Time travel features in this chapter, and rather than visiting the ship itself, why not head to some of the interesting alternative places back in time, associated with the ship. For example:

Location: Dunkettle, Cork

Time: Summer of 1913

Look for: a man walking his dog along Glamire river

The man walking his dog is about to pick up a bottle he has spotted on the banks of the river. An actual message in a bottle. The message reads, "From Titanic. Good Bye all. Burke of Glanmire, Cork." The note has been written by Jeremiah Burke, a 19-year-old farmhand who was travelling to America to visit his sisters. As he was boarding the ship, Jeremiah was handed a bottle containing holy water, by his mother. According to this theory, as the ship was going down, Jeremiah wrote his note, put it in the bottle his mother gave him, and tied it with a bootlace and threw it overboard. A year later, that note will travel halfway across the North Atanlantic to the coast of Ireland, where it will find its way to Dunkettle, just a few miles from where Jeramiah’s family home. The letter would be returned to the family, who confirm it was his writing and verify this extraordinary coincidence. 

Location: New York

Time: 14th May 1912

Look for: the premiere of a movie considered to be one of the great lost movies of the silent era

Just 29 days after the ship went down, the very first movie was made about the Titanic, starring one of the survivors of the ship, who wore the very same clothes and shoes she was wearing the night of the disaster ‘Saved From the Titanic’ was released May 14, 1912. Dorothy Gibson was already a movie star, in fact her latest film was being released as the Titanic was out at sea ‘The Lucky Hold Up’. Upon her return to New York, Dorothy immediately got to work on the movie, which ended up combining original footage of Dorothy, but also stock footage of Captain Edward Smith, the Titanic’s captain, taken of him from the RMS Olympic, and also a lot of stock footage of icebergs. The movie however was lost in a studio fire and no print has survived. Along with Mary Pickford, Dorothy was the highest paid actress in the world at this point. 

The Original movie poster for the movie made just 29 days after the Titanic sank, starring one of its survivors.

But following an incident in which Dorothy crashed her car into a pedestrian, sadly killing them, she quit the movie industry, making only one more movie after the Titanic flick, and becoming a choral singer and relocating to Europe. After a stint of being a nazi sympathiser (which she thoroughly regreted) she was arrested for anti-facist aggitation and was jailed in Milan. However, along with two others, she escaped prison and relocated to France, where she would eventually die of a heartattack at the Ritz Paris. (In my bed, I wonder?)

This is the only movie that features a genuine Titanic survivor. It almost wasn’t though. In 1958, another Titanic movie ‘A Night To Remember’ was filming a sinking scene, when a visitor to the set, Lawrence Beesley, a Titanic survivor, tried to slip into the scene, so that he could deal with some of his survival guilt and at least symbolically go down with the ship. Unfortunately, the director Roy Ward Baker, spotted Beesley and had to have him removed, because it was against actors union rules.