This dates me, but I remember over 50 years ago having a wooden replica of an ocean liner in a case displayed on open water passing in front of a large rock cliff. It meant nothing to me at the time, but the detail was fantastic for its time. As a child, I quickly dismembered what I was told was a model built by a prisoner of war.
The detail on that model equaled anything on the market today but is rivaled by the detail produced by modelers of the Titanic who display there works at Titanic Research and Modeling Assn. (TRMA).
Free Titanic Model In Our Download Center
Check out this free scale model that finishes to 9 inches in length. It is a great project.
April 11th - 12th:
The Titanic sails through calm waters and covers 386 miles.
April 12th - 13th:
The Titanic sails through calm waters and covers 519 miles.
Ice warning are received from the steamer 'Rappahannock'.
April 13th:
1.00 p.m.: The Chief Engineer Joseph Bell reports the coal fire in boiler room #6, coal bunker #10 (which already had started in Southampton).
3.00 p.m.: Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay discuss the voyage.
April 14th:
Sunday.
Several ice warnings are received during the day. Reports come in from the 'Noordamm', 'Caronia', 'Baltic', 'Amerika', 'Californian' and 'Mesaba'.
10.30 a.m.: Church service is being held in the First-Class dining saloon.
10.00 p.m.: Second officer Lightoller relieved on bridge by First officer Murdoch. Lookouts in crow's nest relieved. Warning to watch for icebergs passed between the watches. Temperature is 32º F, sky cloudless, air clear.
11.39 p.m.: The Titanic is steaming at 20.5 knots. Suddenly, the lookouts, Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Robinson Lee, see an iceberg dead ahead about 500 yards away towering some 55-60 feet above the water. They immediately sound the warning bell with three sharp rings and telephone the bridge: "Iceberg right ahead." Sixth officer Moody on the bridge acknowledges warning, relays message to First officer Murdoch who instinctively calls "hard-a-starboard" to helmsman Hichens and orders the engine room to stop the engines and then orders full astern.
One modeler's version of what the underwater wreckage looks like at the site where the Titanic remains entombed.
The Movie Version
Titanic is a 1997 romance film directed, written, produced and edited by James Cameron about the sinking of the RMS Titanic. It features Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, and Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater, two members of different social classes who fall in love aboard the ill-fated 1912 maiden voyage of the ship.
The main characters and the central love story are fictional, but some supporting characters (such as members of the ship's crew) are based on real historical figures. Gloria Stuart plays the elderly Rose, who narrates the film in a modern day framing device.
Special Effects
An enclosed five-million-gallon tank was used for sinking interiors, in which the entire set could be tilted into the water. To sink the Grand Staircase, ninety thousand gallons of water were dumped into the set as it was lowered into the tank. Unexpectedly, the waterfall ripped the staircase from its steel-reinforced foundations, though no one was hurt. The 744-foot (227 m) long exterior of the RMS Titanic had its first half lowered into the tank, but being the heaviest part of the ship meant it acted as a shock absorber against the water. To get the set into the water, Cameron had much of the set emptied and even smashed some of the promenade windows himself. After submerging the Dining Saloon, three days were spent shooting Lovett's ROV traversing the wreck in the present. The post-sinking scenes in the freezing Atlantic were shot in a 350,000-gallon tank, where the frozen corpses were created by applying a powder on actors that crystallized when exposed to water, and wax was coated on hair and clothes.
Cameron wanted to push the boundary of special effects with his film, and enlisted Digital Domain to continue the breakthroughs on digital technology the director pioneered on The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Previous films about the RMS Titanic shot water in slow motion, which did not look wholly convincing. He encouraged them to shoot their 45-foot (14 m) long miniature of the ship as if "we're making a commercial for the White Star Line". Afterward, digital water and smoke were added, as were extras captured on a motion capture stage. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato scanned the faces of many actors, including himself and his children, for the digital extras and stuntmen. There was also a 65-foot (20 m) long model of the ship's stern that could break in two repeatedly, the only miniature to be used in water. For scenes set in the ship's engines, footage of the SS Jeremiah O'Brien's engines were composited with miniature support frames and actors shot against greenscreen. To save money, the First Class Lounge was a miniature set incorporated into a greenscreen backdrop.
