Question: When you see the baker on the ship when it is sinking, he climbs over the railings. Surely when the ship split in half, the force should have knocked him off?
Answer: The baker is a real person who was the last live person to be pulled from the water. He was drunk and from his account of what happened he held on with all his might as the ship broke in half and then he rode the ship down, he even said he didn't even get his head wet. Because he was drunk no one knows the real story but the filmmakers put that in there to show his story. So no the force didn't knock him off, it didn’t knock Jack or Rose off either.
Question: Following up on the answered question about Rose being Cal's "wife in practice", was sleeping together before marriage socially acceptable among that class of people at that time?
Answer: No, contrary to what movies lead us to believe now, it was highly inappropriate for intercourse before marriage until about after World War I.
Question: How much did a typical 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class ticket on the Titanic cost?
Answer: The first class tickets ranged enormously in price, from $150 (about $1700 today) for a simple berth, up to $4350 ($50,000) for one of the two Parlour suites. Second class tickets were $60 (around $700) and third class passengers paid between $15 and $40 ($170 - £460).
Question: Did the real Titanic have a passenger named J. Dawson on board?
Answer: Not a passenger, no. There was, however, a 23-year-old Irish crewmember named Joseph Dawson who died in the tragedy. His body was recovered and is buried in Nova Scotia. According to James Cameron, he was not aware of this until after the script was finished.
Question: What does SQD Mean?
Answer: Its not SQD, it's CQD. This used to be the distress signal sent out by ships before SOS became commonplace, and it stems for the French pronunciation of CQ, the same as how they pronounce "sécurité". The D either means disaster or distress.
Answer: It was CQD. It stands for "come quickly, distress" or "come quickly danger!"
CQ does not mean "come quickly." CQ meant all telegraph stations to be on alert. Later they added D to stand for Distress. CQD means "all stations: distress."
Question: Do Rose and Cal ever sleep together? I've heard that they don't, but in one scene Cal says something like, "There's nothing I won't deny you if you don't deny me tonight," and we don't see how she responds. And in the scene where Cal blows up at her at breakfast, he says "You're my wife in practice if not yet in name, so you will honor me." That's pretty suggestive.
Chosen answer: When he says at breakfast "wife in practice" he's saying that yes, they indeed sleep together which is also why she isn't hesitant about sleeping with Jack so quickly. She obviously was not a virgin.
Question: How did Cal manage to get into a lifeboat with the child that wasn't his? All the crew seem to know who he is so shouldn't have been fooled into thinking the child was his?
Answer: Not every crew member would have known him. He was in first class, the crew were lower deck officers, and there was so much confusion about, that nobody was paying close attention to who he was, just that he was a man with a baby.
Answer: While they probably did know that to be the case, they had to consider the possibility the child had already lost their parents. By refusing Cal onto the boat, they could easily have been sentencing the child to death. At least with an adult the child stands a chance of survival. Hence the hesitation by the guard. Let Cal in with a child that's not his and save the child or refuse him and the child and let them fight for survival. In that guard's position I know what I would do.
Question: Rose's mother says "The purpose of university is to find a suitable husband. Rose has already done that." Does this mean that, at the time, young women would attend college primarily to socialize?
Answer: Not really "socialize" as we would now define it...they would go to upper-class colleges to meet upper-class gentlemen suitable for marriage, but it would all be carefully orchestrated. The women wouldn't have a great deal of say in the matter.
Question: How far could the rudder panel on the Titanic actually turn? Could it turn 90 degrees, or 45, or something in the middle? I'm wondering, because this could have made a difference.
Chosen answer: The Titanic's rudder was capable of turning to about sixty degrees off the centreline, reaching that position in about six seconds from straight.
Question: Over the course of the film we learn all the middle portion of Rose's life, but how did she get through life without any paperwork such as a birth certificate? Getting married, driving/flying, all need documentation the "renamed" version of herself wouldn't have.
Answer: Record keeping at the turn of the 20th century was still incomplete and inaccurate. Many people were born without a birth certificate being issued. Tens of thousands of immigrants entering the country often lacked those types of papers, and many had their surnames changed when they arrived. It was also much easier to get alternate documentation to prove one's identity or, in certain situations, may not have required proof, as it does now.
Answer: It was just a succinct, aspirational and poetic way of saying, "I will go wherever you take me, as long as we're together, an it's anywhere away from my hopelessly bleak and loveless existence." It's one of a few references they make to being together, wherever they go (with apologies to "Gypsy"). They sing the ditty "Up We Go." They say, "you jump, I jump." It also provides kind of an interesting foreshadowing and counterpoint to where they end up, souls knit, spending eternity together at the bottom of the sea. Obviously, it isn't literal.
Question: At the end of the movie, when the crew member yells something and waves a green light, what is he saying? Not the scene where he's looking for survivors, the scene right before they reach the Carpathian.
Answer: Using my amateur lip-reading skills, it appears as though he is saying "Come on, put your backs into it, men. We've been saved! Row!"
Question: What did they do with the model of Titanic after they were done filming?
Answer: There were many different "models". There were many miniatures, CG models and the full scale model down in Rosarita Beach, Mexico. The full scale model was disassembled by crew. Many other "regular folk" who knew about it, went to Mexico to grab what was left. Occasionally, various pieces come up for auction on EBAY.
Question: What happened to Jack's friend? I think his name was Fabrizio or something I know that at one point he falls into the water but what happened to him after? Did he die?
Answer: Yes. As we see the funnel collapse into the water we see a shot of Fabrizio swimming and then turning onto his back just as the funnel comes down and lands on him.
Question: How can Jack carry around a case of drawings without them rubbing together, and smudging the graphite or charcoal? Many modern artists will spray those mediums with hairspray or art fixative, but I don't think those were available in 1912.
Answer: Artists at that time could use fixatives to protect graphite or charcoal drawings. I had a small foldable metal sprayer for my drawings. The small metal tube is inserted into a bottle of fixative. The hinged top of the sprayer is bent at a 45-degree angle. As the liquid is wicked up through the tube, you blow through the bent part and it sprays the fixative onto the paper. It's a little hard to explain, but it works. There were also hand-pumped misting sprayers and atomizers (like the old-fashioned perfume bottles). Artists made their own fixative with shellac and isopropyl alcohol and also used clear casein (made from diluted egg whites) to paint over drawings.
Question: Pardon me for asking a "what if" question, but this confuses me: what did Rose intend to do *before* the ship sunk? She had changed her mind about Jack, choosing him instead of Cal. However, she and her mother needed the security from Cal. They were in debt. Jack was poor. If Rose married Jack, Cal and his family would be offended by the broken engagement. They would not help Rose's mother. Would Rose just marry Jack and abandon her financially-burdened mother in New York?
Answer: Rose was strong-minded and determined but was thinking "in the moment" and had no real plan or idea about what to do if she'd left with Jack, had he survived. It's unknown if they would have stayed together and married. Rose had only told Jack she was going with him. At some point she might reconnect with her mother. Cal Hoxley probably would be so humiliated by Rose deserting him for a penniless artist, that he would have hushed it up and invented some story about the broken engagement. He likely had already paid off the DeWitt Bukater debts to clean-up any lingering complications or embarrassments before marrying Rose. He probably would also have made some minimal financial arrangement for Ruth, not from compassion but for appearances sake. As we saw, Rose faired quite well on her own once she did escape Cal and her mother.
Answer: That was her plan, assuming she would have been able to follow through with it. This would have left her mother high and dry, but that didn't seem to be a very big concern for her. However, in reality, between Cal, Lovejoy, and Ruth, Rose would find it very hard to even see Jack, much less marry him, if the Titanic had made it to New York in one piece. Women had very few legal rights in 1912, so once the marriage was performed, Cal could pretty much keep her imprisoned, for all intents and purposes, and Jack could do nothing about it, even if he wasn't a penniless vagrant...which he was.
Your last statement about Cal pretty much being able to keep Rose imprisoned has no factual basis. Women still had many legal rights, and while some states had more liberal divorce laws, by 1915, 1 in 7 marriages ended in divorce. By the 1920's, it had risen to 15%. Not to mention that in 1917, New York had given women full suffrage.
"Imprisonment" might be too strong of a word to use, but cultural norms at the time (such as those regarding marriage, the role of the wife/ homemaker, and divorce - taboo) didn't give women much freedom. Divorce statistics are notoriously inaccurate and, depending on the method used to calculate the number, percent, or rate, different figures are derived. Instead of 15%, the RATE of divorce (per 1000 PEOPLE) was 1.7 in the 1920s. Women's suffrage is hardly an indication of freedom, rights, or equality. [Just think how "effective" the 14th Amendment (1868) was in granting equal legal and civil rights.].
Regardless of any restrictions on "married" women, Rose was not yet wed to Cal. They were only engaged, and he had no legal right to impose anything on her at that point. If Rose wanted to walk off the ship with Jack, there was nothing Cal or her mother could legally do to stop her. If they tried to interfere, Rose could have the ship's officers or the White Star Line's personnel intervene.
Question: Why did the guy in the engine room turn that big wheel before throwing the engines into reverse?
Answer: In order to reverse the engines, they have to be completely stopped first. So first they shut the dampers so that the engines slow and turn the wheel to release pent up steam. Then they go into reverse.
Chosen answer: A box of matches. At 1:03:10, Cal is seen putting a cigarette in his mouth and then patting his coat pockets looking for a match to light it with.
Jeff Swanson