Anticlimax, one might say — but this really happened.
Mar 14, 2025 06:55 IST First published on: Mar 14, 2025 at 06:55 IST
Escaping a sinking boat, a man and a woman find that their life jackets won’t inflate. Swimming on desperately, they find their succour: A single life jacket floating in the choppy seas. It’s the setup for a classic dilemma, and the expected denouement is a heroic sacrifice, tropes of love and chivalry all wrapped up in a foam vest. Except it doesn’t happen that way; it turns out that both are able to cling to the lone life jacket for more than half an hour until they’re rescued. Anticlimax, one might say — but this really happened.
The not-so-doomed lovers were a newlywed couple — a Brazilian doctor and a businesswoman — on their honeymoon in the Maldives, and there was no iceberg involved. Their boat, which had nearly 50 people on board, was hit by a big wave. About 20 minutes later, the boat started to lean to one side. The passengers were asked to put on their life jackets and jump out. Nobody was hurt — except for the psychological trauma.
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Cue the meme fraternity. “That’s some Titanic love,” wrote one. “Proof that Jack could’ve survived the Titanic,” said another. The latter’s an old, old idea that’s taken on a life of its own among fans over the years. Eventually, director James Cameron even conducted an experiment with two stunt people in a pool, and found there was a possibility that both Jack and Rose could have survived if they’d balanced on the raft and kept their upper bodies out of the water. That might have pleased the crowd, but wouldn’t it have defeated the point? Jack died, and our hearts will ache on. Thankfully, once in a while, reality is kinder than fiction.
