How the Titanic wreck became a money-making scheme | The Business Standard
Skip to main content
  • Latest
  • Economy
    • Banking
    • Stocks
    • Industry
    • Analysis
    • Bazaar
    • RMG
    • Corporates
    • Aviation
  • Videos
    • TBS Today
    • TBS Stories
    • TBS World
    • News of the day
    • TBS Programs
    • Podcast
    • Editor's Pick
  • World+Biz
  • Features
    • Panorama
    • The Big Picture
    • Pursuit
    • Habitat
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Mode
    • Tech
    • Explorer
    • Brands
    • In Focus
    • Book Review
    • Earth
    • Food
    • Luxury
    • Wheels
  • Subscribe
    • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Sports
    • TBS Graduates
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • Gallery
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Magazine
    • Climate Change
    • Health
    • Cartoons
  • বাংলা
The Business Standard

Thursday
July 10, 2025

Sign In
Subscribe
  • Latest
  • Economy
    • Banking
    • Stocks
    • Industry
    • Analysis
    • Bazaar
    • RMG
    • Corporates
    • Aviation
  • Videos
    • TBS Today
    • TBS Stories
    • TBS World
    • News of the day
    • TBS Programs
    • Podcast
    • Editor's Pick
  • World+Biz
  • Features
    • Panorama
    • The Big Picture
    • Pursuit
    • Habitat
    • Thoughts
    • Splash
    • Mode
    • Tech
    • Explorer
    • Brands
    • In Focus
    • Book Review
    • Earth
    • Food
    • Luxury
    • Wheels
  • Subscribe
    • Epaper
    • GOVT. Ad
  • More
    • Sports
    • TBS Graduates
    • Bangladesh
    • Supplement
    • Infograph
    • Archive
    • Gallery
    • Long Read
    • Interviews
    • Offbeat
    • Magazine
    • Climate Change
    • Health
    • Cartoons
  • বাংলা
THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025
How the Titanic wreck became a money-making scheme

Thoughts

Stephen Mihm
04 July, 2023, 05:50 pm
Last modified: 04 July, 2023, 06:19 pm

Related News

  • Jon Landau, Oscar-winning Titanic and Avatar producer dies at 63
  • Why are old movies being played at Star Cineplex?
  • Bernard Hill, veteran actor best known for Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, dies at 79
  • Iconic 'Titanic' door prop that saved Rose fetches over $700K at auction
  • Titanic law helps ship owner limit liability in bridge collapse

How the Titanic wreck became a money-making scheme

A survivor starred in a silent film about the voyage less than a month after the ship sank. The commercialisation of the tragedy knows no bounds

Stephen Mihm
04 July, 2023, 05:50 pm
Last modified: 04 July, 2023, 06:19 pm
People’s obsession with the Titanic tragedy didn’t start with James Cameron.  Photo: Wikimedia Commons
People’s obsession with the Titanic tragedy didn’t start with James Cameron. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The ill-fated passengers who died trying to visit the wreck of the Titanic paid an extraordinary price for the privilege: $250,000 each. This is hardly surprising, given how many people view the story of the doomed ship with intense, if morbid, fascination. A profitable industry now caters to this obsession, with commercial museums the latest offering for those in need of a Titanic fix.

While it's tempting to blame James Cameron for this state of affairs, that's not quite right. Our obsession with the Titanic tragedy, along with monetising it, has far deeper roots. Even as the corpses of those who died in the tragedy awaited burial in April 1912, countless entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to make a fortune off the misfortune of others.

First in line were companies that made and distributed newsreels to be screened in movie theatres. Within days of the sinking, short films claiming to show the great ship before its fateful voyage began playing in packed movie houses and theatres on both sides of the Atlantic. The only problem? Almost no footage of the ship existed.

No matter! Some of the newsreel companies got their hands on footage of the Titanic's twin, the Olympic, in New York City. They scratched out the names of other ships in the footage as well as any other clues that might betray the ship's true identity. They also repurposed footage of the Titanic's Captain Edward Smith taken on a different ship, passing it off as if he was piloting the Titanic.

The Business Standard Google News Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel

This dubious mix of fact and fiction, typically accompanied by melodramatic music and audience singalongs, proved quite lucrative for these companies. Warner's Features, which marketed one of these misleading films, claimed to have sold 100 copies in 48 hours.

Not everyone gave glowing reviews, though. Some crowds protested when they discovered that –- contrary to false advertising claims –- the reels didn't actually contain footage of the sinking after all.

The actual film industry took things even further. Less than a month after the ship sank, Saved from the Titanic hit theatres. It featured Dorothy Gibson, an American silent-film star who just happened to have been on the Titanic's fateful voyage. The film, built around a series of flashbacks, showed Gibson reenacting her experience, all while wearing the very dress she had worn on that fateful evening.

Gibson's film proved a huge hit, overshadowing another Titanic-related commercial success released to the German market: Nacht und Eis, or Night and Ice. Both films excelled where the newsreels could not, building models that depicted the actual sinking. The Germans went so far as to show Captain Smith drowning. The audiences loved it.

But the big screen was only one of many places that attracted people eager to turn the catastrophe into cash. By the early 20th century, publishers had perfected the art of churning out "instant books" that purported to memorialise and document tragedies. When the Titanic sank, they didn't hesitate.

The first instant book came out within a month of the sinking, followed by several others. These typically claimed to have some kind of official imprimatur – "the only authoritative book," one claimed. 

Printed on cheap paper and padded with passages taken from newspapers, these books reached a market through armies of salesmen, who went door to door collecting advance orders for the works, which typically sold for a dollar each, or about $30 in today's money.

The music industry also jumped on the bandwagon. At the time, most of the money lay in publishing sheet music, not records. And while some of the compositions were written with the idea of raising money for the families of the victims, plenty were in it to turn a profit. The offerings varied in quality. Some had maudlin lyrics: "My Sweetheart Went Down With the Ship" was typical of the genre.

While World War I put a temporary end to the fondness for all things Titanic, this was hardly the end of the line. As one historian of this pop culture phenomenon has noted, "interest in the disaster was dormant, not extinct," reviving in 1929 with a smash theatrical hit: The Berg. This became the basis of another film, The Atlantic, which was breathlessly billed as "a thunderbolt of drama impossible to describe."

For the most part, critics of commercialisation hailed from British and American shipping lines. These magnates feared that all the films, plays and radio dramas about the Titanic might deter people from travelling by boat. 

For example, when the BBC proposed making a highly realistic radio play about the Titanic in the 1930s, complete with sound effects, members of the press sympathetic to the liners warned that listeners would experience "a night of horror which, in gruesome realism, is likely to surpass anything given before." But they rarely won these censorship campaigns.

The postwar era experienced renewed commercial interest in the tragedy. Walter Lord's 1955 bestselling book, A Night to Remember, became a critically acclaimed film. 

Others proved less successful. In 1980, Raise the Titanic, based on Clive Cussler's book of the same name, proved a spectacular failure. It took $40 million to make and only brought in $7 million. After it tanked at the box office, the producer, Lew Grade, quipped: "It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic Ocean."

Many predicted that James Cameron's Titanic would suffer the same fate. It did not, eventually grossing more than any other movie made up until that time. But if Cameron made the most money off the Titanic than anyone in history, he was by no means the first.

And, judging from the fate of the Titan, he won't be the last. Whatever other reasons for the doomed ship's appeal across the ages, one thing seems certain: It always was – and will remain so for the foreseeable future – a source of profit as much as anything else.


Stephen Mihm. illustration: TBS
Stephen Mihm. illustration: TBS

Stephen Mihm is a professor of history at the University of Georgia and the coauthor of "Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance."


Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.

 

Titanic

Comments

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderation decisions are subjective. Published comments are readers’ own views and The Business Standard does not endorse any of the readers’ comments.

Top Stories

  • In terms of stream of education, girls maintained their excellence as well. Photo: TBS
    Lowest SSC pass rate in 17 years as over 6 lakh students fail
  • BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir while speaking at a discussion at National Press Club on 10 July 2025. Photo: TBS
    'Backbone of economy will break': Fakhrul says govt should've worked seriously with more qualified people on US tariffs
  • S Alam Group Chairman Mohammed Saiful Alam. Photo: Collected
    Court freezes foreign investments of S Alam Group chairman, family in Singapore

MOST VIEWED

  • Graphics: TBS
    BB raises startup fund limit, drops upper age barrier
  • Workers pack undergarments at the packing section of a garment factory in Ashulia, on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Fatima Tuj Johora
    After US tariffs, jobs hang by a thread in Bangladesh's garments sector
  • Global Islami Bank rectifies 2023 figures, reports Tk2,259cr loss instead of Tk128cr profit
    Global Islami Bank rectifies 2023 figures, reports Tk2,259cr loss instead of Tk128cr profit
  • Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur. TBS Sketch
    Audit reports of most banks contain cooked up data: BB governor
  • File photo of containers at Chattogram port/TBS
    US buyers push Bangladeshi exporters to share extra tariff costs
  • CA orders law enforcers to complete all election preparations by December
    CA orders law enforcers to complete all election preparations by December

Related News

  • Jon Landau, Oscar-winning Titanic and Avatar producer dies at 63
  • Why are old movies being played at Star Cineplex?
  • Bernard Hill, veteran actor best known for Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, dies at 79
  • Iconic 'Titanic' door prop that saved Rose fetches over $700K at auction
  • Titanic law helps ship owner limit liability in bridge collapse

Features

Illustration: TBS

Behind closed doors: Why women in Bangladesh stay in abusive marriages

2h | Panorama
Purbachl’s 144-acre Sal forest is an essential part of the area’s biodiversity. Within it, 128 species of plants and 74 species of animals — many of them endangered- have been identified. Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain/TBS

A forest saved: Inside the restoration of Purbachal's last Sal grove

2h | Panorama
Women are forced to fish in saline waters every day, risking their health to provide for their families. Photo: TBS

How Mongla’s women are bearing the brunt of rising salinity

23h | Panorama
Dr Mostafa Abid Khan. Sketch: TBS

Actual impact will depend on how US retailers respond: Mostafa Abid Khan

2d | Economy

More Videos from TBS

News of The Day, 10 JULY 2025

News of The Day, 10 JULY 2025

7m | TBS News of the day
SSC and equivalent results released: Pass rate 68.45%, GPA drops by 5

SSC and equivalent results released: Pass rate 68.45%, GPA drops by 5

37m | TBS Today
Islami bank aims to increase deposits to Tk 2 lakh crore by 2025

Islami bank aims to increase deposits to Tk 2 lakh crore by 2025

2h | TBS Programs
The two countries still face major challenges and mutual suspicions

The two countries still face major challenges and mutual suspicions

1h | Others
EMAIL US
contact@tbsnews.net
FOLLOW US
WHATSAPP
+880 1847416158
The Business Standard
  • About Us
  • Contact us
  • Sitemap
  • Advertisement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Comment Policy
Copyright © 2025
The Business Standard All rights reserved
Technical Partner: RSI Lab

Contact Us

The Business Standard

Main Office -4/A, Eskaton Garden, Dhaka- 1000

Phone: +8801847 416158 - 59

Send Opinion articles to - oped.tbs@gmail.com

For advertisement- sales@tbsnews.net