A famous love story on a real ship. About 1,500 people really died that night — so which parts of the film are true?
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These are the new words. Match each word (1–8) to its meaning (A–H). Say your answers out loud — "I think 1 is D" — then check.
1 = D (a ship) · 2 = G (an iceberg) · 3 = B (a lifeboat) · 4 = A (a passenger)
5 = F (rich) · 6 = H (poor) · 7 = C (to sink) · 8 = E (to rescue)
James Cameron's Titanic (1997). Read each part. Then try the questions from memory, and talk about the last one. (There are spoilers — that is fine, we want to talk about it.) This really happened, and many people died, so we will talk about it carefully.
The film starts today, not in 1912. A man is looking for treasure at the bottom of the sea, where the ship is now. He finds a picture of a young woman. An old woman of 100 years old sees the picture on television. She says, "That is me." Her name is Rose. She starts to tell her story.
It is April 1912, in England. The Titanic is the biggest ship in the world. Rose is 17. She is rich, but her family has no money now, so she must marry a rich man called Cal. She does not love him. She is very unhappy. One night she runs to the back of the ship because she wants to jump into the sea.
A young man stops her. His name is Jack. He is poor and he draws pictures. He has a third-class ticket — he won it in a card game. Jack and Rose become friends, and then they fall in love. Cal is angry.
1. Why is Rose so unhappy on the ship?
2. Who is Jack, and how does he meet Rose?
1. Her family has no money, so she must marry a rich man, Cal. She does not love him and she feels trapped.
2. Jack is a poor young artist with a third-class ticket. He stops Rose when she wants to jump into the sea.
It is a very cold night. The sea is quiet. Two men are watching the sea from high on the ship. Suddenly they see a huge iceberg — but it is too late. The ship turns, but the ice cuts the side of the ship under the water.
The man who designed the ship, Thomas Andrews, looks at the water coming in. He tells the captain the truth: the ship will sink in about two hours. And there is a terrible problem. There are not enough lifeboats. There are lifeboats for only half of the people.
Some lifeboats go down with only a few people in them. Down below, third-class passengers wait behind gates. They cannot get up to the boats. The musicians stay on the deck and play music. Andrews stands alone in a quiet room. The captain goes back to the bridge.
1. What does Thomas Andrews tell the captain?
2. Why can many people not leave the ship?
1. That the ship will sink in about two hours. It cannot be saved.
2. There are not enough lifeboats — only for about half the people. Some boats also go down half empty, and the poorer passengers wait behind gates below.
The front of the ship goes under the water. The back goes up into the air. Then the ship breaks into two pieces and goes down. Hundreds of people are now in the water. The water is very, very cold — about −2 degrees. People cannot live in this water for long.
Jack finds a piece of wood for Rose. It is only big enough for one person, so Jack stays in the water. He holds her hand and talks to her. Then he cannot talk any more. Only one lifeboat comes back to look for people, and it is too late for almost everybody.
In the morning, another ship rescues Rose. When they ask her name, she gives Jack's family name: Rose Dawson. Many years later, the old Rose is on the treasure ship. She goes out into the dark and drops a very expensive blue diamond into the sea, above the ship.
1. Why do so many people die in the water?
2. What name does Rose give when she is rescued?
1. The water is about −2 degrees. It is too cold, and only one lifeboat comes back, too late.
2. She gives Jack's family name and says she is Rose Dawson.
To tell this story you must say what existed on that night: how many boats, how many people, how cold the water was. English uses there was and there were for this.
Write was or were in each gap.
1. There a lot of ice in the sea that night.
2. There twenty lifeboats on the ship.
3. There more than two thousand people on board.
4. There a band on the ship, and it played on the deck.
1. was (a lot of ice = one thing you cannot count)
2. were (twenty boats = plural)
3. were (two thousand people = plural)
4. was (one band = singular)
Write wasn't, weren't, Was there or Were there.
1. There enough lifeboats for everybody.
2. There enough time to help the people below.
3. any music on the deck? — Yes, the band played.
4. many children in the boats? — Yes, there were.
1. weren't (lifeboats = plural)
2. wasn't (time = one thing you cannot count)
3. Was there (music = singular)
4. Were there (children = plural)
Fill each gap with was, were, wasn't or weren't. Read it aloud when you finish.
"It a very cold night. There no wind and the sea quiet. There hundreds of people on the deck, but there enough boats for them. There a huge iceberg in front of us, and we saw it too late."
was · was · was · were · weren't · was
Remember: there was for one thing (a night, a wind, an iceberg), there were for many things (hundreds of people, boats).
The ship, the night and the people who died are all real. Jack and Rose are not. Here is the difference between the film and the true record.
There were 20 lifeboats on the Titanic. There was space in them for about 1,178 people. But there were about 2,200 people on the ship. About 1,500 people died.
And here is the terrible part: this was legal. The old British rules counted the weight of the ship, not the number of people. A big ship needed only 16 boats. The Titanic had 20 — more than the law asked for. The rules were very old, and ships had become much bigger.
Jack and Rose are not real. The blue diamond is not real either. But many people in the film were real: Captain Edward Smith; Thomas Andrews, who designed the ship; Bruce Ismay, the boss of the ship company; the eight musicians and their leader Wallace Hartley — they all played, and they all died.
The woman in the film called "Molly" Brown was also real. But nobody called her Molly! In her life she was Maggie, and later Margaret. People started to call her "Molly" only after she died in 1932, in newspaper stories, a musical and a film. So the film uses a name that she never heard.
1. "Unsinkable". The company never officially said the ship could not sink. Some magazines said it was "practically" unsinkable — that is not the same. Most of the big "unsinkable" talk came after the ship went down.
2. The officer with the gun. The film shows a real man, First Officer William Murdoch, shooting a passenger and then himself. Some survivors did say that an officer did this, but nobody can say it was Murdoch. His family and his town, Dalbeattie in Scotland, were very unhappy. In April 1998 a manager from the film company went to the town, said sorry for the pain, said Murdoch was a real hero, and gave £5,000 to the school there.
3. Did the ship break in two? Here the film is right. In 1912, many survivors said the ship broke in half, but the official British report did not believe them. Then in 1985, the scientist Robert Ballard found the ship on the bottom of the sea — in two big pieces, about 600 metres apart. After 73 years, the survivors were right.
Do all three tasks out loud. Use the timer to keep talking.
Tell the story of Titanic in your own words. Use these steps to help you: a rich girl who is not happy → a poor young man with a third-class ticket → a huge iceberg on a cold night → not enough lifeboats → very cold water, and one boat that came back.
Try to use some key words (ship, iceberg, lifeboat, passenger, rich, poor, sink, rescue) and there was / there were: "There were twenty lifeboats, but there were more than two thousand people."
There were not enough lifeboats. In the film, the rich people go first and many poor people stay below. Who should get a place in an emergency — children? old people? everybody the same? Say what you think and why. Is money more important than people? Give your reasons.
Talk about films and true stories. Use there was and there were when you describe a place or an event.
Not sure what to say? Choose one: