The cherub on the Grand Staircase was located on A Deck, even though this landing leads into the First Class Dining Saloon on D Deck.
Despite the vast amount of material about the ship that had been available in the mid-90s, this series appears to have paid no attention to any of it.
Before we get started, we'll be mentioning "port" and "starboard" quite a bit. To those who don't know or get confused, when looking forward to the bow (front) of a ship, starboard is the right side and port is the left side.
- Thomas Andrews, Titanic's chief designer who also had a prominent role on the night of the sinking, does not appear in the movie. His role is partially merged with Captain Smith.
- Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Herbert Pitman and Sixth Officer James Moody are also omitted.
- Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall is shown dying during the sinking when he actually survived (and was on the first boat picked up by Carpathia).
- First Officer Murdoch, a Scotsman, here has an upper-class English accent and his uniform has three stripes, the markings of a Chief Officer.
- Chief Engineer Joseph Bell has a distinct Scottish accent, whereas he was from Cumbria in Northwestern England. In addition, he seems to be working as a leading fireman, combining his role with that of Frederick Barrett.
- Isabella asks to switch rooms, but is told the ship is completely booked. Only half the rooms of First and Second Class were occupied.
- The ship is shown to be docked on its starboard side in Southampton, when Titanic was actually docked on the port side.note
- J. Bruce Ismay says that his father founded the White Star Line. Actually, Thomas Ismay founded the parent company Oceanic Steam Navigation, and purchased the house flag and trade name of White Star after the line had originally gone bankrupt in 1868.
- In the same speech, Ismay also snidely puts down Cunard Line's Lusitania by bragging about all the amenities Titanic has compared to the former ship. In reality, Lusitania's First Class accommodations had nearly identical or comparable features as on the Titanic, save for the gymnasium (which was already introduced on other ships and was hardly a novelty) and a Turkish Baths/swimming pool complex.
- Ismay says that Titanic will give the Lusitania a "run for her money," when asked if the former is slower, as if implying that her speed will be impressive. For the record, Lusitania — a winner of the prestigious Blue Riband — had a cruising speed of 25 knots, which was faster than Titanic's rated maximum speed (Cunard's crack express liners were called the "Greyhounds of the Atlantic" for a reason, folks). Moreover, Ismay would have been well aware of all this; White Star's new ships were never intended to match the Cunarders for speed, but instead offered their customers a more leisurely crossing with greater comfort and luxury (the fast Cunard ships were known to rattle uncomfortably during the voyage).
- The conversation also seems to imply that the Lusitania is the current fastest ship in the Atlantic. In reality, her sister Mauretania held the Blue Riband from 1909 until 1929.
- Fifth Officer Lowe says with apprehension that there is confusion amongst the crew as they've never worked together before. At the time, it was standard practice for crewmembers to be hired shortly before a voyage.
- There was a tour for the press and photographers on April 9th, but not a full press conference. In addition, Smith's comment about "shipbuilding becoming such an art that any ship foundering is impossible" was made five years prior on the Adriatic.
- When asked if he's had any accidents or wrecks in his career, Captain Smith brushes off a few "winter squalls, storms, and fog" as the most noteworthy of his "adventures," seemingly forgetting the collision between RMS Olympic and the Royal Navy light cruiser HMS Hawke, which happened under Smith's command barely six months prior to the Titanic setting sail.note
- As in most re-tellings of the story, it is stated that Smith planned to retire after the maiden Titanic voyage. There is actually very little contemporary evidence to support this. He certainly never confirmed it to any newspaper reporters.
- A reporter brings up the fact that the ship does not have enough lifeboats for everyone aboard, which Ismay dismisses by saying "we won't need lifeboats." The common wisdom of the period was that lifeboats would be used to ferry passengers to a nearby rescue ship, and indeed, in 1909, this practice seemed to be vindicated when the White Star ship RMS Republic sank and all her passengers were rescued with the limited number of boats. While Titanic was designed to have far more lifeboats, the shipping industry had not suffered a major disaster in decades and so there was little reason to look beyond academics.
- Attendants are shown placing chairs and decorations the day before departure. However, the ship had already been fitted out in Belfast prior to her arrival in Southampton.
- It's also ridiculous to assume that an outfitter would confuse a wicker chair meant for the private promenade suites with furniture for the first class dining saloon. It's also equally ridiculous that Ismay would scold him for that or even oversee the final placement of the furniture and fixtures.
- Ismay is depicted being on the bridge during the departure. In his testimony, Ismay stated that he was never on the bridge until after the collision.
- Despite the more ominous and foreboding tone with the departure, the film omits the near-collision with SS City of New York, which came undone from its moorings due to Titanic's massive wake and delayed the departure by nearly an hour.
- Benjamin Guggenheim and Molly Brown did not board the ship at Southampton, and instead boarded in France. Because of that, they, along with the Astors, were not able to attend dinner on the first night out.
- John Jacob Astor is described as "the richest man in the world." Though very wealthy, he was not even the richest man in America.note Astor was the richest man aboard Titanic, however.
- Dialogue during the dinner scene suggests that Ismay designed the Titanic. He came up with the general idea behind the Olympic-class, whereas the ship was designed by Harland & Wolff.
- Ismay is shown dining with the passengers. In reality, he ate alone.
- At one point, the deck appears to be entirely wet, as though it had recently rained. Titanic did not encounter any rainstorms during the voyage.
- It is stated that there was only one pair of binoculars on the bridge for the officers to share around, so Murdoch therefore confiscates the pair from the crow's nest. In fact, Second Officer Lightoller testified that each senior officer had his own set of binoculars. It was only the lookouts' binoculars which were misplaced. Shortly before the ship set sail, Captain Smith brought on Henry Wilde as Chief Officer, which meant Murdoch and Lightoller were each demoted a rank, and Second Officer David Blair was removed from the command roster altogether. When he left the ship, Blair accidentally took with him the keys to the locker in which the binoculars were kept (in other versions, he actually took the binoculars with him or they were left in his cabin). Furthermore, lookouts were trained to keep watch with the naked eye, since binoculars greatly limit the field of vision. Binoculars would only be used to inspect an object once it had been sighted. Given the state of optics in 1912, and that there was no moon and a flat calm sea, it is unlikely binoculars would have made a significant improvement.
- There are several major distortions with the story of the Allison Family:
- The Allisons' nanny, Alice Catherine Cleaver, was not a neurotic and unstable child killer. The miniseries has her confused with another contemporary (in)famous British woman named Alice Mary Cleaver, whose highly publicized 1909 trial was a cause célèbre in the United Kingdom after she was charged with murdering her baby by leaving him to die from exposure near some railroad tracks (the miniseries even gets that wrong, stating that she threw her baby off a moving train.) She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and locked up in a convent at the time of Titanic's sinking in 1912.
- It also appears that Alice is hired the day before the Allisons set sail on Titanic. She was actually hired two weeks earlier.
- The Allisons' daughter Loraine was an innocent two year old toddler in 1912. Here she gets an Age Lift to seven and becomes an extremely precocious, loud, rude and nasty Spoiled Brat.
- The Allisons lived in Montreal, Canada, but the film portrays them as an American family with a house in England.
- The Allison Party was much larger than portrayed in the film. Bess was also accompanied by her maid Sarah Daniels, while the family's personal cook Mildred Brown and chauffer George Swane travelled in Second Class. Mildred Brown boarded the same lifeboat as Alice Cleaver and baby Trevor, while Sarah Daniels boarded another lifeboat around the same time. George Swane perished along with Bess, Hudson, and Loraine.
- Simon is shown checking in the Jack family into steerage as they come aboard. However, he's later shown working in First Class. Stewards were assigned only to one class.
- As in many versions of the story, Bruce Ismay is shown to be desperate for Titanic to break a speed record when he would have known that the White Star Line's ships could not match Cunard's Lusitania and Mauretania for speed. Instead, the White Star Line aimed to beat Cunard by offering more comfort and luxury, something Ismay actually says in his first scene. Furthermore, reaching New York in six days instead of their scheduled seven day crossing would not have impressed anyone on either side of the Atlantic or generated much publicity, considering that many contemporary ships built specifically for speed could cross the ocean within five days or less.note That being said, Titanic was performing very well for a new ship, and the passengers were speculating that they might arrive a day early.
- An eastbound ship signals Titanic and warns them about ice on the first night of the voyage. In reality, Titanic did not receive their very first message regarding ice until the following day.
- When Simon and Jamie stake out the first class cabins, Simon unlocks one of the rooms to get inside. Passengers were not issued keys and all cabins were kept unlocked. The stewards did have master keys for the cabins, but this was to lock cabins which weren't in use. In addition, passengers never kept their most valuable jewels in their cabins. Anything worth stealing would have been left in the purser's safe, which Simon actually raids during the sinking.
- Simon finds an empty cabin by claiming to be delivering room service. Titanic did not have room service as it's considered today. First Class passengers could be served tea and pastries for breakfast in their cabins, but otherwise, they had to go to the dining saloon or restaurant for lunch and dinner.
- RMS Baltic did not send an ice warning until April 14th. In addition, while Captain Smith did show the telegram to Ismay, he actually used it to order the ship further south, instead of being ordered to increase speed.
- Captain Smith objects to Ismay's request for more speed by describing it as reckless and blatantly unsafe. But at the time, ships always ran close to full speed because the shipping lines stressed punctuality above all else.
- Phillips receives the Mesaba's iceberg warning at 4:40pm, when it actually arrived five hours later.
- Margaret Brown is inaccurately portrayed as a loud cigar chomping, poker playing, oversexed hillbilly. She is seen in the smoking room, which would have been a male only domain in 1912. She was also never referred to as Molly in her lifetime.
- Frederick Fleet notes a haze on the horizon and then immediately sees the iceberg. Both he and Reginald Lee actually noted a haze about ten minutes before seeing the iceberg, but didn't report it.
- First Officer Murdoch is depicted being in the wheelhouse when the iceberg is sighted. His watch was actually on the bridge wing.
- Fourth Officer Boxhall answers the bridge telephone, which were actually on the back wall, and relays Fleet's sighting of the iceberg, even though it was Sixth Officer Moody who did this. In addition, there's a random crewman in the background during this, whereas Murdoch, Hichens, and Moody were the only ones on the bridge at the time of the collision.
- Quartermaster Hichens rolls the ship's wheel to the starboard side when ordered "hard-a starboard." In this era, British vessels still used tiller commands, which referred to the direction the tiller would be moved in, not the wheel: the ship's wheel would need to be swung in the direction the ship was turning while the tiller (which controlled the rudder) was turned to the side that was ordered. Ergo, a hard-a starboard order would mean to turn the wheel fully to port.
- The iceberg collision is portrayed as an extremely violent impact, rocking the entire ship. While passengers and crew in the bow certainly noticed the impact immediately, in the rest of the ship, it was felt as little more than a brief shudder, if it was felt at all.
- After the ship hits the iceberg, Molly Brown kicks some ice that has fallen onto the boat deck. Ice did break off but fell onto the forward well deck (the realm of Third Class, which did indeed use it for an impromptu snowball fight), nowhere near the boat deck. In addition, the scene with Brown takes place on the port side (judging by the rake of the funnels), while the iceberg hit on the starboard side.
- While assessing the damage, Captain Smith claims that a 300ft gash has been opened along the starboard side of the ship; something that was believed to have been the case for several decades and repeated in various other Titanic-related works, but was years out of date by the time this was made.
- Captain Smith chastises Ismay by telling him that they have "precisely the number of lifeboats required by the British Board of Trade." In actuality, Titanic carried four more boats than the law required for a ship of her size.
- After he learned the ship was sinking, Lightoller threw a navy-blue turtleneck sweater over his pajamas before going on deck to assist. He is never shown wearing the sweater during the sinking.
- CQD did not stand for "Come Quickly, Distress," as Captain Smith tells Phillips and Bride. It stood for "All Stations: Distress."
- Captain Smith came to the wireless room around midnight to tell Phillips to prepare to send a distress signal, then came back 15 minutes later with the ship's coordinates.
- The officers see the Californian directly ahead and attempt to signal her from the bridge. The "mystery ship," believed to be the Californian, was actually sighted off the starboard side.
- Harold Cottam immediately tells Captain Rostron about Titanic's distress signal. In reality, he went to the bridge, and when the officers were dismissive of the message, then he went to the Captain.
- Several lifeboats are shown being launched with even fewer people than they had in reality. For instance, Lifeboat 6 launched with 23 people, but the miniseries shows only 12 people in it.
- John Jacob Astor is shown putting his wife Madeline into Lifeboat 4 relatively early in the sinking, even though it was the last of the wooden boats to be launched. They also spent much of the sinking waiting in the gymnasium. Finally, Madeline actually boarded the boat through a window on the A Deck Promenade, not from the boat deck.
- Ida Straus refuses entry into the same boat that Madeline enters. The Strauses were offered a place in Lifeboat 8.
- As in the James Cameron film, this version also perpetuates the myth that the steerage passengers were deliberately locked below decks during the sinking. The gates were meant to ensure that steerage passengers did not gain access to First or Second Class areas, preventing the spread of diseases so that only steerage had to go through health inspections and immigration processing at Ellis Island. Even when locked, they did not bar access to the boat deck. However, whereas the Cameron film demonstrates a sense of confusion, which likely did happen since the crew did not have any idea what the evacuation procedures were for steerage (whether they had their own boats, were allowed to come up, etc.), here they're locked because "lifeboats are for First Class only."
- The weapons that are removed from the ship's safe are a Smith & Wesson and two Iver Johnson revolvers. However, the guns that the officers had on board were British Webley .455 revolvers (accurately used in James Cameron's film).
- Isidor and Ida Straus are shown giving their place in a lifeboat to their maid, as happened in real life, but their maid was named Ellen, not Sophia.
- First Officer Murdoch shoots a passenger attempting to force his way onto a lifeboat, and then shoots himself. There is no evidence for the former, and while some survivors did report that an officer shot himself late in the sinking, it is now impossible to know which officer it was, or indeed if it really happened at all.
- During the real sinking, Second Officer Lightoller bluffed a panicking crowd back into order with a revolver he hadn't loaded yet (an oversight he immediately corrected), while Fourth Officer Boxhall fired several warning shots with his Webley (the only time a weapon was discharged aboard Titanic) when a crowd rushed one of the boats and Lowe also fired three warning shots from Lifeboat 14 to deter those attempting to jump in. Murdoch himself was last seen on the roof of the Officers' Quarters trying to deploy a collapsible boat (a 12-man job) by himself, and was most likely crushed when the forward funnel collapsed moments later. There is no evidence that Murdoch ever drew, much less fired, his own pistol.
- Moreover, during this scene (which takes place on a near-deserted boat deck), Lightoller and Boxhall are just standing there watching Murdoch. At this point in the sinking, Lightoller would have been on the other side of the ship struggling to launch the last of his lifeboats, while Boxhall had already left on an earlier lifeboat.
- Bruce Ismay escaped in Collapsible C, which was launched from the starboard side of the bridge. However, here, he gets away in a lifeboat on the port side. In addition, there are more lifeboats shown to be readied after his boat is launched, even though Collapsible C was the second-to-last boat to be launched.note
- Jamie is asked to help with the lowering of the lifeboats, even though the ship had more than enough crew to do that.
- Wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride are shown jumping off the ship together. However, they separated once they left their cabin, with Bride heading for the overturned Collapsible B and Phillips heading aft.
- Fifth Officer Lowe reports to Captain Rostron of Carpathia that the ship sank at 2:40am. It was actually 2:20, after sinking in two hours and forty minutes. It was also Fourth Officer Boxhall (who inexplicably dies during this movie), not Lowe, who was the first officer picked up by Carpathia and he relayed this information to Rostron.
- No dead bodies were fished out of the water and brought aboard the Carpathia. It's ridiculous to think that Captain Rostron would decide to further traumatize the survivors by putting corpses of their loved ones on display in the middle of the open deck, as well as wasting linens and blankets to cover up the deceased.note The White Star Line specially chartered the cable ship Mackay-Bennett to recover the bodies a few days after the sinking.note
- Survivors are shown coming aboard Carpathia by their lifeboat being lifted up on the davits. They actually entered on the lower gangway doors, with the lifeboats being brought up later.
- On the Californian, Captain Lord and wireless operator Cyril Evans are shown to be much older than they were in 1912; Lord was 39 (and beardless), while Evans was 20. Third Officer Groves was not on the bridge when the Titanic's rockets were sighted, it was Second Officer Stone and the apprentice Gibson. Groves — not incidentally, the only officer aboard aside from Captain Lord to have any experience at all with large passenger liners at sea, as a veteran of the P&O line — thought the ship in the distance was a passenger liner, but here he changes his mind and agrees with Lord that it is a small freighter or fishing boat.
- Carpathia arrived in New York at 9:30pm on a rainy night, not in the morning as depicted.
- The epilogue mentions "All attempts to raise the Titanic have failed." No such attempt has or ever will be made. While there were plans to raise or salvage the ship since she sank, none of these passed the conceptual stage, mostly because there was no way to reach the wreck and due to inaccurate coordinates in the distress signals, locating it was nearly impossible. Once the wreck was discovered, and it was realized that the ship broke into pieces rather than sinking intact, it became clear it could never be raised.note
- As for the ship itself, the miniseries goes wrong wherever Cameron went right:
- While the CGI model is pretty good, the exterior sets have no resemblance to the actual layout of the ship. For instance, the bridge set is missing the wings on its port and starboard sides.
- The bridge seems to consist of a single room, with an engine telegram at the front, the ship's wheel, and a map table in the back. The actual bridge was a fairly extensive complex. The forward section had the engine telegrams at the front in what was the navigation bridge. The main steering wheel (which controlled the ship's tiller) was enclosed in the wheelhouse in the rear section. The chart room was adjacent to the bridge through the wheelhouse.
- Titanic did not have a two story tea room with revolving doors and huge windows. The actual layout of the ship would not have any room for such an area.note
- The First Class Dining Saloon is depicted as being on A Deck, when it was actually on D Deck at the bottom of the Grand Staircase.
- The glass dome over the grand staircase is absent, and replaced with a chandelier.
- The First Class smoking room did not have a bar; drinks were served by waiters.
- The wireless room did not have a service window for the passengers. Messages were delivered via stewards or from the purser's office by pneumatic tubes, which do not appear in the room. It also did not have any external windows, as it was located in the middle of the boat deck.
- Titanic did not have a brig or prison of any kind.note
- The engineering sections, which took up three-quarters of the watertight compartments, seem to only consist of one room with boilers on one side and valve controls on the other. In addition, a modern klaxon blares throughout the engine room, which the ship did not have. Chief Engineer Bell is in an area that shows flooding, whereas he likely remained in the turbine area with the generators (which did not flood until the ship broke in half).
- Chief Engineer Bell and Lightoller having a conversation while apparently walking through the open watertight doors, giving a view down the length of the ship. The doors were located along the middle line of Titanic, with any view blocked by the massive boilers.
- When Simon and Jamie leave to loot First Class, Simon closes the gate and sees that the lifeboats are being loaded. They appear to be walking down the First Class Promenade, which was right underneath the boat deck and thus the lifeboats wouldn't be visible.
- Speaking of lifeboats, in several scenes they are obviously modern metallic ones instead of wooden.
- There was no space for First Class passengers to dance.
- The First Class Dining Saloon has an unobstructed, open view of the Grand Staircase. In reality, the casing for the number two funnel was positioned between the saloon and the landing, and entering the dining area required going through doors on either side of the enclosed casing.
- On the boat deck, the sign for the entrance to the Grand Staircase reads "1st Class Elevator." The elevators were actually on A Deck.
- A number of cowl vents can be seen on the boat deck, which the ship did not have. The whole point of the dummy fourth funnel was to provide ventilation for the engineering spaces and reduce the number of cowls, which often made ships like the Lusitania look cluttered.
- When Titanic arrives in Ireland, Henry announces to all passengers who are disembarking to proceed to the boat deck. However, the main entry doors were on E Deck, closer to the waterline. Indeed, in Ireland, as in France, passengers came to and from Titanic via tenders, since the Olympic-class ships were too big for Queenstown harbour.
- The forward mast is shown to be extending out of the well deck, when its base was in the forecastle.
- The crew attempts to communicate with Californian via a massive Morse lamp, which opens and closes to produce Morse code. The ship's actual Morse lamp were the little lights on top of the bridge wings.
