This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

The 1997 blockbuster film Titanic is remembered for many things.

This Celine Dion song that was everywhere, the sheer scale of the production,

its record 11 Oscars, the names of its two main characters. Jack! Rose! Jack! Rose!

Jack! Jack! Jack! Listen, Rose! But in real life, the actual Titanic, the one that sank on April

15, 1912, is mainly remembered for

something else, so much so that James Cameron's script couldn't not mention it.

I did the sum in my head, and with the number of lifeboats times the capacity you mentioned,

forgive me, but it seems that there are not enough for everyone aboard. Not half,

actually. Rose, you miss nothing, do you? There are countless films about the Titanic. Most of them

called Titanic. And in almost all of them, the lack of lifeboats is kind of the whole point.

We have lifeboats. We must launch them at once.

Get everyone off the ship.

That won't be entirely possible.

They say it's nothing, but they're lying.

There's water below.

And now somebody says there aren't enough lifeboats for the men.

Even the Nazis took time away from the war in 1943 to discuss the matter of lifeboats in their own Titanic film, Titanic.

The Titanic sink.

The Titanic sink.

We have a retentboat.

The retunstboats reach in best of course for the third part of passengers.

...