Meet The Real-Life People Behind These Titanic Characters

As one of the head honchos of the British White Star Line shipping company, Joseph Bruce Ismay was the man who ultimately owned the Titanic. He’s brought to life by Jonathan Hyde in the movie, and it’s shown that he escaped the vessel after jumping aboard one of the lifeboats. Also, to say that Ismay doesn’t come across very well would be underselling it!

Did that really happen, though? Well, Ismay survived, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Once the media got wind of his decision to abandon ship, he was blasted for taking a spot that could’ve gone to a lady or child. Mind you, his family have long hit back at the claims that he disguised himself as a female to get it. Anyway, with his reputation in tatters, the executive eventually passed away in 1937.

Remember Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon in Titanic? Rosalind Ayres takes on the role, and she gets highlighted by Rose at a certain point. As the latter notes, Lady Duff-Gordon was a renowned tailor. Sure, it’s not the biggest of parts, yet she was in fact a real person on board the ill-fated liner.

Due to the size of the role, Lady Duff-Gordon’s other talents weren’t brought up, so we’ll shine a light on them here! Yes, on top of her job as a designer, Elle magazine notes that she often penned specialist articles that were printed in publications such as Good Housekeeping and Harper’s Bazaar. She apparently escaped the ship via a lifeboat.

In the movie, the character of John “Jack” Phillips doesn’t get a great deal of focus. Gregory Cooke plays him – firing out the message that the Titanic was in trouble. But in real life, Phillips was one of the biggest heroes on the boat. He was in charge of the wireless system and refused to leave once the captain said he could.

Harold Bride – who worked with Phillips – painted an eye-opening picture of the scene while talking to The New York Times back then. He recalled, “I will never live to forget the work of Phillips during the last awful 15 minutes. I suddenly felt a great reverence to see him standing there sticking to his work while everybody else was raging about.” Sadly, the wireless operator didn’t survive.

In one of Titanic’s smaller roles, Craig Kelly portrays Harold Bride. Just like in real life, the film shows him as the “junior wireless operator” working alongside John “Jack” Phillips. Yet there’s more to Bride’s story than that. He witnessed and experienced a lot of harrowing stuff that James Cameron’s epic doesn’t touch.

For instance, Bride explained to The New York Times how he survived the ordeal by climbing onto an overturned lifeboat. The man said, “There was just room for me to roll on the edge. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between slats, and were being wrenched. I hadn’t the heart left to ask the man to move. It was a terrible sight all around – men swimming and sinking.”

Okay, here’s a question: in your opinion, what’s the biggest tear-jerking scene in Titanic? We’re gonna be heading into spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen the movie, look away now! Anyway, is it Jack’s death sequence? Or does something else get you bawling? For us, it’s the part with the older couple on the bed who’ve accepted their fate as the ship goes down.

Tragically, those two characters portrayed by Elsa Raven and Lew Palter are based on a real-life couple: Ida and Isidor Straus. According to Elle, the former had a chance to escape the ship via a lifeboat, yet she chose to stay behind with Isidor. Apparently, Ida didn’t want to leave him there alone. Due to that, the pair lost their lives in the disaster.

Titanic is full of memorable sequences, but a particularly nerve-jangling one comes towards the end. It’s when Rose and Jack cling to the rear of the boat while it drops into the water. Alongside them, a background character is also seen taking a swig from a drink container. He wasn’t just a random addition to the scene, though.

As it turns out, that guy was based on a crew member named Charles Joughin. He was the ship’s baker and really did cling on to the stern as it sank. Incredibly, Joughin then managed to find a lifeboat that wasn’t filled, so he clambered aboard. Thanks to that stroke of fortune, the staffer escaped with his life.

Titanic does a great job of imaging what the chaotic scenes would’ve been like on board. But at the same time, it captures some really poignant moments, too. For example, the scene where William Henry Hartley’s band refuses to stop performing during the disaster is especially affecting, with actor Jonathan Evans-Jones doing a great job.

To add to the sadness, that wasn’t actually a fictional sequence. A member of the Titanic Historical Society went into more detail about it on History.com. Don Lynch said in 2017, “There was no effort to save themselves. They understood that the ship was sinking and that they were needed to keep people calm, and so they just kept playing.”

Do you recall the pregnant character who we see in one of the earlier sequences? Her name is Madeleine Force, and she was portrayed by Charlotte Chatton. The actress doesn’t get a lot of screen time when compared to the heavy-hitters, yet Force was indeed a real person on the Titanic.

Like the film highlights, Force was carrying a child as she traveled with her hubby John Jacob Astor IV. Thankfully, the expectant mother managed to escape the ship when everything went wrong, according to Cosmopolitan. She apparently welcomed her baby into the world a few months after the disaster.

Are you struggling to remember the character of Henry Wilde in Titanic? Well, here’s a refresher. He’s the chief officer on deck and is played by Mark Lindsay Chapman. It’s not a huge role, but the real-life Wilde was, in fact, one of the biggest heroes on the boat.

Wilde already had plenty of experience by the time he joined the Titanic’s crew, and he needed to call upon all of it during the disaster. According to The National Archives website, the officer was responsible for filling lots of lifeboats on the vessel’s left-hand side. There’s actually no telling how many people he saved. Sadly, though, he didn’t make it in the end, and his remains were never found.

Titanic doesn’t dedicate much of its focus to John Jacob Astor IV. The character is portrayed by Eric Braeden, and you might remember that he shares a scene with Jack. In real life, though, Astor would’ve been a huge deal on that ship. He wasn’t just a random upper-class traveler.

Astor was, in fact, reportedly the wealthiest person on the entire boat. Not only that: he actually had more money than almost anyone else around the globe back then. The businessman was traveling with his pregnant wife – Madeline Force – to ensure that their child was born in the United States. Tragically, the father-to-be didn’t survive the trip.

“Iceberg, right ahead!” Those three words change Titanic’s trajectory completely. The film suddenly swings into full-blown “disaster movie” mode. Frederick Fleet is the name of the character who utters that significant line, with actor Scott Anderson giving it his all. Mind you, we can’t help but wonder: did the real man actually say that?

Well, as it turns out, he did indeed! Fleet bellowed that precise warning prior to the collision. And luckily for him, he managed to escape. After that, the ship’s lookout went on to fight in both World Wars for his country, ahead of a tragic moment. Following the passing of his spouse, Fleet took his own life in 1965.

We see quite a bit of actor Jonathan Phillips in the latter half of Titanic. He portrays Charles Lightoller, who was the boat’s third-in-command during the voyage. Unlike a lot of the other characters in the movie, Lightoller gets out of the ordeal alive – mirroring the fate of his real-life counterpart.

Interestingly, the real Lightoller had quite a life after the disaster. Elle reports that he fought during World War I and then played a huge role in getting troops away from Dunkirk in WWII. He actually utilized his own boat to aid the operation. Christopher Nolan incorporated some of that into the character Mark Rylance portrays in his film Dunkirk.

Here’s a nice bit of movie trivia for you. The actors who portrayed the Duff-Gordons in Titanic were also married! Yes, Martin Jarvis was Rosalind Ayres’ husband, which must’ve made those scenes where they played Cosmo and Lady Duff-Gordon pretty interesting! But away from the film, what was the real guy like?

Well, Duff-Gordon was a bona fide Olympian by the time he walked on to the ship. The man actually had a silver medal thanks to his fencing skills. Much like his wife, Duff-Gordon made it on to one of the lifeboats, which prompted plenty of anger after. People believed that the former athlete probably jumped ahead of the line.

Got any favorite lines from Titanic? The character of Benjamin Guggenheim has one of ours. As panic begins to erupt around him, he turns down the chance to take a lifejacket due to the get-up he’s wearing. Guggenheim then chirps, “But we would like a brandy.” Michael Ensign certainly does a great job with his limited screen time.

Surprisingly, that scene might not be as fictional as you think. Don Lynch told History.com, “[Guggenheim’s] steward claimed afterwards that he helped him get dressed warmly, and that later he was up on deck with his valet and they were both in tuxedos. And he said, ‘We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.’” Wow!

Yes, we know what you’re thinking: who was Noël Leslie in Titanic? She’s essentially a bit-part character in the film, with Rochelle Rose taking on the role. Leslie was a passenger aboard the real ship and might be better known as the Countess of Rothes. Leslie also stepped up in a major way when things went wrong.

As per Cosmopolitan, Leslie did her best to maneuver the lifeboat she was in as it veered dangerously close to the descending vessel. On top of that, she continued to keep it on track until they reached the boat that picked them up. There’s a separate movie in that story, surely?!

In a film teeming with supporting characters, Colonel Archibald Gracie IV could’ve been lost in the shuffle. Thanks to Bernard Fox, though, that doesn’t happen. With the little time he has, Fox brings some welcome humor to proceedings. As for the real Gracie, he faced a terrifying challenge when the Titanic went down.

Don Lynch informed History.com that Gracie was engulfed by freezing water as the boat sank. Yet that didn’t signal the end. The colonel managed to swim to one of the life rafts before being picked up. Unfortunately, Gracie couldn’t shake the hypothermia that came after that and passed away a few months later.

Character actor Victor Garber was tasked to bring Thomas Andrews to life in Titanic. Andrews was the man who oversaw the ship’s construction ahead of the ill-fated voyage. But did the film get his actions right once everything started to go wrong? He certainly seemed selfless on the big screen.

Well, judging by a telegram sent by the Titanic crew, the movie got it spot-on. It read, “When last seen, officers say [Andrews] was throwing deck chairs and other objects to people in [the] water. His chief concern [was the] safety of everyone but himself.” Andrews also stayed aboard as the boat went down.

Bernard Hill is a great actor, and we can’t imagine anyone else portraying Captain Edward Smith like he did in Titanic. As for the character himself, Smith’s fate appeared to mirror that of his real-life counterpart. Then again, a historian named Tim Maltin believes that the captain didn’t stay on the boat.

On the basis of a few reports, Maltin told History.com, “Smith actually took a header dive off of the front of the wheelhouse into the sea and then swam around helping people get to lifeboats. He was offered a seat on a lifeboat, but he refused to get on board because he was helping people out. He was completely heroic.”

While Titanic earned plenty of plaudits upon its release, one aspect proved to be a little controversial. It’s in relation to William Murdoch – the ship’s second-in-command. And it’s got nothing to do with the performance by Ewan Stewart. In the film, Murdoch takes his own life after shooting a passenger in the chaos.

Yet no one can be sure if that’s how Murdoch really met his fate on the boat. Due to that, his family hit out at the film – asking for the studio and James Cameron to issue apologies. And they were eventually handed nearly $7,000 by 20th Century Fox to make up for what happened.

Margaret Brown is one of the most memorable characters in Titanic largely thanks to Kathy Bates’ performance. And apparently, her actions in the movie did mirror that of the real-life person. To give you an example, it’s said that Brown really was pushing those on her life raft to save additional people.

That drive to help led to the creation of an awesome moniker – the Unsinkable Molly Brown. It’s great, right? Anyway, she didn’t just disappear following the disaster. As per History.com, Brown planned funerals for all those who were found in the water by the emergency services. She also helmed a so-called survivor’s committee.

Having survived a car accident that killed her fiancé a year earlier, the American stylist and journalist had been given a musical toy pig as a good luck charm by her mother just before boarding the ship. Not only did Rosenbaum survive the sinking, but she also used the toy to calm crying children on her lifeboat.

An Alabama historian, Gracie was returning home from Europe when he was awoken by the Titanic crashing into the fateful iceberg. After escorting a number of women to safety, Gracie later survived by balancing aboard an overturned lifeboat. He went on to earn fame for his detailed account of the disaster.

Rose's character was based on famed artist Beatrice Wood. Both women were concerned about the fate of the lower class and had a passion for the arts. The two also each had fiery romances that ended in tragedy: Rose and Jack with their unforgettable door scene, and the love of Beatrice's life being kept from her due to cultural differences. 

A British suffragette, Bowerman survived by boarding the lifeboat piloted by Margaret "Molly" Brown. She went on to become the first female lawyer in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales and eventually helped establish the UN's Commission on the Status of Women.

An investigative journalist and influential editor, Stead actually spent his last hours on Earth reading in his cabin. Perhaps he felt content, having seemingly foreseen his death years prior. In 1886, Stead published a story titled "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic, By a Survivor," which recounted a fictional sinking eerily similar to that of the Titanic.

Known for the early feminist work "How Women May Earn a Living," Candee was traveling aboard the Titanic to return home to care for her injured son. Although she suffered a severe injury to her ankle as the ship sank, Candee was one of the women that helped Molly Brown work the oars of their lifeboat.

A tennis star before and after the ship's sinking, Behr was apparently only aboard the Titanic to pursue his future wife, Helen Newsome. As the two escaped on a lifeboat together, Behr reportedly asked for her hand in marriage right then and there!

After hearing the ship strike the iceberg, the 22-year-old actress grabbed her mother and the two boarded the first lifeboat off the Titanic. Gibson went on to star in a now-lost 1912 film about her experience called Saved From the Titanic in which she actually wore the same clothes she'd had on as she escaped the disaster.

"[The] trend toward large boats might end in tragedy," Hays, a railway magnate, reportedly told his companions before boarding the Titanic. While his wife and daughter managed to escape the ship on a lifeboat, Hays perished, though his body was one of the few recovered. He was buried in Montreal.

A former cricket player and executive of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, Thayer's only focus once the Titanic began to sink was getting his wife and son to safety. He managed to do just that, though Thayer himself sadly perished in the disaster. His body was never recovered.

A mystery writer, Futrelle was best known for his story "The Problem of Cell 13" and others involving detective Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen. After helping his wife aboard a life boat, the writer was last seen speaking with another member of this list: John Jacob Astor.

A famed steel magnate, Wick had been traveling through Europe to improve his health before he stepped aboard the ill-fated Titanic. He was last seen on the deck of the ship, waving to his wife, daughter, cousin, and aunt as they escaped on a lifeboat.