“Hold your mother’s hand and be a good girl.”  These words were spoken as the Titanic sank.  They went to the movie

“Hold your mother’s hand and be a good girl.” These words were spoken as the Titanic sank. They went to the movie

James Cameron’s “Titanic” was on the one hand a love story of fictional characters, on the other hand the team wanted to tell the story of the only voyage of this ocean liner as faithfully as possible in many aspects. Among the extras there was e.g. a girl that the writers created, inspired by Eva Hart.

Eva was born on January 31, 1905, so she was seven when the Titanic set sail. In early 1912, her parents, Benjamin and Esther, decided to emigrate on a second-class board to Winnipeg, Canada. They planned to open a tobacco shop there.

She survived the Titanic disaster. “I remember colors, sounds, everything. Worst thing I remember is screaming”

– It’s only for a moment. Hold your mother’s hand and be a good girl, were the last words Eva heard from her father before the lifeboat they boarded was lowered into the ocean. This line also appears in the 1997 film during the evacuation of some passengers. – I remember the colors, the sounds, everything. The worst thing I remember is screaming, Eva later recalled.

Her mother was supposed to have sensed something wrong from the beginning of the journey. – Before boarding the Titanic, I had never seen the ship live before, and this one was very large. All the passengers were very excited. When we went down to the cabin, my mother told my father that she would not sleep any night. And she did, she said. The seven-year-old herself was said to have been awake in fear throughout the evacuation and the time the ship was sinking.

Eva Hart recalled that on the evening of the tragedy, many people were gambling on board the Titanic, but her father did not want to because he had a bad experience (his father was an addict and lost a large fortune), so he went to sleep. The mother, busy sewing 10 minutes before midnight, was reported to have felt a slight jolt “as if a train were braking at the station”. However, she woke her husband to check what had happened and tried to dress her sleepy daughter. My father came back very quickly, picked me up and wrapped me in a blanket as tight as a baby. His mother said nothing to him. I asked her later why she didn’t ask “What was that?”, but she replied, “I didn’t have to. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew something terrible had happened that I had to live with. There was nothing to say in this situation. “- recalled Eva years later.

The women were saved from a shipwreck that was supposed to be unsinkable and went down during its maiden voyage. They were taken by RMS Carpathia to New York, where they arrived on April 18. With about 2.2 thousand 1,500 people on the Titanic died. Benjamin Hart’s body has not been identified.

“To die from a few lifeboats is ridiculous”

Eva’s mother decided to return to England with her daughter, after some time she remarried. Eva struggled for many years with fear of the sea and nightmares about the disaster. Until her late years, she was also one of the survivors who spoke more willingly about the Titanic. She has repeatedly criticized the White Star Line for having too few lifeboats (although researchers say other factors would have been more catastrophic). In one of the interviews:

If the ship was torpedoed, it’s the war’s fault. If it shatters against the rocks in a storm, it’s a matter of nature. But to die from a small amount of lifeboats is ridiculous

It was she who argued for years that she saw the ship break in two, which was questioned by some until the wreck was found in 1985. Two years later, when members of the expedition began to fish various items from the wreckage, the woman called them pirates and vultures and referred to them as thieves. In her opinion, this place should be treated with the reverence due to a tomb.

Eva Hart wrote an autobiography in 1994, but did not live to see the premiere of “Titanic” with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. She died of cancer on February 14, 1996, just after her 91st birthday. Titanic opened in theaters in December 1997.

Source: Gazeta

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