When it comes to history’s most famous ships, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more notorious one than RMS Titanic. The largest and most luxurious passenger liner of its time sank in the early hours of 15 April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, just four days into its maiden voyage. Of the 2,200 aboard, some 1,500 people perished in the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

Immortalised in books, TV and films, much of what we think we know about the ship stems from James Cameron’s Oscar-winning romance Titanic, released in 1997. But what was life really like on board? And what are the myths that still surround the doomed vessel?

Read on to discover the lines separating fact and fiction in the story of the Titanic…

It makes for a good story, of course. One with an almost biblical moral feel to it. The folly of men who presume they can build something to outmatch the unrelenting power and force of nature. Pride coming before a fall, and all that. 

The only thing about this is that, well, it’s just not really true. The ‘unsinkable’ boast, fixed in the popular imagination possibly forever, has tinges of reality to it, but time has twisted it into something Titanic’s operators, White Star Line, never actually claimed or advertised.

Constructed over four years at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, the Titanic was a masterpiece of nautical engineering. Fusing ambition and scale in an unprecedented way, it cost £1.5 million ($7.5m) to build (around £170 million/$200m in today’s money), with no expense spared.

The ship’s grandeur, combined with its 16 watertight compartments (or bulkheads), considered a cutting-edge safety feature at the time, goes some way to explaining why the Titanic had an air of invincibility about it. Exaggerated media stories and a misinterpreted line in a 1910 White Star Line brochure also played their part.

This myth has definitely not been helped by filmmaker Cameron’s portrayal of the Titanic’s sinking. In the film, third-class passengers are shown being systematically locked below decks while wealthy antagonists like Cal, played by Billy Zane, cowardly hop aboard lifeboats and make their escape. 

Perhaps movies, with less time to explore nuance and more of a pressing need to push narrative, can be forgiven in this instance, though. Especially because, as stats have since shown, 61% of first-class passengers survived compared with 24% in third class. However, no locking away took place during the sinking.

What certainly played a part in more third-class passengers dying on the night of the Titanic’s sinking was their quarters being located deep within the bowels of the ship, as opposed to being in the upper levels. Difficulties in navigating the enormous ship in the confusion of the initial iceberg hit, as well as language barriers for non-English-speaking emigrants, undoubtedly cost lives.  

We know that the order for the lifeboats, though, was “women and children first”. And this order being followed is, by and large, reflected in the statistics, with a higher percentage of women surviving than men across all passenger classes.

Another juicy Titanic myth that clutches people’s imagination tight and refuses to let go is the one about a cursed Egyptian mummy. In the years since the ship’s sinking, tales spread of a long-deceased Princess Amen-Ra – thought by some to have been responsible for spooky happenings at the British Museum in London – being aboard the liner when it went down. 

In the story, the paranormal mummy was sold by the museum to a private collector, who tried to have it exorcised. When this couldn’t be arranged, an American archaeologist bought it and organised its shipping over to New York on a new White Star ship about to make its maiden voyage.

As is so often the case with these things, the truth of the ‘cursed’ Titanic mummy is a little less Hollywood than the myth. The so-called ‘unlucky mummy’ of the British Museum, which isn’t even a mummy but actually the lid of an inner coffin, simply couldn’t have gone down with the ship in 1912. Why? 

Because rather than being down at the bottom of the Atlantic with the wreckage, it’s still clearly on display in the British Museum’s Egyptian section. Housed there ever since it was delivered in 1889, the artefact’s reputation stems from sensational (yet unfounded) newspaper stories. 

There’s a temptation when thinking about the Titanic to presume that it was a case of first-class passengers enjoying pure luxury, while everyone else lived in absolute squalor. It’s certainly a picture that Cameron’s 1997 film about star-crossed lovers, played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, leans into heavily. 

The myth revels in the idea that those in third class were poorly fed and could barely move for rats, while up high, the ship’s wealthiest drank nothing but Champagne, ate nothing but caviar and luxuriated in a world a million miles away from everyone else’s.

Of course, it goes without saying that first-class passengers had the best and most opulent quarters during the Titanic’s voyage. Their section of the ship was the height of luxury, with lavish public spaces, private bathrooms and fine dining. 

Third class was a step down, for sure, with fewer facilities and smaller cabins. But passengers here still enjoyed a higher level of luxury compared to other liners of the day. They were well-fed on food such as roast beef and, unlike on other ships, were not required to bring their own meals for the journey.

Again, this is a myth that we can put squarely at Cameron’s door. His 1997 film implies that the social makeup of the Titanic’s guests boiled down entirely to the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, with Winslet’s cohort representing the world’s richest and DiCaprio and his companions representing the very poorest in society.

Simplifying the tragedy, this type of retelling leaves a gap in the picture. It focuses on the enormous gulf between passengers like John Jacob Astor IV, the wealthiest man on the Titanic, with a personal fortune of $80 million (£152bn/$200bn in today’s money), and the third-class emigrants desperately seeking a better life in the US.

What is often forgotten is that the middle class was also well represented on the ship. Teachers, clergy, nannies, chauffeurs, clerks, writers and tourists could all be found in second class – and it’s their part in the story that’s often overlooked.

Interestingly, a lower percentage of second-class men survived the sinking of the Titanic than any other passenger type. Of the 168 men based in these quarters, only 8% lived to tell the tale. For men in first class, the survival rate was 33%, and for those in third class, it was 16%.

For decades, despite survivors’ testimonies stating otherwise, it was widely thought that the Titanic sank to the depths of the Atlantic in one piece. Illustrations and dramatic recreations of the disaster, including the 1958 film A Night To Remember, helped the myth to endure.

The darkness of the ocean that evening in April 1912, especially when the lights of the ship went out, and some conflicting accounts of the disaster by those who saw it play out firsthand, led the inquiry to discount many of the eyewitness statements. The ‘one-piece’ version of events lingered on until 1985.

This is one Titanic myth that, by and large, Cameron’s 1997 film put right. Remarkably, it had taken until September 1985, when the ship’s wreckage was discovered at the bottom of the Atlantic, for the ‘two-piece’ theory to be confirmed as fact.

What we know now is that the Titanic broke apart during its final, horrifying moments. The sheer amount of water flooding in, combined with the angle of the ship, and the excessive weight of the stern rising up, caused a complete and total structural failure. It would have been a truly nightmarish spectacle.

While some first-class passengers would undoubtedly have been appalled by the thought of mixing with those residing in the bowels of the ship, the barriers separating the richest and poorest on board actually had nothing to do with the demands of passengers or the policy of White Star Line. 

Of course, in the telling of the Titanic, the idea of gated segregation works as a way of emphasising the plight of third-class passengers in the ship’s final moments. In Cameron’s film, it helps to underline the sense that DiCaprio and Winslet’s characters are from entirely different worlds. 

The truth about the gates on board the Titanic is that they’re actually tied up in a lot of (quite boring) bureaucracy. While they undoubtedly existed on the ship, they were actually there to ensure compliance with US immigration laws and measures around the spread of infectious diseases.

Subsequent inquiries into the night of the ship’s sinking have suggested that allegations of third-class passengers being maliciously locked below decks were false. Less third-class passengers made it onto lifeboats, but the idea that this was all part of some cynical plot to save only the richest doesn’t actually stack up.

In the 1997 film, there’s a scene where Winslet’s character Rose shows DiCaprio’s protagonist Jack – an artist who once lived in Paris – some of the famous artwork she has in her quarters. Among her collection, there are paintings by none other than Picasso and Monet.

As you'll see, there were certainly some interesting creative pieces on the Titanic when it left Southampton on 10 April 1912. It’s just that none of them were by, arguably, the two most famous painters of the 20th century.

When the Titanic sank to the icy depths of the North Atlantic, it took with it thousands of pounds' worth of food, some seven million pieces of correspondence, exquisite china and even bales of rubber. Disappearing beneath the waves that night, there were also manuscripts, rare art, jewellery and reels of film. 

La Circassienne au Bain (partially pictured here), painted by French artist Merry-Joseph Blondel and left behind by fleeing first-class passenger Mauritz Håkan Björnström-Steffansson, was perhaps the most notable work. Also on board was a short story handwritten by Joseph Conrad.

This is another one of those myths that refuses to go away. It stems from a sense that Captain Edward Smith, perhaps pressured by the powers that be at White Star Line, was pushing the Titanic too hard and too fast in order to set a transatlantic record.

Because the Titanic was the biggest ship of its day, a feeling lingers in the popular imagination that unfettered arrogance played a part in its demise. When it comes to the speed of the crossing itself, though, this just isn’t the case.

It is a fiction and a fabrication that the crew of the Titanic was attempting to set a speed record on its maiden voyage. This gargantuan ship was built for luxury, not for speed, and would not have been able to compete with the faster Atlantic ships of its day.

At its heart, the Titanic was designed to be an extravagant hotel on water rather than a rapid mode of transport. Take the ship’s Verandah Cafe (pictured), for example. It was decorated to resemble the idyllic gazebos found on the grounds of large country houses.

Perhaps the most enjoyable scene in Cameron’s Titanic is the one where Jack takes Rose to a raucous party in third class. There’s loud music, crazy dancing and a sense that the poorest passengers were having the most fun of anyone on the ship. 

From the downing of beers to the wild spinning on the dancefloor, an evening in steerage looks too good to be true. Sadly, that’s exactly what the film version turns out to be.

Maybe we’re being unfair in entirely dismissing the previous slide as a myth. After all, we know that third-class passengers did gather for music and dancing. Many of them would have been excited about starting new lives in America, and had much to celebrate.

So let's put this one down to a classic case of cinema taking some artistic licence, with a few grains of truth. Parties? Yes. Parties at that fever-pitch level? Unlikely.

Now check out these ancient myths that turned out to be true