New evidence uncovered from Titanic wreckage completely changes key part of film's storyline
A new documentary about the RMS Titanic which has used thousands of photos of the shipwreck to create a digital model of the vessel's final moments has indicated that things went down differently to the way James Cameron's film showed.
Titanic: The Digital Resurrection is a National Geographic documentary which has generated a 3D replica of the famously doomed ship and thanks to this, some of the details about the sinking have been confirmed.
The scanned model appears to confirm the long-told detail that crews in the ship's boiler rooms kept working right until the last possible moments to keep things operational.
Passengers on board the Titanic said the lights stayed on during the disaster and the 3D model of the ship found from the shape of the boilers that crews kept working as it went down, with their efforts saving plenty of lives as it gave some light for lifeboats to be launched.
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Over 700,000 images of the wreck of Titanic have been put together to tell the story of how the ship sank, with details including a porthole that was smashed by the iceberg and the damage it did to the hull which ultimately brought down the supposedly 'unsinkable' ship.
Another detail the documentary covers is the attempt to get passengers onto the lifeboats, and how it tells the story of one crew member in particular.
In a clip from the documentary, it shows them examining one of the lifeboat davits, the system used to raise or lower lifeboats.
They explained that they were looking at a part of the ship where First Officer William McMaster Murdoch had been getting people onto lifeboats, pointing out that the davit was 'in an upright or retracted position'.
That meant that when the Titanic went down the people crewing it had been trying to launch a lifeboat, with the documentary saying this confirmed testimony that Murdoch had spent his final moments working to launch lifeboats and save as many lives as possible.
"This coincides with Second Officer Lightoller's description, who was standing on top of the deck house back here," the documentary crew said, explaining that the Titanic officer's account of the sinking had claimed Murdoch was swept away when the ship dipped in the water as he and his crew were trying to launch a lifeboat.
Why this changes the story many people have in their minds is because there has long been some confusion over whether Murdoch shot himself rather than be swept away by the sea.
James Cameron's Titanic film has Murdoch (played by Evan Stewart) and depicts him shooting himself after accidentally shooting a passenger, rather than working until the last moment to get people into lifeboats before being swept away to his death as the documentary says.
At an inquiry into the Titanic sinking, a witness named Woolner said he saw Murdoch as 'very active' in getting people into lifeboats and said that there were shots fired during the evacuation, but into the air rather than at passengers.
Woolner said following the shots, he heard Murdoch shout 'Get out of this, clear out of this' to a group of men who the survivor described as 'swarming' into a collapsible boat.
Murdoch's depiction in Titanic caused a backlash among his relatives, and film executives travelled to the Scottish town of Dalbeattie to apologise to Murdoch's nephew Scott.
Cameron also acknowledged the 'character and heroism' of the man, saying on Titanic's DVD commentary: "This guy had half of his lifeboats launched before his counterpart on the port side had even launched one. That says something about character and heroism."
The director later said he'd 'come to the realisation that it was probably a mistake to portray a specific person' as taking their own life in his film, accepting that Murdoch's family had 'rightly' objected.
Titanic: The Digital Resurrection releases on 11 April.
Topics: Titanic, History, Film, TV and Film, Documentaries
Joe Harker