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Titanic.

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Its very name evokes a chill.

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And the tale of its sinking is legendary.

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Captain Smith was the man of the hour, a hero of the era.

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You have crew who were the best that White Star could offer.

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There are stories of heroism, the way the band played.

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The way the band played until the end.

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But are these stirring tales of a heroic captain and crew actually true?

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Since the tragedy, Titanic historians have sought to acquire the personal papers of Lord Mersey.

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The man charged in Britain with investigating the disaster.

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His private journals may hold the answers.

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Now for the first time since 1912, these critical documents will be revealed.

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108 years later, here we go.

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Will this information alter the accepted story of how and why Titanic sank?

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They didn't think that they would need to have lifeboat drills.

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Titanic told them to shut up and go away.

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Nearly the entire response was completely improvised.

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California could have galloped to the rescue like the Fifth Cavalry.

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Bull****.

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What new light can the contents of this box shed on one of history's most enduring disasters?

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It's not a new light.

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April 17, 1912.

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Two days since Titanic's demise.

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The Mackie Bennett, a 269-foot cable repair ship in service since the 1880s,

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is dispatched from Halifax, Nova Scotia on a grim task.

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Sail into an icy hell and retrieve Titanic's dead.

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Richard McMichael is a historian at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.

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As you can imagine, this is a nightmarish situation.

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The crew's main role is to repair sections of damaged transatlantic cable.

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There's nothing in the job description about fishing women and children

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out of the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

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Mackie Bennett's journey takes 36 hours.

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And when they enter the death zone, they find several hundred corpses.

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Men, women, children.

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51 we have taken on board today. This is the first day out.

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The sea still seems strewn, but the exception of ourselves and the boas and bird

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is the only living creature here.

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Put yourself in the position of these men.

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One day alone, Mackie Bennett recovers 128 bodies.

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127 men, one woman.

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There are photographs that exist of those people being buried at sea.

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Very solemn just to look at.

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And then they would keep a log in real time.

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8 p.m. The tolling of the bells summoned all hands to the folks.

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As the weighted body plunges into the sea, they're to sink to a depth of about two miles.

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Splash, splash, splash.

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As the gruesome details of Titanic's fate filters back to both continents,

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a horrified public demands answers.

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Mark Chernside is a maritime historian and author of ten books on British royal mail ships.

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It was such a huge disaster.

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The questions were rightly being asked about how the largest and most luxurious ship in the world

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could possibly sink during its maiden voyage and with such a catastrophic loss of life.

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There was such public interest in what had happened that the British government determined

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that they needed to appoint a wreck commissioner.

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Lord John Charles Bigum, first by Count Mersey, is a well-connected barrister, judge and politician.

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And he's chosen for a monumental task.

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Find out exactly what went wrong on Titanic.

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Charles Haas is an historian, author and president of the Titanic International Society.

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Lord Mersey was bringing to the table considerable legal knowledge, hopefully a sense of fairness, a sense of balance.

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All of the things that a judge, if you will, needs to have.

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The thing that we have to keep in mind, however, is that the investigation in England was a board of trade investigation,

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which means that essentially the very organization that had allowed Titanic to go to sea

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is now investigating itself to some degree.

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Across 36 days of testimony, from nearly 100 witnesses answering 25,000 questions,

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an exhaustive inquiry comes to a close.

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While the report's final conclusions do levy criticism, some observers wonder if the hundreds of pages of notes

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Lord Mersey took in his private journal during the trial and stored in a leather-bound box

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go much further than his public pronouncements.

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After a century tucked away in their private family archives, Lord Mersey's estate has agreed to share the contents of the box publicly.

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Some judges think out loud. Lord Mersey did not think out loud.

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Lord Mersey thought on paper, and it's only now that we get to see what some of his private thoughts were.

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My name is Ned Bigum, and I'm the fifth FI-Count Mersey.

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My great-great-grandfather was John Charles Bigum, Lord Mersey.

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I don't think anyone has actually sat down and gone through the box or the materials

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and said, what exactly have we got here? What is its significance?

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It's just sat there for all these years.

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So 108 years later, here we go.

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For the first time in recorded history, we're going to open the box.

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Mersey's drawings, observations and ruminations will be examined by several renowned Titanic experts

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who will explain the significance of this lost evidence.

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And through the lens of this new information, Titanic's journey will be reconstructed,

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beginning with problems that arose before she set sail.

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The early part of the 20th century, the United Kingdom was clearly a world power.

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Its influence stretched literally around the world.

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The shipping industry is front and center in terms of the importance to the country

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and for that matter, to the world.

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One of the most dominant shipping companies of the day is Britain's White Star Line.

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Founded in 1845, White Star made its fortune delivering the Royal Mail,

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while also providing top-flight passenger service.

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The extra size of these ships enabled White Star to increase the number of first-class passengers

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that were carried and have even more luxurious first-class accommodations

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than the world had previously seen.

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And White Star's newest steamer is the most luxurious Titanic.

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The massive ship, at more than 882 feet long, weighing more than 46,000 tons

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and costing more than 180 million in today's dollars, has a major problem few people remember today.

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With the departure date in April fast approaching, half the cabins are empty.

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So White Star makes a fateful decision.

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It brings famed Captain Edward Smith out of retirement to shore up ticket sales.

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If you want to hire somebody for central casting to be captain of an ocean liner in the early part of the 20th century,

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it's E.J. Smith whether or not he knew how to run a boat or not.

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It doesn't matter. He just looks the part.

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Edward Smith was one of the captains who played up that sort of ship's captain thing.

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Invited the rich and the famous to the captain's table, hence his nickname, the Millionaires Captain.

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When April arrives, Titanic with Smith at the helm is ready to sail.

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But the Millionaires Captain also brings plenty of baggage with him onto the spit shine deck of the Titanic.

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Inside Lord Mursey's box is a red leather journal that he kept by his side throughout the inquiry.

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He used it to write down his notes and discoveries.

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On page 114, there's a notation referencing that most of Titanic's crew had been on the Olympic.

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Why did Mursey think this detail was important?

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In 1911, Captain Smith and his fellow officers who later served on the Titanic's doomed voyage,

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crewed Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, on her maiden voyage.

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While docking in New York, the Olympic collided with a tugboat.

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Then, three months later, Smith's Olympic did something far worse.

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In 1911, the Olympic was leaving Southampton, and the British naval cruiser Hawk was in the vicinity.

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Somehow, the Hawk managed to collide with the Olympic in the stern.

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Olympic was severely damaged, and she experienced flooding.

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Smith is on the bridge, and therefore in charge of the vessel.

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Titanic left Southampton on the 10th of April 1912.

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It was a bit of a gusty, cold day by all accounts.

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It was a proud moment for White Star.

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She came out of the dock, went round to the left,

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and then proceeded down the river.

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She was on the ship, and she was on the ship, and she was on the ship.

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She went round to the left, and then proceeded down the river.

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And all the indications were that Titanic was set for a successful maiden voyage.

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As hundreds of well-wishers arrive dockside to cheer Titanic off,

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the ship's reputation precedes it.

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Both the press and White Star espouse a perception of invincibility.

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But who could blame them?

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Titanic is spectacular.

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6,600 tons of coal powers massive 17-foot propellers.

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The ship is the length of two and a half football fields,

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and can ferry 3,547 passengers and crew.

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She is the largest man-made moving object on Earth.

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Pour the passengers on board.

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The first four days of the journey are euphoric.

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That's especially true for the wealthy,

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soaking in their world-class accommodations.

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When Titanic comes out, it was actually referred to as the Millionaire Special,

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because it could not be imagined that someone would be able to spend that much money

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on a transatlantic crossing.

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If you look at the best accommodations in the ship,

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$4,350 for a crossing,

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that's the equivalent of 10-year salary to an average American in 1912.

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The first-class price tag is steep, but it comes with perks.

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Among them is access to Titanic's state-of-the-art Marconi wireless system.

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The Marconi, this was modern technology for a modern ship.

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So part of the whole idea was this sort of showman's thing.

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You were there, you were rich, you were powerful,

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you were right at the edge of modern technology.

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And you could send messages to tell your friends in New York or London or Paris

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what you were doing.

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These were young men on ships, tapping away on a more spoked player.

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They were using a lot of slang and lots of rather sort of relaxware talking to each other.

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The fellows that worked in the wireless rooms on board ship

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were not part of the crew.

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In most cases, they were employees of the Marconi company.

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The Marconi operator's independence has a glaring risk.

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If people were being employed by Marconi to send messages on behalf of private passengers,

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did they then perhaps omit to look at the safety messages?

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It should have been their priority.

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Titanic will end up receiving 21 ice warnings via Marconi Gram on its four days at sea.

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But Captain Smith, like many transatlantic veterans, is skeptical of the new technology.

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Someone who had sailed back and forth across the Atlantic for so long

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without the aid of any sort of technology,

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didn't really take something like wireless very seriously.

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Another thing Captain Smith might not have been prepared for, the lifeboat situation.

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While White Star fitted Titanic with 20 lifeboats, four more than were required by regulation.

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It still isn't enough for a ship this large.

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At full capacity, Titanic's lifeboats could hold just half of the ship's 2,240 passengers.

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While that fact is well known, less known is that, according to the Mersey box,

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Smith and crew may not have trained sufficiently with the lifeboats they did have.

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Titanic's lifeboats were raised and lowered with a new crane system called Welland Davids.

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Dave Brown is a Titanic historian and retired commercial ship captain.

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The crew, they were all certified seamen, but the only thing that they didn't have

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a lot of experience with is Welland Davids, which were fairly new and coming online.

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As Sunday, April 14th, dawns, four days into Titanic's maiden voyage.

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The crew is scheduled for a routine lifeboat drill.

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Though his men are new to Titanic and her lifeboat apparatus, Captain Smith cancels the drill.

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I cannot say why Captain Smith failed to do that.

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At a bare minimum, he could have detailed one of the lower ranking officers to walk from boat to boat

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and check the lines and check any pulleys that had been greased or whatever was necessary,

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but he didn't even do that.

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During the inquiry, a Titanic lookout named Archie Joule testified that although they tested lifeboats

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before leaving Southampton, there were only two boats lowered away out of 20

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and they were not even put into the water.

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In his private journal, Mersey notes this unusual.

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When Lord Mersey wrote in his journal and found that to be unusual,

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deed it was, you really need to have a lifeboat drill.

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They didn't think that they would need to have lifeboat drills, and this goes back to hubris.

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Why bother having lifeboat drills when the ship simply can't sink?

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April 14, 1912, early evening.

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It's moonless and the seas are eerily calm.

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Titanic is steaming towards the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic

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at a brisk 22 knots or 25.5 miles per hour.

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At 7.30 p.m., Second Officer Charles Lightholer raises his sextant.

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In the era before GPS, this device is used to plot a ship's position.

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According to information in the Mersey box and other sources,

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this moment initiates a series of fatal errors by Titanic's officers.

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The sextant was the critical instrument of navigation.

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When you look through the telescope, one side sees the horizon,

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the other side here sees the sky.

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So if I put it up like this and I adjust it,

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what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the celestial body down till it sits on the horizon.

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I call out Mark, and then the guy who's got the hack watch

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writes down the exact moment of the hack.

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When Lightholer took this reading at 7.30, he either was wrong

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or the hack watch was off by a few seconds.

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A sextant in conjunction with a hack watch and a nautical chronometer

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can accurately determine a ship's position.

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But if the officers taking the readings make a mistake, the ship can veer off course.

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If you're off by a minute of time, is a mile of latitude.

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You can grow very big.

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While historians have long suspected that Titanic was lost en route,

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proof of the navigational errors has been elusive.

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That's because Titanic's logbook, the equivalent of a black box,

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containing notes on every important decision of a ship's journey, has never been found.

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Typically, it was put in a waterproof bag, sealed,

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and the highest ranking officer would take it onto the lifeboat.

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Theoretically, you carry all the records off the ship.

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But the captain who knows that it's got some information that he would rather not disclose

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will probably throw five pounds of rocks in the bag and throw it overboard, you know?

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Despite 25,000 questions across a month of testimony,

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Lord Mirzi's private box doesn't contain a single reference to the missing logbook.

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There may be something in there that Captain Smith didn't want the world to know about.

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It could have been something damning to the White Star Line and the Board of Trade.

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We don't know.

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Months before the inquiry, steaming through the North Atlantic,

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Titanic is not only lost, she's heading into danger.

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Throughout the day on April 14th, Titanic's Marconi operators

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received disturbing news from other ships in the area.

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Titanic did receive a series of ice warnings from ships that lay ahead of its path.

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These ice warnings were fairly specific in terms of latitude and longitude.

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They were taken to the bridge and the position was noted on a transatlantic chart

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and there it could be examined by each shift of officers as they came on duty.

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Almost like some sort of music creeping up in the background,

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messages from other ships saying, be careful, there's danger ahead.

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19 and a half miles due north from Titanic, the SS Californian,

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a freighter bound for Boston, sees an ice field around 7.30 at night.

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Her skipper, Captain Stanley Lord, isn't about to take any chances.

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So the Californian stops in ice, it realizes it's dangerous.

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The wireless operator sent a message to tell people that ice was around.

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Titanic didn't say thank you very much, I'm very glad you told us about this.

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They told them to shut up and go away effectively.

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They were busy sending private messages, they didn't want to know about it.

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While Captain Lord hunkers down in the ice field,

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to his south, Captain Smith powers Titanic ahead with his engines steaming at near capacity.

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In his final report, Lord Mersey does note Titanic's excessive speed

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and in private, he expresses grave concern.

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Within Mersey's box, tucked inside his journal, he writes that there was no reduction of speed

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and then Mersey points it out again.

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Okay, so now this is interesting.

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Speed, 21 knots and never reduced up to time of collision.

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Notwithstanding, wary that icebergs in vicinity and that she would be likely to meet them.

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They were traveling at 21 knots, which is practically full speed for the Titanic.

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This was at night, this was in an environment where they knew that there was ice.

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We don't need to reduce speed.

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We're not going to have any issues with any icebergs that we come across because we're Titanic.

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After all, it is unsinkable, isn't it?

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Sunday evening, April 14, 1912.

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Under the command of Captain Edward J. Smith, Titanic is just past the midpoint of her journey to New York.

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Steaming at nearly full speed, she's scheduled to arrive on time Wednesday morning at White Star's Pier 59 along Manhattan's West Side.

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Nine other ships are also traversing the North Atlantic, heading west and east along the same shipping lanes.

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But just south of the Grand Banks, the ice field looms, four miles wide and extending north and south as far as the eye can see.

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As each ship hits the danger zone, they sound the alarm.

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The wireless messages were sent by ships who were traveling in the same waters and they were alerting each other to potential risks.

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They thought it was dangerous and they let the other ships know around them.

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We know that Titanic received these messages. We know they acknowledged some of these messages too.

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It should have been taken seriously.

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The Marconi messages not only reveal where the ice is, they also contain important details on how big and dangerous the icebergs are.

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Kristen Serumgard is the commander of the International Ice Patrol. She's familiar with the types of icebergs the ships might have reported.

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There's flows formed from frozen seawater. There's a growler which is about the size of a piano.

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And then all the way up to what we call a very large iceberg is over 200 meters.

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In Titanic's day, just like now, hitting an iceberg could rip a ship apart and endanger the passengers.

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A fact that wasn't lost on Lord Mersey in his black box.

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Inside his journal, Mersey hones in on two specific ice warnings that reached Titanic.

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Two vessels informed her. Icebergs, growlers, glows.

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Lord Mersey drew some images, things that the Titanic clearly would have passed on its way to the big monster iceberg.

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That also should have given the Titanic some pause. It would have warned them that things were getting bad.

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Lord Mersey also scribbles down that the temperatures were falling and that this to indicate ice.

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And then finally, and perhaps most crucially, he notes and underlines, no reduction of speed.

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This was obviously very significant for him. Quite understandably, he was asking the question, why didn't they slow down?

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If we didn't have this journal, we wouldn't have known that Lord Mersey was taking in all this information and clearly recognized the problems.

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He was getting more and more towards criminal negligence in this case.

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Historians have spent countless hours deliberating this question. Why didn't Captain Smith slow down?

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One theory centers around the behavior of one of Titanic's most influential passengers, J. Bruce Ismay.

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Ismay was the chair of the White Star Line. It was his role to run it and grow it into the 20th century.

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On White Star's pride and joy, Ismay reigned supreme, hobnobbing with wealthy passengers and keeping tabs on Captain Smith and his crew.

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Ismay is on deck around 2 p.m. when Titanic receives an ice warning from the Baltic.

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Another White Star-owned ship about 230 miles to the east.

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What happens next would give Bauder to a century of conspiracy theorist.

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And it's a moment Lord Mersey also focuses on.

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There was a paper-ridden marconi gram delivered to Captain Smith that he showed to Bruce Ismay that Bruce Ismay took, stuck into his pocket.

294
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Why did Captain Smith give Bruce Ismay the telegram?

295
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:33,000
Mersey references Ismay's own testimony from the British inquiry.

296
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On page 222, Ismay underlined, Captain handed me the Baltic message which Ismay held on to for a while.

297
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So this is obviously quite significant for Lord Mersey.

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Why would Ismay have stuck it in his pocket? Was there something he didn't want the bridge crew to see?

299
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Did he not want them to slow down?

300
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You didn't want the Titanic to be late. The press would be waiting on the docks. People would be there waiting.

301
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There have been theories that Ismay was keener to get there on time than to get there safely.

302
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:24,000
Captain Smith asked Ismay for the ice warning back that Sunday evening so that he could put it in the chart room.

303
00:32:27,000 --> 00:32:34,000
The Baltic message is posted alongside the six other ice warnings received throughout the day.

304
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Then at 9.20 p.m. Captain Smith heads to his cabin to go to sleep, handing command to his senior officers.

305
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The North Atlantic was extremely calm as they went into Sun Town and into the night.

306
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That made it more difficult to find the iceberg. You can't see it.

307
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If it's very calm out, there's no waves breaking on the edges of the iceberg. You're not going to even see that it's there.

308
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The lookouts are above the canvas dodger of the lookouts nest. Their face is being whipped by a 25 mile an hour cold wind,

309
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which inevitably could cause tearing to take place, which in turn could hurt their vision.

310
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At precisely 11.39 p.m. Crow's Nest Lookout Frederick Fleet spots the gigantic dark mass.

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He strikes the lookout bell three times.

312
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Fleet lunges for the telephone, reaching sixth officer James Moody on the bridge.

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When you're traveling at 21 or 22 knots and you see iceberg dead ahead, there wasn't enough time to turn.

314
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It was already too late. The ship was doomed.

315
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April 14, 1912. RMS Titanic has been at sea for four and a half days.

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At 11.39 p.m. 375 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Titanic's seven ice warnings received throughout the day are no longer a warning.

317
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They're a frightening reality.

318
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With the iceberg spotted 1500 feet ahead and with Titanic bearing down on it at 26 miles per hour,

319
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first officer William McMaster Murdock has less than 45 seconds to determine the fate of thousands.

320
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He says, fold the port. Murdock signals the engine room. Ring, ring, ring.

321
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But by the time Murdock makes his desperate maneuver, the iceberg is already on.

322
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At reportedly 60 feet high, it's even with Titanic's crow's nest.

323
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And its estimated 400 foot length is greater than a football field.

324
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Scientists say it could have weighed up to one and a half million tons, the equivalent of 15 fully loaded aircraft carriers.

325
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The iceberg packs the punch of a granite mountain.

326
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When you compress carbon under pressure, you get this very strong diamond.

327
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And that's kind of the similar concept of compressing the freshwater into a glacier that forms an iceberg.

328
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:20,000
Dense glacial ice has a much higher probability of causing significant damage to a ship.

329
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:27,000
At 11.40 p.m., Titanic makes contact.

330
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The iceberg scrapes along for starboard side for eight seconds, gouging the double-plated steel hull.

331
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The collision takes place, opening it's side to the iceberg so it can cut into it like a tennis sardines.

332
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The forward compartment, three cargo holds, and two engine rooms are blown open.

333
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And the frigid sea pours in.

334
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:09,000
Meanwhile, some 90 feet above, those first-class passengers still awake catch an ominous glimpse into their fate.

335
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:16,000
When the iceberg struck, they felt something, but they weren't sure what it was, and they went to the portholes of the ship

336
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and actually saw pieces of ice coming off the iceberg onto the deck through the portholes.

337
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:31,000
Moments after impact. First officer Murdoch orders full stop.

338
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And he engages Titanic's high-tech watertight doors.

339
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:42,000
Down in the tank top level, bells started going off and doors started closing.

340
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:48,000
It must have sounded pretty much like the Hammers of Hell down there.

341
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:52,000
Murdoch did not know whether there was damage or not.

342
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:58,000
He's just got to close the watertight doors and then find out. That's all he can do.

343
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:04,000
Murdoch's decision to seal the doors is rooted in ship science.

344
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When activated, the watertight doors keep Titanic from foundering by walling off the flooded areas from the rest of the ship.

345
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:19,000
We want to close them so the water doesn't escape and make the ship bow or aft heavy.

346
00:38:19,000 --> 00:38:22,000
We want to stop the water from coming in and spreading.

347
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:30,000
The head of the British inquiry trains his investigative eyes on those crucial first minutes after the doors are activated.

348
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:40,000
Lord Mursey learns that some of the watertight doors were then manually raised by crew to move around hoses and pumps.

349
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But he notes and underlines that the doors were then all left open.

350
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Lord Mursey obviously thought that was important that no one ever requested the doors to be reclosed.

351
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He certainly recognized the fact that there were some problems here.

352
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:07,000
Captain Smith, who had gone to sleep for the evening at 9.20pm, suddenly snaps to attention.

353
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He felt a cathode and heard the ship's engine bells ring.

354
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I can't imagine what that must have done to his heart rate.

355
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Smith rushes to the bridge. He asks First Officer Murdoch what they struck.

356
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And icebergs, sir, Murdoch replies.

357
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Smith's first priority upon arrival at the bridge is to immediately send down people to determine just what's going on down below, how bad is it?

358
00:39:45,000 --> 00:39:51,000
In testimony, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall recounts that he did not find any damage.

359
00:39:53,000 --> 00:40:02,000
With Boxhall's assessment in hand, Captain Smith issues an order to the engine room that causes Lord Mursey to sit up and take notice.

360
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:08,000
An order that flies in the face of what we think we know about Titanic's story.

361
00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:13,000
According to history, Titanic hit the iceberg.

362
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:20,000
The crew shut the watertight doors and the ship came to a dead stop.

363
00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,000
But is that what really happened?

364
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:31,000
Lord Mursey wrote down during Frederick Scott's testimony that the ship was ordered half speed ahead and then stop and ahead.

365
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:33,000
What was all this?

366
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Captain Smith may have been trying to speed up in hopes that things really weren't so bad.

367
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There may have been some talk about moving ahead to try and calm the passengers, letting them think that the ship is moving normally.

368
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For 20 minutes, Smith decides to keep the ship pressing forward at half speed instead of coming to a full stop.

369
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:06,000
Moving the boat forward was something that increased the influx of water and was a very dangerous, if not disastrous thing to do.

370
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:14,000
If there were openings in the hull, you'd push them open more, any weaknesses you would exploit them.

371
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If we start moving through the water and there is damage of some sort on the starboard side of the ship, any forward motion is going to increase the water flow through that crevice and might have an effect on how quickly the ship sinks.

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With precious minutes ticking by, Captain Smith summons Titanic's carpenter to sound the ship, a nautical term for assessing a ship's seaworthiness.

373
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When the report came back to Captain Smith, it wasn't a very good one at all. Lord Mursey made a note of that fact in his journal.

374
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Carpenter is said to have reported seven feet of water in a few minutes.

375
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At that point, the damage was already done, the ship was doomed. But Lord Mursey may have been taking more note of that fact than Captain Smith was.

376
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:21,000
It should have led the captain to other choices. For instance, immediately lowering those lifeboats, putting everybody on those lifeboats that he possibly could.

377
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:39,000
Then, shortly after midnight, 22 minutes after hitting the iceberg, Thomas Andrews, Titanic's chief designer, arrives grim-faced on the bridge after surveying the decks below.

378
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:45,000
Titanic, Andrew says, has only two hours left.

379
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:55,000
Captain Smith seems really overwhelmed by it all, almost to the point of a paralysis taking place.

380
00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:07,000
Here's a guy at the end of his career, retirement is in sight, and everything that he had achieved in 30-some odd years with the White Star Line is now at risk.

381
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:13,000
And not only that, he is at risk, along with 2200 other people.

382
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:43,000
After the collision, the amount of water flooding into Titanic was fatal.

383
00:43:46,000 --> 00:44:00,000
The flooding was far beyond the capacity of the pumps to keep up with. They struggled to even slow it down, and Titanic was simply doomed.

384
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:18,000
25 minutes after the collision, Captain Smith orders his senior officers, Murdoch and Lightholer to prepare the lifeboats, which can only hold half of the more than 2200 lives on board.

385
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:33,000
Worse still, as Lord Mersey noted during the inquiry, the crew is unfamiliar with the lifeboat state-of-the-art crane system. They cancelled the drill earlier in the trip.

386
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:41,000
Regardless, they're now faced with a thankless task, having to spread the word.

387
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:57,000
We can be given a warning. Somebody can walk up to us and say, this ship is sinking. But if we look around and see it looks like we're floating just fine, then we question that warning that we've been given.

388
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,000
We actually need to see that the ship is sinking to see that something is wrong.

389
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:13,000
Though his passengers may not have believed the warning, Captain Smith is fully aware of the slow-motion catastrophe unfolding around him.

390
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:24,000
He makes a beeline for the Marconi wireless room and its operators, 25-year-old Jack Phillips and 22-year-old Harold Bride.

391
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:34,000
Who else can he turn to other than these two wireless operators who suddenly are his only source of help?

392
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:48,000
This was now their only lifeline for contacting the outside world, and Captain Smith must have wondered, perhaps this was the miracle that would rescue him.

393
00:45:49,000 --> 00:46:02,000
Of course Smith has no idea that Light-Toller's erroneous sextant reading from earlier in the evening places his ship at a different position than the coordinates he's sending out for help.

394
00:46:03,000 --> 00:46:08,000
Still, the SOS fans out, and some ships respond instantly.

395
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:18,000
Putting about and heading for you replies veteran Captain Arthur Rostron of the SS Carpathia, 58 miles away.

396
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:28,000
Despite having 740 passengers of his own, he lights up his coal burners and sets a course for Titanic's position.

397
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:48,000
Meanwhile on board the Californian, about 20 miles north of Titanic and the closest ship to her, Captain Lord has stopped down in the ice field, and the Marconi is switched off.

398
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:56,000
In those days, the fellows that worked in the wireless rooms on board ship clocked off at a certain time.

399
00:46:56,000 --> 00:47:01,000
At that point the Californian was deaf to the world, they didn't know.

400
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:11,000
With the Californian hunkered down for the night, across the same ice field, a chaotic scene is unfolding on Titanic.

401
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:18,000
More than an hour after the collision, the first of Titanic's lifeboats begins lowering into the sea.

402
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:28,000
Around 12.45 am Captain Smith gave an order, and that order was to load the lifeboats with women and children.

403
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:33,000
This leads to the next revelation from inside Lord Mersey's box.

404
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:44,000
During the British inquiry, Mersey makes a note in his journal referencing the testimony of Second Officer Lighthola, who says that he didn't load the lifeboats to capacity,

405
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:48,000
because he worried the new davits wouldn't hold the weight.

406
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:57,000
Obviously, Second Officer Lighthola had to have some excuse for not loading the lifeboats to full capacity.

407
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:02,000
That was his excuse, I can't believe that Lord Mersey would have bought it.

408
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:05,000
Ultimately, Mersey did not.

409
00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:11,000
In his final report, he discovers there are a number of explanations why the lifeboats weren't full.

410
00:48:11,000 --> 00:48:19,000
Specifically, he writes that Lighthola's worry about the weight proved to be an unfounded apprehension.

411
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:25,000
The fact is that lifeboats went into the water with less than a full capacity.

412
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:32,000
Those crewmen should have been pulling people by their collars to put them into the lifeboat.

413
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:42,000
As Officer Murdock fires the first of eight distress rockets into the night sky, the makeshift evacuation continues.

414
00:48:43,000 --> 00:48:46,000
On deck, confusion reigns.

415
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:52,000
Dr. Samantha Montano studies human response to disasters.

416
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:59,000
In 1912, there was no formal emergency management in the way that we have it today.

417
00:48:59,000 --> 00:49:06,000
Because there was that lack of training, that lack of planning about what to do in a situation like this,

418
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,000
nearly the entire response was completely improvised.

419
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:23,000
With Titanic's bow sinking lower and the stern slowly rising against the blackness of the sea, the panic begins.

420
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,000
The remaining passengers of all stations surge toward the few remaining lifeboats.

421
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:33,000
It's life or death.

422
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:39,000
We do see more of that panic. It tends to be when people feel the threat is imminent.

423
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:44,000
There is still a chance of escape, but that chance is dwindling.

424
00:49:45,000 --> 00:49:59,000
With the window of escape closing fast, White Star Line's chairman, Bruce Ismay, makes his way across the deck towards one of Titanic's few remaining lifeboats.

425
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:06,000
One of the crew says, Mr. Ismay, there's a space in this boat, and Ismay's got split second to make a decision.

426
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:11,000
When the opportunity presents itself, he gets into the boat.

427
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:23,000
Ismay is one of many men who displaces women and children during those last desperate minutes.

428
00:50:24,000 --> 00:50:33,000
Lifeboat 15 was one of the last lifeboats to be lowered on the starboard side, and the vast majority of its occupants were men.

429
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:40,000
It opens the question as to why there weren't more women and children in the lifeboat.

430
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:48,000
Inside the box, Mersey notes his concern.

431
00:50:49,000 --> 00:51:03,000
Here's another interesting section. This is May the 10th, and it's a testimony by Samuel Rule, who was a steward, talking about the lifeboats, and in particular talking about Lifeboat 15.

432
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:12,000
68, who were saved, who went in the lifeboat, were made up of 61 men, double underlined, and seven women and children.

433
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:18,000
This was an age in England where honor and chivalry prevailed.

434
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:28,000
Now at the end, 61 men are in a sense rushing to get into this lifeboat with only seven or so women and children who may have been left.

435
00:51:29,000 --> 00:51:33,000
How could that possibly be? What happened to the women and children first of all?

436
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:36,000
Was it a case that men had rushed the boats?

437
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:51,000
At 2 a.m., with the ship minutes from sinking,

438
00:51:52,000 --> 00:51:59,000
Titanic's eight-member band under the direction of Wallace Hartley segues into a rendition of,

439
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:06,000
Nearer My God to Thee, all while the last of the remaining lifeboats are launching.

440
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:17,000
One of the last orders, attributed to Captain Smith, was poking his head into the wireless shack and basically telling Phillips and Bride, it's every man from Self Boys.

441
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:25,000
He knew of the magnitude of the tragedy that was going to unfold when the ship sank.

442
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:30,000
Some of the first-hand accounts say that he goes to the bridge, locks himself in, waits for the tide to come in.

443
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:38,000
Titanic's bow submerges and the stern rises nearly perpendicular to the water.

444
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,000
Its propellers completely aloft.

445
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:55,000
Just then, the once mighty unsinkable Titanic splits in two and slides into the icy depths.

446
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:11,000
For many of the thousand-plus free-falling victims, the end, while horrific and violent, is also swift.

447
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:21,000
Some of these people may have been injured, hit by falling objects, hit by lifeboats, battered by the sinking of the ship.

448
00:53:22,000 --> 00:53:30,000
If the person gets submerged, they're going to get a lung full of very cold saltwater and they're going to drown almost immediately and they're going to die.

449
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:40,000
Those who survived the smack into the sub-freezing ocean experience excruciating pain.

450
00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:47,000
Second Officer Charles Lightholer would equate it to a thousand knives driving into the body.

451
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:55,000
Shaya Robowski is a medical legal investigator and forensics consultant.

452
00:53:56,000 --> 00:54:02,000
That makes sense because extreme cold is going to feel like extreme heat.

453
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:09,000
At 28 degrees, there's a physiologic response that happens, also known as a cold shock reflex.

454
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:14,000
And that's followed by repeated, very rapid gasping.

455
00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:26,000
You know, your brain is saying, hey, get me out of this water and your arms are just laying there at your side because they're no longer under your voluntary control.

456
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:41,000
I remember talking to a survivor, Eva Hart, and her saying, Charles, it was not the screams that unhinged me.

457
00:54:41,000 --> 00:54:50,000
It was the silence that came afterwards when the cold had done its work.

458
00:54:54,000 --> 00:55:02,000
It gives you an idea of just how deadly this exposure was because of the 1,500 or so people that perished.

459
00:55:02,000 --> 00:55:07,000
We can assume that hundreds, perhaps, could have been rescued.

460
00:55:07,000 --> 00:55:12,000
Only around 40 or so people were pulled out of the water and survived.

461
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:22,000
Those 40 are picked up by two lifeboats that turn back for them.

462
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:27,000
They are the only ones out of 20 lifeboats to do so.

463
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:36,000
Another boat, Lifeboat Number One, turns away from the victims in the water despite having enough room for them.

464
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:42,000
Here's an instance where a lifeboat left with only 12 people.

465
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:47,000
Instead of 42, the boat could have easily gone back and picked up others.

466
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:58,000
When a crewman on Lifeboat Number One urges everyone to turn back, two first-class passengers, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife, Lady Duff Gordon, refuse.

467
00:56:00,000 --> 00:56:08,000
Sir Cosmo decides to give the crew five-pound notes. It certainly didn't smell too good.

468
00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:19,000
The Duff Gordon's were called to the British Inquiry to testify and, of course, they simply denied they were driving the crew not to go back and rescue others.

469
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:28,000
The Duff Gordon's are the British Inquiry's only testifying passengers.

470
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:45,000
As Titanic sinks to the bottom, RMS Carpathia is less than 30 miles away and heading to the rescue.

471
00:56:45,000 --> 00:56:54,000
Captain Rostrin, you went charging off in the middle of the night into an ice situation that had already sunk the world's largest ship.

472
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:07,000
Rostrin became the hero of the day, you know? What'd he do? He risked all those people's lives.

473
00:57:15,000 --> 00:57:21,000
The sun was about to come up over the horizon when he found the lifeboats.

474
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:31,000
And so they brought on as many of the survivors they could find, responding in a human way to the suffering of people around them.

475
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:47,000
One boat to come alongside was the boat that carried Lightholer and he was immediately escorted to the bridge and Rostrin said to him,

476
00:57:47,000 --> 00:57:54,000
where is the Titanic? And with his voice cracking Lightholer said she's gone down, sir.

477
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:07,000
As the morning sun arcs over the horizon, the last of Titanic's lifeboats paddles up alongside Carpathia.

478
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:15,000
Escorted on board is white star president J. Bruce Ismay quaking from the cold.

479
00:58:17,000 --> 00:58:21,000
For the owner of the ship to come home in a lifeboat was seen as shameful.

480
00:58:21,000 --> 00:58:31,000
He was immediately accused of cowardice and seen as being someone who had failed to stand by his captain, stand by his ship, stand by his passengers.

481
00:58:31,000 --> 00:58:35,000
The ship that made his name was now threatened to ruin his name.

482
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:46,000
Ismay was in such a delicate frame of mind that the surgeon of the Carpathia put him on opiates to ease the pain.

483
00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:59,000
Rostrin set sail for New York, where Carpathia is expected on the evening of April 18th.

484
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:09,000
Meanwhile, Titanic's Marconi operator Harold Bride is plucked from a lifeboat and dispatched to the wireless room.

485
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:13,000
An anxious world awaits.

486
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:18,000
A ship containing something that's richest, most powerful, best known people in the world, it sunk.

487
00:59:18,000 --> 00:59:21,000
Everyone wanted to know what had happened.

488
00:59:21,000 --> 00:59:26,000
President of the United States wanted to know about his friends who were on board ship.

489
00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:31,000
What happened to Colonel Aster, what happens to Benjamin Guggenheim?

490
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:39,000
The rest of the world was screaming at the Carpathia to let it know what had happened to the Titanic.

491
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:44,000
And they chose to rebuff information and they chose not to answer.

492
00:59:45,000 --> 00:59:54,000
But that doesn't stop a now lucid Bruce Ismay from sending a cryptic message of his own to white star offices in London.

493
00:59:56,000 --> 01:00:04,000
Titanic crew aboard Carpathia, should be returned home earliest moment possible, suggests you hold Cedric sailing.

494
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:07,000
Yamsi.

495
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:17,000
I think the use of the reversal of the name to say Yamsi rather than Ismay, it might now look rather suspicious and you wonder what's going on.

496
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:27,000
Ismay sent this message, have all the crew taken back to the UK so that there could be a debriefing and to come up with a unified story.

497
01:00:27,000 --> 01:00:33,000
So if there was an inquiry, everyone would be singing from the same page of the hymnal.

498
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:45,000
You've probably got 20 to 25 crew members who are really have stories to tell.

499
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:53,000
You want to get them back to Blighty, you want to find out what those stories are before the Americans can get to them.

500
01:00:54,000 --> 01:01:15,000
After rescuing the last of Titanic's 705 traumatized grief stricken survivors, Captain Rostren's Carpathia sets a course back from where she started, New York City.

501
01:01:16,000 --> 01:01:25,000
But on board, white star president J Bruce Ismay is becoming increasingly panicked.

502
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:41,000
It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that if you just sunk the biggest ship in the world with a lot of people dying, that there's going to be a reporter or two around when you get to the dock.

503
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:52,000
There's that editorial cartoon of Ismay looking like a maniac in a lifeboat filled with nothing but grieving women.

504
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:57,000
And of course the byline is J Brute Ismay instead of Bruce.

505
01:02:00,000 --> 01:02:09,000
In Washington, William Alden Smith, a hard charging senator from Michigan, is gearing up to lead an American inquiry into the sinking.

506
01:02:10,000 --> 01:02:14,000
It's set to begin the day after Carpathia's arrival in New York.

507
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:19,000
So Ismay is desperate to dash back to London.

508
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:28,000
He thought let's just get out of here, let's get everyone back home. We don't want to get caught up in this because this isn't going to look good.

509
01:02:29,000 --> 01:02:34,000
The unfortunate for him, Senator Smith's plans put a stop to that.

510
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:42,000
Turns out Senator Smith was tipped off by the U.S. Navy, which intercepted Ismay's telegram.

511
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:52,000
So Smith prepares subpoenas to give to Ismay and Titanic's officers upon arrival in New York on the evening of April 18th.

512
01:02:53,000 --> 01:03:05,000
Lining the banks of the Hudson River were 100,000 people from the battery all the way up to the White Star Line pier at West 14th Street.

513
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:12,000
All of New York's policemen had been summoned to patrol the crowds because people knew this was going to be Mayhem.

514
01:03:13,000 --> 01:03:21,000
As Carpathia snakes its way up the Hudson, a tugboat filled with photographers follows the ship to Pier 54.

515
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:33,000
The flash of cameras lights up the sky, revealing Carpathia's decks crammed with terrified passengers.

516
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:50,000
For those without knowledge of what had become of their loved ones, the hurt, the pain of Titanic's loss was continuing and maybe even deepening.

517
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:55,000
What became of my father? What became of my husband?

518
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:10,000
Halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, the terrible fate of all those men, women and children is all too evident.

519
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:26,000
The crew of the cable repair ship Mackie Bennett, joined by the SS Minia, have completed the grim task of recovering over 300 bodies, 116 of which were buried at sea.

520
01:04:27,000 --> 01:04:32,000
On April 26th, the Mackie Bennett steams back toward Halifax.

521
01:04:34,000 --> 01:04:37,000
For the living, the voyage is surreal.

522
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:47,000
The wind and motion of the ship causes the tarpolines to rise and fall, producing the illusion that the bodies have come to life.

523
01:04:47,000 --> 01:05:03,000
It must have been absolutely horrific for the crew because you're walking around doing your daily duties and of course you turn your back and the next thing you turn around the canvas is blown out over slightly and you can see an arm exposed and then you sort of tuck that arm back in.

524
01:05:05,000 --> 01:05:07,000
How more nightmarish can this get?

525
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:22,000
The arrival of Mackie Bennett in Halifax on April 30th was a huge deal.

526
01:05:23,000 --> 01:05:29,000
All the church bells in Halifax ring a death knell for the Titanic victims.

527
01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:43,000
There's a fleet of horse drawn herces waiting at the dock to take the bodies off to the Mayflower curling club to be processed to be identified.

528
01:05:44,000 --> 01:05:48,000
And that's just one more surreal touch to add to the whole thing.

529
01:05:50,000 --> 01:05:56,000
With nearly 200 distended corpses laid out on the curling rink ice.

530
01:05:57,000 --> 01:06:00,000
Each body is tagged.

531
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:02,000
Numbered.

532
01:06:03,000 --> 01:06:04,000
Noted.

533
01:06:12,000 --> 01:06:21,000
This is Fairview Lawn Cemetery here in Halifax and for 121 of Titanic's passengers, this is where the maiden voyage ends.

534
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:27,000
This whole series here of headstones have one thing in common.

535
01:06:27,000 --> 01:06:31,000
No names. Just died April 15th, 1912.

536
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:39,000
For every identified body in Fairview Lawn Cemetery, there's two that are not.

537
01:06:40,000 --> 01:06:48,000
This is all classes, mocks of lice represented from Titanic and that speaks volumes as to the tragedy of Titanic.

538
01:06:52,000 --> 01:07:03,000
While the dead are being brought to Halifax, 600 miles away in New York City, the next phase of the spectacle is beginning.

539
01:07:04,000 --> 01:07:14,000
In a packed ballroom in the Waldorf Astoria, a day after the Carpathia arrived, Senator Smith gavels in the United States inquiry.

540
01:07:15,000 --> 01:07:18,000
A moment not lost on his counterpart in Britain.

541
01:07:19,000 --> 01:07:29,000
Inside Lord Mersey's personal papers are two copies of the official United States Senate inquiry into the sinking of RMS Titanic.

542
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:36,000
The hearings start on April 19th, 1912, two weeks before the British inquiry.

543
01:07:37,000 --> 01:07:47,000
The American inquiry is like a three-ring circus and you have Senator Smith from Michigan who is doing his utmost to make bruises may look like the worst villain since, you know, Pops.

544
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:50,000
The Pontius pilot turned Jesus over to the Romans.

545
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:56,000
His may is the first witness called and his testimony is damning.

546
01:07:57,000 --> 01:08:06,000
He claims that he was just a voluntary passenger and that no one else was on deck when he decided to save himself.

547
01:08:07,000 --> 01:08:15,000
Senator Smith roasted his may left and right and condemned him in the speech that he gave before Congress.

548
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:23,000
The vitriolic American attack on Ismay, a leader in the shipping industry, crosses the line.

549
01:08:24,000 --> 01:08:31,000
The United States inquiry is seen as an affront to honor and a threat to Britain's national interests.

550
01:08:32,000 --> 01:08:38,000
This wasn't just a ship. The Titanic was the pride of Britain.

551
01:08:38,000 --> 01:08:50,000
It was very important for the British government that Britain's maritime interests weren't threatened as a result of the Titanic disaster.

552
01:08:50,000 --> 01:09:14,000
When Lord Mersey is selected to lead the British inquiry into the Titanic disaster on April 22nd, 1912, he's celebrated as a man of integrity.

553
01:09:21,000 --> 01:09:36,000
We have a copy of Daily Mail, which is Wednesday, April 24th, 1912, and it's got a little peace on him, a man who fears nobody, Lord Mersey.

554
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:51,000
As a barrister, he earned the nickname the little terrier of Toxteth for his sort of dogged determination to extract the truth from those he was cross-questioning.

555
01:09:52,000 --> 01:09:59,000
I think for him the Titanic must have been an opportunity to really get to the bottom of this appalling tragedy.

556
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:15,000
As the fallout from the hard-hitting US inquiry continues to rain down on Great Britain, the eyes of the world are on Mersey. He awaits his turn on the dais.

557
01:10:16,000 --> 01:10:26,000
He knew what his position was. He knew what he had to do. He knew what his charge from the crown was in terms of getting to the bottom of the disaster.

558
01:10:27,000 --> 01:10:42,000
The British inquiry begins on May 2nd, 1912, during its first week many of Titanic's surviving crew members testified. Soon though, the focus turns to another ship entirely.

559
01:10:44,000 --> 01:10:53,000
The Californian, the ship that didn't hear Titanic's distress calls because they'd turned off their wireless and gone to bed.

560
01:10:57,000 --> 01:11:07,000
Inside his personal box, Mersey's copy of the American inquiry contains the bruising examination of its captain, Stanley Lord.

561
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:12,000
Stanley Lord has really posed these difficult, difficult questions.

562
01:11:13,000 --> 01:11:24,000
Captain Lord's testimony in the American inquiry would probably serve as a kind of a pointing tool as to where Mersey might go further.

563
01:11:25,000 --> 01:11:31,000
Lord Mersey wanted to investigate how far Californian was from Titanic.

564
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:45,000
And what action could Californian have taken in order to try and rescue Titanic's passengers and crew and come to Titanic's assistance?

565
01:11:46,000 --> 01:11:55,000
Earlier, the Californian was 19 and a half miles north of Titanic's position when it saw the ice field and telegraphed the warnings.

566
01:11:58,000 --> 01:12:06,000
The wireless operation onboard the Californian sent a message. We're here, we're stopping, it's dangerous. And it was received by the Titanic.

567
01:12:07,000 --> 01:12:11,000
As almost like an aside, they were told to shut up.

568
01:12:12,000 --> 01:12:17,000
The wireless operation onboard the Californian then went to bed at the end of his day.

569
01:12:17,000 --> 01:12:21,000
At that point, the Californian then was cut off from the outside world.

570
01:12:21,000 --> 01:12:41,000
Captain Lord was now finding himself amongst all these powdered wigs in central London, far from the sea as you can get, and he's being grilled mercilessly.

571
01:12:42,000 --> 01:12:50,000
Captain Lord asserts that his ship was 30 miles from Titanic when she sank.

572
01:12:50,000 --> 01:13:01,000
But separately, Californians crewmen testify that they were close enough to spot ship lights and flares that could have been Titanic's.

573
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:14,000
These witnesses made the inquiry think that they were inside the Titanic and failed to act. It was a very serious accusation.

574
01:13:16,000 --> 01:13:28,000
Among the stash of saved letters in Lord Mersey's box is one from Rear Admiral Arthur Goth Calford, a naval assessor and senior legal advisor to Mersey during the inquiry.

575
01:13:32,000 --> 01:13:38,000
Rear Admiral Calford is really throwing doubts on the whereabouts of the California.

576
01:13:38,000 --> 01:13:46,000
Obviously, this was a very hot topic for the inquiry and the guilt or innocence of Captain Lord depended very much on it.

577
01:13:46,000 --> 01:13:56,000
Goth Calford writes Mersey a passionate letter, refuting Captain Lord's sworn testimony that he was too far away to mount a rescue.

578
01:13:57,000 --> 01:14:03,000
There is a strong presumption that Californian was not where she says she was.

579
01:14:03,000 --> 01:14:13,000
So he's casting doubt on the assertion made by Captain Lord, who clearly stated that the California was well out of range of the Titanic.

580
01:14:15,000 --> 01:14:25,000
What does this do? This now tells Lord Mersey that what he heard may not be accurate, even if he found Stanley Lord to be credible.

581
01:14:27,000 --> 01:14:40,000
When Lord Mersey issues his final judgment on July 30th, 1912, he blames the collision on excessive speed, with the disaster compounded by a lack of lifeboats.

582
01:14:43,000 --> 01:14:51,000
Despite concluding that Titanic's Captain Edward Smith made a very grievous mistake, Lord Mersey states that,

583
01:14:51,000 --> 01:14:55,000
it is in my opinion impossible to fix Captain Smith with blame.

584
01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:13,000
However, Mersey's final report did take aim at the Californian, concluding that Captain Lord could have come to the assistance of the Titanic.

585
01:15:13,000 --> 01:15:20,000
Had she done so, she might have saved many, if not all, of the lives that were lost.

586
01:15:22,000 --> 01:15:28,000
Captain Lord, he was blamed for not doing enough.

587
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:37,000
The personal impact on him was probably stronger than the financial impact of it.

588
01:15:37,000 --> 01:15:42,000
He tried to clear himself, but time ran out on him.

589
01:15:42,000 --> 01:15:47,000
Californian could have galloped to the rescue like the Fifth Cavalry.

590
01:15:48,000 --> 01:15:51,000
Oh, f**k!

591
01:15:57,000 --> 01:16:12,000
Since Titanic's demise in 1912, a century worth of historians have sought access to Lord Mersey's innermost thoughts, wondering whether they differ from his public pronouncements.

592
01:16:13,000 --> 01:16:20,000
The notes in his journal were kept private throughout the years until now.

593
01:16:20,000 --> 01:16:31,000
If we didn't have these notes, we wouldn't have known that Lord Mersey was taking in all this information and clearly recognized the problems.

594
01:16:32,000 --> 01:16:42,000
After a careful review, it's clear. His final public judgment largely matches what is in his private box.

595
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:50,000
There exists no evidence to prove Lord Mersey was compromised in any way.

596
01:16:50,000 --> 01:16:59,000
In the view of many historians, Lord Mersey's inquest was fair, his judicial responsibility uncompromised.

597
01:17:02,000 --> 01:17:06,000
The British inquiry was not a criminal trial.

598
01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:14,000
No one ever went to jail, and there were very few lawsuits filed against White Star or the Board of Trade.

599
01:17:14,000 --> 01:17:27,000
And so, with Captain Smith going down with his ship and his crew largely absolved, popular perception of the disaster has been opened to interpretation.

600
01:17:27,000 --> 01:17:34,000
Many who have retold Titanic's story have latched on to the narrative of a tragic act of God.

601
01:17:34,000 --> 01:17:37,000
But Mersey knew better.

602
01:17:37,000 --> 01:17:44,000
Mistakes were made, and more than 1500 men, women and children lost their lives.

603
01:17:45,000 --> 01:17:59,000
While the story of Titanic never faded, the ship itself disappeared from view.

604
01:17:59,000 --> 01:18:09,000
And then, seven decades later, a final piece of lost evidence emerges.

605
01:18:14,000 --> 01:18:22,000
In 1985, oceanographic explorer Robert Ballard made the discovery of a lifetime.

606
01:18:28,000 --> 01:18:39,000
Ballard spots Titanic's boilers, its tell-tale bow, and confirms something equally significant.

607
01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:47,000
When Titanic was finally found, its position was about 13 miles from where it was reported to be.

608
01:18:55,000 --> 01:19:02,000
The discovery of Titanic's position on the ocean floor may speak to one last mystery.

609
01:19:02,000 --> 01:19:11,000
Could its passengers have been saved if only SS Californian had heard her distress call and come to the rescue?

610
01:19:11,000 --> 01:19:13,000
Maybe not.

611
01:19:14,000 --> 01:19:19,000
When Titanic hit the iceberg, her Marconi operators sent out an SOS.

612
01:19:19,000 --> 01:19:27,000
But they gave the wrong location because Titanic officers had taken a bad sextant reading earlier that evening.

613
01:19:28,000 --> 01:19:37,000
Carpathia was only able to find survivors because her crew had seen a flare fired from one of the lifeboats.

614
01:19:37,000 --> 01:19:46,000
The absolute miracle that night was that, in going towards the distress position, which we now know is not accurate at all,

615
01:19:46,000 --> 01:19:51,000
that the Carpathia stumbled into the place where the lifeboats were.

616
01:19:52,000 --> 01:20:06,000
Does this exonerate Captain Lord of the Californian? Had he steamed immediately to the location of the SOS, he would have found nothing.

617
01:20:06,000 --> 01:20:14,000
Years later, the British government reassessed the role of Californian in the disaster.

618
01:20:15,000 --> 01:20:22,000
In 1992, there was a subsequent inquiry that exonerated the captain.

619
01:20:25,000 --> 01:20:36,000
Even if the Californian had left immediately on receipt of the first distress message, it could not have arrived in time to make any difference.

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01:20:45,000 --> 01:20:53,000
Today, the Titanic lies in an eerie state of decomposition,

621
01:20:53,000 --> 01:20:58,000
rusting on the bottom of the Atlantic.

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01:20:58,000 --> 01:21:07,000
But it's still as mesmerizing and captivating to the public as it was 108 years ago.

623
01:21:14,000 --> 01:21:19,000
The Titanic is a place where the Titanic is a mystery.

624
01:21:28,000 --> 01:21:35,000
We're fascinated by the Titanic because it is like a myth. It's like something from a biblical story.

625
01:21:36,000 --> 01:21:50,000
It contains greed, human ambition, vanity, this vast modern and beautiful ship full of hope and ambition collided with fate in a spectacular way.

626
01:21:50,000 --> 01:21:55,000
Although this was an accident, it was clearly an avoidable one.

627
01:21:57,000 --> 01:22:02,000
The crew didn't steer away from the iceberg. They didn't reduce the speed.

628
01:22:02,000 --> 01:22:08,000
They didn't load the lifeboats like they should have. Many more lives could have been saved.

629
01:22:12,000 --> 01:22:17,000
The Titanic is the one event that the last century will always be remembered for.

630
01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:25,000
It's the combination of pride, hubris, playing fast and loose with the regulations of the time.

631
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:31,000
And it's an incredibly tragic event. The world will never forget.

632
01:22:32,000 --> 01:22:37,000
The Titanic is a place where the Titanic is a mystery.

633
01:22:38,000 --> 01:22:44,000
Lord Mersey's British inquiry led to crucial shipping industry changes across the globe.

634
01:22:44,000 --> 01:22:51,000
Adding more lifeboats to passenger ships, 24-hour radio communications,

635
01:22:51,000 --> 01:22:56,000
and the formation of the International Ice Patrol to name a few.

636
01:22:57,000 --> 01:23:05,000
106 years after it was created, no ship heating the warnings of the ice patrol has struck an iceberg.

637
01:23:06,000 --> 01:23:11,000
Titanic's legacy lives on.