Shortly before midnight on April 14, 1912, the “safest and most luxurious passenger ship ever built” hit an iceberg off the Newfoundland coast. After lying dead in the water for about two-and-a-half hours, her bow began to submerge. In just minutes, this giant ship was nearly vertical, her stern soaring hundreds of feet in the frigid night air. Great plumes of steam billowed from her four stacks as she began her long descent to the bottom of the sea. More than 1,500 people stood on the decks singing “Nearer My God to Thee” as she slid beneath the waves taking them with her to their watery grave, thousands of feet below. That was the maiden voyage of the most famous luxury liner ever built, the White Star Lines’ Titanic. And it was the worst disaster in commercial naval history.
Fifty-five years later, almost to the day, a crew of Hollywood actors, technicians, directors, camera operators, and the myriad others required to make a modern motion picture gathered a few miles south of Rosarito Beach on the west coast of Mexico’s Baja, California peninsula to recreate that dreadful night. To duplicate the steam erupting from the Titanic’s exploding boilers, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures – all of whom are involved in the picture – turned to Nationwide Boiler.
A few weeks before filming of the sinking sequence began, Nationwide Boiler sales engineer, Russell Rabago received a call from one of the film’s special effects coordinators inquiring about the availability of a steam plant for use in the film. Within days, Russ was on his way to Mexico to examine the location and make sure about all the details. By late January, two of Nationwide’s mobile steam plants were loaded on trucks and headed to the border. Within days of their arrival, they were making steam. During filming, the steam provided by Nationwide Boiler’s equipment was used to simulate the effect of exploding boilers as the Titanic sunk. During filming of the Titanic’s sinking, “Even the stunt people looked scared when they saw the dailies of the 90-degree angle shot,” reported Francis Fisher, one of the lead actors in the film.
Titanic is one of the most expensive movies ever made. Currently, the estimated cost is $150 million. Although originally scheduled for a summer release, it is now planned to be in theaters this winter. To get a better idea why Titanic required such an enormous investment, consider the facility where the sinking sequence was simulated. First, new studio facilities were built. Next, an 80-foot-long model of the ship was constructed. Then the model was floated in a 180-million-gallon tank, constructed specifically for this sequence. And all this construction was only for the exterior shots. Interior sequences were filmed earlier over a period of many months.
“We’re not sure if Nationwide Boiler’s name will appear when the screen credits roll, but we’ll be watching,” says Mr. Rabago. “From everything that’s been reported so far, it will be a film like Gone with the Wind, which everyone will view sooner or later, and one they’ll be talking about for years to come.” Someday, Mr. Rabago will probably tell his grandchildren about the important part he played in making one of the greatest motion picture spectaculars of all time.
This article was originally featured in the Summer 1997 edition of our Steamlines newsletter.