Goofs

Pitt has just come from a meeting where the secrecy of the mission has been stressed, and the decision is clearly stated that no outsiders should learn about the project. But John Bigalow seems to already know before the news is leaked, and asks Pitt to put back the Titanic's pennant when the ship is raised.

When Dana Archibald runs into Pitt on the street, the traffic behind her alternates between flowing and stopped. The area behind Dana is an intersection with a traffic light, but the same brown Celica appears in 2 different shots, with other cars in its place in other shots.

When Deep Quest gets trapped in the Titanic's skylight, the other submarine changes from the Sea Cliff to the Turtle and back.

When Pitt brings forward raising the Titanic, he says the explosive charges will be detonated eight seconds apart. The explosions are random, except the last two, which occur less than a second apart.

Twice when the explosive probes are placed and armed, the probe being placed is a completely different number than the one armed.

The Titanic is towed up New York City's East River, presumably to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and passes under the Brooklyn Bridge. The Titanic's masts, which are intact, were about 200 feet high from the waterline. The Brooklyn Bridge has 127 feet of clearance at mean high water. To reach the Navy Yard, the ship would also have to pass under the Manhattan Bridge, which has 135 feet of clearance.

When the team examines the horn retrieved from the wreck, they note that the instrument was presented to its owner after "three years service on the Olympic". The RMS Olympic, the Titanic's sister ship, was launched in 1910 and entered service in 1911. No one could've served 3 years on it by 1912, when the Titanic sank.

In the film, the Titanic's second funnel is missing. No one knew at the time that the ship had lost all 4 funnels when it sank, but it was generally accepted that the first (forward) funnel, not the second one, had toppled over and detached from the ship during the sinking.

Bigalow describes Titanic as being one-of-a-kind. It was actually the second of three virtually identical ships. The first, Olympic, remained in service until 1935, was sold due to loss of business in the Great Depression, and was demolished in 1937. The third, Britannic, was sunk in shallow water by a mine in November 1916 while serving as a hospital ship, with a loss of 30 men.

In the film, the Titanic is towed to New York from mid-ocean by harbor tugs, not ocean tugs. The towing methods are meant for harbors and other relatively calm waters, and would be very dangerous at sea.

When the Titanic sank, its masts and funnels were ripped off and the Grand Staircase's dome imploded. The damage was discovered in 1985, when the wreck was found. It was unknown when the film was released in 1980, and when the novel was published in 1976.

The Titanic broke in two as it sank, and the stern section suffered major structural damage, perhaps due to implosion from water pressure. However, those facts were only discovered when the ship's remains were found in 1985. Eyewitness testimony soon after the sinking was conflicting. In 1980, it was generally accepted that the Titanic sank intact.

When the Titanic has risen and the camera pans over the deck, about halfway down, a miniature sailor by the rail is turning some sort of wheel at the 1:26:15 mark. It's a joke by the props department; the wheel is a hand pump.

Bigalow orders a pink gin, which is prepared by warming a brandy glass with your hands, adding a few drops of Angostura Bitters, shaking them out, then adding a single or double optic measure of gin. The glass would never be so full or so richly colored.

None of the location dialogue was looped, so the background audio is often as loud as the dialogue.

In the photo montage that opens the movie prior to the main titles, a photo depicting cornet player Graham Farley is actually from a 1917 publicity shot of The Original Dixieland Jass[sic] Band featuring cornet player Dominic "Nick" LaRocca. The Titanic's small string band had no brass.

Southby is described as being "in Hampshire" and "20 miles from Southampton". The graveyard is on a very rugged, rocky shoreline. There is no coastline like that within 20 miles of Southampton. The scene was shot near St. Ives, Cornwall, which has a very rugged, rocky shoreline.

When the Titanic is docking in New York, the cars in the background include a number of Citroëns, which have never been sold in the US.

Sander Vanocur's newsroom has the channel logo KCOP-13, a Los Angeles station, but he says he is in Washington. Also, Vanocur was an ABC anchor at this time.

Part of the plot describes how sinking Titanic wanders ten miles away from its sinking position due to the missing smoke stack affecting its fluid dynamics. But when it is raised it is portrayed as rising practically straight upwards into the middle of a group of ships that appear to be distanced by only hundreds of yards. The same logic would apply to the raising of the ship as its sinking.

Bohannon and Pitt state they've sighted a smokestack. It's a ship, so they should have said 'funnel.'

The briefing stated Titanic is at depths past 12,000 feet. The submersibles state 'no contact' at depths of 8 to 9 thousand feet.