[deleted]

Jesus. Survive the most notorious maritime disaster ever, set off in a pleasure craft for France to rescue stranded soldiers. Kudos.

So the whole plotline of a dead teenager was not historical then.

And his son wasn't senselessly killed during it. I really wondered why they decided on that in the film. It was ahistorical and left some audiences with the wrong message. What was the takeaway from that? Fear PTSD cowards?

It really took me out of the movie.

The real life Lightoller did lose two sons in the War. But both died in the line of duty. Not killed by some shell shocked recently rescued sailor.

The boy who gets killed in the movie is not the son of the civilian pilot but a friend.

He lost 2 sons in WW2, one was an RAF bomber pilot killed on the second day of the war, one killed in 1945 during the Granville Raid.

I've no idea what the thing with the boy on the boat was about.

Well apparently he also saved 127 people, rather than the ~30 in the film. But if you didn't know it was ahistorical until now, why did it take you out of the movie?!

Didn't happen to him, might have happened elsewhere I guess.

So did that happen where one of the rescued sailors killed his son's friend?

I double checked after because it was so horrible. Found no evidence of anything like it.

And he opted to do it, rather than letting the Royal Navy commandeer his boat, he decided he'd rather go himself.

He survived a lot of stuff, but only after making sure other people survived before him. He was a thoroughly honorable man.

"what do you see?"

whoa you're telling me that a film based off of factual history had actual people from history in it? color me shocked...

"Kate Winslet's magnificent tits."

"Oh, uh, I mean...home."

The character in Dunkirk is simply inspired by him, not literally him.

Weeeeell he’s complicated. He definitely engaged in a few less-than-honorable actions, both relating to the Titanic and his service in WW1…

EDIT: Love the downvotes. Okay, here is some educating on Lightoller:

• He refused to allow any male passengers into the lifeboats, despite there being plenty of room for them (many boats went away half-full or less.). At one point, he refused entry into a boat of a 13-year-old boy. The boy's father, Arthur Ryerson, had to shame Lightoller into letting the kid into the boat with his mother and sisters. Lightoller relented, but was clearly unhappy about it, grumbling "no more boys" under his breath. Many, many more passengers lives could have been saved had Lightoller not adopted his senselessly strict rule for who could go.
• In his memoir, Lightoller describes how he chased a few crew members away from one of the last lifeboats while waving his revolver at them, threatening to shoot them. In his account, Lightoller makes it a point to note that these men were not "English," and then uses a common ethnic slur to describe them, stating that of course people of such ethnicity would be so cowardly.
• Lightoller blatantly lied about the Marconi wireless operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride. This related to the controversy of a iceberg warning that was sent to the Titanic by the SS Mesaba, some two hours before the collision with the iceberg. During his testimony at the U.S. Senate Inquiry into the disaster in 1912, Lightoller had been blindsided while testifying by the revelation of this message, and he got very defensive about it, insisting it had never been delivered to the bridge. Bride, for his part, was adamant that Phillips (who died in the sinking) would have delivered it. Lightoller himself would have been in command of the bridge when the message came in. So in his memoir, written over two decades later, Lightoller suddenly invents the claim that Bride was laying in his bunk and reading/musing over the Mesaba warning, rather than it being taken to the bridge. Even worse, he then invents a tale that after the Titanic sank, while struggling to survive on the back of an capsized lifeboat, Lightoller was next to Phillips, who tearfully confesses to failing to deliver the Mesaba's warning to him. How convenient, eh? Of course, Phillips then had the courtesy to die so no one could actually verify this story, since not a single other witness from that overturned boat (including Bride) ever corroborated this story.
• And how about a war crime? During WW1, Lightoller commanded a patrol boat in the English Channel, and at one point rammed and sank a German U-boat. The surviving commander of that U-boat claimed that Lightoller ordered his men to fire on the German survivors as they struggled in the water and were asking for help, killing several of them. Lightoller himself implicitly confirmed this in his memoir, stating that he refused to accept "this hands in the air business." So yeah, war crime.

Anyway, make of all that what you will.

I don't think you should be downvoted because you make some good points. If you look at him through the lens of someone obviously very chivalrous (in the traditional sense) his actions are more understandable. It's easy to say "more lives could have been saved", however the argument that men would have swamped the ships is also a possibility. At all times, he appears to have been eminently concerned with the welfare of women and children, which I think is quite honorable. This comes at the expense of men, obviously, and also himself. His chivalry also makes the war crime more comprehensible. Having been on the Titanic, he would have experienced a passenger ship sinking with women and children. The idea of a warship (the uboat) sinking passenger and merchant ships probably pissed him off. It's not right of him to kill the uboat survivors, but I feel like if he were ordered to sink ships full of women and children he would refuse the order.

> It's easy to say "more lives could have been saved", however the argument that men would have swamped the ships is also a possibility.

When the boats were going away half empty, there wasn't any danger of this. The evacuation was quite orderly and without such panic for most of the sinking, it wasn't until near the end that you had the frantic mobs trying to get at the last boats. Lightoller himself indicated that not allowing men in the boats was simply a point of pride for him, not for any such practical reason.

>At all times, he appears to have been eminently concerned with the welfare of women and children, which I think is quite honorable.

Except for Jack Ryerson and other young boys, right?

>The idea of a warship (the uboat) sinking passenger and merchant ships probably pissed him off. It's not right of him to kill the uboat survivors, but I feel like if he were ordered to sink ships full of women and children he would refuse the order.

Women and children were accepted collateral damage of waging war in that era, and Lightoller didn't seem to have any problem with such acts of war, so long as it was his own side doing it. The allied embargo on Germany caused mass starvation of women and children--was that any more "honorable" than sinking ships? Bear in mind that the British sank German merchant ships, too. And of course, once we get to WW2, there was wholesale bombing of civilian cities by all sides, killing millions of innocents.

What Lightoller did was a war crime even in that era, so I can't see any way to skew it as "honorable." He would have known it wasn't.

And if he'd been given a lawful order to sink a German merchant vessel that may have had civilians on it, I'm pretty sure he would have. Bear in mind that merchant vessels were legit targets if they had deck armaments installed.

And not to harp on it, but the blatant lies about Bride and Phillips weren't "honorable," by any definition.

The takeaways were that fear makes you do inhuman or dangerous things. Like when the Highlanders wanted to make the disguised Frenchman get off the boat. Those things have unintended consequences. Those things actually don’t matter at all, sometimes.

That not all heroic acts end in glory. A lot of people die in wars, tragic and mundane deaths. But they're still heroes nonetheless. George was a hero because he risked his life to help his nation's army, despite the circumstances of his death. Peter asked him "Do you know where we're going?" and George simply replies "France." He doesn't realize the severity of the situation, much less that a man traumatized by a near death experience could kill him even if he is on his own side.

The British people came to the aid of their soldiers, but it wasn't all glory and easy. That is the real purpose of the Moonstone's involvement.

Farrier is the other side of this I think. He fully knows the consequences of his actions. Not having enough fuel to return to England might mean his death or capture. But he does it to help his comrades and ultimately his nation. This stark contrast goes to show just how sad yet meaningful George’s death is.

It's funny that you say "Fear PTSD cowards" because the dad addresses George's question of "Is he a coward?" with "He's shell shocked, he's not himself, and might not ever be."