Titanic

there lifeboats for all the passengers?
The Mystery Children
One of the strangest stories was the Titanic's mystery children. When the ship 
was going down, a man passed his two young sons into the last lifeboat. The father, 
"Louis Hoffman," didn't survive. The boys arrived in New York on the Carpathia. 
But nobody knew who they were. No family was found.
In fact, "Louis Hoffman" wasn't the father's real name. It was Michel Navratil. 
Navratil took the boys from their mother in France and decided to start a new life 
with them in America. He didn't want their mother to know. Finally, the mother saw 
her sons in a newspaper, and the boys were sent back to France. There they told her 
their father's last words: "Tell her that 1 loved her and still do."
An Unbelievable Story
Alice Cleaver was a nurse, traveling on the Titanic with a family in first class. 
The Allisons didn't know that, years earlier, Alice killed her own child. But now, she 
was helping to look after the Allisons' two children, Trevor and Loraine.
On the night of the accident, the Allisons went on deck. Alice Cleaver acted 
quickly. She picked up the baby, Trevor. "1 won't let him out of my arms," she told
the boy's mother. Then she left and found a lifeboat.
After she got on the Carpathia, she kept Trevor Allison with her. All the 
newspapers called her very brave. But the Allison family thought that Trevor's 
parents died on the ship because they were looking for their son. Their other baby, 
Loraine, died with them. Was Alice Cleaver using Trevor to save herself? It is true 
that people with babies got into lifeboats more easily.
Years later, the mystery about Alice Cleaver and the Allison family became 
even stranger. In 1940, an American woman, Loraine Kramer, spoke on the radio. 
Her story was hard to believe. She was Loraine Allison! This was her story:
A man on the Titanic carried her into a lifeboat. This man was the ship's 
builder, Thomas Andrews! He and Loraine lived together in America. Sometimes 
Bruce Ismay, the president of the White Star Line, visited them. He wanted them to 
hide because they knew important secrets about the Titanic.
Kramer was probably not Loraine Allison. She was probably looking for 
money. In fact, many people think that Alice Cleaver helped her with information 
about the real Loraine Allison.
Interest in Loraine Kramer's story showed that, years after the accident, people 
were still interested in the Titanic. The world saw one world war and then another, 
and the great ship lay in darkness at the bottom of the Atlantic. But many People 
dreamed of finding the Titanic again.
"Leave it there."
The ocean was 4,000 meters (13,120 feet) deep where the Titanic lay. The 
water was black. Some people tried to find the ship, but without success.
In 1985, Robert Ballard and Jean Jarry were looking for the ship. There were 
twenty-three crew and twenty-three scientists on their ship, the Knorr. The team was 
using a submarine without a crew to search the bottom of the ocean. They worked 
for weeks and found nothing.
Then, on September 1, they saw pieces of metal on the ocean floor. Soon they 
couldn't believe what the camera was showing them. There was a big, dark shape in 
the water. It was the front part of the Titanic! The crew and scientists of the Knorr 
were silent for a minute, as they remembered the dead of the Titanic.
When the ship was discovered, some of the mysteries of the
Titanic were solved:
* The front part of the ship lay 600 meters (1,970 feet) from the back. So the 
Titanic did break in two as it sank. Before the ship was discovered, people weren't 
sure about this.
* The ship sank 21 kilometers (13 miles) from the position that Jack Phillips 
and Harold Bride gave on the radio.
Ballard and his team returned the next year to look at more of the ship. All of 
the wood was gone, but some things on the ship looked almost new. Ballard's 
pictures of the Titanic became very famous. But Ballard didn't bring anything up 
from the Titanic. He wanted to leave it all at the bottom of the ocean.
In 1987, the ship was visited by a team with a different idea. This time the 
scientists went down in the submarine. They brought 1,800 things up from the 
Titanic. A box from the ship was even opened on a French TV show. It was empty-
9Many of the survivors were angry about all of this. When Ballard was asked 
for his opinion, he said, "In a word, sad." This didn't stop the French team returning 
a few years later. They brought 3,600 things up from the Titanic,
What will the future of the Titanic be? One business man wants to sell trips to 
the ship. Will anyone ever bring the ship back up from the bottom of the ocean? 
Survivor Eva Hart hoped not. Before her death in 1996, she said, "Leave it there.”
The Titanic on Film
When James Cameron was writing the movie Titanic, he wanted to show the 
rich history of the ship and its many true stories. He soon became sure of one thing. 
The love story between Rose and Jack was the most important part of the movie. If 
people worry about the two young lovers, they will understand the disaster more..
The movie's story doesn't begin in 1912. It starts in the present day, when 
Rose DeWitt Bukater is old. She thinks back to the past. The camera shows us the 
young Rose, when she sees the Titanic for the first time.
Rose DeWitt Bukater is getting on the Titanic in Southampton. "It doesn't 
look any bigger than the Mauritania," she says, speaking about another famous ship.
* British actress Kate Winslet played the young Rose, unhappy at the 
thought of her future with rich Cal Hockley (Billy Zane).
* All of the clothes here are exactly like the clothes of 1912.
Jack Dawson is a poor, young artist, traveling third class back to America 
from Europe.
First-class passengers listen while Jack Dawson explains his ideas about life. 
"Life's a gift," he says.
* James Cameron later said about Leonardo DiCaprio, "1 didn't want Leo at 
first." But after Leonardo read some lines, Cameron changed his mind. "1 knew he 
was the guy.'
Soon Rose and Jack fall in love. When Rose asks Jack to draw a picture of 
her, she is wearing nothing except "the Heart of the Ocean" around her neck.
* This part of the movie was made on Leonardo DiCaprio's first day of 
filming. Important parts of a movie are often filmed at the beginning. The two actors 
later became good friends.
The lookouts watch as Rose and Jack are together on the deck. When they 
look up, they will see the terrible shape of the iceberg in front of the ship.
* Of course, this love story is a real difference between the movie and the real 
history of the Titanic. But, James Cameron explains, Rose's love for Jack plays a 
part in the terrible accident that follows.
As the water comes higher and higher, Jack and Rose try to escape from Cal.
* The actors in Titanic were often tired, wet, and cold. Later, DiCaprio 
described it as his hardest job.
The crew send rockets high into the dark sky—but the Titanic is sinking.
*In the 1958 movie A Night to Remember, the ship didn't break in two. 
Because of Ballard's work in 1985, Cameron and his team knew more about the 
ship's last seconds.
Jack Dawson, Rose DeWitt Bukater, and Cal Hockley weren't real people, but 
many of the people in the movie did exist.
The movie shows:
* Captain Smith and most of the ship's officers
* first-class passengers Molly Brown and Benjamin Guggenheim
* Bruce Ismay, the president of the White Star Line, and Thomas Andrews, 
the builder of the ship
* Jack Phillips and Harold Bride in the radio room
In the movie, Jack Dawson says that the cold water feels like "knives." These 
words come from one of the real survivors. Cameron read what many of the 
survivors wrote about Titanic. He used some of their words when he wrote the 
movie. It was important to James Cameron to show these real people. He carefully 
planned the story so everything happened in the movie at exactly the right time. Try 
watching Cameron's movie again after reading this book. Can you see all of the 
things that are true?
But there are some mistakes in every movie. While Jack and Rose are walking 
on the deck, you can see a small hill with a building on it behind Jack. But they are 
in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!
As Rose finishes her story to Brock Lovett and his crew, the last line of her 
story is, "He exists now only in my memory." Later, she throws the Heart of the 
Ocean into the Atlantic. 
At the very end of the movie, we see Rose back on the Titanic. She is young 
again, and Jack Dawson is waiting for her. The two are together again. James 
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Cameron says that people always ask him about this. Is Rose dreaming or is she 
dead? Cameron's answer? "You decide."
"The world woke up . . ."
After Cameron's movie, more and more people became interested in the story 
of the Titanic. Every year there are more and more books and videos on the 
subject.
But why? After so many years, why are people still interested in the Titanic? 
There have been worse accidents on , the ocean in the years since then. What is so 
special about the Titanic?
*
Some people think that the sinking of the Titanic showed the end of one part 
of history and the start of another. Before the Titanic sank, it was a time of great 
hope. People felt good about the world's future. Buildings were becoming taller, 
machines were becoming faster, and, of course, ships were becoming bigger and 
bigger nything seemed possible.
*
For many people, that dream of a wonderful future sank with the Titanic. 
After April 15, 1912, the world seemed a different place. Just two years later, the 
First World War began. Millions of people died. New machines were used to kill 
more and more people.
*
Maybe Titanic survivor Jack Thayer was right when he wrote, "The world 
woke up on April 15, 1912."