The Real Woman Who Wore Rose’s Necklace On The Titanic

And no, she didn’t throw the real necklace in the ocean. Fate was not that kind to her.

Everyone says Jack and Rose in The Titanic were fictional characters. Just a fictional love story woven into the true story of the sinking of the Titanic. Even James Cameron said so, and he ought to know.

He wrote the script.

After writing the script for Titanic, he met with 20th Century Fox executives and pitched the movie as “Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic”..

Here’s what you might not know.

There really were star-crossed lovers on the Titanic.

Not Jack and Rose. No.

But there was a woman wearing that necklace

When the ship went down.

And she lived to tell the story.

Jack and Rose were a gentler story…

Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it? I mean, their story was heartbreaking.

Tragic. And yet, it was gentler than the story kept hidden.

In the movie, Rose was 17 and engaged to a man that she didn’t want to marry. He was full of himself and mean. But he had money.

Rose and her mom needed the money.

His name was Cal and he bought her a crazy expensive necklace with a big blue diamond from the crown of King Louis XVI, encircled by diamonds. That necklace would be her wedding gift.

He dangled it like bait.

The necklace was called “Heart of the Sea.”

When the movie opens, Rose is getting ready to jump overboard because she feels like her only options in life are poverty or marrying that guy.

But then she meets Jack. A poor artist who won a ticket on the Titanic.

Of course, they fall in love.

Jack draws her wearing nothing but that necklace.

In the movie, when you see Jack’s hands drawing, that’s actually James Cameron’s hands. He did all the drawings in Jack’s notebook.

That necklace weaves itself through the story. First Cal uses it like bait.

Then he puts it in Jack’s pocket and accuses him of theft. Rich man vs. poor man. Who do you think they’re going to believe?

That necklace is why Jack is handcuffed to a metal pipe when the ship is sinking. That’s why Rose doesn’t get on the lifeboat with her Mom.

Why didn’t she just move over…?

Surely there was room for two on that door. Why didn’t she just move over? That’s what a lot of people say.

Well, because it wasn’t a door. It was a piece of wainscoting from above the door. That’s actual Titanic trivia.

After the Titanic sank, a piece of wainscoting was found floating in the water. It was not big enough to safely hold two people. It could have held one person afloat.

Cameron used a lot of real details like that in the movie.

I could write an entire story about all the details he got right.

Know who the “real” fictional characters were?

There was a woman wearing that necklace. And the lover who gave it to her.

You know who was totally fictional?

Jack’s friend, Rose’s mother and the man Rose didn’t want to marry.

When you hear about the real lovers on the Titanic, you’ll understand why her mother wouldn’t have been there.

Not in a million years.

Same with the fiancé.

Totally made up to support the story of Rose and Jack.

Because trust me, no one would have wanted to write a script about the real woman who was wearing that necklace on the Titanic.

The real Kate and the real necklace…

Funny that Kate Winslet got the role of Rose.

The woman who wore the real necklace was also named Kate.

Kate Florence Phillips was 19 years old when she boarded the Titanic. She was running away from home to elope with her boss.

His name was Henry Morley and he was 42 years old.

Henry owned a chain of confectioner’s stores. Not low end candy stores, but stores where rich people bought fancy confections.

He was abandoning his wife and 12 year old daughter to marry a young employee he was smitten with. She was a counter clerk in his store.

Henry was not a poor man, like Jack.

Kate was the one that was poor.

Henry was wealthy. Very wealthy. He’d sold two of his stores so he’d be able to send the money to his wife and kid and call the marriage done.

He bought tickets on the Titanic under fake names.

The couple boarded as “Mr. and Mrs. Marshall.” They weren’t married yet. But they were going to get married as soon as they got to San Francisco.

You know why he used fake names, of course.

So no one could find them before he and his 19 year old girlfriend could make it to America before anyone tracked them down.

Kate was asleep when the Titanic hit the iceberg…

By the time Henry woke her and brought her to the deck of the ship, all the lifeboats were gone except one.

They were loading boat number 11.

It was the last lifeboat.

She was wearing nothing but a thin cotton nightgown. She’d taken nothing with her but the key to her cabin. They didn’t know what was happening.

Henry was holding on to her for dear life. Like he wanted her to stay.

A crewman forcibly pulled Kate away from him.

As she was yanked from his arms, Henry put a necklace around her neck. It was a big blue sapphire, encircled with diamonds.

It was to be her wedding gift.

Her necklace was called “Love of the Ocean.”

Interesting, don’t you think? The necklace in the movie was Heart of the Sea. The real necklace that Kate wore was called Love of the Ocean.

Coincidence?

Wearing a thin nightgown, with that necklace around her neck and clutching her cabin key, Kate was dropped unceremoniously into the last lifeboat.

She was in that lifeboat for eight hours before she was rescued.

Kate never threw the necklace overboard…

It’s a beautiful scene at the end of the movie. Rose is an old woman with snow white hair and trembling hands as she tells her story and then throws the necklace back into the ocean.

(The clip is real short (about a minute) and is quite touching.)

That’s the Kate Winslet, Hollywood version of the ending.

But the real Kate? Fate wasn’t as kind to her.

Nine months after the rescue, Kate delivered a child.

A little girl named Ellen.

With no money and her lover dead, Kate had to go back to her hometown, where she was shamed, whispered about and utterly ostracized.

Not just a home wrecker but a single mother.

In 1913 England.

She tried to be a good mother, but her daughter’s eyes haunted her. She had her daddy’s eyes. Kate couldn’t stop seeing him there on the boat as she sailed away in the lifeboat and left him to go down with the ship.

She gave the little girl to her parents to raise.

They even tried marrying her off, but it didn’t help.

She never recovered from the trauma.

Slowly, Kate became mentally and emotionally unstable until her husband took her to an asylum and just abandoned here there. Signed her over to them, for life. She lived in the asylum until she died there at age 71.

Broke and struggling, her daughter eventually sold the necklace.

She said some lady in Florida bought it.

“The shock of the Titanic must have disturbed my mother’s mind. [She] became more and more disturbed — once she swallowed some acid and it burned the walls of her stomach. She was eventually put in an asylum.” ~Ellen, Kate’s daughter

Sources

— Kate Phillips at Britannica — Story of Kate Florence — The true story of the heart of the ocean necklace — Titanic Stories You Didn’t Know — The Surprising Calm Before the Chaotic Sinking