The Associated Press announced July 23 that it and British Movietone have recently posted over a million minutes of historic film and video news footage to YouTube. All have an AP watermark, but the bulk of the clips are newsreels.
The Washington Post asked an AP archivist to pick out some of the most memorable films. The #1 selection was about the sinking of the Titanic — but the ship in the newsreel footage is not the Titanic.
Because the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, there is very little photographic record, save for invaluable amateur photographs taken before final departure from the British Isles. However, there was footage of the Olympic, its sister ship. On the Titanic, the forward section of the A deck promenade (below the Boat Deck) is enclosed. It was not so on the Olympic. Since this is the only immediately identifiable difference save for the printed names themselves, footage of the Olympic was rushed into service as substitute Titanic footage, fooling audiences of 1912 and still vexing all except hardcore Titanic buffs* a century later. The port side of the ship without the enclosed A deck is clearly visible from 1:15-1:25.
The nine-minute newsreel about the disaster shows how the world saw what happened, and the rest of the footage including the Carpathia’s arrival in New York is accurate.
Reminder: A Titanic artifact exhibition is in Dubuque this summer at the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium.
*Including yours truly, if that wasn’t obvious.