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Find new customers today. Just open your browser, type in getstarted.tiktok.com slash tiktok ads and grow your business fast. Shortly after 12 noon on the 10th of April, 1912, a whistle, bold and optimistic, RMS Titanic cast off from Southampton Dock on England's south coast. Towed out into the river Test by tugboats, she set sail on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to New York.
Hundreds of passengers and crew on board gathered at the bows of the ship, while hundreds more swarmed across the decks, desperate to secure a view. Couples embraced, children sat on the shoulders of their parents. A sea of hands and hats waved ecstatically as goodbyes were sent to family and friends on the dockside. The vastness of this mighty ship was breathtaking. The luxurious ocean liner dwarfed its flanking tugboats,
She seemed to glide, making light work of the water beneath. She pulled further and further away from the crowds and well-wishers on the dock, until their cheers were slowly replaced by the sound of waves and seabirds. How few of them can have imagined that this would tragically be the final farewell. Four days later, in the dead of night on the 15th of April, 1912, Titanic, the world's biggest ship,
was lost beneath the waves following a catastrophic collision with an iceberg. It was and it is still the worst peacetime maritime disaster in history. 1500 people perished that night in the icy Atlantic.
For decades, historians and enthusiasts have pored over the same question. How could the unsinkable ship sink? Well, today on this extended podcast, we are going to answer that question categorically. I'm joined by one of the world's leading experts, Tim Moulton. He's pored over the records, the testimonies of survivors, the artefacts he dug into the science to reveal how Titanic, at every turn, was doomed to sink that fateful night.
In this minute-by-minute account, we're going to tell the dramatic tale from the moment of impact to the moment it slipped beneath the sea. We'll bust a number of infamous myths and give you details and insights you've probably never heard before. You're listening to Dan Snow's History It, and this is my definitive guide to the sinking of Titanic. Titanic.
Tim, great to have you back on History Inn. It's great to be here, Dan. Thanks for having me. Well, at 11.30 that night, how's the voyage going? Pretty good, I expect. The voyage has been going really well. It's Titanic's maiden voyage. The weather has been absolutely perfect. The sea is like a plate of glass. So everyone's loving the fact that no one's feeling seasick. They've been exploring the restaurants, the libraries. They've been even playing squash. There's
There's a swimming pool on Titanic. So they're amazed at all these new things like elevators that they haven't seen before, electric gymnasiums, and people are just really feeling that the ship is so beautiful and they're complimenting Ismay and Andrews on the beauty of the ship. So 11:15, 11:20, still a few people in the restaurant, some people have gone to bed. What exactly is going on on board? That's absolutely right. At about that time, people are starting to go to bed and in fact, on this night, they were going to bed a bit earlier than they normally would have done because it
It's freezing cold, Dan. Titanic's arrived in the Labrador Current. The water's actually below freezing. In fact, at 9.30, Lytola, who's on duty on the bridge, has asked the carpenter to keep an eye on his cold water, his fresh water supplies, so they don't actually freeze. So everyone's thinking it's so cold, I'm going to go to bed with a cup of hot Bovril or a
cup of soup or something like that. Now, Tim, were they being a bit cowboy here? Because were there ice warnings? Were there ice warnings ignored? Were they worried about hitting a great big iceberg? Well,
Well, to some extent, you're absolutely right, Dan, because with hindsight, everyone would have wanted them to slow down. And of course, had they slowed down, they wouldn't have hit the iceberg and we wouldn't be talking about the Titanic now. However, it's very easy for historians to chat with the benefit of hindsight and blame the people that were there. And what I want to do today is really put you back into the mindset of being on Titanic. And it's very important to understand that in the time of Titanic, captain after captain testified.
that they would continue their course and speed until they actually sighted ice, trusting that they would have time to avoid it. In fact, Dan, in 1912, the danger of the ice region was actually the danger of fog. Now, Titanic was quite lucky to the extent that she had very high pressure that night. It was 1,049 millibars. Yeah, it was astonishing weather in some ways, wasn't it? Oh, it was the clearest night. All the survivors said it was the clearest night we've ever seen. Not a breath of wind.
Not a breath of wind, the stars were actually reflecting in the surface of the Atlantic like a mill pond. And in fact, Beasley, his survivor account is there, but Beasley actually says that it seemed that there were more stars in the sky than gaps between the stars, if that makes sense. So it's very, very clear...
And so they thought, let's make speed while we can. That's right. It's crystal clear, Dan. It's one of the clearest nights they will ever have encountered. In fact, it's possible because of the atmospheric conditions that they may have been able to see about 80 miles that night, whereas normally you'd only see sort of 20 or 30 miles. So what they were doing, you're absolutely right, is they were really trying to capitalize on this
perfect weather to get through it before the barometer drops and the fog came down. Because it should be understood that once the fog comes down, Titanic has to go dead slow. The problem is Titanic needs to be doing six knots to have steerage weight, otherwise she needs tugs to maneuver her. You could argue she's actually more dangerous when she's going below six knots
than when she can turn fast, because the faster she goes, Dan, the quicker she can turn. Okay, so everyone on the bridge goes, "Look, we know there's going to be ice around, but we can see it. It's got this beautiful clear night, so let's crack on. We don't want to get stuck in a fog bank. That would be really dangerous." That's right. In fact, they had put a number of ice warnings in the chart room, and what's a fascinating fact is that because the Labrador Current was travelling south at at least one knot,
which is more than one mile an hour, Dan. It's nearly almost two miles an hour. What was happening was that wherever the ice was reported, they knew that there wouldn't be ice exactly there anymore. So they were all aware of ice. In fact, Murdoch, who was on duty at the time, he's the first officer Murdoch, and actually Captain Smith really rated him because Murdoch was the guy with the quick reactions.
Murdoch was used to being on the Olympic with Smith, which was Titanic's twin sister. These ships were the biggest ships in the world at the time, 50,000 tons. They could take 3,000 people. They had four funnels, which reassured everyone that they were the strongest, biggest ships. In fact, the third funnel was actually for ventilation. She only actually needed three, but they thought she looked better with four.
So these ships were the marvel of the age. And the other thing that gave them confidence, Dan, is that you could actually sort of, if you like, sort of chainsaw the ship into three sections and each section would have floated indefinitely. As we'll find out later, that isn't what happened. Okay, Tim, the big moment.
suddenly the lookout sees an iceberg. What time is it and what happens? That's right. So it's just before 11.40, Dan. It's probably about 11.38 and 40 seconds, something like that. They just start to see what they describe as a dark berg coming out of the haze in front of them.
Now, in fact, people think of Titanic hitting a lone iceberg, and yes, she did hit one iceberg. However, seven minutes steaming time away from the iceberg that they actually crashed into, Dan, there was a barrier of field ice. Now, this was solid ice,
three miles deep and 75 miles long. - It's like an island of ice. - A huge floating island of ice, Dan, completely blocking the path to New York. So Titanic was actually on the slower, longer southern route to New York in the attempt to avoid this ice, which generally comes from the north and melts as you go south.
But that year, the Labrador Current was almost overflowing with freezing meltwater from the Arctic. And this brought down this ice barrier. And you get this thing slightly called ice blimp that comes off of field ice like that. And that, combined with a little bit of haze all around the horizon, which the lookouts noticed, it just meant they saw the berg abysmally.
bit later than they would otherwise have done. Tim, did they have binoculars and would that have helped? Well, they didn't have binoculars. They wanted binoculars. They would normally have had binoculars. They were actually left behind, locked away in the cabin because when Lightoller was switched for Murdoch, it
In fact, they bumped off one of the officers and he had the key of the binoculars in his pocket. So he went back to Belfast and they couldn't get the binoculars. However, Dan, it's not all bad news because the best way to spot ice at night is with the naked eye. And that's because you need a wide field of vision to actually be able to see the berg coming out of the darkness. Now, interestingly, actually Captain Lord, who we'll hear about later on a nearby ship, he actually said he never allowed the binoculars at night.
the lookouts at night to have binoculars. But in fact, what Titanic wanted, they wanted the ring of three bells and three bells signified object dead ahead. Now, if they'd had binoculars, they might have been tempted to inspect the object after they detected it. But all the officers on the bridge wanted from the lookouts was to just detect the object and immediately prior to inspection with binoculars, ring the bell. And that's what happened.
That's what happens. So what they do is as soon as they see this, what they see is this dark berg. In fact, it was a brilliant white berg, but it appeared to them dark because the haze behind was even slightly brighter than the berg itself. They rang three sharp rings on the crow's nest bell. Now, Murdoch had been standing on the starboard wing bridge, and that's because Murdoch
There was glass in front of the bridge and of course you'd get bits of spray on there, although they kept it very clean. But Murdoch knew they were approaching the ice area. He knew they were doing 22 and a half knots. So he wanted to have no glass between him and the bergs, as it were. So he was out on the wing bridge. It would have been freezing cold. He's got a 20 mile an hour wind, a freezing wind coming at him.
The lookouts have been on duty for over an hour as well, so they're going to be quite cold. But nevertheless, they see the bird, they immediately give the three rings. And what Murdoch does is he basically sprints into, he dashes onto the bridge, the wheelhouse area. And what's fascinating is, people don't really tend to realise this, but the wheel itself, Titanic ship's wheel, is actually in its own room, Dan. It's in a little cubicle with the curtains drawn.
so that the compass binnacle of the compass by the wheel will not splash light onto the bridge. And this is because the officers want to have their eyes in. So the officers don't want to have any light because they're looking ahead. To give you an idea of how fanatical they were about that is Murdoch ordered all the hatches to be closed.
on Titanic's foredeck, and that was to avoid any spillage of light. Even there were some first class cabins on Titanic sort of looking forward, and what they did is they actually put shutters on those windows. - Oh wow. - So any cabins that had light had it blocked out, and that's because they wanted to be able to absolutely, as it were, see in the dark.
not have any dangers. So what happens is Murdoch dashes onto the bridge and what he does is he the first thing he does is he rings full astern on Titanic's engines to slow the vessel. And that's signalling to the engine room. That's exactly right. Signalling to Chief Engineer Bell where these giant reciprocating engines are. And Dan just to give you an idea these are the
biggest reciprocating engines ever built. They're four storeys high, all right? So suddenly, they're all having their cups of Bovril and soup and things, and they're warming their soup on the engine. So they're just sort of, you know, chilling out and, you know, enjoying their sort of relaxing and probably chatting about Belfast. And then saying how well it's all going
Absolutely right. Then suddenly, this order comes through full astern. Suddenly, it's not like nowadays where you'd flick a switch and the electric engines would just go in reverse. This is the case where they have to wait for the engines to slow down to a stop, and then they have to order the steam into the other chambers to get them to go in reverse. Long story short, he also orders harder starboard.
Now, starboard is the right-hand side. Yeah, turn right. Well, actually, hard as starboard. So, it's pretty confusing. But basically, in layman's terms, he gave the order hard left turn. Okay.
But the way they did that in 1912 was called harder starboard because it's an overhang from sailing days when you had a tiller. And so you'd say to the chap at the tiller, harder starboard, which means throw the tiller over to the right, which throws the actual rudder over to the left, which brings the ship over to the left or port side. And actually, Dan, Titanic turned in time to her stem actually missed the iceberg they could see above the water. So the lookouts thought she'd had a close shave
Tim, I know you've written an entire thesis about this, but why didn't they see that iceberg in time? Well, this is the extraordinary thing, Dan. They didn't see it because it was so clear, which sounds a bit counterintuitive. But joking apart, Dan, they had just come from a very warm part of the sea called the Gulf Stream into a freezing part of the sea called the Labrador Current. And this actually
actually made it that the air was very cold down below and much warmer higher up. And what this creates is a bit of haze at the horizon. Sailors call it abnormal refraction. And in fact, many ships in the area of Titanic's crash talked about abnormal refraction. And unfortunately, this refraction is a layer of haze at the horizon, and it just slightly reduced the contrast with the berg. And what that meant was they probably saw it 10, 15 seconds later than they would otherwise have done.
And as it happened, Dan, they did see it 30 seconds before the collision. They only needed a few more seconds and they nearly missed it as well. But that's why they didn't quite spot it. Okay, well, time check.
About 23:40 now? That's right. Bang on, Dan. 23:40, 11:40pm, we have the collision. Terrible sound. Terrible sound. So, it sounds different from people all over the ship. So, if you're down in the boiler rooms down there, it sounded like a roll of thunder. If you're one of the passengers up like Beazley in second class, it sounds like calico being ripped.
Someone said it sounded like a boat being pulled up on a gravel beach. And then to Smith. Smith comes running out of his chart room, which is part of the bridge. Right, we should say, because Captain Smith, he wasn't down drinking with the high-rolling guests. He was on the bridge. Another myth we should bust, because Captain Smith actually never drank at sea. He had been having a party, but funnily enough, they made sure that
the crew actually took his glasses off the table so that the people in the restaurant could see that he wasn't drinking at all. And he never drank at sea. Also, people say he was in bed. Actually, he wasn't in bed. People say that because he did rush out from the chart room onto the bridge. And his cabin, where he slept, was also beyond the chart room. Captains always have a little cabin, don't they? Right as close to the bridge as possible. That's right. But actually, we know from Lytola...
who survived, that Smith was on and off the bridge the whole time and working out star sites and very much on duty at the time. Although the person actually in charge of the actual watch, the officer in charge of the watch was Murdoch. Smith remained in the charge of the ship and there was no way, Dan, that Smith was going to turn in when he knew they were in the ice region. Okay, so Titanic has smashed into this iceberg.
but tragically, not just bang on. This is the terrible thing, Tim. If it just hit the iceberg, we might not be talking about it today. Dan, that's absolutely true. So Titanic had 16 watertight compartments and she could float with any two of them open to the sea. And that's because, if you can imagine, Dan, that there's a,
a collision like that, for example, if another ship had speared Titanic between a bulkhead, the automatic doors would have automatically come down with the floats as the water came in, it lifted floats, the heavy doors dropped down. It was a foolproof system. In fact, they went further than that. They made it so that she could float with any four of her forward watertight compartments flooded.
But here's the thing, Dan, and you'll remember this from your geography GCSE days, but you know when you learn about wave erosion at the cliffs and things like that, and you have a shelf of the beach, and that's because the waves are on top of the water, aren't they? But it's very calm under the surface. So what happens is the iceberg was eroded at the surface,
but leaving a shelf, an ice shelf sticking right out. We call it a spur. And what happened was that Titanic actually had a flat bottom. So what happens is this flat bottom of the ship runs right over this ice ledge, which is why it does so much underwater damage to Titanic.
This glancing blow of the Berg just gently, if you like, scraping along the side of Titanic. I mean, enormous forces, of course, Dan. But what it meant was, instead of slowing up Titanic, it meant that it actually ripped. It knocked the heads off the rivets over a 200-foot section of Titanic.
Now, to put that in perspective, Dan, see this sort of fireplace we've got here. The actual damage that the iceberg did to Titanic was no bigger in volume, Dan, in total, than the size exactly of this fireplace. Okay? So quite a small amount of damage from that perspective. Hang on a second. What? Yeah. That the hole in the size of Titanic was no bigger than a meter squared, two meters squared? Correct. Correct. Wow.
However, if only it had been a hole, Titanic would have survived. The problem is the iceberg didn't make a hole at all. What it did was it smashed in, dented the plates, which is like a patchwork quilt made of steel. And if you like with your patchwork quilt, the cotton that sews the patches together, they're the rivets. And what it did was...
It went for the weakest point in a very strong structure. Now, the weakest point, just like, you know, in my jersey, it's probably the seam here. You know, it'll rip in the seam. Well, the seams on the Titanic's hull were these rivet heads. So what happened was the enormous explosive force of the iceberg, which was tens of hundreds of thousands of tons of pure water, and Titanic, which was 50,000 tons,
You know, they were going to come off badly. And Titanic came off worse because her river heads got popped off. And what that meant was over a 200-foot gash, there was just water spurting in along the seams. She was just leaking like a sieve then, Dan, along 200 feet. And the critical problem is, if she'd neatly filled her first four bulkheads, she'd have been absolutely fine.
Yeah, if she'd rammed head-on into an iceberg or a rock. She'd have been absolutely fine. In fact, Dan, bizarrely, if she'd hit head-on, it wouldn't even have thrown people out of their beds because she was doing 22 knots. It would have smashed in the first 100 feet. And if you go from 20 miles an hour in 100 feet in a car, you're not even going to be thrown through the windscreen or anything.
Do you see what I mean? So actually, it would have been quite a gentle and should have floated indefinitely. But this whole shelf is doing damage to what we call Titanic's keel, which is the flat-bottomed area. And then what happened was some of the plates underneath were damaged in the fifth watertight compartment, and that's the end boiler room. And when Andrews, who designed Titanic, or helped design it and helped build it, he was actually traveling on the maiden voyage. And when he realized it was leaking into number five,
he knew that the pumps in the stern were not sufficient to keep the water down. So, front four, you can manage... Manage forever. ...just that one extra compartment. Yeah, it was probably a couple of feet too far. Really? Yeah. So, if they'd had another two seconds on that big turn to port, they probably could have just about made it, you reckon? 100%.
Or if they just kept going and bashed it head on. Yeah, I think Murdoch would have been fired if they bashed it head on, because the captain would be like, why didn't you try and avoid it? In fact, Murdoch did two things. We talked earlier about the harder starboard, the famous harder starboard order, but there's a much less famous order which quartermaster Oliver noted
when he came onto the bridge at that time, which was harder port. So what happened was that they were going harder starboard to move the bow to the left, and then they were exposing all of the right-hand side of the stern of Titanic. So what Murdoch wanted to do was flick the tail of the ship away. And this gives you an idea, Dan, of actually how well the ship did turn, because he did flick the stern away, and that's why the damage stopped.
Otherwise, you see, if he hadn't gone hard at port afterwards, the iceberg would have ripped right the way down the side of Titanic and she'd probably have rolled over and sunk. But the fact that he flipped, he used the good steering of Titanic and his immense skill to flip the stern tail of the ship out of the way, but this actually rammed
the bow more into the iceberg. So they're making decisions even as the scraping is taking place. He's throwing that tiller. Oh yeah, yeah, 100%, 100%, absolutely right. In the minutes that follow, so 41, 42, 43, what decisions are being made? Is there sort of panic on the bridge or are they doing stuff?
Well, immediately after the collision, Captain Smith runs onto the bridge and says, what was that? And Murdoch said, it was an iceberg. We've struck an iceberg. And Smith says, close the watertight doors. And Murdoch says, I've already closed them. OK, five minutes in, 23.45. We've got Captain Smith on the bridge. What's he thinking?
He's very worried, Dan, because not only did he feel the collision itself, he was sufficiently worried to order the watertight doors closed. Now, actually Murdoch, who was the officer in charge of the watch, had already done that, but Smith was sufficiently worried to order the carpenter to go down straight away to sound the ship. But what really worries Smith is there's a little instrument on the bridge called a commutator, and this is a thing which tells how the ship is listing.
Now, normally they use it for in a heavy sea or when they're trimming it for a cargo, for example, how they load the ship. And he knows it's an absolutely dead calm night. He knows it's like a mill pond out there. And when he looked at that commutator, it's showing a five degree list to starboard. So he knows she's making water fast. And in fact, Ismay does ask him. He's the owner of Titanic. Ismay comes onto the bridge and asks the captain,
why have we stopped? He says we've hit an iceberg. He says, is it serious? And Smith does say, I believe it is serious.
Tell me about Smith. Was this his last journey? Was he past it? Was he the right man for the job? Well, all these are in fact myths, as you hint. No, Smith was in his absolute peak. He was the best captain of the White Star Line. Captain Smith was known as the millionaire's captain. And you would think that he would always have a voice like a foghorn. In fact, he almost never spoke above a conversational tone. But when he had to reprimand a sailor, he could make them jump off the deck
So they liked him. He was popular with the first-class passengers because he was urbane, intelligent, sophisticated. He could talk about antitrust law and things like that when he was around the first-class dinner table. But when he was with the sailors, he was greatly admired for his speed and caution and safety.
He was known as the Commodore of the White Star Line and they particularly chose him to do every maiden voyage. So he did the Adriatic when she was the biggest ship in the world. He did the Olympic when she was the biggest ship in the world. Now he was doing the Titanic. In fact, Dan, he had every intention of doing the Britannic's next ship's maiden voyage as well. So he was at least three years away from retirement.
And he'd never really had an accident apart from the year before in 1911, he liked going fast and he was racing a Navy vessel called HMS Hawk. And unfortunately, the huge suction from the propellers of Olympic combined with the shallow water off the Isle of Wight in Southampton water actually sucked the Hawk
into the side of Olympic. Now, actually, even on Titanic's maiden voyage, when the passengers were having lunch as they were departing Southampton water, there had been a coal strike. Lots of ships were laid up, and this constricted the channel even more. And actually, the New York, which herself was once the biggest ship in the world, she was sucked
away from her mooring lines, which snapped, and she was sucked towards Titanic's hull. Now, the relevance of this is that it was quick thinking on Smith's part, putting a touch of thrust on the port propeller that actually washed New York back into her berth and saved a collision then. Now, ironically, had Captain Smith not been so quick thinking on the Wednesday before when Titanic left Southampton, the voyage would have been cancelled and everyone would have been saved. 2346, does he order the engine stopped or do they just come to a stop?
Murdoch orders the engines to be stopped. Titanic then comes to a stop after about five minutes, something like that. What about the passengers? Are they aware of what's going on now, in the minutes that follow? What really alerts the passengers that there's trouble, Dan, is the engines stopping.
Because 10 minutes after the collision, the engine stopped for the last time. And you know when you're at sea, if anyone's been on a cruise, they'll remember there's always the sort of dancing of the mattress. There might be clinking of some glasses. There's that shipboard hum. And what happened was, Dan, that that shipboard hum stopped. And it was really, although some people
heard and felt the noise of the collision. What woke most people up was the sudden stillness, which at sea in a liner like Titanic, which takes days and days to cross the Atlantic, that's just wrong. And they're like,
Why have we stopped? So what did they do? They all went and opened their windows. The first thing they did was, oh, have we arrived in New York? Have we hit another boat? Have we run out of coal? What's happened? So they all opened their windows, portholes, to have a look out. And they thought, beautiful starry night, absolutely fine. It must be something non-critical. And they went back to bed. But a lot of them left the portholes open.
So at that stage, no panic really among the passengers? Oh, absolutely no panic at all. So even at that stage, even Andrews is saying, before he knows the rate and the extent of damage, even Andrews is saying, we think it'll be all right. And then Smith, not the doddery old man that he's portrayed as, Smith goes, get the carpenter to sound the ship. So straight away, he's ordering the carpenter to go and sound the ship. And that means work out how much water's in the bottom of the ship.
That's right. And what the carpenter did, because he was quite a clever chap, is he went to stand on that spiral staircase and he let his plumb line down and he drew it back up. And he was amazed because 10 minutes after the collision only, he had seven feet of water in Titanic. Oh, that's bad news.
Well, that is very bad news because it's not just these first four watertight compartments. It also goes into the fifth compartment and that is outside, Dan, of Titanic's design envelope because Titanic is built to withstand any sort of normal collision that might happen between two vessels at sea. She's even built to have a running aground where she just hits head on. But what she's not designed for
is the kind of sideswipe disaster that she had. Like a tin can just opening up. Absolutely right. Tim Moulton, just before midnight, 23.58, just before midnight, almost 20 minutes after the collision...
Captain Smith's obviously thinking about what comes next because he orders the lifeboats to be uncovered. That's right. This is very significant and it's almost a window on to Smith's mind because he gives the order at that time to what's called uncover the boats. And that means take the canvas covers off, start getting ready, start getting the oars and everything out ready to ship, start swinging out the davits because Titanic had these sort of cranes on her deck which would
swing the lifeboats out. So he doesn't yet know if they're going to have to abandon ship because the designer is still, the builder of Titanic is still doing his calculations. But Smith wants to be ready. So he makes sure that the crew start preparing the lifeboats as a precaution.
Tim, has anyone perished by this stage? Were people killed in that initial collision down there in the depths of the hull? Not yet. In fact, there is someone called Fred Barrett who falls into an open manhole cover that's open because they're trying to get the pumps from the stern to come in and help with the front. And because of all the steam, because they're trying to put the fires out in the boilers, he falls into this manhole cover and breaks his leg. But no, no one has died at this stage.
Presumably now on the bridge there's damage reports coming in from different parts of the ship trickling in. The news is bad.
The news on the bridge is terrible and it's blow after blow. So first of all, the carpenter comes up sort of white in the face in a bit of a dither about how much water the ship is making. Then the mail clerks rush up and want to know where the captain is because Titanic's a royal mail ship. One of her key things is delivering mail at super fast speed to America. And Dan, 10 minutes after the collision, the mail bags are floating in the mail room.
The cars and stuff that are on Titanic, they're all underwater by now. The crew, the fireman's accommodation is underwater. So at this stage, people down below in the forward are also third-class male passengers know there's a problem because their berths are having water coming in because the females in third class were at the stern. So they didn't know anything about it, but the males were in the back.
And they knew all about it. Wow. Not if they were in families, Dan. I should say men travelling alone in third class were in the bow. Women travelling alone in third class were in the stern. And just while we're here, were they locked in and denied access to escape? They were not locked below, Dan. So, in fact, there's no easy answer to that question. So let me explain. The gates between third class and the rest of the ship...
had to be locked. That was the rule. And it was actually insisted upon by US immigration. In other words, what they said was, if you open these gates during the voyage, we're not going to let any of you in New York. So they had to keep the gates shut. Now, interestingly, at the point that Smith orders the boats uncovered as a precaution, he doesn't yet know that it's an abandon ship order. Now, later on, Dan, when they do abandon ship, they immediately open the gates.
And not only do they open the gates, they send first class stewards down to third class to guide them up to the boat. But when we hear the reports that they're locked below, that's because Titanic is complying with the immigration laws. And yes, those gates are locked. So actually, third class did try and climb the gates. They tried to barter and bargain with the crew to get them opened.
And the crew did not open them until the order to abandon ship is given. And that isn't until about 40 minutes after the collisions. Okay, well, we're going to come to that. So 14 minutes past midnight. We're now on Monday morning.
Monday morning, Dan. 15th of April 1912. We're having a bad Monday morning. The lifeboats are ordered to be swung out now on these davits. That's right. So they've been prepared, the covers have come off, they've got them all ready, and then Smith says, swing them out. And that's the next stage to being super ready, because now they can be actually filled with people. So Tim, there's a big myth, isn't there, that the lifeboats were unsightly and there weren't enough of them. Is that true?
Again, Dan, it's a very hard question to answer. So Titanic had 20 lifeboats, 16 lifeboats that are what you would call proper clinkerbill wooden lifeboats. But Titanic also carried four collapsible boats. So these had solid sort of flat bottoms, but then you could pull up canvas sides on them. And so she had four of those. So in total, you could say she had 16 lifeboats and four life rafts known as collapsible lifeboats. Titanic...
although she sank on an even keel and took two hours, 20 minutes to sink, she still sank with some lifeboats attached. So she didn't have enough time, even with all that time and even on an even keel, to unload all her lifeboats. And what's fascinating about this is people, you know, armchair historians in the future, you know, with the benefit of hindsight can say,
Well, you should have had lifeboats for everyone. But as we know, Dan, from disasters like Costa Concordia and even Lusitania, is that most ships list when they're sinking. And that means you've got to have lifeboats on each side for everyone. So you've got to have then 40 or 50 lifeboats, not 20 or 30.
And what the Board of Trade wanted was, instead of ships piled high with lifeboats that you'd never have enough crew or time to launch, what they wanted was properly subdivided vessels which only needed to carry enough lifeboats to ferry the passengers down from a stricken vessel to a nearby rescue ship. So that was the idea, that the lifeboats would be used as ferries between Titanic and nearby ships that would rush to her aid.
We've got 18 minutes past midnight now. The band are starting to play. That's right. So, the main thing that Captain Smith wants to avoid is a panic. So, he's now ordered people to get their warm clothes on and get up to the boat deck.
And at the same time, he orders all the stewards from each of the classes to go down and tell passengers to be woken up and to put warm clothes on and their life belts on and to come up on deck. He even orders the gates between third class and second class to be opened. And he orders first class stewards to go down and usher the third class. Women and children is the order.
to the boat. And so the band is playing actually quite light-hearted music. There was a comedy that was very popular in London at the time called The Merry Widow and they were playing things like Ghost Dance which is like a comic tune from The Merry Widow for example. And actually Dan, contrary to expectations, there
There was quite a lot of merriment going on among the passengers because they believed they were safe. They actually believed nothing would sink. They believed it was ridiculous that they were being asked to put their life jackets on. So there were lots of jokes about, you know, you'll need to get some ice from the iceberg for your drink and all that.
So very different mood on the bridge to down where the passengers were. Oh, yes. On the bridge, it's very serious. Smith's probably even actually sweating. Certainly Lightoller was dripping in sweat at this time. But the passengers are making light of the situation.
And the mood on the bridge gets worse about 25 past midnight, so we're about 45 minutes-ish after that collision. We've got bad news for the captain from the designer, from the builder of the ship. That's right. This is the most shocking news of that night, really, because they believe they can cope with everything. They've got huge pumps on board to pump out the water. They've got watertight bulkheads.
Titanic even had a double hull on her black heel. But Andrews has now crunched the numbers then. And he comes back and he says, she can't stay afloat. With the rate that water is coming in, and with the number of compartments it's coming into, and with the power of the pumps that we've got on board, it's a mathematical certainty that Titanic will sink. And it's his ship. He knows better than anybody else. Not only did he help design the ship, but he's the managing director of Harland & Wolfe, where she was built.
built. He knows that ship like the back of his hand, always first into work, always last to turn the lights out. He knows every rivet and every screw on that ship. If there was anyone that could save the ship, the man to do it was on board, Andrews. Now, he errs on the side of caution, and he reckons she's got an hour to an hour and a half to live. Now, actually, Titanic floated almost
on an even keel for two hours and 20 minutes. But nevertheless, you know, it was such a body blow to Smith who had a young daughter at home, had a wife at home. He knew that he probably wasn't going to survive. Because a captain ought to go down with his ship. Yeah, in fact, the rule is that after the abandon ship order has been given, captains can survive. And actually the captain of the Lusitania survived the sinking of the Lusitania, for example. But I think Smith was one of those people. He knew it was going to be a very rough night.
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If you think you might be struggling with OCD, visit nocd.com to schedule a free 15-minute call and learn more. That's nocd.com. We're at 25 minutes past midnight. We're 45 minutes since the collision. Andrews and Smith have agreed that the ship is doomed. Smith orders the passengers to abandon ship.
"What about asking for help getting on the radio?" That's exactly what they do. So as soon as they realise that Titanic is going to sink, they work out their position and they give the distress position. Now there's the old distress call, which is CQD. Titanic's call signal is MGY. So the first signal that goes out is CQG MGY. But then there's this new signal called SOS, which has only just been brought in by a convention earlier of Marconi operators.
And so they also used the new call, SOS. And that's Morse code. They just blasted that out into the ether. That's absolutely right. There's another myth here that people have heard. Do they send out the wrong coordinates? That's absolutely right. That is not a myth. So the way that Titanic and other ships in 1912 found their position, Dan, was by looking at the stars and how high they were relative to the horizon. So Titanic took her star sites at 730. So just before it was completely dark,
And unfortunately, obviously, you have to take the star sites on deck. And they have a thing called a hack watch, which is what you and I would call a stopwatch.
And what happened was that when Pittman, who was a junior officer, when he actually transferred the time from the star site at 7:30 onto Titanic's ship's chronometer's time, and Titanic had three clocks to make sure that nothing could go wrong, he made an error of one minute in transcribing the time. And so Titanic's position was correctly logged, the star sites were correct, but because the time was a minute out,
Titanic's position was given as 10 miles too far west because one minute at 42 north, which is the latitude she was at, is 10 miles too far west. So it was the wrong coordinates. Is anyone on the receiving end of these messages?
That's right. Because it was such a clear night, the messages actually traveled much further than they normally would. They're picked up all over the place. They're picked up at Cape Race on land about 400 miles away. In fact, Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, picks up the distress signals straight away. Bizarrely, Dan, a couple of rather important ships that don't pick it up is there's a ship only 10 miles away called the Californian. Her radio operator has gone to bed. He's done a 14-hour shift.
So he's asleep, so he doesn't pick it up. Even Titanic's eventual rescue ship, the Carpathia, Dan, doesn't actually pick up these distress calls immediately because what's happening is Cottam is getting ready for bed. He's getting his slippers off, dressing gown. Cottam's the radio operator on the Carpathia. And what he does is he thinks, I'll call my mates on Titanic because they all knew each other. All these radio operators on the North Atlantic, Dan, they all trained together.
and they were all young men and they knew each other. And as a term of endearment, they used to call each other old man, which is O-M in code. So he said, say old man. And Titanic's then quite rude. Titanic comes in K, which means, what is it? Carry on. What are you saying? And he says, oh, you've got some mail for you at Cape Cod. And then Phillips comes in and says,
CQD, CQD, SOS, SOS, it's a CQDOM, which means it's a CQD, old man. We are thinking you've got to come now and have your boats ready.
And if Cotton on Carpathia had not telephoned Titanic, he wouldn't have picked up Titanic's distress signal either. But the Californian was 10 miles away. If they'd responded to the call, that would have been half an hour at 20 knots? They'd have had to get steam up, Dan. It would have probably taken them about an hour. So they would have got there at about the time the last big lifeboats on Titanic were being launched. So it probably would have saved a lot more people.
I think they could have saved a lot more people. So the Carpathia didn't get the incoming call, it just randomly decided to dial into Titanic and see how they were doing. Well, that's the amazing thing, Dan, because a lot of ships that were way too far away to help actually did hear the call.
But actually the Carpathia, which was the only ship that eventually came to Titanic's rescue, she actually just decided to telephone Titanic to let her know there was some mail waiting for her at Cape Cod. So when she just casually rings up Titanic, Phillips and Bride on Titanic, they can't believe it. And they're like, no, no, we're sinking, come now. We don't care about the mail. That mail's going to stay there. Right, we've got 40 minutes past midnight. We're now an hour from that collision.
We've got first lifeboats lowered away. That's right. So it takes a while for passengers to come up from their cabins with all their sort of motoring coats on and all their life jackets and things. And then the first lifeboat to be launched is lifeboat number seven. And is this first class passengers getting in this lifeboat? First class passengers. So what you have to remember is, broadly speaking, first class passengers are towards the front of the ship or the bow, second class are nearer the stern, and of course third class are both
right at the bow and right at the stern, and there were no lifeboats in that section at all. These first-class passengers, this is now getting real. They must be scared. Are they excited? What's going on with these passengers as they're being put in the lifeboats? Well, at this stage, Dan, they are still thinking that it's ridiculous that they're being put off in lifeboats, because in 1912, most ordinary people couldn't swim. It was a freezing night, and they all believed they were better off in the warmth and security of Titanic. They also trusted in radio that ships would be
coming to their aid. In fact, to give you an idea of how brave the first passengers were who went in Lifeboat Number Seven, there's a great little story about Dorothy Gibson, who was a beautiful film actress. And she was so sort of attractive that many men had offered their services to protect her on the voyage, which is how they carried on in 1912 then. And about four of them said, oh, you know, can I look after you on the ship and all this sort of thing. So
Her favourite, Kent, Edward Kent, she met him on the stairs going up to the lifeboat. And she had her most treasured possession on her, which was a gold and ivory miniature of her mother. And what she did is she said,
They're making me go in the lifeboat. It's absolutely ridiculous. I'll be on board in the morning for breakfast, but here is this miniature. Can you look after it? 'Cause you're going to stay on the ship and I want it safe. I'm not having this miniature in a lifeboat. So he looks after it. She gets in the boat and is eventually saved. He goes down with the ship. His body is eventually saved and in his pocket is her miniature and she gets it back eventually.
So it's first class passengers. Men are allowed to go. Is it the women going in there? So men and women are all allowed on the deck. And in fact, Dan, it's different rules on each side of the ship. So on the right-hand side of the ship, although the rule is women and children first,
On the right-hand side of the ship, men are allowed to get in when there are no women and children around, or once all the women and children who are nearby have got in. So a lot more people, a lot more men certainly, escape from Murdoch's side of Titanic, which is the side that he's in charge of on the right, whereas Lightoller...
is in charge of the left-hand side of the ship, and he's much more strict about no men at all. So Aster, the richest man in the world, comes up to Lightoller and says, "Oh, can I go in with my pregnant wife to look after her?" Now, I think Murdoch on the other side would have let him, but Lightoller's like, "No, no men." So the richest man in the world is consigned to die, and his pregnant wife, Madeline, goes in the lifeboat on her own,
Then there's another boy who's only about 14 and Lightoller says he can't go because in 1912 you're a man if you're over 13. Then apparently what Astor does is he puts a lady's hat on the boy and says, "Now he's a girl and he can go." He is then allowed to go. That's where the myth of people dressing up as women comes from. It's actually a young boy who's given a girl's hat. Were those lifeboats load without their full complement? Well, they
Well, that's absolutely right, Dan. And again, that sounds very odd from 100 years later, but I can explain why. So what you had was you had emergency lifeboats, and that's called lifeboat number one. But that shared a crane, shared a davit with some of the bigger lifeboats. So what Murdoch wanted to do is get the little lifeboats away quickly because they thought they only had an hour left, and that was really not enough time to launch all the boats. So basically what they were doing
is getting the boats launched and if there were people around, yes, they can all get in. But the chief thing was get the boats away quickly. The other thing they did, Dan, was they opened the doors in Titanic's hull and they opened these gangway doors that were used in port and they opened those so that the lifeboats could be filled more they felt safely. So instead of filling them from 90 feet up, you can see in that photograph up there. And lowering everyone down. Yeah, see how far it was to the sea. 80 foot drop in the dark.
And so what they wanted to do really was just lower the lifeboats away, then get the people filled from lower down. And they also felt they could fill them with more people if they filled them from the water. Interesting. So there's these hatches in the South Isle, which is actually how people get on and off the ship when it's in hot. That's right. And they're close to the water level, so they can all just hop out of there. Well, that was the plan. But in fact, what happened was all the lifeboats, once they got into the water, they could see how the ship was listing, and they were terrified of suction.
And in fact, Captain Smith on some occasions ordered lifeboats to row to lights that they could see.
So yet another myth, Tim, that's not true. That they were callously abandoning people as they lowered half-full lifeboats of toffs down into the sea. And there's another point there, Dan, that's very important, is that the Board of Trade, in their wisdom, decided that each lifeboat could take 65 people. And this was based on some cubic footage worked out behind a dusty desk in Whitehall. But actually, Dan, when you had six oars in the lifeboats, they needed room to swing.
So you couldn't pack it with people and have room to swing the oars. The other thing is, people were bringing bits of luggage. Someone had their dog in their life mode. Also, people had these huge life jackets and big fur coats. So this was taking up more and more space. And a final thing is, someone like Lightholler was a seaman. He'd actually been wrecked at sea before. He'd been on a desert island even.
of St. Paul in the middle of the ocean. Anyway, he knew that the wind would come up with the sun in the morning. So he didn't want to load the lifeboats fully because then they would start to get swamped. And in fact, as we'll find out later on, the lifeboats were becoming swamped when they were eventually rescued in the morning.
So it's 44 minutes past midnight and we can see there is another ship. We can see lights from another ship. Well, this is one of the most extraordinary things that happened that night, Dan. So the Californian had been nearby and she'd actually been watching Titanic the whole time. But because Californian was facing away from Titanic because she'd run into...
massive ice barrier that was just ahead of the iceberg that Titanic ran into. It was only when she swung around and what we call opened her lights out to Titanic that suddenly, for example, her masthead light could be seen by Titanic. And the other thing is that Californian had been morsel lamp signaling to Titanic since she stopped, but now they noticed her morsel lamp signals. So now the two vessels started to morsel lamp signal to each other. But that's great.
It should be great, Dan, but remember we're talking about the Titanic and everything's a tragedy. So that night what happened was because of the very cold water we talked about in the Labrador Current, it had made the air lie in layers of colder, heavier air down below and warmer air higher up. And this
added, Dan, to the beauty of the night because someone like Beasley later on in The Lifeboat said that the stars were flashing so much that it seemed like the stars were morseling to each other. Now, the terrible tragedy is that it didn't just make the stars flash. It made the morse flash randomly. No.
No. Yes. So, Titanic and Californian decided that they were both looking at vessels burning oil lamps, flickering oil lamps, because it scrambled the sense out of the morse. And there's something even worse than that, is that the Californian knew that since they had a map of all the ships in the area with radio, and they had a map saying the only ship near us with radio is Titanic. And the reason they didn't get their radio out
is that because of this raised horizon caused by this very calm weather and this fog bank on the horizon, basically, it made Titanic look like she was only five miles away from them. And that made them think she was only 400 feet long, instead of a ship twice as long, twice as far away. So they then concluded that whatever ship that was, it was about the same size as they were and didn't have radio. So it couldn't be Titanic. So therefore, she doesn't have radio. So don't bother to turn the radio on.
Oh, the tragedy. Oh, it's tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. So they were within sight of Titanic. That's crazy. As I said, they'd been morsing for a long time. A lot of calmness on Titanic was because people were looking on the bridge. The Titanic was facing towards Californian. And actually, Smith allowed...
not just first class passengers, but also stewards and passengers of all classes to go onto the bridge and actually have a look at what was going on. And they were calm because they believed that the Californian was actually coming towards Titanic. And the reason for that was, remember we said that she'd swung around and opened out her lights, so suddenly she'd appeared. Now, Dan, if you suddenly see a ship just appear, you think it's coming towards you.
So they all felt they were about to be rescued. So the Californian had arrived at this big ice island, hadn't hit it or anything. It ran into the shallow ice, which had scared Captain Lord. Okay. And it was just, but therefore just floating about waiting to work its way around. That's absolutely right. It was waiting until daylight to explore. And so Captain Lord decided that the ship he was looking at was a nearby small vessel, probably got into trouble with his rudder, wasn't answering his morsel lamp signals.
didn't appear to be making rocket signals because the rockets appeared to be very low. They appeared to be coming from a ship further away, which is very ironic. And so he thought, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to wait three hours till daylight when I can investigate in safety. So the first boat to be lowered is very much from the sort of first class area of the ship. Does that mean it's only first class passengers in there?
Yes. In fact, they did send stewards down to second class and third class to help passengers come up. But their real priority, Dan, was luring the lifeboats before Titanic sank underneath them. So it just so happened that the first class had these big decks where they stored the lifeboats. So it is logical that the first people on the scene with the lifeboats are first class. So are there women who refuse to leave the ship if their husbands can't come with them?
Oh, absolutely. This happened quite a bit, especially, I would say, Isidore and Ida Strauss. So they actually owned what's Macy's department store. They were a very wealthy, older couple. And it was regarded really that Isidore Strauss, the gentleman, would have been allowed into a lifeboat because he was quite old and very important. And she was frail and needed someone to be with her. But he absolutely refused. He said, I will not get in a lifeboat before other men.
And so she said, because she was pretty terrified as well of going out in a small boat without him on the North Atlantic in the dark. So she said, I would rather stay with my husband. So I will stay. So she elected to stay because he wasn't allowed in. And did they perish? They did. It's believed they went down to their cabin together and drowned together. Okay. So the Californian thought they were near a ship without radio. They didn't turn their radio on. They couldn't see the Morse lamps, these light signals,
Was there any other way of getting in touch? Well, Titanic had one final way of alerting help, Dan, and this was what's called distress rockets. And these are rockets which went up and went 600 feet high, exploded into a ball of stars, and then came down on little sort of parachutes quite slowly. Now, tragically, because the nearby ship thought they were looking at a smaller, nearer ship than they were, they thought these rockets were coming from much beyond the ship that they were looking at.
And unfortunately, the rockets were only really detectable when they were very low down because in that cold air that was magnifying, whereas when they were very high up in the warm air, they were too far away to be seen. And so they thought they were some sort of company signal or what they really thought was there was some sort of signal from a vessel way beyond the one they were looking at. So many things had to go wrong for this tragedy to take place. That's right, Dan.
We're at 47 minutes past midnight, Tim. We're over an hour since the collision. First of all, are there any casualties yet? Has anyone drowned down below? Well, they haven't drowned down below. What's happened is, Dan, a lot of the engineers have what's called damped the boilers to avoid explosions, because what they didn't want was freezing seawater pouring into red-hot boilers and then exploding. So in fact, one of the first orders that Captain Smith gives on the bridge, and very soon after the collision as well, within a couple of minutes of the collision, he orders the boilers to be damped. So
So what happens is that once they've damped it, a lot of the boilers, firemen, go up to the top and are just cooling their heels, just waiting in their promenade area. And what there is in the engine room is lots of activity. There's a skeleton crew down there. And what they're doing is they are making sure to keep steam up because the steam drove the lights on Titanic. And what they wanted to do was keep the lights on.
burning. In fact, Dan, there was a squash core on Titanic, which was an amazing innovation, and the lights were burning under the seawater, and you could see the green seawater. So people were looking in the viewing gallery of the squash core, and they could see green Atlantic water in there, lit up by these lights that were still burning. So yes, lots of activity around the dynamos and the engine room to keep the lights burning.
water level rising or still far enough to the stern that they're reasonably dry? The water level is rising in the bow because what's happening is the weight of water, Dan, so although Titanic weighs 50,000 tonnes, you can imagine there's thousands of tonnes of water coming in very quickly. And so what's happening is, imagine if you're making sort of ice or something in an ice cube tray,
What happens is as Titanic, like an ice cube tray, dips into the water, it fills the first cube, then the second cube, then the third cube. And what happens is the weight of water is getting bigger and bigger. And remember we talked about how actually there wasn't much damage done by the iceberg. But guess what? As soon as the anchor hauser goes in, you can see at the bow there, there's that big anchor. That is a huge hole. That hole itself was double the size of the damage that was done by the iceberg.
as soon as that goes down. So then she starts to sink twice as fast. And guess what? When everyone was ordered up to the lifeboats, they didn't go back down to their rooms to shut their portholes, which they'd been looking out of to see why they'd come to a stop. So what happened is, Dan, these portholes are big, right? And remember, the damage to Titanic isn't that big. So every two portholes that goes underwater, it doubles and triples and quadruples the damage to Titanic as she's settling in the water. So Titanic's actually sinking faster and faster and faster.
So 47 minutes past midnight, there is some sort of mixed news, a slightly bit of good news for Titanic, the first in a while, is that someone is actually responding.
Well, it's very good news because all these ships that have responded previously are just too far away to make any difference. And now Carpathia, who was actually heading from America to Europe, she has decided to turn straight around and head for Titanic. Problem is, she's 56 miles away. Now, that might not sound like very long, but Titanic asks her, when do you think you'll get here? How long will it take you? And she says, we'll be within about four hours. And they know they just haven't got four hours done.
For the next 10 minutes, there's more and more lifeboats being lowered now.
That's right. Lifeboats are being lowered the whole time. There's 20 lifeboats. They lowered about 16 of them. They were lowering them about every 10, 15 minutes. They were lowering them more or less in order. You've got the lifeboats numbered one to seven going first, then you've got the later lifeboats coming in. There are still some things called collapsible lifeboats, Dan. They're on the top of the bridge around the first funnel area.
And the ship actually ends up going down with some of those collapsible lifeboats still attached. We're at quarter past 1 a.m. on Monday morning. The bow's underwater. Presumably now the passengers have realized this is life and death.
Absolutely right. So people are much whiter, they're much more terrified with fear, their blood's drained out of their cheeks, and they are very, very worried. And there's negotiations going on about who's going to get into lifeboat, who isn't. Because tragically, Dan, in 1912, if you were over 13, you were an adult if you were a man. So...
they were regarding it as really women and children, but actually teenage sons were not allowed in the lifeboats. And this had an unforeseen consequence, which is a lot of the third class families, for example, the Goodwins, there were eight of them ranging from all ages, and they chose to stay together instead of splitting up the younger males and the husband from the daughters and the mother.
And there's another reason for that. If we think of socioeconomic times in 1912, it was often the man that was the breadwinner in 1912. And a lot of the first and second class passengers were traveling on business. They had plenty of money. They could replace everything. And there was only a couple of them traveling. So they were sort of nimble to move around the deck. Whereas if you've got a family of eight-- You're emigrating. You're emigrating. You've got all your luggage. You've got everything you own on that ship. You can't replace stuff that's lost.
Also, you can't replace the breadwinner if your husband dies very easily. You might be destitute. So I think with third class, they had a lot more to think about. And tragically, a lot of third class, they had every assistance down, women and children, to get to the lifeboats as much as anyone else. But they chose to stay together. And was that increasingly fraught for the officers that are running this evacuation? Yes.
We have a particularly fraught time on the starboard side towards the stern of Titanic, which is kind of where these lifeboats are here, because what happens is that a flood of third-class passengers does come up from third class and decide to want to get onto the boats,
but a lot of the lifeboats are already full. And so people are trying to jump into the lifeboats. Now, in fact, some people did jump into the lifeboats, including first class. And there are stories about people having arms broken, ankles broken by people jumping into the lifeboats. And so what 5th Officer Lowe does is he actually takes his revolver and fires into the air. And of course, that brings everyone up, you know, sharp and realises that it's serious. And so that stops a lot of the rushing of the boats.
All right, Tim, so 1:30am to 1:45, this period, those final lifeboats are being lowered. There's a big clamour to get on. Are we talking big queues, a melee to get on these lifeboats? That's absolutely right, Dan. It couldn't be more different from when the first lifeboats were launched, they were trying to beg people to get in, the band was playing, you know, sort of lovely classical music. Actually,
Comedy music sometimes at that time. By now, Dan, people know it's a very serious situation. They know there's more people wanting to get onto the lifeboats that they can see in front of them than there is room. And so what this crew do is they throw a cordon of linked arms around the lifeboats and they're actually pushing the people back and they're allowing women and children through under there between their arms to get into the lifeboats. And then as soon as it's full enough, they're like, right, no more in this boat, lower away.
So there's more people in these last lifeboats, but is it more challenging lowering them? Well, it's very challenging because not only are the ropes straining and creaking because these lifeboats are in some cases actually overfilled,
But also what's happening is that there's a discharge coming out of the side of Titanic and it's actually washing lifeboats together so that they're actually being lowered one on top of the other. And there's a danger that people in the lifeboat on the sea will actually be crushed by the lifeboat that's coming down. So they absolutely scream and shout and say, hold on, hold on. And luckily someone on the deck hears them and halts the lowering of the lifeboat above. And it allows the lifeboat below to cut the falls and actually head away
from the ship and then to safely lower the lifeboat above. But obviously it's a balance between absolute speed, rushing to get these boats away, but balancing it with safety.
But we still only got a fraction of the passengers on board into these lifeboats that are now floating around Titanic. That's right. So tragically, there were 2,227 passengers on Titanic. We've also got, remember, we've got like 800 crew. So unfortunately, only about 700 people actually got into lifeboats. And people thought that people could swim from the water into the lifeboats. But unfortunately, the water was below freezing then. And people only survived about 20 minutes.
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So Tim, we're now at five past two on Monday morning. The final lifeboat's being lowered. That must have been a hot ticket. Well, it was. And there's a lot of controversy around this because Ismay, who actually owns the White Star Line, owns Titanic, he actually is standing there. He has been helping. He's been acting like...
a member of the crew helping launch the boats. He's got his pyjamas on under his suit. He's sweating. He's wading his arms around. Actually, he's annoying the crew. They're like, look, we're handling it. Just leave us alone. But then at that last moment when it is...
you know, he knows it's death or there's a space in the boat. And he kind of feels that it's going to be a wasted space in the boat if he doesn't get into it because no one else is allowed to get into it. But he switches from crew to passenger. So suddenly, the crew who kind of owns the captain, if you like, suddenly becomes the first class passenger with massive staterooms and suites. And I think to be fair to him as well, I think Chief Officer Wilde,
who's one of his most senior officers, says, come on, there's a space for you here, get in. Almost bungled him into the lifeboat, but whatever happens, he ends up regretting it. So that boat is lowered with the owner of Titanic in it.
That's absolutely right. It's a fateful decision. So yes, he saves his life. And who among us can say in the same situation, because thankfully we haven't been in that situation, that we wouldn't try and save ourselves as well. But he makes that decision and he has to live with it. And it comes home to roost very quickly because when he is...
got up onto the rescue ship Carpathia. He cannot see any of the other passengers. He can't face anyone. He goes into the doctor's cabin. He's shivering. He's delirious. They put him on sedatives and he stays locked in his cabin for the entire slow, long journey to New York. Everyone's like,
where's Ismay? Why are we going so fast? Why did we crash? What's going on? And he refuses to speak to anyone. He does say that it ruined his life. In fact, later on, he does still function as a company director and things like that. But he was very heavily vilified in the press at the time.
What is the mood? As you watch that last lifeboat lowered, what's the mood amongst the people remaining on board? I mean, it's terror and shock. I mean, some people are running around trying to find other lifeboats, not realising that there aren't any more. The band, who bravely played throughout the whole lowering of the lifeboats without trying to get into a lifeboat themselves...
They know that the game's up, as it were, and they actually go down to their cabins, they get their instruments, put them on their backs, they take their shoes off. And we know later on that they did actually jump off the ship before it went down completely. But of course, all the survivors said the band played until the end, and they did because they were very brave. But very, very few people survived who weren't in lifeboats.
And therefore the survivors all say the band played until the end. But we actually know, Dan, that they stopped playing about 15 minutes before the ship actually disappeared below the waves.
Captain Smith, unlike Ismay, he's still on board. He's still on board. And unlike Ismay, he hasn't been panicking like Ismay was loading the boats. He's kept it very calm. And what he's been doing is just quietly going around to each knot of men, layering the lifeboats, encouraging them, saying, well done, lads. But what he does is he quietly goes around and he says, it's time to abandon ship. It's every man for himself.
You've done enough. He even goes to the wireless cabin and says, "I release you both. You've done everything you can. Basically, stop sending distress message. It's not worth it anymore." They still stay at their posts. Smith's job at this stage is to go around and do that. He's also being approached by women holding babies saying, "Captain, what do I do?" He's in this terrible situation.
He's also scanning the horizon for the Carpathia to come or to Californian and he's constantly looking around at what's going to be happening next. So Captain Smith says every man for himself. That just means your work here is done, do the best you can to save yourself. How does everyone respond to that differently?
Well, that's right, Dan. So what it was meant to mean was you're no longer required to stick to your post on the ship and you can save yourself. Now, in fact, we're led to believe that Murdoch didn't want to save himself. He felt personally guilty for having been in charge of Titanic and
at the time of what became the fatal collision. And there is a French gentleman who very vividly writes a letter home and recalls Murdoch, in fact, after he's launched one of the last sort of proper lifeboats before the collapsible boats,
he is actually standing there more or less with water around his feet. And he actually does a salute, military salute, and then takes the revolver and shoots himself in the head and falls to the deck. And there's a couple of people that corroborate that. So I believe that Murdoch did, in fact, take his own life.
At 2:15 AM, there's a particular event. What happens, Owen? Well, there's an extraordinary event at 2:15 because it's such a calm night. But suddenly, Titanic takes a lunge forward. And this makes people think there's a wave on the North Atlantic. And this wave washes a lot of people into the sea. It actually knocks off the first funnel. They believe John Jacob Astor was crushed by the first funnel
the starboard wing bridge. So the funnel falls into the starboard wing bridge. So we've got a wave that's coming over the bows here. Yeah, that's right. It washes over the top here of the officers' quarters. Okay. Yeah, it washes people that are trying to release collapsibles A and B at the front here. They're trying to cut the falls and release it. It washes them off the deck and at that point they know it's pretty much the end. And in fact, Lightoller
takes a header dive off the bridge. And in fact, so does Captain Smith. So, you know, in the film, we've got Smith in that dramatic scene and the water's coming up the windows and everything. That didn't happen at all. Smith actually dived into the sea and he was actually found helping babies and children to get to lifeboat.
Is this the first mass casualty event then, now that there's a wave that's crashed over and swept some people into the freezing cold sea? That's absolutely right, Dan, because up until now there's been a lot of panic and danger, but actually not a huge amount of deaths aboard Titanic. But what we have here with this wave is the first people being washed into the freezing ocean. Now, they can only survive in there 10 to 20 minutes maximum. So the big wave's around 2:15, Captain Smith is in the water. Is this really the end? Not just the beginning of the end, is this the end?
It's really the end. And what really signifies that, Dan, is that Titanic's lights have heroically been kept burning by very brave engineers with no thought for saving themselves, keeping the dynamos going, keeping everything running. And suddenly what happens is we get this big wave coming in, which washes people off. But it's part of where the ship actually breaks her back. So the weight of the bow is full of water and the stern up in the air actually breaks.
snaps, and at that moment all the lights go out in the ship and everyone knows there's only a matter of five minutes left before she sinks. So the big wave smashes the bowels, the stern, which has been out of the water, the propeller's out of the water? The propeller's out of the water, but again, only an angle of about 15 degrees, not the Hollywood version. And eventually that bit sticking out of the water, that stern, just breaks off. That's right, because the Titanic is made to be on an even keel and supported all the way along her length,
You know, maybe in huge waves she could take a couple of waves underneath, but when she's got nothing underneath her stern at all, that's 20,000 tonnes. She's just not designed to hold that in the air. She's designed to float on the water. So she breaks there and that's when all the lights go out. So Titanic's hull ruptures, the lights go out, this big wave washes across the foredeck. Captain Smith's in the water. Yep. Lightoller, the officer's in the water.
They are, Dan, and the musicians have by this time jumped into the water. We've also got a lot of third-class passengers and other passengers just jumping off the side of the ship. Some of them tragically are sucked back into the ship through open portholes where there's a change in pressure and they're getting sucked in.
But generally speaking, most of them, we end up with about 1,500 people in the water on that calm night. In fact, the baker, he's been quite smart. He's gone down and filled his pockets with oranges and things like that. And less cleverly, perhaps, he's got completely drunk on brandy and stuff like that. And he actually climbs over the stern. Because what's fascinating, Dan, is as the ship breaks in half,
the stern settles back again and people think, oh, the stern's going to stay afloat indefinitely. It's a lifeboat in itself. But unfortunately, there was so much damage done to the keel when the bow pulled apart from the stern that the stern is actually slowly, slowly sinking. But the stern stays afloat on its own for about five minutes on an even keel and people think we're going to be all right. Then the stern itself starts to tip up. So the stern section is now floating separately to the main section.
Which one goes down first? So what happens is, in fact, Jack Thayer notices and does a sketch that the bow actually comes up a bit again, but we don't know whether his sketch is right or not. What we do know is from the seabed that Titanic's at about 500 metres apart, both sections, and in fact the bow kites down to the seabed before the stern. So probably the bow goes down at least a couple of minutes. Remember, the sea's two miles deep there.
But Titanic's bow has probably not yet hit the ground by the time the stern actually disappeared. But it actually takes a while for the bow to sink two miles when it's full of water. So at 2.17, we think the bow slips beneath the waves. So the bow's gone. The stern section, they think, my goodness, we might make it here. But then it starts to tip up again and it's not long for this Earth. That's right, Dan. And are people jumping off?
People are jumping off, people are screaming, people are actually saying prayers. One of the passengers actually said that it looked like clumps of bees sort of hanging onto capstans and bits of decking and falling off in clumps. So people are sort of hanging onto each other and then falling off.
And we don't know what it was like because almost no one survives after the lifeboats have left Titanic. We don't know firsthand what it was like being on board. However, there was enough light for some people who were swimming in the water, like Jack Thayer, to actually see people and light holders, see people dropping clumps of bees from the deck. So people could see very much what it was like if they were very close. Most of the lifeboats had now pulled away to a safe distance because they were worried about being caught in the suction.
So it is 2.20am and the sea is flat calm. There is no Titanic. The mighty ship that had been there minutes before is just gone. What's the seascape look like?
Well, it's just such a tragic picture, Dan. You've got a few lifeboats dotted around. Most of them can't see each other because they've all sort of split away. But what everyone can hear is this sickening sound, a bit like a football crowd cheering when a goal is scored. You've got 1,500 people just screaming from the top of their lungs, you know, help, come to me. And what they're doing is they're calling the lifeboats back.
But I'm afraid in the dark, the lifeboats that are in many cases quite overloaded anyway, but certainly when faced with a crowd of people, it will be like deciding to row your lifeboat into Wembley Stadium to pick people up. And you would just think you would get swamped immediately. So the lifeboats decided they would wait until the cries thinned out a bit. And so it would be more safe to go back. But tragically, by the time the lifeboats did go back, very few people were able to be saved. I think about five or
Even people who were in lifeboats like the upturned collapsible or lifeboats that flooded a lot, even they died because the water was actually two degrees below freezing. So the rule of thumb basically is if you got submerged, you would probably not survive. Now Lightoller was a really hard case. He got sucked under with the ship, but he was a real tough guy. He'd already survived shipwreck and things like that. He'd done gold prospecting in the frozen Yukon.
Even his sailors called him a hard case, and he did manage to survive on the upturned collapsible B lifeboat. So he came to the surface, and there was a floating smaller lifeboat there. That's right. In fact, the first funnel, when it fell, created a wave which actually pushed the lifeboat away from Titanic.
And he was able to reach that along with a number of others, including for a time Captain Smith. But unfortunately, people tended to drop off that during the night. So there was a woman there, I think with some children as well, and they dropped off during the night. So people just clinging to the other side of this hull and they just... That's right, because they just can't cope with the cold and it's survival of the fittest.
anybody else make it having been fully submerged, having been aboard Titanic till the end? Well the most remarkable story really of surviving in the water as opposed to in a lifeboat is a baker called Charles Jothlin and he was remarkable because he was the head baker on Titanic but also he was quite drunk. He drunk a lot of alcohol in the moments before the sinking.
He filled his pockets with food and biscuits and all sorts of stuff. And he says that he didn't get his head wet as the Titanic sank. He says he stood right on the end there as the bow went and just sort of swam off. But then they wouldn't let him on the lifeboat because they were worried that the air pocket...
in the upturned collapsible would get submerged if too many people got on the boat. So they were policing it, and they wouldn't let him get on. And then as sadly, as people died in the night and fell off, then they said, right, now you can come on. So after about an hour or so when other people had fallen off, he was then allowed to get on, and he did end up surviving. I think, Dan, it's probably because his blood had so much alcohol in it that it was antifreeze.
And what's the last confirmed sighting of Captain Smith? The last confirmed sighting of Captain Smith is he was swimming to this collapsible B because it was the upturned boat that was nearest the officers' quarters and he had a child in each arm. He gave the children to the crew on the upturned lifeboat and they said, oh, come on, save yourself, jump on. And he said, no, I'm all right, boys. I'm all right, lads. Good luck. And then carried on swimming near the lifeboat but then would have eventually succumbed to the cold.
So he made the decision not to try and save himself. That's right. I mean, he probably had hoped that he would have eventually survived, but he was certainly not going to take up a place on a lifeboat that someone else could have climbed onto. And the children that Captain Smith had taken to the life raft, did they survive? Unfortunately, they did not survive. It's 4.17 a.m.,
And the next big event happens. That is that finally the Carpathia arrives. Well, that's right, Dan. It's been the most extraordinary night because people are finding themselves in these tiny lifeboats, in these freezing conditions on the wide North Atlantic. And what they're doing is they're constantly looking for boats and ships approaching. And that night, the stars were so clear that you could see them setting and rising behind the icebergs all around. And what they were seeing is they kept thinking that rising stars were ships approaching.
and that setting stars were ships going away. So the whole night it was kind of what's going on. And eventually they allow themselves to realize that these lights that are coming must be another ship. And that, of course, was the Carpathia. She arrived on the scene about 4.20 in the morning. So about two hours after Titanic disappeared below the water, it's still dark at this stage. And the other fascinating thing, and you could regard this as good luck,
But Titanic's false distress position, which was wrong, in fact, the actual sinking was between her and the rescue ship Carpathia. So Carpathia was on her way to the wrong position, 10 miles wrong, but happened to come across Titanic's lifeboats in that position. So if you want a little bit of luck that night, it was that the actual position was between the rescue ship and the false position.
And actually, in the middle of the night, it's quite hard to spot these little lifeboats floating about. Well, that's a really good point, Dan. And in fact, Boxall had the presence of mind to have some rockets put in his lifeboat. So he was actually burning green flares in his lifeboat. And it was the green flares that Carpathia saw, and that steered them
to pick up the boats. And then as the day dawned, then Rostron on the Carpathia could see more and more Titanic's lifeboats dotted around because some of them went north towards Carpathia and some of them just sort of fanned out to get away from Titanic and away from what they thought would be suction. So they were in a wide area on the sea. And in fact, it took until about 8.30 in the morning before the last lifeboats were brought on board. And so how many people does Carpathia pick up?
Carpathia has 705 survivors.
However, it's hard to know exactly how many were lost on Titanic because the inventories are not completely accurate. But around 1,500 people drowned at the night the Titanic sank, possibly 1,490, something like that. And again, the 705 figure, it might be 702, 703, but the generally accepted figure of survivors from the Titanic is only 705 out of 2,227 people on board.
And Carpathia takes them to New York. Carpathia takes them to New York, but it is a very painful journey because obviously you've got people realising that no other ships have come to the rescue. You've got people realising and looking for their loved ones on Carpathia in vain, finding they're not there. And then, would you believe it, this fog disappears.
Captain Smith was worried about actually descends before they get into New York. They have to go dead slow and the foghorn's blaring. People just want to get back to normality. They want to try and change their clothes and tell the world what's been happening. It takes days and days for Carpathia to actually arrive at New York. Actually, Dan, it's only in that moment when Carpathia arrives at
at the dock in New York that people realised the terrible tragedy and that only 705 have survived and that there's no other boat with any other survivors. When they landed in New York and the dust had settled, they worked out who'd survived. What are the headlines about who had survived and who had perished? And are the myths true? Was it all the posh people?
Well, actually, Dan, again, there's even myths about that. So one very extraordinary fact is that more men survived the sinking of the Titanic than women. And to give an example, out of the almost 900 crew, there were only 23 women in that crew, and they were all stewardesses. How about the different classes? How did they fare?
Well, there again, Dan, you know, the sort of theory is obviously that first and second were much, much more prioritised than third. But in fact, you were twice as likely to drown on Titanic as a second-class man than as a third-class man. Another one there is that actually twice as many third-class men were saved as first and second-class men combined. Wow.
I mean, that shows presumably there are a lot of third-class men on board. It does. You've spotted it, Dan. It's that people don't generally understand how much the bulk of those travelling on Titanic were actually in third class. But it does help to dispel the myths that not only were they not locked below until they were allowed not to be, if that makes sense, but also...
They were actually given a good chance to survive. But unfortunately, there were not enough lifeboats. There were a lot of third class and also these large families. They actually chose to stay together. What's the one big lesson that they drew at the time to try and reduce the chances of this catastrophe happening again? I think the biggest one, Dan, is actually 24-hour radio watch.
had California had two radio operators as Titanic had, then we wouldn't be talking about Titanic now because everyone would have been saved. Because I'm from Southampton, the great port city from which Titanic sailed, we often talk about the impact that that sinking had on the people of Southampton. Is that true?
Gosh, it's absolutely true and the impact of the sinking of the Titanic on Southampton was utterly devastating. So, for example, most of the nearly 900 crew were hand-picked from Southampton and in fact there was a school near the docks where every single child had lost their father in the sinking of the Titanic. The Titanic disaster was a milestone of the 20th century. Sinking seemed to symbolise the end of the era of progress.
After years of rapid technological innovation and cultural and industrial changes, it was a stark reminder of the fragility of innovation, the hubris of humans, and how things can just get worse. I don't think we'll ever stop being fascinated by the stories of heroism, the catastrophe, the luck, the humanity that emerged that night, and the lessons that were learned from that disaster over a hundred years ago still influence our lives today, from maritime safety to international law.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you want more on the Titanic, more personal stories, more history on its construction and the aftermath that followed the sinking, you can check out the mini-series we made a few years ago on this podcast. We've linked to it in the show notes. Thanks so much as ever to Tim Moulton. If you want more minute-by-minute explainers, let me know. Our email's in the show notes too. See you next time.
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