escape the ship period, others thought it meant the men could get on after their wives and children were secured. Had they put it on record that the order meant "Women and children go first, then the men after them" then maybe there would have been more survivors of the sinking. There was a severe lack of communication between the officers and their captain; they pretty much were running on assumptions on what they thought the correct thing to do was, and...well...we all know how that turned out.
  • John Jacob Astor IV, the richest man on board, was forbidden from entering a lifeboat even after he argued that his young pregnant wife might need his help. As mentioned above, Isidor Strauss couldn't get in a lifeboat either, the only reason why people were willing to disregard the rule in his case was because his wife wouldn't leave without him (and he wouldn't leave as long as there were women and children left on board). Benjamin Guggenheim decided not to even try boarding ("We're ready to go down like gentlemen!") because he knew he couldn't. Jack Thayer, aged 17, was refused entry in a boat because he was a man, and only survived because he managed to climb aboard the overturned collapsible boat B after he jumped into the water. Yeah, the rule definitely applied to First Class male passengers.
  • It also depended on which side of the ship you were on. I forget which side because I'm dyslexic but on one side, the rule was not enforced but it was enforced on the other side of the ship.
    • Sorry, that is factually incorrect. The rule, or more accurately the order, "women and children first" was enforced on both sides of the ship. The only difference, as mentioned above, was in how the rule was interpreted. On the port (left) side, the rule was interpreted as "women and children ONLY", with the exception of assigned crewmen to man the oars and tiller. On the starboard (right) side male passengers were allowed on board if there were no more women and children nearby to be loaded. Being male and an adult on the Titanic drastically reduced your chances to survive. Survival for men also became less and less practical the more wealthy the individual in question was. Should a pauper like Jack, Fabrizio, or Tommy survive, he'd walk off on foot upon arrival in New York, live the rest of his quiet, faceless life, and never be noticed or cared about by the rest of the world again. Meanwhile, a middle- or upper-class man who survived a "women and children first" situation would most probably be a financially-ruined social pariah. Notice that the steerage men in the movie fight to escape from behind the locked gate (life after a shipwreck is still potentially worth living for them), while the first-class men tend to immediately accept facing death with dignity (their lives are already over either way, and drowning will be more pleasant than another few decades branded a dishonorable coward in early twentieth century society).

Let's check out the engine room

• Thomas Andrews gives a tour of the ship to Rose, Ruth, and Cal the day of the sinking. Right before Jack shows up and brings Rose into the gymnasium, Andrews says their next stop is the engine room. Would they really have been able to go down there, since I've read passengers weren't allowed in the engineering sections?
  • I imagine that being with the guy who designed the ship (Andrews) gives you free-reign of most places you're not allowed to be.
    • Also Andrews would know where to take them they would be safe, probably some sort of observation platform. He wouldn't lead them jogging between the boilers like Jack and Rose did.

Rose's age

• When the bearded guy Lewis is disbelieving of Rose's claim, he says that that had Rose DeWitt Bukater survived, she would be over 100. Lovett then tells him that she'll be 101 next month. Lewis pauses for a moment, as if this was news to him, and then says, "Okay so she's a very old goddamn liar!" However the very next thing he says is "Look, I already did the background on this woman all the way back to the '20s, when she was working as an actress." If he looked her up and found that she was working in the '20s, shouldn't he know that she's around 100?
  • I don't think he was surprised, I think he was basically saying 'so, what's your point?' to Lovett. His research made him believe she was lying.
  • Lewis knows she's obviously an old woman, but — for obvious reasons — he won't have access to Rose's exact date of birth, and just because she was alive and working as an actress in the 1920s doesn't mean she was old enough to be Rose DeWitt Bukater. If she was born in, say, 1902, that's old enough for her to be working as a young actress in the 1920s and an elderly woman in the mid 1990s while still not old enough to be Titanic Rose. He's just slightly taken aback when Lovett confirms that she is actually old enough to be Titanic Rose.

What guys' faces?

• When Jack and Rose make it back up to deck after the two stewards find the car empty, Jack says "Did you see those guys' faces?" How could he have seen their faces since they clearly weren't anywhere nearby when the stewards arrived, at least not close enough to see their faces?
  • A. He might have been talking about other people they saw on their journey back to the deck. B. They could have hidden somewhere and watched the stewards go by looking for them.

Lizzy's age

• Rose would have been in her 50s when she had the child of the grandchild we meet.
  • Suzy Amis, who played Rose's granddaughter, was 34 when the film was shot. Assuming the character is the same age, that would mean Rose was 67 when she was born. She could have given birth to her father in her thirties and then he fathered the granddaughter in his thirties, so the age is entirely within the realm of possibility. Not to mention it’s said that Rose got married and had kids after her stint as an actress in the 1920s. The mentions of Rose’s age would put her year of birth as 1895, so even putting her marriage and child bearing toward the earlier part of the decade, Rose would be in her mid twenties at the youngest when she had her first child, and assuming that her first child was Lizzy’s father, that would make him in his early forties at most at her birth which is hardly implausible. If he was one of Rose’s younger children, than the age gap is smaller. Plus Lizzy herself could have been one of her father’s younger children.
  • Even if this wasn't true, then Rose's granddaughter might have easily been her great-granddaughter, but they just go with "Grandma" and "Granddaughter" for convenience sake. As a personal anecdote, my cousin's children tend to refer to my parents as "Uncle" and "Aunty" even though this isn't strictly the relationship, just because they hear my cousin refer to them as such, everyone knows who's being referred to and it's just easier for everyone.

Cal in the ending

• I've seen frequent mentions of Cal being visible in the end scene where Rose returns to Titanic, however I can't seem to spot him anywhere. Where exactly is he?
  • I went back and looked at the scene in slow-motion. There's a lot of dark-haired guys in coattails and tuxedos, so it's hard to tell, but none of them look like Billy Zane. It's an interesting moment because Ruth doesn't show up, either, and neither does Lovejoy, but people who Rose has never met or talked with before do: the woman and her baby, First Officer Murdoch, Wallace Hartley. So it's not clear whether Cal and Ruth aren't there because Rose hasn't forgiven them or has put them out of her life (which would explain Lovejoy's absence) or whether Cal and Ruth aren't there because they died off of the Titanic (and Lovejoy isn't there because he's in another place entirely).
  • Cal and Ruth aren't there because only those who died in the sinking were there. It's why survivors that Rose befriended such as Molly Brown and Archibald Gracie aren't there.

Use one of the other pieces

• Couldn't Jack have just pushed one of the already dead people off a piece of debris to save himself?
  • He's keeping Rose's debris balanced and a deleted scene shows him guarding that float from other survivors.
  • From a realism standpoint, they were lucky to find a piece at all. The Titanic sank on a moonless night, which means that it would have been a LOT darker than was depicted in the film (but a pitch black 10 minutes after the ship’s lights go out wouldn’t have been very interesting to the audience). Tests have been done to see how easy it would be to find a piece of floating wood, get on, and stay on, in pitch black, with limited time available due to hypothermia, and in a panic. It’s almost impossible.
  • If Rose had just stayed on the lifeboat she actually boarded, it seems [like Jack would have had a much better chance of survival, for one, he wouldn't have been chased back below deck by Cal and submerged in the freezing waters again (something that in real life would have only exacerbated his hypothermia even if he got back out) but presumably he would have done the same thing he did with Rose, that is, ride the ship down then find the floating door. Then they both could have survived.
    • If Rose didn't stay with Jack, he would have been sucked down by the ship since he's not wearing any life vest. Also, if Rose remained with her mother, she wouldn't have escaped her miserable life and promise Jack to "hold on."
    • The above is talking about the second lifeboat, the one Rose actually boards. Her mother's in an earlier one, launched from the same side-they're both put in by Lightoller-but well away. If she'd stayed on that boat, whether she hides from her mother or not depends on whether or not Cal makes it and can tell her mother Rose is still alive.
    • The suction from the film is fictional as Charles Joughin who also clinged on the stern didn't even wet his hair.
    • That could be because Joughin was wearing a life vest. Rose, who was also wearing a life vest, only sunk because Jack (who was not) was holding onto her.
  • I've always wondered how come Rose got on that second lifeboat, believing that Jack would benefit from an agreement Cal had made with an officer on the other side of the ship. Since she wanted to stay with Jack, why not simply go with Cal and Jack to that other lifeboat and board it together? Sure, Cal might have found a way to prevent that from happening, but she wouldn't know that yet and clearly does seem to believe he is sincere about getting Jack onto a lifeboat. It's not a plot hole per se since she simply might not have thought of it in the heat of the moment, but looking at the options for how best all three of them could have survived that seems to me the best plan.
    • As far as him doing the same thing he actually did with Rose in regards to riding the ship down, keep in mind he only did that after first running back to the Grand Staircase to reunite with Rose after she jumps off, then gets chased by Cal deep into the depths of the ship, and then is forced to make his way back up through the stern. If Rose doesn't jump back on, Jack will likely have stayed above deck and tried to get onto one of the remaining boats, probably heading to the other side where he had previously sent Fabrizio and Tommy. From there, it's impossible to say how things would have turned out. Maybe he would have gotten shot and killed instead of Tommy. Maybe he would have been crushed by the falling funnel like Fabrizio. Maybe he would have been sucked into the Grand Staircase entrance and drowned when the dome collapsed. Maybe he would have succumbed to hypothermia earlier due to being soaked in freezing water earlier. Even if he does decide to ride the stern down, the absence of Rose leaves too many uncertain variables that it can't be said with certainty that he still would have found that piece of wood.

No one heard about Rose?

• So after Rose fakes her death on the Titanic and comes back to the US under an assumed name, she starts a career as an actress, and while she probably wasn't a superstar, she was well-known enough that someone could look her up/know who she was long after she presumably retired. Considering how Rose's family and the Hockleys were implied to be rather prominent in East Coast (at least Philadelphia) high society (500 people coming to the wedding, they get a private tour of the ship, and they routinely hobnob with the Countess of Rothes and the Astors), wouldn't at least a few upper-class folks in Philadelphia see publicity photos of Rose/go see a play or film she starred in and say "Hey! That lady looks an awful lot like Rose DeWitt Bukater!"? Judging from the photos we see, Rose doesn't drastically change her appearance except for perhaps a dye job (her hair looks blonde in one of the pictures), but if your friend dyed her hair a different color, you'd still recognize her face. So why does no one realize that she's Rose DeWitt Bukater?
  • Because Rose's death was reported and the family accepted it. Plus it could be likely that Rose might not have become an actress of note. In that she got plenty of work but wasn't a big name so she didn't get on the posters. If she was an actress in theatre or vaudeville then it would be even harder to identify her. And it depends on when she became an actress. If it was after the Wall Street Crash and Cal's suicide then that would have been enough time for the socialites to forget what she looked like. Besides, if they think she's dead and see someone who looks like her, they're more likely to assume it's someone else who happens to look similar as oppose to "Rose must have faked her death".
  • It wasn't suggested that she's that well known — the details that get rattled off about her are basic biographical stuff (she worked as an actress in the 1920s, got married soon after, moved to Cedar Rapids, had kids, husband is dead). You don't have to be world-famous for that kind of information to be circulating about, it's the kind of thing that could be found with a few phone calls, a bit of a search on Yahoo!.com and someone with access to some old records. Chances are she moved far away from where anyone would likely recognize her (possibly Los Angeles — good place for a struggling actress), got a few small parts to support herself but never managed to hit it big, and so eventually settled down to raise a family.
  • In the silent era of film, stars weren't marketed nearly as much as the Golden Age of MGM. a lot of biograph films didn't even have credits. I believe a Titanic survivor named Dorothy Gibson actually made a film about the Titanic and comfortably exited the industry pretty quickly.
  • At the time, and continuing into the 1930s, the upper classes (and especially the notoriously close-minded Philadelphia society) wouldn't be caught dead enjoying lowbrow mass entertainment like movies and vaudevilles. Rose's age means she would have probably been too old for Hollywood by 1930 (she would have been 35), so even if she was a giant silent movie star, very few in her former social class would have the chance to see her unless she happened to take a dramatic role on Broadway.
  • Maybe it was changed for the dub, but maybe Bodine saying that Rose worked in theater, not film. As a result, Cal and Ruth would not know of her unless they lived in the same part of town - and we know they didn't, since Rose stayed in New York City while they presumably returned to their lives in Philadelphia. That would leave either attending a theatre production during a visit to New York City where Rose starred in, as a possible reunion. But we know neither was the cultural type (and Ruth in particular would be too grief-striken to see a theater play for a long time).
  • I would assume that if nothing else, Rose would probably steer clear of Philadelphia as much as possible to lessen the chances of anyone she knew there encountering her. Most likely she hung around New York (not only a good place for actors, but even then a large city easy to disappear within) for a while, saved up some cash, and then made for Los Angeles to try her hand in films.

Marks

• When Rose undresses for Jack, why are there no red marks on her skin? There's already been at least one obligatory Of Corset Hurts scene, and anything that presses so closely into the flesh is going to leave marks.
  • Because Fanservice. The point of that moment is "Hot damn, Rose is hot!" not, "Hot damn, Rose is hot if you overlook the mild temporary scarring of the corset that then-contemporary society demanded she wore in order to comply with dominant attitudes surrounding gender!" The filmmakers bet the farm that most viewers would be more interested in Kate Winslet's beauty and nudity rather than pedantically quibbling over the lack of markings from her clothes. Not the most high-minded of motives or reasons, conceded, but it is what it is.
  • Actually if laced properly and the correct undergarments there should be no marks at all. A corset did come before the modern bra. Tightlacing is uncommon, not the norm. Ruth tightening it was shorthand for her mother restricting her lifestyle and the way she wants to live.
  • Yes, if the corsets are measured to fit and laced correctly, then there are no issues. Trudy was the one dressing Rose all the time, and not Ruth, so she'd know how to do it the right way. Or if you want to believe that Rose is applying a Rose-Tinted Narrative to her past, she leaves those details out to make the scene look more romantic.

Better hide this diamond

• Where exactly was Rose keeping the diamond all those years without her family ever accidentally stumbling upon it?
  • Family members CONSTANTLY have secrets that they never talk about and guard with their life, especially in painful situations like the Titanic's sinking. The best way to get someone curious about a relative's mysterious and fancy necklace is to tell them about it, after all.
  • In her jewelry box. Maybe hanging on her wall. Most people wouldn't recognize a priceless jewel.

The child or Rose?

• Had Jack and Rose succeeded in rescuing that third-class child, how would they have survived if, at the end, there was only one piece of wood for Rose? A Deleted Scene has another passenger pleading with Jack and Rose to let him grab onto the wood but Jack threatens to kill him because more weight would sink the wood, so what they would have done with the child if his weight would have sunk the wood?
  • That's assuming that they would have ended up in the same place that they actually did end up in. With an extra person in their party, there's too many variables to know how things would have turned out.
  • If we do assume that Rose, Jack and the child end up in the same position at the end for the purposes of argument, then it's almost certain that Rose and Jack will make sure that the child ends up on the floating wood first, even if it means both of them freeze in the water.
  • The boy is quite small and would have probably been able to stay on the floating door with Rose while Jack kept it balanced.
  • I can't remember if the scene where they first see the kid came before the first or second time they managed to get back to the top deck, but if it were the former, Jack would've made sure the kid got into a lifeboat along with Rose. No way he would've allowed him to tag along with them for the whole sinking.

Useless threat?

• According to What Could Have Been, Cal was originally meant to find Rose aboard the Carpathia, but she would have blackmailed him into never seeing her ever again in exchange for keeping quiet about his nefarious actions aboard the Titanic. However, when Cal took Lovejoy’s gun and tried to shoot dead both Rose and Jack, there were many passengers who definitely should have seen Cal wielding a gun and trying to kill two passengers with it, so Rose’s threat would not have served at all...
  • They probably didn't get a good look at his face, and that's assuming that they survived the sinking.
  • Also, that could be why they decided to have Cal simply fail to find Rose instead.
  • In addition, the true danger in Rose's threat in that deleted scene isn't so much the fact that Cal has a hidden secret; it's the dishonor and misery she intends to bring upon Cal regardless if he presses the subject of her returning to him. Because even if Cal gets lucky and can basically make the matter go away in public, he and Rose were still there, he and Rose still know what truly went down and how he truly behaved, and if he forces Rose to return he will have to spend his life with a woman who has that knowledge, who utterly detests him, and now has plenty of motivation to make every remaining day of his life utterly miserable. Rose is essentially saying "Leave me alone or I'll destroy your reputation among your social set, potentially have you arrested for attempted murder, and do whatever else I can to basically make myself an insufferable pain to you by spending my entire life reminding you and everyone who knows you of what an absolute contemptible bastard you turned out to be when the chips were down." It's not necessarily blackmail to keep an impenetrable hidden secret; it's her making it clear that any power-tripping flex Cal might be tempted to indulge in by forcing her to return to him will not be worth it, because she will play the 'mutually assured destruction' card by devoting her life to making sure he regrets it infinitely more than if he just walks away and pretends that he never saw her.
    • Moreover, as Rose would’ve been among those testifying at the American and British inquiries into the sinking coupled with the fact that she still has Cal’s jacket WITH HIS NAME ON IT (high end custom made outfits tend to have the owner’s name sewn onto the inside lining or inside tag for identification purposes to prevent mix ups) and Lowe would definitely report that he rescued one woman from the water who was wearing only a nightgown and a men’s dinner jacket on top of any survivors who witnessed the one-sided gunfight on the grand staircase. Cal knows that he’d be branded as a coward and his reputation would be irreparably ruined once word got out that he’d tried to murder his fiance which caused her to flee into the bowels of the sinking ship to escape where a deceased 3rd class passenger found and got her back up to the boat deck; while he (Cal) went back and got into a lifeboat as if he’d done nothing wrong.
  • The fact that other people may have seen it also helps her case, as it means that there are potential witnesses that can back Rose up (though granted, this one does depend on exactly how many of them survived the sinking).
  • Rose also has name respectability, outranking Cal from a class point of view. Her word against his would actually carry a bit of weight. Cal is new money, and is only marrying Rose for her name.

Maybe the finale is just Rose's first stop in heaven?

• Given how long and storied her life was, Rose probably had dozens of cherished friends and loved ones she would want to catch up with in addition to her husband. Also, she had probably spent more time with her husband while he was alive than with most of the others combined, and now she was free to return to him anytime. Not only has she waited 84 years to see Jack again, but she spent the last few days of her life thinking and talking constantly about him. Not to mention that, since he saved her "in every way a person could be saved", she likely never would have met all the others if not for him (and definitely not her husband, whom she apparently didn't meet until years later). So it makes perfect sense that Jack would be the first one she'd want to meet on the other side, but that doesn't mean she plans to spend eternity with him. The presence of all the other victims supports this as well: they had loved ones of their own to be with, and I can't imagine their personal heaven is the ship they died on! They would want to be on hand to welcome Rose to heaven, but then I imagine they'd be off back to their families and friends. The same applies to Rose herself.

As for "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets," well, MostWritersAreMale!

Why was elder Rose so explicit to Lizzy that Jack wasn't her grandfather?

• Maybe this is meta, but why does Rose point out that she never told anyone about Jack, including Lizzy's grandfather? It just seems so weirdly on the nose that it sticks out like a sore thumb. It feels like it was meant to dispel a possible side story, but I can't fathom why.
  • It was probably just to emphasize how personal this secret was that she didn’t even confide it to the man she married and had children with.
  • It honestly hadn't even occurred to me that Jack was Lizzy's grandfather. Isn't she supposed to be a teenager?
    • Jack wasn’t her grandfather. As for her age, given that she’s Rose’s live-in caretaker and lives apart from her parents, she would have to be an adult and is played by an actress in her thirties.
  • Let's face it, Lizzy's finding out a lot about Grandma this weekend. All this has to be somewhat overwhelming. Rose is probably just trying to provide some reassurance about why she kept it secret and that there aren't more bombshells to come (as in, "turns out the person you thought was your grandfather actually wasn't".)

Chief Engineer Bell's Reactions

• So let me get this straight. "All ahead full" means calm, and yet "Full astern" means panic, even though Bell couldn't see the icebergs from within the engine room?
  • Absolutely yes. Going from full speed ahead to full astern is absolutely only going to occur in an emergency. He doesn't need to see the reason for the order, it's not his job.
    • To quickly elaborate: full speed ahead means "move forwards at full speed". Astern means "move backwards". If you are suddenly ordered to instantly switch from moving forwards as quickly as possible to moving backwards as quickly as possible, something very bad is happening somewhere.
    • Especially when such an order is being given in the middle of the night during what has to then been a very uneventful voyage.
  • Also, even leaving aside the emergency nature of the situation, the man's the Chief Engineer. It's his job to immediately respond to any changes in direction ordered by the bridge.

---