Here's something to ponder. It is easy to make a "feel good" Titanic movie, since the vast majority of people who were aboard for the terrifying portion of the disaster did not survive to leave accounts of it.
Now, with Lusitania, if you make a factual film you will also make a horribly depressing film. Sometimes, like Schindler's List, it can be done. But, you are going to have to fight producers tooth and nail if you want this film to be even 50% accurate. Because the majority of people who spoke immediately after the disaster did not speak of heroic officers, self sacrificing husbands, etc. They wrote about being scared and seeing horrible things. And were VERY angry and articulate. Some of the shoot-from-the-hip remarks made about the Admiralty bordered on treasonous in a wartime context. Within a week, as peoples' minds cleared, cliches started creeping in.
I'm not saying this to be discouraging or disparaging. I sincerely hope that you can do it, and will gladly help in any way I can. But, read the following never-reprinted account by a survivor with brilliant powers of observation, and then try to translate it into something commercially viable:
"My first thought was 'This is the end of earthly happiness.' I saw a great volume of dirty water rise. It was filled with broken iron and splinters of wood, and though it fell all about me not a piece touched me. Then, for what must have been half a minute there was the deepest, most awful silence I ever experienced, the siren did not sound at all, in spite of what the stewardess had told me.
Finally, as realization came, the people began rushing out of their cabin doors. Two women, mother and daughter clasped each other tight in order not to be torn apart. My thought was to get back to the stateroom where my husband lay. But the stairway was blocked with the people coming up from the second cabin. A young woman stood with her arms around the post of the stairway, screaming 'Charlie! Charlie!' And I was to hear the same woman still shrieking the same name in acute hysteria in an Irish hotel days later. Both her husband and father were drowned.
After the second cabin passengers had all come up, I started down the stairway and met a rush from the third cabin. They turned me clear around four times before I could get off the stairway and wait for them to pass. My husband met me at the stateroom door with our life preservers in his hand. All three sets of strings on each life belt was tied securely, but we managed to undo them.
Finally, we got them on and hurried up on deck, where we found many people. My husband aided six persons to get into their life preservers properly. One was a woman with a heavy fur coat. 'Madam, you must get out of that coat.' said Mr. Naish. 'The fur will sink you.' She took it off, and he tied her life preserver on again for her. Another woman was wearing a long, heavy, wool coat with a large fur collar, her life preserver outside of that and her baby tied to the life preserver on her breast. Mr. Naish told her she must take the coat off and manage differently about the baby or both would be drowned. A pitifully strange sight was a woman, glassy-eyed, mouth hanging open and emitting queer sounds. She was dragging her life belt. As we tied it on her, another woman came along, her hat tied on with a long motor veil.
By that time the ship had tipped so far we couldn’t take our footing without taking hold of something. A boat was being launched, and one end dropped letting all the people it contained into the sea. At the sight, I felt faint and asked Mr. Naish to pinch me to help me back to consciousness. He did, and I was alright again in a moment. We made no effort to get into the lifeboats. Mr. Naish had promised me long before he would never force me to get into a lifeboat unless there was room for him.
Now, I saw the water coming closer. A boatman came up and said 'She’s steady. She’ll float for an hour.' But I knew she wasn’t steady, and wouldn’t float for an hour. 'Look,' I said, 'at the horizon and the railing of this boat. We’ll be gone in a minute.' And gone we were. The Irish coast looked far away, and the song “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary” kept glancing through my mind.
We took hold of the railing that penned in the lifeboats. I had my arm through my husband’s. But, as I felt the boat sinking I unclasped my hand from his, because I did not want to drag him down. At that moment the ship dipped down and over at the same time, bringing the water up to my armpits. A boat swung out and struck my head and cut it open, and I lifted my arm to keep it from striking my husband in the face. It seemed as if everything in the universe ripped and tore. The deck seemed to strike the soles of my feet hard.
The next thing I knew, I was twenty or thirty feet below the surface of the sea. I thought 'Why, this is like being on grandmother’s feather bed.' I was comfortable. I kicked, and rose faster. My head struck something that cut my scalp, and kept bumping. I got my arms around something, and when I came out of the water I was clasping the bumper of an overturned lifeboat."
A great account and 90% of what she says can be confirmed thru other sources. This is a safe account to use. But one which, if you let the mental images flow, is also fairly disturbing. And typical of what people sat down and wrote to family and friends waiting at home.
