The Murder of Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater

In 1912, the upper-class 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater boards the departing ship in Southampton with her fiancé Caledon Hockley and her mother Ruth DeWitt Bukater. Distraught and frustrated with her engagement to Cal and her controlled life, Rose attempts to commit suicide by jumping from the stern, but a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson intervenes. Initially Cal, his friends and the sailors, overhearing Rose's screams, believe the penniless Jack attempted to rape her. She explains Jack saved her life, covering up her suicide attempt by explaining she slipped after trying to see the propellers. Jack supports the claim, although Hockley's manservant, former police officer Spicer Lovejoy, is unconvinced. Jack and Rose strike up a tentative friendship as she thanks him for his corroboration, and he shares stories of his adventures traveling and sketching; their bond deepens when they leave a first-class formal dinner for a much livelier gathering in third-class.

Cal is informed of her partying in the steerage and forbids Rose to meet Jack again. However, after witnessing a woman encouraging her seven-year-old daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose decides to defy him and her mother, and asks Jack to sketch her naked wearing only the Heart of the Ocean, which was an engagement present from Cal. Afterwards, the two playfully run away from the inspecting Lovejoy, going below deck to the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault traveling car and consumate their affair, before moving to the ship's forward well deck. Rose decides that when they arrive at New York, she will leave the ship with Jack. They then witness the ship's fatal collision with an iceberg. Meanwhile, Cal discovers Rose's nude drawing and her taunting note in his safe, so he frames Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant it in Jack's pocket. Rose chooses to run away from Cal, risking her chances of getting on a lifeboat with her mother, to rescue Jack from his imprisonment in the master-at-arms' office.

Jack and Rose return to the top deck. Cal and Jack, though enemies, both want Rose safe, so they persuade her to board a lifeboat. But after realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with Jack in the ship's first class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose down the decks and into the flooded first class dining saloon. Cal catches up to Jack and Rose and shoots the two of them, killing them!