Dirk Pitt ftw.

I suppose there are conflicting accounts. A couple remembers Ismay coming out on deck after the ship struck the iceberg "looking as if he had just tumbled out of bed". Other witnesses said the band played until the "water was up to their knees". Eyewitness accounts can be rather inaccurate, especially under dire circumstances. Walter Lord, the author of "A Night To Remember", certainly tried to account for
the conflicting testimonies as best he could.

The biggest mistake in the movie in my opinion was that the Titanic did not break in two. But there were conflicting reports on that, and
up until Ballard's expedition, no one could say for certain.

Watch these eye-witness accounts, the man says he saw the band just before he jumped ship into a lifeboat and the band was not playing any music, the woman says it is an outright lie too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w26_CG8BPGI&feature=related

Here are some more eye-witness accounts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lywYIF2EdOY&feature=related

There's been about a million documentaries on over here on teh Titanic, and all the films as well, even the 1996 version of Titanic as well as the 1997 one!
They ran through some of the facts and fiction of the sinking, and basically it was said that back int eh day those who died were considered heroes, even if the opposite were true as it was not the done thing to villify those that died in a tragic accident. As they tried to portray the captain as a hero who went down with his ship while trying to help babies out of the water!

It noted that not one film actually portrays Ismay in a good light, while all the eyewitness statements point out he actually helped people get into the life boats, and got into one of the last to leave on his side of the ship, and it was a media tycoon of the day in the US that had a run in whith him previously decided to print a lot of waffle about him jumping in to the first life boat that this day would have gotten said media tycoon sued for every penny!

It also runs through how the inquests tried to blame anyone except the captain of the Titanic, again due to him not being able to defend himself and it not being the done thing. They instead forced blame onto the captain of the ship that was within travelling distance but did not respond.

Also went into the wireless opperator, and how he in reality had a massive part to play as he ignored the ice warning messages as he was trying to send out messages from the first class passengers.

Basically, the films were mainly running with the common thought events, not those that were documented, as it was pointed out that in one film the director knew that Ismay wasn't the bad guy, but decided to portray it as others had as the film needs it's bad guy and thats what the public had always been told that he had done.

Watched a very interesting Titanic documentary on NGC the other day. Actually two, one with James Cameron, and the other one dealing with a very interesting theory that was based on several ships' logs from the days both before and after Titanic sank. The theory was that there was a really cold air mass around the area where ice was present, and that this led to a phenomenon similar to mirages, where a boundary between cold and hot air bends the light, leading to the iceberg not being spotted in time, due to the horizon appearing higher than it was. This was tested and confirmed, and is a very interesting theory.

Well,

The Band Played On
As I said, eyewitness accounts can be faulty. However, the two eyewitnesses you cite are not necessarily wrong. The band was playing in the First Class Lounge in the beginning, then moved to the boat deck as the ship began to founder. It is quite possible people did not see the band or even hear it in the pandemonium, or were launching on a boat far away from their position. And I doubt the band played every second, so naturally a glance from someone jumping into a boat might catch them not playing.

But accept what you wish.
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semmern: Interesting theory. I'm a little dubious, as the California only ten miles from the Titanic's last position spotted the pack ice and halted in time. It must have been a very "local" phenomena. But, as pointed out in the movie, the Titanic was just entering the Labrador Current and temperatures were falling, so there may be some truth to it.

Certainly an interesting theory, and there might be some truth to it. Also, I imagine your height above the water would have something to do with it. Angle of refraction, etc. And I imagine the Titanic's lookouts were higher up than on any other ship of that time. And maybe the Californian spotted bigger pieces of ice? The whole event was, as so many others, just a snowball of unfortunate circumstances. The telegraph operator ignoring warnings from other ships since he was busy with passengers' telegrams, the sole radio operator of the Californian leaving his set early, no lookouts to spot the distress rockets, the lookout's binocs being left at the dock, and so on. All of which contributed to disaster.

I like how Cameron described his sales pitch to the studio execs, "This ship, Romeo and Juliet." I can imagine this being the same pitch for Pearl Harbor, "This attack, Romeo and Juliet." You mark my words, after more time has passed someone will be in front of studio execs with a romantic looking graphic of the Twin Towers saying, "This terrorist attack, Romeo and Juliet."

Except the big difference is that James Cameron is a good director while Michael Bay is not.

Actually, I remember reading somewhere recently that the Captain Rostron on the Carpathia was also threading his way through pretty steady pack ice most of the time he was steaming towards Titanic's position (which initially was sent out as being on the wrong side of the ice field the Californian had encountered).

Also, something else I just found out recently: shipboard wireless operators at that time weren't employed by the respective ship lines, but instead by the Marconi company, which may partially explain why California's operator wasn't at his station that night, especially as the ship had decided to wait in the ice field for the night before braving the ice field in the morning.