In James Cameron’s Titanic, as the ocean liner plunged deeper into the Atlantic’s icy waters, First Officer William Murdoch drew his gun. Passengers were pushing for spots in what few lifeboats the ship had to offer, and Murdoch was struggling to keep order. Panicked, he fired into the crowd. An Irish worker, Tommy Ryan, collapsed to the floor, cradled by a friend as he bled to death on the sinking deck. Realising the horror of what he’d done, Murdoch gave one last nautical salute to a nearby colleague before turning the gun on himself.
When the blockbuster hit cinemas in 1997, audiences lapped up this pulse-racing scene. Except, that is, in the small town of Dalbeattie, Scotland, where the real-life Murdoch grew up (a stone plaque on the town hall hails his “heroism” to this day). Family members’ public condemnation of the movie’s depiction of Murdoch – which, his nephew Scott Murdoch claimed, was fabricated to make the film’s crescendo more exciting; there was no evidence his uncle had killed anyone – was so fierce, the executive vice president of 20th Century Fox flew all the way to Dalbeattie to apologise. A £5,000 cheque was presented as compensation for the “distress” caused, with Cameron himself describing his regret on Titanic’s DVD commentary: “I think I have come to the realisation that it was probably a mistake to portray a specific person.”
