We will never know for sure whether James Cameron knew what he was filming during the filming of Titanic. What I have less doubt about is that he knew exactly what ending he needed to give the story. At this point we have discovered nothing about poor Jack’s death that would sustain Rose, but the doubt will always be there. Could he have survived? The answer, it turns out, is in one frame of the film.

Jack’s death. Let’s start with one of the most famous deaths in cinema history. That’s because Jack was, in essence, perfectly redeemable, or so most of us think. Where one fits, there are always two, but DiCaprio’s character decides to leave the board to Rose, and instead of trying to force him to continue, Rose devotes herself to watching the hero curled up as he dies in agony, parts of him slowly freezing over.

The debate was served.

The Mythbusters are emerging. In 2012, the popular show revived the debate with a live test. What do they do? A simulation with babies and a mini-recreation of the film board. Of course, the board bends, but when they tried the feat with a full-scale replica, they discovered that Rose could have removed her life jacket and placed it under the board to provide extra buoyancy. The method lifted the board so much that most of their bodies (80%) were out of the water as they swam.

The show’s conclusion was clear: “Jack’s death was unnecessary.” The Mythbusters video went viral, and Cameron was quick to defend them. The director said people were “losing their minds” over the character’s death.

It was a license. By 2017, Cameron was growing tired of the question and being labeled as sadistic or lacking in scientific rigor. He had already realized in the past that the character’s death was simply artistic license, but when he saw that no one was interested in it, he chose to test the situation himself, which happened on the Titanic.

“I was in the water with the wooden plank for about two days, putting people on it and seeing if it was buoyant enough to support the weight of a person with full headroom, meaning the body wasn’t submerged in the water, so it could last the hours until the boat arrived,” he explained.

Cameron’s latest work. So could it have been saved or not? Two years ago, Cameron came forward to say something that had not been known until then, at the insistence of many fans of the film. In an interview with The Toronto Sun, he revealed that he had documented a “scientific study” that showed that two people could not have survived in the floating door at the end of “Titanic.”

“We did a scientific study to put an end to all of this and permanently stake the heart,” Cameron said. “We’ve since done extensive forensic analysis with a hypothermia expert who replicated the raft in the movie and we’re going to do some custom work on it.”

Apparently, in this study, they took two experts who were about the same body mass as Kate and DiCaprio, placed sensors all over their bodies, and “put them in ice water to see if they could survive various methods. The answer was that neither of them could survive. Only one person did.” He added: “Jack had to die. Just like in Romeo and Juliet. It’s a movie about love, sacrifice and mortality.”

Baker. Artistic license or not, the fact is that Cameron knew something that many viewers missed at the film’s premiere: One of the many historical figures strategically positioned in the film to represent real-life people who boarded the Titanic was Jack’s answer at the end that fans were waiting for.

Real name: Charles Joughin, a man who boarded the Titanic to work as the ship’s pastry and bakery manager. Joughin, 33, was resting in his cabin when the Titanic collided with an iceberg on April 14. He was tasked with getting the most food to the lifeboats, and in doing so, he “gave” the bottle.

Whiskey bottle. This was recorded by the British government commission during the inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic. “I went down to my room for a drink,” Joughin said, adding that there was a bottle of Whiskey in his cabin which would accompany him for the rest of the fateful day. The man then went up and helped the women and children into the boats, occasionally hitting the bottle, which probably calmed him down and made the chaos more bearable.

Frame. And here comes the moment when reality and fiction come together (it actually appears several times, but this is the clearest one) (at least 01:22 of the video). The film shows us Joughin, played by actor Liam Tuohy, in the same company as Jack (DiCaprio) and Rose (Winslet), and the Titanic splits in two.

However, unlike the film, the only person left at the end of the Titanic is said to be the “baker”, and the Titanic rose into the air, remained suspended in the air for a while and then sank into the ocean. “To be honest, I don’t think my head ever went into the water. It may have gotten wet but that’s it,” he told the inquest.

Voyage at sea. So Joughin was one of those who found themselves floating in the icy waters of the North Atlantic (like Jack) and survived to tell the tale. Like? Researchers have reported that the water temperature that night was estimated to be -2°C. We also have to take into account the impact of diving into such icy waters, so most people would have died within minutes.

We know that a person dies of hypothermia within half an hour, when the body temperature drops to an extremely low level (below 25°C), at which point the heart stops beating and begins to slow down, causing the blood flow to accelerate, slow down or stop completely, ultimately causing death.

But the man did not stop moving and swam and swam for hours until he found the floating remains of a capsized boat. With a dozen other people, he could barely stand a scene very reminiscent of the end of the movie. Finally, Joughin reached a second boat with extra space. He had survived for more than two hours.

The bottle made the difference. It should be noted that Joughin had already drunk almost half a bottle of whiskey when he entered the water. The commission in charge of the investigation put the bottle on the table, as well as any possible excess of intoxication that could have saved his life.

Theory: Alcohol increases the risk of a person succumbing to hypothermia, and this is because it causes blood vessels to dilate, allowing warm blood to flow to vital organs where heat is needed most. This can cause a person’s body temperature to drop more quickly, thus hastening possible death.

But it does happen in cold weather. According to the commission, the effect of a sudden immersion in icy waters, like Joughin’s, can cause powerful constriction of blood vessels, overcoming the dilating effect of alcohol and keeping body heat close to vital organs, possibly extending life. They also added that since alcohol is a depressant that slows down the activity of the central nervous system, the whiskey may have prevented his body from responding poorly to the physical stress caused by sudden immersion in “ice.”

A man with a thousand lives. After making a full recovery in New York and returning to England, Joughin joined the official government inquiries into the sinking and then began work on the British passenger liner Olympic until the outbreak of World War I just two years later.

Joughin took his skills as a baker to the Navy and served on the SS Congress. Interestingly, this ship also suffered a disaster when a fire broke out on board and she quickly consumed the ship and sank miles from shore. However, this time Joughin found himself safe in a lifeboat from the beginning of the evacuation (and there were no casualties).

Jack versus Joughin. Charles Joughin, who survived numerous shipwrecks, two world wars, and enough drama to make several movies, finally died in December 1956. But he will always be remembered as “the baker on the Titanic,” the real-life character who proved that Jack could be saved even without Rose’s help.

I just needed a bottle of whiskey.

Picture | Fox

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