The Legend of the Titanic 1999

In New York City, an old mouse named Top Connors sits with his grandchildren and tells them the story he calls the “true” tale of the RMS Titanic, a memory-filled yarn told with warmth and wit. Before he dives in, he gently chides one youngster for blowing a shark whistle, joking that it might attract Mr Ice.

In April 1912, Connors is a young sailor mouse aboard the Titanic’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York. A lively young Brazilian mouse named Ronny befriends him, sharing a love of soccer and friendship even as danger looms. The ship’s fate is set in motion by the scheming plan of Mr Ice, a tiger shark who has escaped from prison and seeks to wreck the grand liner.

Ice and his gang plot to sink the ship, pressing their luck as Geoffreys asks the radio man to send an urgent wire from Maltravers to his whaling ships by telegraph, only for the mice to gnaw apart the wires to prevent the message from getting through. The villainy takes a fantastical turn when Ice and his crew trick a giant, gentle octopus into heaving an iceberg to the surface, a move that forces the Titanic toward disaster. The ship crashes into the ice, Maltravers and his entourage flee in a lifeboat, and the mice scramble to salvage what they can.

To fix the telegraph, the mice recruit a French mouse named Camembert, who insists they tie the wires to his moustache, an act that seems to spell doom for him. Yet rescue arrives in the form of whales and dolphins, while a guilt-ridden but determined Tentacolino fights to keep the bow and stern together as the ship begins to break apart. Everyone leaps into the sea and is saved by a passing whale, and the Titanic finally sinks, taking Tentacolino with it and seemingly crushing him. By morning, the survivors are aboard the RMS Carpathia and head toward New York, with Tentacolino and Camembert appearing unharmed in an almost magical twist.

Back in modern-day New York, the old Connors concludes the tale by reminding his grandchildren that whales are still hunted and urges them to do whatever they can to halt the whaling schemes at all costs.