Sinking scene

Doghouse-6 is essentially correct in everything he says.

To answer one aspect raised by TheGuyWithTheFeet, about there being no "logic" in the WSL's covering up the fact of the break-up: the fact is that "logic" doesn't always play a major or determinative role in human affairs.

In fact, both the White Star Line and the British Board of Trade dismissed all testimony that the ship had broken in two and went with the version offered by the officers and crew, who insisted to a man that the ship had stayed in one piece as she sank. This was indeed out of concern that the public's confidence in the safety and stability of British passenger liners -- not just White Star's but Cunard's and the others -- would be undermined, and their business redirected to German, French and US lines, if it was believed that there was something structurally wrong with the design and construction of British ocean liners.

It wasn't a matter of the ship's sinking as such -- that at least was an accident that could be explained, and necessary counter-measures could be built into later ships to make them safer. But the notion that it broke apart was seen as undermining confidence in the fundamental shipbuilding capabilities of the designers, engineers and factories that created the Titanic, and therefore all other British shipping. It was seen as something that just shouldn't have happened. The fact that it would occur only under such an extreme circumstance as the Titanic's sinking -- caused by the unanticipated load this placed on the ship's structural integrity -- was something it was feared the public would simply ignore. Instead, there was concern that they would wonder, if the ship broke apart while sinking, couldn't it break up under other, less dire circumstances?

This was the fear driving the people sitting in judgment of the disaster, as well as the WSL. The fact that such fears were misplaced, or that a break-up would occur only when the ship was lost anyway, was basically irrelevant. It was these men's perceptions of what the public might think that drove them to, if not quite cover up, at least discredit and dismiss testimony from survivors who insisted the ship had split in two. And in fact, the word from the WSL to its employees was that it was important that nothing be said that would indicate the Titanic was inherently or structurally unsafe, and that included any testimony that the ship broke in half. Accordingly, the officers all testified that the ship had sunk intact -- which most of them, as trained seamen witness to the event, knew was a lie. But they thought they were serving a greater good, and since the ship was lost anyway, and its break-up played no role in its actually sinking, they could rationalize their testimony as not being of any real importance.

Doghouse is also correct that as late as the early 1980s, just before Ballard discovered the wreck, so-called "experts" still openly disputed accounts of living survivors as to the ship's break-up, claiming they were delusional, untrained in knowing what to look for (as if an engineering degree was needed to see a ship split in two), or simply, by then, old and forgetful. Talk about arrogance.

So was there a cover-up? To all intents and purposes, yes. Remember that in many particulars, the Board of Trade was also defending its own inadequate and antiquated regulations, so it was natural at the time for such a body to reach conclusions that absolved it, as well as the WSL, of any fault or oversight. Was concern about discrediting testimony about the break-up misplaced, if not downright ridiculous? Perhaps. But by their own lights, the WSL and the BoT were worried enough about the imagined effects of such testimony to hush it up and reach a wholly unwarranted conclusion.

This, then, was the "logic" of their successful efforts to convince the public that the Titanic sank in one piece. They had enough on their hands trying to explain the lack of adequate lifeboats and speeding through an ice field -- both common at the time. But at least these could be readily rectifed in the future, as they indeed were.

As to this movie, the depiction of the sinking to me was always marred by the thoroughly inexplicable shot of the ship being opened up on the wrong side -- the port side is torn open, even as we see the ship passing the iceberg to starboard (as was indeed the case). I have never seen an explanation of how or why this monumentally stupid shot got in in the first place -- it's inaccurate and illogical even on the film's own terms. But if you look at the model as it sinks, it's clearly listing to port. Could some idiot in the crew have "opened up" the model on the wrong side, thereby compelling the filmmakers to "flip" the underwater shot to match this mistake? Was it all a mistake from the start? I have no clue, but ever since 1953, people have been asking how and why this blatantly obvious and indefensible error could have made it into the final film.

The rest of the errors pointed out by Feet -- the passengers standing nobly on deck singing instead of trying to save themselves, the meaningless explosion as the ship goes down (I assume put there for cinematic effect, as the sinking itself is, rather surprisingly, depicted with little drama or detail) -- are flaws, but can be seen as dramatically excusable. The ship being torn open on the side opposite to the one where she passes the berg -- a physical impossibility -- is what really scuttles the sinking scene in this film.