Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron Page #5

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So it actually winds up

moving kind of horizontally

and blowing objects away from the ship.

THOMAS". Do we have any data on

the magnitude of the down blast?

I mean, the hydro guy in me says that

it can't be all that huge.

We are talking about buckling

and deforming in a big way,

these moderate-sized structural members.

And the total mass of water can't be

any much more than the mass of the ship.

- Down blast is enormous.

- Okay.

It's huge loading per square inch.

Yeah, I just... I professionally disagree

with that statement.

It can't be the momentum

of the deck mushrooming,

and then plastically deforming

and remaining there in permanent set?

Plastically deforming just from inertia?

So, the deck is falling,

falling, falling, stopping,

there's nothing supporting

the middle of the deck, it just...

Yeah. It's got water underneath it

that needs to be compressed

out of the way for it to deform.

What it does is, as it squashes the ship,

it increases pressure

on the water inside the ship,

which can't be compressed like air.

So it has a hydraulic effect,

just like the fluid in a hydraulic cylinder,

and it tends to blow things out the side.

So this thing stops cold, and you've got

50,000 tons of water moving above it

at, still, 3O miles an hour.

That's 3O knots coming down.

Whatever its sinking speed was.

Which is the equivalent of the flow here

that broke the mast,

and broke all these windows,

and peeled off the davits, and did all that.

They like to say that the steel doesn't lie,

but, you know, I like to...

I think I'd revise that. I'd say that the steel

probably tells more complicated stories

than we can tell from

how it's lying on the bottom of the ocean.

There's two different energies going here.

Number one, it took off, did this.

Flow passed, weakened

a lot of these structures up here.

Then it hit, and those weakened structures,

which were moving with the ship,

all of a sudden, they do this.

And then on top of this,

then you have your down blast.

So it's a combined effect.

Sure, it's definitely combined.

I think that the steel and the water

are kind of flowing together.

I agree with Parks on that, absolutely.

But there is one curious detail

that baffles me.

All the windows of the officers' quarters

on the boat deck are open.

The air was freezing that night,

they wouldn't have opened them.

So, who or what opened

those heavy-latched windows?

So the interesting thing is, why are

these windows all open and forward?

- Yeah, that is really interesting.

- Well, it went... The very front one...

- No, but why are they unlatched?

- Why are they unlatched?

- Unlatched is a different deal.

-It's down blast.

We know why they're forward,

the hinges are that way.

It's the overhead

just getting enough of a compression,

'cause this is right under it,

and all those windows...

Yeah.

So they just blew open.

But why wouldn't it just break the glass?

Why would it unhinge

solid brass hinges and latches?

Yeah, one after another.

Keep in mind,

there's two ways to latch this window.

There's a day latch, which is done from

the casement, like we would all think of.

- And then there is a storm...

- Which is this thing.

SAUDER:
Yeah, that's an eccentric.

You close the window, you turn the crank,

the eccentric shifts,

and it pins that window in place.

That's not latched, so there's a day latch

that is actuated from the inside, right?

If that handle weighed

more than the latching side,

when the ship flopped down to the bottom,

all those handles flipped open?

No, I think what happened...

No, I think what happened is, um,

the spindle that goes in

probably just failed from tension.

A lot of times, people will look

at a device from the Victorian period

and go, "Well, what's this for?"

And they will make up an answer.

And unfortunately,

it's the wrong answer because

our understanding of machinery

is different from the ones at the time.

Oh, okay.

Because it's a fairly large area,

and it's at the end of the fulcrum.

Yeah, I see what you are saying.

Sure, it just blew them open.

- Yes. It's not meant to...

- But didn't break the glass?

And that was weaker than the glass.

- But didn't break the glass.

- Yeah.

Bill Sauder very modestly says

he knows the ship better than the builders,

and I actually believe he does.

He's the curator of an enormous collection

of Titanic artifacts.

He has more day-to-day contact

with the physical remains

of the ship than anyone.

The one thing I'll remember about

Titanic artifacts, to the day I die,

is when the Saalfeld perfume vials

came up.

When you recover stuff from the Titanic,

it's wet, it's rusty, and it's rotten.

And the smell that comes off it

is perfectly alien, perfectly fetid.

You know it's a kind of death

you have never experienced.

So the lab is kind of unpleasant,

and then all of a sudden somebody

opens up this satchel, this leather satchel,

and out comes the fragrance of heaven.

It's all these flowers and fruity flavors,

and it's delicious.

It's the most wonderful thing

you've ever had.

Um...

It was just a complete,

overwhelming experience.

It was like, all of a sudden the fragrance

of heaven kind of goes through the room.

So...

Instead of being surrounded by

all of these dead things,

um,

(CHOKING UP)

for those few minutes,

the ship was alive again.

(SOBBING)

CAMERON:
Okay, we're filling in the picture

from the flow, to the impact,

to the down blast.

I understand the damage to Titanic's bow,

but the stern is

a completely different story.

It shattered beyond recognition,

like it was hit by a bomb.

We're gonna figure out why.

MARSCHALL:
Well,

my name is Ken Marschall.

I've been studying the Titanic

for over three decades now.

CAMERON:
I called Ken Marschaii

to this investigation

because he knows the wreck site

better than anyone.

He has created these remarkable paintings

that stand even today

as a definitive guide to Titanic,

in life and in death.

After 30 years

of studying the ship so intently

and painting the ship so many times,

a hundred times,

to see this thing in three dimensions

and be standing here,

I am absolutely speechless.

I've been painting Titanic

since the late 1960s.

1967, actually, was my first painting.

CAMERON:
Ken has a keen visual memory

and the talent to composite

hundreds of separate images

into these big picture mosaics.

He is especially invaluable

with the internal archeological survey

that we did with the robotics,

because he can actually look at something

and identify it.

There will be big brass letters that will say,

"A deck," "B deck," "C deck," or "D deck,"

the first thing you see

when you come out of the elevator.

And there it is. Bingo, baby! Bingo!

Tell him, bingo.

MARSGHALL:
With my paintbrush,

I've been spending truly my adult lifetime,

I feel, subconsciously trying

to bring all those souls back to life,

in a weird way.

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