Titanic's loss was real.  The ship once described as "The Floating Palace" now rests in pieces on the ocean floor some two miles below the surface.  But even in it's broken state, it still miraculously maintains it's stately but now ghostly appearance.   These 3 pictures are how the ship looks today.  The bow of the ship stayed mostly intact during it's plunge into the icy North Atlantic, mostly because the bulk of the flooding happened there first and the water helped minimize any changes in pressure.  The interior shot shows most of the decks still intact.  Titanic's stern is almost unrecognizable.  It was crushed by the pressure of the water as it sank, landing almost a quarter of a mile away from the bow and somehow ended up facing away from the rest of the ship.

These links will let you see actual footage of Titanic at rest on the ocean floor.  They were taken from Dr. Robert Ballard's first discovery of the ship in 1985.       Titanic bow movie      Titanic stern movie 

  How well does the film Titanic compare to the real ship?  Well, let's just say that over half of the film's budget went into the sets and furnishings.  James Cameron wanted to make the movie as realistic as possible. Take a look at the pictures below and see for yourself.     I'd say they compare rather well, wouldn't you?  Incidentally, the black and white photo is the last known picture to be taken of Titanic before she sank.

I'd like to end these pages with two quotes from the movie that I feel best exemplify all that is Titanic.  They are words spoken by older Rose Dawson looking back on her experience with the life and death of the great ship. " It's been 84 years... and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in.  Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams. And it was. It really was... " "Fifteen hundred people went into the sea when Titanic sank from under us. There were twenty boats floating nearby and only one came back. One. Six were saved from the water, myself included. Six out of fifteen hundred.   Afterward, the seven hundred people in the boats had nothing to do but waith... wait to die, wait to live, wait for an absolution which would never come. " ***This page was posted on April 15, 1998 at 1:15am EDT.  The 86th anniversary of the loss of Titanic.  May she and all that sailed on her never be forgotten***