 In real life, Lightoller never reported receiving a child from the water.Though in the movie Gallagher survives the sinking, he actually died in the shipwreck.Upon its December 1958 U.S. premiere, Bosley Crowther called the film a "tense, exciting and supremely awesome drama...[that] puts the story of the great disaster in simple human terms and yet brings it all into a drama of monumental unity and scope"; according to Crowther