Why Didn't Jack Climb Onto That Plank At The End Of Titanic?
Much like the chorus from Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’, the tragic conclusion of ‘Titanic’ will live on in all of our hearts until the day we die.
That’s just a given.
But hang on… that plank looked awfully roomy, didn’t it? See below…
Couldn’t Jack have tried just one more time to haul himself up and floated his way to safety with his lady love, instead of going all blue and sinking to an icy doom?
As with all subjects in the world - ever - such matters have obviously been much discussed online.
See this couple, who mocked up how the duo could have both slotted onto the piece of wood.
However, James Cameron himself has always maintained that it was strictly a single-person occupancy plank.
He shot down the two person plank theory some time ago, telling IGN: “It’s not a question of room; it’s a question of buoyancy.
“When Jack puts Rose on the raft, then he tries to get on the raft - he’s not an idiot, he doesn’t want to die - and the raft sinks; it kind of flips.
“So it’s clear that there’s really only enough buoyancy available for one person. So, he makes a decision to let her be that person.
“If he got on with her they’d both be half in and half out of the water, and they would have both died.”
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What Happened To Jaws’ First Victim?Others have taken the dimensions of the plank, added in some other data like the combined weight of Winslet and DiCaprio’s characters, the density of the wood and suchlike, and put the equations to the test.
Most convincing, however, were the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, who took on Cameron’s buoyancy claims head on and prove him wrong.
Hosts Adam and Jamie – with help from Cameron himself – determined that a little lateral thinking (easy to come by when you’re not freezing to death, of course), might well have saved them both (see below).
Simply strapping Rose’s life-preserver to the bottom of the plank would have affording it significantly more buoyancy, and thus allowed Jack to climb aboard for the 63 minutes it would have taken to be saved by dashing Ioan Gruffudd in his lifeboat.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, of course.
However, having the last word, Cameron told the pair: “I think you guys are missing the point here. The script says Jack died. He has to die.
“So maybe we screwed up and the board should have been a little tiny bit smaller, but the dude’s goin’ down.”
He is a cold, cruel man…
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Image credits: 20th Century Fox, lolsnaps.com, YouTube/Mythbusters
