Actually, all of this reminds me that I haven't watched the Leonardo and Kate 3 hour Titanic epic for a while.
The iceberg collision and initial flooding scenes were especially well done for 1997.
One thing that has always made me cringe is towards the end of that video clip when the watertight doors are closing and men are scrambling to get under them before they close (with a couple of close calls too) and then we see men who didn't make it looking around in panic not knowing what to do and the audience probably thinking they are going to drown.
While this makes for a bit of 'dramatic cinema' all those men needed to do was climb up the escape ladders to the deck above. Even ship designers back in those days knew there could be situations where individual compartments had to be sealed off quickly and escape ladders were needed.
In fact, after the collision the workers in the 2 flooding forward boiler rooms climbed up the ladders and waited for orders for what to do next - and those orders were to climb back down and start putting out the fires in the boilers which is what a couple of men are doing in the attached image below from the 1958 Titanic movie
A Night To Remember which shows shipbuilder Thomas Andrews (played by Michael Goodliffe) on one of these escape ladders in one of the flooding boiler rooms - he's the one on the right and the expression on his face says it all after he's surveyed the damage and realises the ship is doomed.
The actual dialogue from that scene was:
Chief Engineer Joseph Bell: "Anything more you want to see?"Thomas Andrews: "No. (turns his head and looks around) Chief, I'd get those men up as soon as you can".Joseph Bell: "Yes, I'll... I'll do that, Mr. Andrews".The other thing from the James Cameron epic in the video clip is when First Officer William Murdoch closes the watertight doors from the bridge and an indicator panel lights up showing when the doors have closed (this is also in
A Night To Remember and other Titanic movies).
Turns out there was no such lighted indicator panel on the Titanic. One was retrofitted to the
Olympic after the Titanic disaster and one was also fitted to
Britannic, the 3rd sister.
There was just a single lever on the bridge to close the watertight doors on the Titanic... and still today no one is absolutely sure exactly where it was located. Oh, and there was a button next to the lever to sound warning bells to let those down below know that the doors were about to close (and Murdoch waited about 10 seconds between sounding the bells and moving the lever to close the doors - he didn't do both at the same time as shown in the film clip).
And that lever only closed about 12 "automatic" doors at the very bottom of the ship as you see in the video clip. The rest - about 20 or 30 throughout the ship from memory - all had to be closed by hand. Some were, some weren't and some were even closed then opened again later (including some of the "automatic" doors in the engine compartments and unflooded boiler rooms) to run hoses and pipes when the engineers were trying to rig extra pumps.
Fascinating reading! Yes watching them scrambling feet before the doors closed freaked me out too!
But speaking of Titanic movies…. back in the 70s whilst I travelled an hour each way on trains to work… I would read a lot… and one memorable book was “Raise the Titanic” brilliantly written by suspense author Clive Cussler. From the first page it got me in… I could not put that book down… and then…. a movie was done based on that book!
If you ever get a chance, view that movie “Raise the Titanic” ….