Titanic: Untold Stories Page #2

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are enticing.

Mrs. Emily Ryerson's eldest son has been

killed in a car crash in America.

She's going to claim his body.

She leaves her cabin rarely

and eats in her room.

The elegance of Titanic is meaningless to

a mother in mourning.

Haas is now one deck above

Mrs. Ryerson's cabin.

The team moves forward along the bow to

one of Titanic's most famous locations.

Between the first and second funnel,

there was a magnificent dome which sat atop

an area known as the grand staircase.

There's really no part of the Titanic

that perhaps demonstrated the grandeur of

the ship than this feature which was

called the grand staircase in first class.

It was surmounted by a rod iron

and glass dome.

It penetrated five or six decks down

through the ship.

As we can see now, however, the grand

staircase is only a shattered leftover

of its former self.

For the first few days out at sea,

the trip to America is uneventful.

Then on Sunday, the temperature

drops dramatically.

Titanic's chief designer, Thomas Andrews,

spends his Sunday reviewing the ship's plans

and inspecting the vessel

for any subtle imperfections.

Titanic is the greatest achievement

to date of his ascending career.

Harold Bride is one of

the ship's two radio operators.

Bride's partner is Jack Phillips.

Throughout the day on Sunday,

they receive six warnings of ice.

Titanic's course is altered further south

to avoid the danger.

For passengers like the Lindells,

the frigid air is enough to keep them indoors.

Mrs. Emily Ryerson, however, makes a

rare appearance outside her cabin to

enjoy the quiet evening with a friend.

Bruce Ismay, managing director for the

company that owns Titanic,

approaches Ryerson.

Mrs. Ryerson.

Ismay shares a wireless message.

I have here a communication from the captain.

It indicates...

First he showed the telegram, then he said,

"We're in among the icebergs."

At the time, the conversation

had no importance to me.

I was very much overburdened with

other things that were on my mind.

First Class Passenger, Mrs. Emily Ryerson.

In fact, few on board are concerned

about ice.

Titanic, after all, is unsinkable.

The colossal scale of Titanic was

unrivaled in her day.

Her tragic sinking is one of few events

in history that still holds such a

grip on our imagination.

Titanic holds the place in the public

interest for a number of reasons of course.

The first... is that it was probably

the first major disaster to be covered

by all of the media.

There were some very early disasters

in the 20th century

but Titanic was the first one

that made such a worldwide impact.

People from the outset could identify

with people on board the ship

and this is something that has remained

over the years.

Titanic stood as a pinnacle of human

ingenuity in a time of unbridled optimism.

There was great optimism that the age

was going to improve.

They had such modern things as telephone

and automobiles and even airplanes.

And how far are these wonderful scientific

devices going to take us?

Above the wreck, Nautile moves to a

haunting location in the story.

The submersible is guided to the

devastated remains of the forward funnel.

A one hundred and fifty foot funnel

once occupied this cavernous hole.

What we're passing over now is a huge

ventilation system.

Titanic had, of course, four funnels

connected to the boiler rooms.

So what we're looking at here is a

giant tube in effect.

And if we were to pursue it further,

we would find ourselves way down

in the Titantic's boiler rooms.

The massive boilers located deep in the

belly of the ship were Titanic's source

of power.

On the day of the disaster, twenty-four

boilers are feeding

Titanic's enormous engines.

The ship's speed, twenty-one

and a half knots.

That evening, stoker Frederick Barrett

begins his shift.

In a few short hours,

he will find himself in a pitched battle

for survival.

Second class passenger, Lawrence Beesley,

fills out a claim form

so that he can retrieve his valuables

from the purser's safe.

Before retiring, Beesley takes in some

quiet entertainment.

Eternal father come to save...

After dinner, Mr. Carter invited all

who wished to the saloon

and with the assistance at the piano,

he started passengers singing hymns.

He was curious to see how many chose

hymns dealing with dangers at sea.

Second class passenger, Lawrence Beesley.

Two hours before impact,

wireless operator Jack Phillips

receives a warning from the ship Mesaba.

Ice report, latitude 42 degrees north to

41 degrees, twenty-five minutes north.

Saw much heavy pack ice and great number

of large icebergs.

Wireless operator, Jack Phillips.

Phillips doesn't realize the ice field lies

directly in Titanic's path.

Rather than report the warning to an offiicer,

he places it on a spike.

This simple act dooms Titanic.

The warning should have been delivered

to Second Offiicer Charles Lightoller

who was working on the bridge.

The one vital report that came through

but which never reached the bridge was received

from the Mesaba.

That delay proved fatal and was the main

cause of the loss of that ship.

Second Offiicer, Charles Lightoller.

With the stage now set for disaster,

the Nautile approaches an eerie scene.

We are hovering over the fallen forward mast

and you see the remains of the crow's nest.

It was here that lookout Frederick Fleet

spotted an iceberg at 11:40 p.m.

On the night of April 14th, 1912.

Fleet used the crow's nest bell

but he essentially telephoned the bridge

to report iceberg dead ahead.

The iceberg is spotted a quarter mile away.

Not enough distance to turn a ship

that stretches four city blocks long.

Offiicers steered Titantic from this location.

The ship's wheel used to be attached to

this device called a telemotor.

It is all that's left of the bridge.

What we're seeing is the telemotor

coming up.

Here is really where Frederick Fleet's

order was translated into action.

Between Frederick Fleet's warning

of the berg and the collision,

it was just thirty-seven seconds of time.

As Titanic begins to turn, it looks as

if the ship will clear the iceberg.

But an underwater ledge pierces

Titanic's steel hull,

buckling plates, causing thin separations

in her side.

There came what seemed to me, nothing more

than an extra heave of the engines,

nothing more than that,

no sound of a crash or anything else.

No sense of shock, no jar that fell like one

heavy body meeting another.

Second Class Passenger, Lawrence Beesley.

I was just about ready for the land of nod

when I felt a sudden vibrating jar run

through the ship.

Not that it was by any means a

violent concussion

but just a distinct and unpleasant

break in the monotony of her motion.

Second Offiicer, Charles Lightoller.

Deep below in third class, the impact

is more obvious to the Lindells.

And August Wennerstrom.

Captain Smith dispatches Titanic designer

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