MovieChat Forums > Raise the Titanic (1980) Discussion > It should be viewed for what it is

It should be viewed for what it is

posted 16 years ago by davbot
2 replies | jump to latest

I just saw this movie on DVD last night. I added it to my Netflix queue figuring it would be a good laugh, which in parts it was. I see that the movie was made in 1980, 5 years before Bob Ballard and his team even discovered the wreck. I presume that no one had actually viewed the wreck of the Titanic prior to that?

The movie (and book, I presume) make A LOT of assumptions. The largest one being that the ship, after some 70 years on the floor of the Atlantic, is in perfect condition. Even if the ship had sunk in one piece (which we now know it did not), just the shock of the ship hitting the ocean floor would have surely caused more damage to it.

Even more preposterous than the idea of raising the wreckage of a ship that sunk decades before was the idea that the mineral would still be aboard - and, in the end, it wasn't.

I'm definitely no expert on the wreckage of the Titanic (go to Bob Ballard for that). But I believe that the actual wreckage is now so totally weak from being eaten by microbes at the bottom of the Atlantic, it could never be raised. In the movie, it looks as if the wreck is left at dry dock in NYC, where it was scheduled to dock back in April 1912.

I also wonder what any of the survivors of the sinking (all are now deceased, I think) thought of this movie.

[–] riker_alfa 16 years ago

You're right about state of the wreck. I'm not an expert either, but what some people fail to recognize is that in the 97 years that have passed, Titanic hasn't just simply been "rusting away". Microbes have litterally been feeding off of her, which is why nearly all the woodwork has gone. Fabrics such as clothes, bedsheets etc. is believed to be the first things which were eaten.

[–] lostliners 16 years ago

Dr Ballard himself gives the wreck 70 years maximum to retain any structure,tests done from other expeditions suggest as little as twenty years,any possibility of raising it is long gone,there will always remain certain wreckage,apparently leather shoes and boots remain untouched by bacteria.