Did Jack really have to die to save Rose at the end of Titanic?
In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it, once and for all
There is a debate that has raged for decades. One that cleaves whole families in two. A conundrum so fundamental to what it is that makes us human that it divides not only nations, but the populace of an entire planet. That planet is Earth – this planet – and the question in question is this question: did Jack really have to die to save Rose at the end of Titanic? Or is Rose a despicable, door-hogging monster? These are murky waters, dear reader.
This isn’t the first time that someone has sought answers. In 2013, popscience show MythBusters attempted to nix it once and for all, concluding that, yes, Rose could have scooched over a bit, and Jack would have lived dishily ever after. But only if Rose had removed her lifejacket and given it to Jack to tie it beneath the portion of door he would then be occupying. Otherwise, they would have faced the single biggest threat to makeshift, flotsam-based lifeboats: wobbliness. Nevertheless, MythBusters heralded that particular myth Busted, and Rose’s good name was henceforth for ever tarnished. So … Solved?
Not exactly. There’s more to life on driftwood in the north Atlantic than simple wobbliness. Firstly, the debris wasn’t actually a door at all, but a chunk of oak door frame, according to comparisons made to actual wreckage recovered from the ship. And it was certainly big enough in terms of surface area to accommodate both bodies: Leo’s height is 183cm, Kate’s is 169cm; the shoulder width of the average man is 39.6cm and a woman’s is 36.7cm, forming a body warmth-sharing total of 76.3cm. According to a deep dive done by Physics Central, Rose’s raft was 183cm x 91cm. Room to spare, then. But what this doesn’t take into account is buoyancy.
The boating boffins at Physics Central discovered that a piece of oak of that size and thickness has a weight (volume x density x gravity) of 1,920 newtons. The couple’s weights at the time – which are apparently discoverable if you look hard enough – are 715N for Leo and 549N for Kate. That’s a combined bulk of 3,184N. In ice-cold salt water, oak in those dimensions would give an upward buoyant force of 2,490N. You don’t need a white coat and bushy eyebrows to know that 3,184 is bigger than 2,490, and Jack, Rose and one quite intricately carved piece of wood are therefore sinkier than Armitage Shanks.
What about the lifejacket theory, though? What if Rose did the honourable thing and gave hers up? In water that cold (around -2.2 celsius at the time of the boat’s sinking), Jack would be unconscious within 15 minutes of first going in – and he’d already been in there for a fair old while before even getting round to trying to affix a lifejacket to a bobbing piece of wood. More importantly, even modern lifejackets top out at a buoyancy of 275N, which still leaves our pair a full 419N over. In other words, after all that faffing about, they’d sink anyway. So there you have it: for Jack, it was either push Rose in or sacrifice himself. Whether he made the right call there is up to you.