Titanic

Episode 1

Episode #1.1

Sat, Apr 14, 201247 mins

Hugh, the Earl of Manton, and his snobbish wife Louisa set sail on the Titanic for New York, where Hugh has business. Their daughter Georgiana, a fervent suffragette just released from prison, accompanies them. On the train to Southampton, the trio meet Hugh's lawyer Irishman John Batley and his vocal wife Muriel, who despises her husband's subservience to the aristocracy, as well as the aristocracy itself, and a tea party on board the Titanic ends in an argument between the two wives. Barnes, the Earl's valet, and Mabel Watson, Louisa's maid, are served dinner with the servants of other first-class passengers by stewardess Annie Desmond and Barnes upsets Mabel by tearing a book of Aesop's Fables given her by her father when she was a child. Georgiana befriends Harry Widener, scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family, and the two witness the over-protective attitude to her baby charge by Alice Cleaver, nanny to the Allison family. Louisa's aloofness extends to condemning film actress Dorothy Gibson and Madame Aubart, mistress of married millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim as well as insulting Grace and Joseph Rushton, a couple who have made their wealth through trade. When the ship hits an iceberg and Louisa declares herself lucky to have rescued her jewels, Muriel launches a verbal attack on her and her patronising ways. However, Hugh is more concerned that Second Officer Lightoller is lowering lifeboats which are not full because he is filling them with women and children only whilst Alice leaves the Allisons and their little girl to get in a boat with the baby. Harry succeeds in putting Georgiana in a lifeboat but Louisa refuses to leave her husband and save herself.