I first saw Titanic in the cinema, in the UCI in Tallaght, to be precise. I used to love that cinema for its Ben & Jerry’s concession stand – Cineworld had an even bigger, better one but soon turned it into Baskin Robbins and that was that.
At UCI, though, I would buy myself an extortionately-priced tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough – I am nothing if not a purist – that cost more than a pint of the same ice-cream and eat it all before the end of the trailers, lest so much as a droplet of ice-cream would be lost as it melted in the heat of the cinema screen.
The trip to see Titanic was a family affair, but without my mother, who has never seen a film she couldn’t fall asleep in front of – with the notable exception of Not Without My Daughter, the film after which our podcast is named.
I think of her, now, staying behind as her children and husband and father – my 85-year-old grandfather, who would be born two months after Titanic took her ill-fated maiden voyage, came along for the experience – were bundled into the car and set off for the cinema, delighted with the chance to drink tea and listen to the radio in peace. She made the wise choice, really.
As for me, I think I started to cry when Jack tried to teach Rose to spit off the side of the ship. It wasn’t the spitting that set me off, necessarily, but that I, at the tender age of 12, was no fool, and knew what calamities were about to befall the “lucky” passengers on this luxury liner.
Every scene, every piece of dialogue, from then on, further set me off. Each new character, however minor, seemed to me to be doomed already. The little girl, dancing in steerage (“they’re probably all going to die down there!” I thought, weeping into my empty ice-cream cup); the kind maid, who helps Rose pick up the pieces after Cal’s outburst over breakfast; the nice beardy captain who, I knew, would ultimately choose to go down with the ship.
I must have cried for at least two-and-a-half hours of Titanic’s three hours and 14 minutes running time. My grandfather, who hadn’t previously witnessed my high emotional state – the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that would cause him to turn to my mother and ask, “she does know it’s… not real?” would not air for another year – was most perplexed by my loud sobbing.
I don’t remember being comforted, though, by either him or my father, merely watched carefully for signs that I was losing it entirely and might have to be removed from the cinema, a dramatic conclusion that, I’m sure, they both very much wished to avoid.
By the time Rose is selfishly hogging the entirety of the massive wardrobe door, I was absolutely inconsolable. My eyes were hot, angry, fogged-up windows through which very little was visible – albeit, enough to deny me any respite from the emotional torment I was enduring at the hands of one James Cameron, sadist.
I watched Titanic at least a dozen times over the next few years, once it had been released on VHS and entered the steady rotation of things I watched on repeat, along with the BBC’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
It never quite caused the same emotional ruination as it had that first time, although, I must confess that, even now, I get choked up at the sight of the woman holding her baby, bobbing silently in the freezing cold of the North Atlantic as the lifeboats return, too late, looking for survivors.
By the time I moved in with Brandin and the boys, in the summer of 2020, it had been over a decade since I’d watched Titanic in its entirety. For a while, it was a Christmas Day staple, perfect for putting in the time between breakfast and dinner, to be watched while eating the first of the family Terry’s Chocolate Oranges.
But of late, we had stopped turning on the TV on Christmas Day. Dad would read a book on his laptop and I would read a book on my Kindle and Mum would busy herself in the kitchen and occasionally we would break from our reading to peel potatoes or set the table, but the television rarely featured. I forgot about Titanic altogether.
Until 2021 when, with little to no explanation, our then-eight-year-old, William, discovered Titanic. The ship, the tragedy, the film (the films). He came home from school one day, to quote him, “a titaniac”, full of facts and figures and enthusiasm for a film that, to be honest, we weren’t sure was quite suitable.
Still, we acceded to his begging and sat down to watch it, determining to supervise closely so that we could skip through any questionable scenes. The hand on the car window was one we wished to avoid, if nothing else but so that we wouldn’t have to answer any questions about it; when, later, we got to the scene where a member of the ship’s crew shoots himself in the head and falls, listlessly, off the side of the upper deck, William announced, “I saw that scene on YouTube already”.
That Christmas, he asked for the newly released LEGO Titanic, a gift that would set us back a cool $800. He did not get it; instead, we purchased a LEGO-alike set from Amazon that he assembled in record time and which has sat fully assembled, ever since, on top of the shelving unit in his bedroom.
William can tell you how many lifeboats there were on Titanic. He can even tell you how many lifeboats there should have been on Titanic. He can tell you how many people boarded Titanic, and how many people made it to New York.
He can tell you which end of the boat is the starboard side, and where the stern and port are. He can name the shipbuilders who put Titanic together; he can name the ship’s captain; he can tell you which famous people perished on board.
He has Titanic T-shirts and a Titanic baseball cap. He has a captain’s hat, too, although that doesn’t seem to get as much wear as the rest; I think he finds it a bit too much like a costume, and Titanic is not a fairytale or a scary story to be dressed up in.
He’s even gone into the conspiracy theories, absorbing hours of Titanic-related documentary on YouTube.
“Some people say it wasn’t even Titanic that sank,” he told me once, “because of the letters they found on the bottom of the ocean.”
I don’t believe in conspiracies. Perhaps because of my own inability to keep a lie going (that is, if I could get it started to begin with), I find it implausible that enough people could be convinced to lie – and could do so convincingly! – to keep any kind of conspiracy going. The most obvious answer is, I find, usually the answer. Occam’s razor. Titanic is Titanic.
William still has his doubts.
I’m hoping we’ll make a trip to Ireland – or, at least, I was, before our fortunes changed and the idea of a transatlantic trip became further out of our reach than ever before. I’d like to take him to Belfast, to the Titanic museum. I’d like to show him, up close, things he’s only seen in books or in documentaries. I’d like to see his little face as he witnessed the scale of it.
A few months ago, a letter came in the post addressed to Brandin in the unmistakeable writing of a child.
Inside, a coloured pencil drawing of – also unmistakeable – the sinking of Titanic. Its yellow and black funnels are at an angle, smoke billowing into the sky, stick figures bobbing in the choppy blue-grey waves. On the upper deck of the ship, a single stick person is being launched into the sea below.
It is a child’s drawing, but it is also a scene of chaos and trauma and inevitable death and destruction.
There are two lines of text on the drawing – three, if you count the “to Dad”. They read:
“I drew a picture of the Titanic sinking.
I love you so so so so much.
William.”
When you eventually bring the boys to DC to play tourist (and everyone does!), leave time for a quick visit to the semi-obscure Titanic Memorial in SW. Designed by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (yes, of those and those), it dates back to 1931, though the statue has only been in its current home since the late '60s and most people stumble across it by accident - unless they're Titanic fans.
I think we all remember our first time seeing Titanic! Our cinema took a break in the middle because it was so long!