How Titanic’s Chinese passenger rescue scene was cut from film
- The 1997 blockbuster told the story of the tragic 1912 sinking of the passenger liner
- Six Chinese men were rescued, but the scene ended up on the cutting room floor
A cut scene from the 1997 blockbuster Titanic, the most expensive film ever made at the time, with a production budget of US$200 million, depicted the real-life rescue of one of eight Chinese passengers aboard the doomed passenger liner.
Directed by James Cameron, the action-packed flick focused on the fictional romance between main characters Jack – played by Leonardo DiCaprio – and Rose (Kate Winslet) on board the RMS Titanic that, on this day 107 years ago, sank after the vessel hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, taking more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew down with it.
But one scene from the epic three-hour, 15-minute film that ended up on the cutting room floor shows lifeboat number 14, the only vessel to return and search for survivors navigating the freezing waters of the North Atlantic Ocean in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
Watch the cut scene here:
In the deleted scene, the rescue boat’s skeleton crew can be seen scanning the water’s dark surface with torches for signs of life, the boat passing debris and floating corpses (one very grim shot shows a dead mother and baby).