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Today In History...April 15, 1912 The Titanic Sinks · Gil I Am

0:11
Speaker 1: On the twentieth of September nineteen eleven, Titanic sister ship,
0:15
Speaker 1: the Olympic, was steaming down the Solent.
0:19
Speaker 2: The Olympic is about to set off for her fifth
0:21
Speaker 2: voyage across the Atlantic, and she's sailing through the Solent
0:25
Speaker 2: parallel to a Navy warship called HM S.
0:27
Speaker 3: Hawk, and they were having a bit of a race.
0:34
Speaker 3: So there was a bit of fun going on between
0:35
Speaker 3: the two ships.
0:37
Speaker 4: Due to the restricted channel. The Olympic tried to maneuver
0:42
Speaker 4: out of the way of the hulk, but it was misjudged.
0:47
Speaker 2: The Olympic effectively cuts up the Hawk and he couldn't
0:51
Speaker 2: stop a collision.
0:56
Speaker 1: The Olympic, like the Titanic, featured a series of internal bulkheads,
1:01
Speaker 1: dividing the ship into water tight compartments. Even though the
1:06
Speaker 1: warship had punched a hole in her side, the bulkhead
1:09
Speaker 1: compartments prevented water from flooding the whole ship, allowing her
1:13
Speaker 1: to stay afloat.
1:15
Speaker 3: I think the spectacular survival of the Olympic from the
1:19
Speaker 3: Hawk collision planted a dangerous idea in people's minds.
1:22
Speaker 2: If a warship can take you on and you can
1:25
Speaker 2: just sail home again and get fixed. Then it's giving
1:28
Speaker 2: people the wrong idea.
1:30
Speaker 4: Many would have thought, well, that really does make the
1:33
Speaker 4: ship relatively unsinkable. Invariably, most captains operating on a transatlantic
1:41
Speaker 4: voyage will want to go as fast as possible in
1:46
Speaker 4: the early part of the voyage to have something in
1:48
Speaker 4: hand in case they encounter fold. Fog is very prevalent
1:52
Speaker 4: on the North Atlantic and it generally means you have
1:56
Speaker 4: to slow down. So by going faster the beginning, you
2:01
Speaker 4: have something in hand just in case you meet the
2:04
Speaker 4: unexpected fog.
2:06
Speaker 1: Smith would not have been unduly worried by the iceberg risk.
2:10
Speaker 1: Seven months earlier, he'd been captain of the Olympic when
2:13
Speaker 1: she survived a serious collision.
2:16
Speaker 2: If you are Smith and you are captained Olympic and
2:19
Speaker 2: she survived being rammed by a scary looking spike on
2:24
Speaker 2: the front of a Royal Naval vessel, then you are
2:27
Speaker 2: not going to be that concerned about what a little
2:31
Speaker 2: iceberg might do to you, because in your mind, if
2:34
Speaker 2: there's a big iceberg, your people are going to see
2:36
Speaker 2: it and steer away from it.
2:38
Speaker 4: No doubt, the perceived risk of striking an iceberg was
2:44
Speaker 4: so small that it was discounted, but there was the
2:48
Speaker 4: very real risk if the ship arrived late to New
2:51
Speaker 4: York there would be a lot of adverse publicity.
2:56
Speaker 1: Titanic's fireman revealed that a fire had taken hold in
2:59
Speaker 1: the bunker in boiler room five.
3:02
Speaker 2: The fire had been going since Belfast, when Titanic would
3:05
Speaker 2: have sailed with the skeleton crew round to Southampton to
3:07
Speaker 2: make the voyage.
3:09
Speaker 5: So when the Titanic left Southampton, the fire was already there.
3:12
Speaker 1: The three story high bunker was only finally emptied on Saturday,
3:16
Speaker 1: the thirteenth of April, one day before the collision.
3:20
Speaker 5: Fire was burning for something in reasion for about ten days.
3:23
Speaker 5: It took that long to actually empty the bunker.
3:26
Speaker 1: The sheet of steel that formed the bunker's rear wall
3:29
Speaker 1: did another critical job. It was part of a water
3:33
Speaker 1: tight bulkhead, the safety feature specifically designed to stop the
3:37
Speaker 1: ship from flooding if she got a hole in the hull.
3:40
Speaker 2: What two of the surviving firemen actually said was that
3:43
Speaker 2: once the coal was taken out of Bunker number five,
3:46
Speaker 2: that you could see how the bunker had warped because
3:49
Speaker 2: of the continued heat it had been exposed to.
3:52
Speaker 1: So the warping of the steel plates may have weakened
3:56
Speaker 1: one of Titanic's vital water tight bulkheads.
3:59
Speaker 3: We know from the inquiry into the Titanic disaster that
4:02
Speaker 3: the intense heat of the bonker fire on the Titanic
4:05
Speaker 3: had actually deflected the metal of the hull, and this
4:10
Speaker 3: meant that there was no longer a perfect seal, and
4:13
Speaker 3: in fact, the fire damaged plates in the bulkhead may
4:15
Speaker 3: have been weeping about one or two buckets of water
4:18
Speaker 3: per hour even before the collision.
4:24
Speaker 2: To be a wireless operator in one of these big
4:26
Speaker 2: transatlantic liners you had to be really good at your job.
4:29
Speaker 2: You had to be really swift at sending, in receiving
4:31
Speaker 2: horse code.
4:34
Speaker 1: As well as incoming passenger messages. The operators received urgent
4:38
Speaker 1: safety alerts from nearby shipping. They were marked with three
4:43
Speaker 1: letters to highlight their importance.
4:47
Speaker 4: MSG Master Service Graham was a priority message that was
4:52
Speaker 4: intended to be sent to the captain and it was
4:55
Speaker 4: used for things such as ice wawnings and the like.
5:00
Speaker 1: Several ice warnings from other ships earlier that day were
5:04
Speaker 1: marked MSG and were duly relayed to Captain Smith.
5:10
Speaker 5: Captain Smith saw and received all these messages, so he
5:14
Speaker 5: decided to go a little bit further on, about half
5:17
Speaker 5: an hour additional travel before turning west toward New York.
5:21
Speaker 1: While Smith entertained first class passengers to a ten course
5:25
Speaker 1: dinner featuring oysters and filet mignon in the Marconi room,
5:29
Speaker 1: the messages were piling up. At nine fifty two pm,
5:40
Speaker 1: another ice warning arrived, this one from the s S Massaba,
5:44
Speaker 1: a few hours ahead of the Titanic, heading for New
5:47
Speaker 1: York on almost exactly the same course. So much heavy
5:54
Speaker 1: package had a great number of large icebergs also field ice.
5:58
Speaker 1: It was a clear worn that Titanic's new route would
6:02
Speaker 1: take her straight into an ice field bristling with giant bergs,
6:06
Speaker 1: but the message never reached Captain Smith.
6:11
Speaker 5: The problem with the Massava miss say is that there
6:13
Speaker 5: was no MSG. Priefens.
6:15
Speaker 1: Almost an hour later, Titanic received an even starker warning
6:19
Speaker 1: from a ship just ten miles away, but again the
6:23
Speaker 1: three critical letters MSG were missing.
6:29
Speaker 3: At ten thirty pm on the night the Titanic sank,
6:32
Speaker 3: so only an hour before the collision, a vital message
6:36
Speaker 3: came in from the nearby Californian, who radioed the Titanic
6:40
Speaker 3: to say that they were stopped and surrounded by ice. Now, unfortunately,
6:45
Speaker 3: right at the moment that it arrived, the wireless operators
6:48
Speaker 3: on the Titanic were really busy doing what's called working
6:51
Speaker 3: kate race.
6:53
Speaker 4: Titanic was trying to communicate with Newfoundland over four hundred
6:58
Speaker 4: miles away, so it would have had had its radio
7:00
Speaker 4: set switched on to a very.
7:02
Speaker 6: High the.
7:06
Speaker 4: California fairly close to the Titanic when it sent out
7:11
Speaker 4: the message to the ship, it would have come through
7:14
Speaker 4: extremely loud.
7:15
Speaker 3: It nearly blasted their ears off. So the Titanic replied,
7:19
Speaker 3: keep out, old man, which meant, please be quiet, we're busy.
7:22
Speaker 3: And sadly with that, the operator on the Californian went
7:26
Speaker 3: to bed. If you look at this glass of water here,
7:33
Speaker 3: as the pencil is behind it, what you can start
7:35
Speaker 3: to see is the different shapes that are being made.
7:39
Speaker 3: And that's simply because light is bending according to the
7:43
Speaker 3: density of the water behind it. And this was the
7:46
Speaker 3: same the night the Titanic sank, because the air was
7:49
Speaker 3: different densities and therefore the light was bending. Everyone has
7:56
Speaker 3: heard of a desert miraage. Well this actually created what
8:00
Speaker 3: we call a miraging haze at the horizon behind the iceberg,
8:04
Speaker 3: so in effect, the haze on the distant horizon actually
8:08
Speaker 3: camouflage the iceberg in the near ground.
8:13
Speaker 1: Lookouts. Fred Fleet and Reginald Lee have no idea that
8:17
Speaker 1: they are staring into an optical illusion.
8:23
Speaker 3: If they'd had binoculars, theoretically they could have seen that
8:26
Speaker 3: base of the berg a little bit earlier, and those
8:29
Speaker 3: few seconds could have been crucial for Titanic.
8:37
Speaker 1: Titanic's central propeller gives its rudder more power to change direction,
8:42
Speaker 1: but only when it's rotating.
8:47
Speaker 4: Crucially, when the order was given to stop the engines
8:54
Speaker 4: and then lutterly reverse them, the center propeller would have been.
8:59
Speaker 1: Stopped, cutting power to the central propeller would have stopped
9:03
Speaker 1: it pushing water across the rudder for a few crucial seconds.
9:08
Speaker 4: We're talking about a marginal situation here, and perhaps the rudder,
9:14
Speaker 4: working a few percentage points more efficiently, may may have
9:22
Speaker 4: swung round just a little bit more to actually miss
9:29
Speaker 4: the ice berm.
9:32
Speaker 1: Instead, Titanic struck the giant bird.
9:42
Speaker 7: A rivet is a way of fastening two sheets of
9:45
Speaker 7: metal together. You would take this rivet and heat it
9:49
Speaker 7: up and then put it in through a hole that
9:52
Speaker 7: was punched through the two pieces of metal that are
9:55
Speaker 7: lined up on top of each other, and the rivet
9:58
Speaker 7: is put in through that hole and then hammered at
10:01
Speaker 7: the flat end, and that deforms the flat end into
10:05
Speaker 7: another head and fastens these two pieces of metal together.
10:09
Speaker 1: These rivets hold up well under normal circumstances, but the
10:13
Speaker 1: North Atlantic was unusually cold that night.
10:17
Speaker 3: Because Titanic was cutting through smooth, icy waters, her hull
10:22
Speaker 3: would have actually been below freezing at the time of
10:25
Speaker 3: the clusion.
10:26
Speaker 1: But that's not all high qualities. Steel rivets could only
10:30
Speaker 1: be inserted using a bulky hydraulic machine, which in the
10:34
Speaker 1: bow section was a challenge.
10:36
Speaker 5: The hydraulic riveter was a very very large, unwieldly piece
10:39
Speaker 5: of equipment. Where the hydraulic riveter was not so efficient
10:43
Speaker 5: was in the parts which were not straight the turn
10:44
Speaker 5: of the bilge, or in the bow of the ship,
10:47
Speaker 5: where the hull is more angled. As a result, you
10:49
Speaker 5: had to use manual rivting crews there.
10:52
Speaker 1: But steel rivets required too much force to be hammered
10:55
Speaker 1: in by hand, so the plates of the ship's bow
10:58
Speaker 1: section had to be fixed together by rivets made not
11:01
Speaker 1: of steel but iron, and iron had significant drawbacks.
11:07
Speaker 7: Raw iron is not quite as versatile as steel, and
11:12
Speaker 7: when it's made in the smelting process, it produces a
11:15
Speaker 7: byproduct called slag, which is just all the stuff in
11:19
Speaker 7: the or that you don't really want in your eyn.
11:26
Speaker 1: The slag in the rivets can make them even more
11:29
Speaker 1: prone to fracture when struck by a heavy force in
11:32
Speaker 1: low temperatures.
11:38
Speaker 7: As the iceberg hits the Titanic, that force and that
11:42
Speaker 7: impact has to be absorbed. It has to go somewhere,
11:45
Speaker 7: and it's going to impact the weaker sections of the
11:48
Speaker 7: ship that it's hitting, and those are along the seams,
11:52
Speaker 7: along the rivets, So the ship basically gets unzipped and
11:57
Speaker 7: water floods in and we know what happens after that.
12:04
Speaker 3: After the collision, the Titanic came to a stop and
12:07
Speaker 3: people wondered what had happened, so their natural reaction was
12:11
Speaker 3: to open the portholes and.
12:12
Speaker 8: Have a look.
12:14
Speaker 1: As the ship's fate became clear, the crew ordered passengers
12:17
Speaker 1: up on deck ready for evacuation, and.
12:21
Speaker 3: Then when they went up to the lifeboats, they left
12:23
Speaker 3: the portholes open. As Titanic's passenger accommodation began to dip
12:29
Speaker 3: under the Atlantic, the open portholes meant that water flooded
12:33
Speaker 3: in at a much greater rate. In fact, twelve open
12:37
Speaker 3: portholes would have doubled the iceberg damage to Titanic, And
12:41
Speaker 3: of course there were hundreds of portholes in Titanic's.
12:44
Speaker 1: Bow, standing an average of twelve meters high. The bulkheads
12:52
Speaker 1: weren't tall enough to reach the passenger deck level, a
12:56
Speaker 1: deliberate choice by Titanic's designers. Once the water reaches the
13:01
Speaker 1: top of the bulkheads, they become useless. Water spills over them,
13:06
Speaker 1: flooding all the compartments and rampages unchecked through the public
13:11
Speaker 1: spaces above. It's the final straw. Titanic's boughs dip below
13:20
Speaker 1: the surface, hoisting her stern high in the air.
13:25
Speaker 3: In the final moments, there were thunderous crashes as the
13:29
Speaker 3: steel was heard down below to be breaking apart at
13:32
Speaker 3: the keel them. And then higher up there was almost
13:35
Speaker 3: a stampede of passengers towards the stern of the ship.
13:41
Speaker 2: She rises so high in the water, and then she
13:43
Speaker 2: seems to right herself again, and people think they're safe.
13:49
Speaker 6: Everything.
13:49
Speaker 2: It might be all right briefly, but all that is
13:51
Speaker 2: is the stern snapping off and falling back down when
13:58
Speaker 2: you have all out k In the final death race.
14:03
Speaker 3: The lights went out and then the ship bobbed for
14:07
Speaker 3: a bit and then disappeared forever.
14:15
Speaker 1: The Titanic's foremost bow section was a collision bulkhane, like
14:23
Speaker 1: the crumple zone in a modern car. It was designed
14:26
Speaker 1: to absorb the worst of a head on impact, protecting
14:30
Speaker 1: the integrity of the compartments behind, and reducing the inflow
14:34
Speaker 1: of water. Scraping the underside of the ship along the
14:41
Speaker 1: iceberg arguably caused more structural damage than a head on crash,
14:47
Speaker 1: but Murdoch could never have made that call.
15:00
Speaker 9: There was no impact as such. It was just like
15:04
Speaker 9: jamming your brakes on a car, and that was actually stopped.
15:10
Speaker 9: We had a porthole open, and I looked at and
15:13
Speaker 9: the sky was clear, the stars were shining, the sea
15:17
Speaker 9: was dead calm, and I thought, I don't know, I
15:20
Speaker 9: couldn't understand it. So I came out of a cabin
15:24
Speaker 9: and I thought I'd go forward, and I went forward
15:28
Speaker 9: to the well deck on the starboard side, and I
15:31
Speaker 9: could see ice in the well deck and no sign
15:34
Speaker 9: of iceberg then, cause she'd passed us and the lights
15:38
Speaker 9: were shining on the water from the portholes, the no
15:41
Speaker 9: sign of damage above water line, and of course what
15:44
Speaker 9: had happened. We slipped over the iceberg, and although she
15:48
Speaker 9: was supposed to be unthinkable with a double bottom, the
15:52
Speaker 9: iceberg had cut her from forehead on the starboard side
15:57
Speaker 9: to the engine room, almost a bid chips right through
16:00
Speaker 9: her two bottoms. And we had orders to get the
16:04
Speaker 9: lifeboats out, and because the order the same old order,
16:08
Speaker 9: women and children, and we swung the lifeboats out and
16:12
Speaker 9: gradually filled them up. First boats away on the port side.
16:16
Speaker 9: The first boats away didn't have many passengers on board.
16:20
Speaker 9: They were afraid to go down. There were seventy foot
16:22
Speaker 9: drop to the water, and they didn't think she was
16:25
Speaker 9: going to sink. And a few of the first boats
16:28
Speaker 9: on the port side got away with half filled. And forget,
16:31
Speaker 9: we had sixteen lifeboats and they each carried fifty and
16:38
Speaker 9: if they'd been filled, we could have saved eight hundred,
16:42
Speaker 9: whereas we only saved five hundred. So you can imagine
16:46
Speaker 9: there were many seats in the first lifeboats vacant. Then
16:54
Speaker 9: I had orders to go down the storeroom with a
16:59
Speaker 9: gang and get all the biscuits we could find. When
17:04
Speaker 9: we got back up onto the boat deck, we couldn't
17:07
Speaker 9: get near the lifeboats. Some people were scrambling to get
17:11
Speaker 9: in and being pushed back. By that time, she was
17:15
Speaker 9: listing very badly to port, and we couldn't get the
17:17
Speaker 9: starboard boats down. But before I got my life belt on,
17:21
Speaker 9: I met a young couple and I can tell you
17:26
Speaker 9: her name. It was a missus Clark. They'd spent their
17:31
Speaker 9: honeymoon in France and we'd picked them up at Scherberg
17:36
Speaker 9: and she she was having trouble with her life built,
17:39
Speaker 9: so I fixed that onto her and I said, I
17:42
Speaker 9: think you'd better get into a lifeboat. And there was
17:45
Speaker 9: one in the port on the port side. So she said, no,
17:48
Speaker 9: I don't want to go there. I don't relieve my husband.
17:52
Speaker 9: So I said, well, it's just a precautionary measure. You
17:55
Speaker 9: get in, your husband will follow later on. And I
17:59
Speaker 9: got her away and that was that, and then I
18:01
Speaker 9: picked up my own life built and put it on.
18:05
Speaker 9: Well things went then, and then the third class fashioners
18:12
Speaker 9: were coming up. There were seven hundred of them, and
18:16
Speaker 9: they swarmed the decks and filled up the decks, and
18:21
Speaker 9: I thought, well, I'd done all I thought we could.
18:23
Speaker 9: I'd help them all I could. And I thought, well,
18:28
Speaker 9: now I'll go up and get out of all this
18:34
Speaker 9: scrumming and go on the poop deck. And she was
18:37
Speaker 9: sinking past then and all of a sudden she lifted
18:41
Speaker 9: up quickly and you could hear everything crashing through her.
18:45
Speaker 9: Everything that was movable was going through her. And then
18:49
Speaker 9: she went down and seemed to come up again. So
18:53
Speaker 9: I thought, well, now I'm going to leave. And I
18:57
Speaker 9: was hanging on to a board. We had two boards,
19:00
Speaker 9: starved and port, which said keep clear of propeller blades,
19:04
Speaker 9: and I was hanging on to one of these, and
19:06
Speaker 9: I was getting higher and higher in there, and I thought, well,
19:09
Speaker 9: now i'll go, and I dropped in. I had a
19:11
Speaker 9: life built on and I hit the water with a
19:14
Speaker 9: terrific crack, and luckily I didn't hit anything. When I
19:18
Speaker 9: dropped in, there were bodies all over the place. And
19:21
Speaker 9: then I looked up at the Titanic. So the propellers
19:26
Speaker 9: were right out of water, the rudder was right out,
19:29
Speaker 9: and I could see the bottom. And then grat she
19:36
Speaker 9: glided away and that was that. That was the last
19:39
Speaker 9: of the Titanic. I didn't want to die I mean,
19:44
Speaker 9: and I didn't see much chance of living. But I
19:46
Speaker 9: was gradually getting frozen up. And by the grace of God,
19:54
Speaker 9: I came across a lifeboat and they pulled me in.
20:00
Speaker 9: There was a farm and dead in the bottom, and
20:02
Speaker 9: there was about a foot of water in this boat.
20:05
Speaker 9: There were there was another man who tried who was
20:07
Speaker 9: trying to you seem to be trying to get away
20:09
Speaker 9: from it again. I don't know what was the matter
20:11
Speaker 9: with him, and they were tying and tying him down,
20:14
Speaker 9: and the rest were women and children. And I sat
20:19
Speaker 9: on a seat, and.
20:21
Speaker 6: Who should be?
20:22
Speaker 9: I sat next to missus Clark, the girl i'd put
20:28
Speaker 9: into a lifeboat, And she said the first thing, she said,
20:31
Speaker 9: where's my Have I seen my li? Have you seen
20:34
Speaker 9: my husband? So I said, no, I haven't. I expect
20:38
Speaker 9: he'll be all right. Anyway, I was pretty in a
20:42
Speaker 9: pretty bad way then, as you can imagine, frozen solid, almost,
20:47
Speaker 9: and she wrapped me around with her cloak. She had
20:49
Speaker 9: some sort of blanket or a coat on. Anyway, I
20:53
Speaker 9: think she probably saved my life. I don't know, but
20:59
Speaker 9: I saved her at use, I think I might have done.
21:02
Speaker 9: I think I did, And she saved mine. Then first
21:05
Speaker 9: light the car Paither came along, car Paith It was
21:13
Speaker 9: about seven thousand tons and they were going to the Meterrane,
21:16
Speaker 9: absolutely loaded, and they took us all on board, took
21:22
Speaker 9: us to New York.
21:23
Speaker 10: That was that.
21:25
Speaker 9: Captain Rosskin was knighted for his charby. Did it done
21:28
Speaker 9: good job too?
21:30
Speaker 4: I believe you've even got a watch that you were
21:32
Speaker 4: wearing at the time when you went into the water.
21:35
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, oh, but it show me your old gun
21:38
Speaker 9: metal watch. But I couldn't afford anything better in those
21:43
Speaker 9: early days. Here it is this one. Does it show
21:47
Speaker 9: us that says twenty past two?
21:49
Speaker 10: What time was it when you went into the water?
21:51
Speaker 9: Did I think about two o'clock? I think lasted it
21:56
Speaker 9: was frozen up black eyewa was I think it lasted
21:59
Speaker 9: for about twenty minutes in the water.
22:02
Speaker 4: Us talking about this incident bother you like you have been.
22:06
Speaker 9: Today talking about it. I shall probably dream of that tonight.
22:11
Speaker 9: Have another night, ma'a. You'd think I'm too old for that,
22:15
Speaker 9: but it'll be amaze. You'll lie in bed at night.
22:19
Speaker 9: The whole thing comes round again.
22:29
Speaker 8: Sunday evening, April fourteenth, nineteen twelve, Under the command of
22:35
Speaker 8: Captain Edward J. Smith. Titanic is just past the midpoint
22:40
Speaker 8: of her journey to New York, steaming at nearly full speed.
22:44
Speaker 8: She's scheduled to arrive on time Wednesday morning at White
22:49
Speaker 8: Stars Peer fifty nine along Manhattan's west side. Nine other
22:57
Speaker 8: ships are also traversing the North Atlantic west and east
23:01
Speaker 8: along the same shipping lanes, but just south of the
23:06
Speaker 8: Grand Banks, the icefield looms four miles wide and extending
23:11
Speaker 8: north and south as far as the eye can see.
23:16
Speaker 8: As each ship hits the danger zone, they sound the alarm.
23:26
Speaker 11: Wireless messages were sent by ships who were traveling in
23:29
Speaker 11: the same waters, and they were alerting each other to
23:32
Speaker 11: potential risks. They thought it was dangerous and they let
23:35
Speaker 11: the other ships know around them. We know that Titanic
23:39
Speaker 11: receive these messages. You know they acknowledge some of these
23:42
Speaker 11: messages too. It should have been taken seriously.
23:51
Speaker 8: The Marconi messages not only reveal where the ice is,
23:54
Speaker 8: they also contain important details on how big and dangerous
23:59
Speaker 8: the icebergs are. Kristen Seremgard is the commander of the
24:05
Speaker 8: International Ice Patrol. If she's familiar with the types of icebergs,
24:10
Speaker 8: the ships might have reported.
24:13
Speaker 12: There's flows warm from frozen seawater, there's a growler which
24:18
Speaker 12: is about the size of a piano, and then all
24:22
Speaker 12: the way up to what we call a very large
24:25
Speaker 12: iceberg is over two hundred meters.
24:30
Speaker 8: In Titanic's day, just like now, hitting an iceberg could
24:34
Speaker 8: rip a ship apart and endanger the passengers, a fact
24:38
Speaker 8: that wasn't lost on Lord Mersey. In his black box.
24:48
Speaker 8: Inside his journal, Mersey hones in on two specific ice
24:52
Speaker 8: warnings that reach Titanic. Two vessels informed her icebergs growlers.
25:01
Speaker 13: Lord Mercy drew some images things that the Titanic clearly
25:06
Speaker 13: would have passed on its way to the big monster iceberg.
25:11
Speaker 13: That also should have given the Titanic some pause. It
25:15
Speaker 13: would have warned them that things were getting bad.
25:18
Speaker 8: Lord Mersey also scribbles down that the temperatures were falling
25:22
Speaker 8: and that this to indicate ice. And then, finally, and
25:28
Speaker 8: perhaps most crucially, he notes and underlines no reduction of speed.
25:36
Speaker 10: This was obviously very significant for him. Quite understandably, he
25:40
Speaker 10: was asking the question, why didn't they slow down?
25:47
Speaker 13: If we didn't have this journal, we wouldn't have known
25:51
Speaker 13: that Lord Mercy was taking in all this information and
25:54
Speaker 13: clearly recognized the problems it was getting more and more
25:59
Speaker 13: towards criminal negligence.
26:01
Speaker 8: In this case, historians have spent countless hours deliberating this question.
26:09
Speaker 8: Why didn't Captain Smith slow down? One theory centers around
26:15
Speaker 8: the behavior of one of Titanic's most influential passengers, j
26:20
Speaker 8: Bruce Ismay.
26:23
Speaker 6: Ismay was the chair of the White Star line. It
26:26
Speaker 6: was his role to run it and grow it into
26:29
Speaker 6: the twentieth century.
26:32
Speaker 8: On White Star's pride and joy, Ismay reigned supreme, hobnobbing
26:37
Speaker 8: with wealthy passengers and keeping tabs on Captain Smith and
26:41
Speaker 8: his crew. Ismay is on deck around two PM when
26:47
Speaker 8: Titanic receives an ice warning from the Baltic, another White
26:51
Speaker 8: Star owned ship about two hundred and thirty miles to
26:55
Speaker 8: the east. What happens next would give botter to a
26:59
Speaker 8: cent of conspiracy theorist, and it's a moment Lord Mersey
27:04
Speaker 8: also focuses on.
27:08
Speaker 13: There was a paper written Marconi Graham delivered to Captain
27:11
Speaker 13: Smith that he showed to Bruce's May, that Bruce's May
27:14
Speaker 13: took stuck into his pocket.
27:17
Speaker 14: Why did Captain Smith give Bruce's May the telegram?
27:24
Speaker 8: Mersey references is May's own testimony from the British Inquiry.
27:30
Speaker 10: On page two hundred and twenty two, is May underlined,
27:34
Speaker 10: Captain handed me the Baltic message, which is May held
27:38
Speaker 10: onto for a while. So this is obviously quite significant
27:43
Speaker 10: for a udomazing.
27:49
Speaker 13: Why would is May have stuck it in his pocket?
27:51
Speaker 13: Was there something he didn't want the bridge crew to see?
27:55
Speaker 13: Did he not want them to slow down?
28:00
Speaker 11: You didn't want the Titanic to be late, press be
28:02
Speaker 11: waiting on the docks, so people will be there waiting.
28:05
Speaker 11: The happy theories that is May was keener to get
28:08
Speaker 11: there on time than to get there safely.
28:11
Speaker 6: Captain Smith asked his Maay for the ice warning back
28:15
Speaker 6: that Sunday evening so that he could put it in
28:18
Speaker 6: the chart room.
28:22
Speaker 8: The Baltic message is posted alongside the six other ice
28:26
Speaker 8: warnings received throughout the day. Then at nine to twenty pm,
28:34
Speaker 8: Captain Smith heads to his cabin to go to sleep,
28:37
Speaker 8: hand in command to his senior officers.
28:44
Speaker 15: The North Atlantic was extremely calm as they went into
28:47
Speaker 15: sundown and into the night. That made it more difficult
28:51
Speaker 15: to find the iceberg. You can't see it.
28:57
Speaker 12: If it's very calm out there's no waves breaking on
29:01
Speaker 12: the edges of the iceberg. You're not gonna even see
29:04
Speaker 12: that it's there.
29:06
Speaker 14: The lookouts are above the canvas dodger of the lookouts nest.
29:12
Speaker 14: Their face is being whipped by a twenty five mile
29:15
Speaker 14: an hour cold wind, which inevitably could cause tearing to
29:20
Speaker 14: take place, which in turn could hurt their vision.
29:29
Speaker 8: At precisely eleven thirty nine pm, Crow's Nest lookout Frederick
29:34
Speaker 8: Fleet spots the gigantic dark mass. He strikes the lookout
29:40
Speaker 8: bell three times. Fleet lunges for the telephone, reaching sixth
29:49
Speaker 8: Officer James Moody on the bridge.
29:56
Speaker 13: When you're traveling at twenty one or twenty two knots
29:59
Speaker 13: and you see iceberg dead ahead, there wasn't enough time
30:03
Speaker 13: to turn. It was already too late. The ship was doomed.
30:12
Speaker 8: First Officer William McMaster Murdoch has less than forty five
30:16
Speaker 8: seconds to determine the fate of thousands.
30:23
Speaker 15: He says, fall apart. Murdoch signals the engine room rang, rang, rang.
30:31
Speaker 8: But by the time Murdoch makes his desperate maneuver, the
30:35
Speaker 8: iceberg is already on them, at reportedly sixty feet high.
30:42
Speaker 8: It's even with Titanic's crow's nest, and its estimated four
30:48
Speaker 8: hundred foot length is greater than a football field. Scientists
30:53
Speaker 8: say it could have weighed up to one and a
30:55
Speaker 8: half million tons, the equivalent of fifteen fully loaded aircraft carriers.
31:02
Speaker 8: The iceberg packs the punch of a granite mountain.
31:11
Speaker 12: When you compress carbon under pressure, you get this very
31:14
Speaker 12: strong diamond, and that's the kind of the similar concept
31:18
Speaker 12: of compressing the fresh water into a glacier that forms
31:22
Speaker 12: an iceberg. Dense glacial ice has a much higher probability
31:27
Speaker 12: of causing significant damage to a ship.
31:31
Speaker 8: At eleven PM, Titanic makes contact. The iceberg scrapes along
31:43
Speaker 8: for starboard side for eight seconds, gouging the double plated
31:49
Speaker 8: steel home.
31:52
Speaker 13: The collision takes place, opening its side to the iceberg
31:54
Speaker 13: so it can cut into it like a tin of sardines.
31:57
Speaker 8: The forward compartment, three cargo holds, and two engine rooms
32:01
Speaker 8: are blown open, and the frigid ce pours in