Original subtitles

Titanic.

Its very name evokes a chill.

And the tale of its sinking is legendary.

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

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

There were stories of heroism, the way the band played until the end.

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

Since the tragedy, Titanic historians have sought to acquire the personal

of Lord Mersey, the man charged in Britain with investigating the disaster.

His private journals may hold the answer.

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

revealed.

108 years later, here we go.

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

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

Titanic told them to shut up and go away.

Nearly the entire response was completely improvised.

Californian could have galloped to the rescue like a fifth gavelman.

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

enduring disaster?

April 17, 1912.

Two days since Titanic's demise.

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

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

Sail into an icy hell and retrieve Titanic dead.

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

Halifax.

As you can imagine, this is a nightmarish situation.

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

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

the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

Mackie Bennett's journey takes 36 hours, and...

When they enter the death zone, they find several hundred corpses.

Men, women, children.

Fifty -one we have taken on board today. This is the first day out.

The sea still seems strewn, with the exception of ourselves and the bosun

as the only living creature here.

Put yourself in the position of these men.

One day alone, Mackie Bennett recovers 128 bodies.

127 men, one woman.

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

solemn just to look at.

And then they would keep a log in real time.

8 p .m. The tolling of the bell summoned all hands to the forecastle.

as the weighted body plunges into the sea, there to sink to a depth of about

miles. Splash, splash, splash.

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

horrified public demands answers.

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

mail ships.

It was such a huge disaster, the questions were rightly being asked about

the largest and most luxurious ship in the world could possibly sink during its

maiden voyage and with such a catastrophic loss of life.

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

determined that they needed to appoint a rep commissioner.

Lord John Charles Biggum, 1st Viscount Mersey, is a well -connected barrister,

judge, and politician.

And he's chosen for a monumental task.

Find out exactly what went wrong on Titanic.

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

Society.

Lord Mersey was bringing to the table considerable legal knowledge, hopefully

sense of fairness, a sense of balance, all of the things that a judge, if you

will, needs to have.

The thing that we have to keep in mind, however, is that the investigation in

England was a Board of Trade investigation, which means that

the very...

organization that had allowed Titanic to go to sea is now investigating itself

to some degree.

Across 36 days of testimony from nearly 100 witnesses answering

25 ,000 questions, an exhaustive inquiry comes to a close.

While the report's final conclusions do levy criticism, Some observers wonder if

the hundreds of pages of notes Lord Mersey took in his private journal

the trial and stored in a leather -bound box go much further than his public

pronouncements.

After a century tucked away in their private family archives, Lord Mersey's

estate has agreed to share the contents of the box publicly.

Some judges think out loud.

Lord Mercy did not think out loud. Lord Mercy thought on paper.

And it's only now that we get to see what some of his private thoughts were.

My name is Ned Bigham, and I'm the fifth Viscount Mercy.

My great -great -grandfather was...

John Charles Bigham, Lord Mersey.

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

materials and said, what exactly have we got here?

What is its significance?

It's just sat there for all these years.

So, 108 years later, here we go.

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

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

renowned Titanic experts who will explain the significance of this lost

evidence.

And through the lens of this new information

Titanic's journey will be reconstructed, beginning with problems that arose

before she set sail.

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

power. Its influence stretched literally around the world.

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

country and, for that matter, to the world.

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

Line.

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

also providing top -flight passenger service.

The extra size of these ships enabled White Star to increase the number of

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

accommodation than the world had previously seen.

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

But the massive ship, at more than 882 feet long, weighing more than 46 ,000

tons, and costing more than $180 million in today's dollars, has a major problem

few people remember today.

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

So White Star makes a fateful decision.

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

I mean, if you want to hire somebody, central casting, to be captain of an

liner in the early part of the 20th century, it's E .J. Smith, whether or

knew how to run a boat or not. It doesn't matter. He just looks the part.

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

thing, invited the rich and the famous to the captain's table, hence his

nickname, the Millionaire's Captain.

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

But the Millionaire's Captain also brings plenty of baggage with him onto

spit -shine deck of the Titanic.

Inside Lord Mersey's box is a red leather journal that he kept by his side

throughout the inquiry.

He used it to write down his notes and discoveries.

On page 114, there's a notation referencing that most of Titanic's crew

on the Olympic.

Why did Mersey think this detail was important?

In 1911.

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

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

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

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

In 1911, the Olympic was leaving Southampton,

British naval cruiser Hawk was in the vicinity.

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

Olympic was severely damaged and she experienced flooding.

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

Titanic left Southampton on the 10th April 1912.

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

It was a proud moment for White Star.

She came out of the dock, went round to the left, and then proceeded down the

river.

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

voyage.

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

reputation precedes it.

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

But who could blame them?

Titanic is spectacular.

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

The ship is the length of two and a half foot long fields and can ferry 3

,547 passengers and crew.

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

For the passengers on board, the first four days of the journey are euphoric.

That's especially true for the wealthy, soaking in their world -class

accommodations.

When Titanic comes out, it was actually referred to as the millionaire special

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

money on a transatlantic crossing.

If you look at the best accommodations in the ship, $4 ,350 for

a crossing, that's the equivalent of 10 years' salary to an average American in

1912.

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

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

The Marconi...

This was modern technology for a modern ship.

And so part of the whole idea was this sort of showman thing. You were there,

you were rich, you were powerful, you were right at the edge of modern

technology. And you could send messages to tell your friends in New York or

London or Paris what you were doing.

These were young men on ships, tapping away on a Morse code player.

They were using lots of slang and lots of rather sort of relaxed way of talking

to each other.

The fellows that worked in the wireless rooms on board ship were not part of the

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

The Marconi operator's independence has a glaring risk.

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

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

It could have been their priority.

Titanic will end up receiving 21 ice warnings via Marconigram on its four

at sea.

But Captain Smith, like many transatlantic veterans, is skeptical of

technology.

Someone who's sailed back and forth across the Atlantic for so long without

aid of any sort of technology didn't really take something like wireless very

seriously.

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

situation.

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

by regulation.

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

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

passengers.

While that fact is well known, Less known is that, according to the

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

have.

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

Welland Davids.

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

The crew, they were all certified seamen, but...

The only thing that they didn't have a lot of experience with is Well and

Davits, which were fairly new and coming online.

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

scheduled for a routine lifeboat drill.

Though his men are new to Titanic and her lifeboat apparatus,

Captain Smith cancels the drill.

I cannot say why Captain Smith failed to do that. At a bare minimum, he could

have detailed one of the lower -ranking officers to walk from boat to boat and

check the lines and check, you know, any pulleys had been greased or whatever

was necessary.

But, you know, he didn't even do that.

During the inquiry, a Titanic lookout named Archie Jewell testified that

although they tested lifeboats before leaving Southampton, There were only two

boats lowered away out of 20, and they were not even put into the water.

In his private journal, Mercy notes this unusual.

When Lord Mercy wrote in his journal and found that to be unusual, indeed it

was. You really need to have a lifeboat drilled.

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

And this goes back to hubris. Why bother having lifeboat drills when the ship

simply can't sink?

April 14, 1912. Early evening.

It's moonless and the seas are eerily calm.

Titanic is steaming towards the Grand Bank in the North Atlantic.

At a brisk 22 knots, or 25 .5 miles per hour.

At 7 .30 p .m., Second Officer Charles Lightoller raises his sextant.

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

According to information in the Mersey Box and other sources, this moment

initiates a series of fatal errors.

The sextant was the critical instrument of navigation.

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

The other side here sees...

the sky.

So if I put it up like this and I adjust it, what I'm going to do is I'm going

to bring the celestial body down till it sits on the horizon.

I call out, Mark.

And then the guy who's got the hack watch writes down the exact moment of

hack. When Light Hauler took this reading at 7 .30, he either was

wrong or the hack watch was off by a few seconds.

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

accurately determine a ship's position.

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

course.

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

It can grow very big.

While historians have long suspected that Titanic was lost in route, proof of

the navigational errors has been elusive.

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

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

Typically, it was put in a waterproof bag, sealed, and the highest -ranking

officer would take it onto the lifeboat.

Theoretically, you carry all the records off the ship.

But a captain who knows that he's got some information that he would rather

disclose will probably throw five pounds of rocks in the bag and throw it

overboard, you know.

Despite 25 ,000 questions across a month of testimony, Lord Mersey's private

box doesn't contain a single reference to the missing logbook.

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

about.

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

Trade.

We don't know.

Months before the inquiry, steaming through the North Atlantic, Titanic is

only lost, she's heading into danger.

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

news from other ships in the area.

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

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

longitude.

They were taken to the bridge.

and the position was noted on a transatlantic chart, and there it could

examined by each shift of officers as they came on duty.

Almost like some sort of music creeping up in the background are these messages

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

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

freighter bound for Boston, sees an ice field around 7 .30 at night.

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

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

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

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

They told them to shut up and go away, effectively.

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

While Captain Lord hunkers down in the ice field, to his south, Captain

Smith powers Titanic ahead with his engines.

steaming at near capacity.

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

private he expresses grave concern.

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

reduction of speed, and then Mersey points it out again.

Okay, so now this is interesting.

B, 21 knots.

And never reduced up to time of collision.

Notwithstanding, wary that icebergs in vicinity and that she would be likely

to meet them.

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

Titanic.

This was at night.

This was in an environment where they knew that there was ice.

We don't need to reduce speed.

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

we're Titanic.

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

Sunday evening, April 14, 1912.

Under the command of Captain Edward J. Smith.

Titanic is just past the midpoint of her journey to New York.

Steaming at nearly full speed, she's scheduled to arrive on time Wednesday

morning at White Stars Pier 59 along Manhattan's west side.

Nine other ships are also traversing the North Atlantic, heading west and east

along the same shipping lanes.

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.

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

Wireless messages were sent by ships who were traveling in the same waters, and

they were alerting each other to potential risks.

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

We know the Titanic received these messages.

We know they acknowledged some of these messages, too.

It should have been taken seriously.

The Marconi messages not only reveal where the ice is, they also contain

important details on how big and dangerous the icebergs are.

Kristen Seremgaard is the commander of the International Ice Patrol.

She's familiar with the types of icebergs the ships might have reported.

There's flows formed from frozen seawater.

There's a growler, which is about the size of a piano.

And then all the way up to what we call a very large iceberg. It's over 200

meters.

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

endanger the passengers.

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

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

Titanic.

Two vessels informed her.

Iceberg. Growlers.

Lord Mersey drew some images, things that the Titanic clearly would have

on its way to the big monster iceberg.

That also should have given the Titanic some pause. It would have warned them

that things were getting bad.

Lord Mersey also scribbles down that the temperatures were falling and that this

to indicate ice.

And then, finally...

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

This was obviously very significant for him. Quite understandably, he was asking

the question, why didn't they slow down?

If we didn't have this journal, we wouldn't have known that Lord Mercy was

taking in all this information and clearly recognized the problems.

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

Historians have spent countless hours deliberating this question.

Why didn't Captain Smith slow down?

One theory centers around the behavior of one of Titanic's most influential

passengers,

J. Bruce Ismay.

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

it into the 20th century.

On White Star's pride and joy, Ismay reigned supreme, hobnobbing with wealthy

passengers and keeping tabs on Captain Smith and his crew.

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

Baltic.

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

What happens next would give fodder to a century of conspiracy theory.

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

There was a paper -written Marconigram delivered to Captain Smith that he

to Bruce Ismay that Bruce Ismay took, stuck into his pocket.

Why did Captain Smith give Bruce Ismay the telegram?

Mersey references Ismay's own testimony from the British inquiry.

On page 222, Ismay underlined, Captain handed me the Baltic message,

which Ismay held on to for a while. So this is obviously quite significant for

Lord Mersey.

Why would Ismay have stuck it in his pocket?

Was there something he didn't want the bridge crew to see?

Did he not want them to slow down?

He didn't want the Titanic to be late. The press would be waiting on the docks.

People would be there waiting.

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

there safely.

Captain Smith asked Ismay for the ice warning back.

that Sunday evening so that he could put it in the chart room.

The Baltic message is posted alongside the six other ice warnings received

throughout the day.

Then, at 9 .20 p .m., Captain Smith heads to his cabin to go to sleep,

command to his senior officers.

The North Atlantic was extremely calm as they went into Suntown and into the

night. That made it more difficult to find the iceberg.

You can't see it.

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.

The lookouts are above the canvas dodger of the lookout's nest.

Their face is being whipped by a 25 -mile -an -hour cold wind, which

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

At precisely 11 .39 p .m., Crow's Nest lookout Frederick Fleet spots the

gigantic dark mass.

He strikes the lookout bell three times.

Fleet lunges for the telephone, reaching 6th Officer James Moody on the bridge.

Iceberg, dead ahead!

When you're traveling at 21 or 22 knots, and you see Iceberg dead ahead, there

wasn't enough time to turn.

It was already too late.

The ship was doomed.

April 14, 1912.

RMS Titanic has been at sea for four and a half days.

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.

They're a frightening reality.

With the iceberg spot 1 ,500 feet ahead, and with Titanic bearing down on it at

26 miles per hour,

First Officer William McMaster Murdoch has less than 45 seconds to determine

the fate of thousands.

He says, hold the port.

Murdoch signals the engine room. Ring, ring, ring.

But by the time Murdoch makes his desperate maneuver, the iceberg is

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

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

Scientists say it could have weighed up to 1 .5 million tons, the equivalent of

15 fully loaded aircraft carriers.

The iceberg packs the punch of a granite mountain.

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

that's kind of the similar concept of compressing the fresh water into a

that forms an iceberg.

Dense glacial ice has a much higher probability of causing significant

a ship.

At 1140 p .m., Titanic makes contact.

The iceberg scrapes along her starboard side for eight seconds,

gouging the double -bladed steel hull.

The collision takes place, opening its side to the iceberg so it can cut into

like a tin of sardines.

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

and the frigid sea pours in.

Meanwhile, some 90 feet above, those first -class passengers still awake

an ominous glimpse into their fate.

When the iceberg struck, they felt something, but they weren't sure what it

and they went to the portholes of the ship and actually saw pieces of ice

off the iceberg onto the deck through the portholes.

Moments after impact, First Officer Murdoch orders full stop, and

he engages Titanic's high -tech watertight doors.

Down in the tank top level.

Bells started going off and doors started closing.

It must have sounded pretty much like the hammer to hell down there.

Murdoch did not know whether there was damage or not.

He's just got to close the watertight doors and then find out.

That's all he can do.

Murdoch's decision to seal the doors is rooted in ship science.

When activated... The watertight doors keep Titanic from foundering by walling

off the flooded areas from the rest of the ship.

We want to close them so the water doesn't escape and make the ship bow or

heavy. We want to stop the water from coming in and spreading.

The head of the British inquiry trains his investigative eyes on those crucial

first minutes after the doors are activated.

Lord Mersey learns that some of the watertight doors were then manually

by crew to move around hoses and pumps.

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

Lord Mersey obviously thought that was important that no one ever requested the

doors to be re -closed.

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

Captain Smith, who had gone to sleep for the evening at 9 .20 p .m., suddenly

snaps to attention.

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

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

Smith rushes to the bridge.

He asks First Officer Murdoch what they struck.

An iceberg, sir.

Murdock replies,

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?

In testimony, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall recounts that he did not find

damage.

With Boxhall's assessment in hand, Captain Smith issues an order to the

room. that causes Lord Mersey to sit up and take notice.

An order that flies in the face of what we think we know about Titanic's story.

According to history, Titanic hit the iceberg.

The crew shut the watertight doors, and the ship came to a dead stop.

But is that what really happened?

Lord Mercy wrote down during Frederick Scott's testimony that the ship was

ordered half speed ahead and then stop and ahead.

What was all this?

Captain Smith may have been trying to speed up in hopes that things really

weren't so bad.

There may have been some talk about moving ahead to try and calm the

letting them think that the ship is moving normally.

For 20 minutes, Smith decides to keep the ship.

pressing forward at half speed instead of coming to a full stop.

Moving the boat forward was something that increased the influx of water and

a very dangerous, if not disastrous, thing to do.

If there were openings in the hull, you'd push them open more. Any

you would exploit them.

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.

With precious minutes ticking by, Captain Smith summons Titanic's

to sound the ship, a nautical term for assessing a ship's seaworthiness.

When the report came back to Captain Smith, it wasn't a very good one at all.

Lord Mercy made a note of that fact in his journal.

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

At that point, the damage was already done. The ship was doomed.

But Lord Mercy may have been taking more note of that fact than Captain Smith

was.

It should have led the captain to other choices.

For instance...

immediately lowering those lifeboats, putting everybody on those lifeboats

he possibly could.

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 deck below.

Titanic, Andrews says, has only two hours left.

Captain Smith seems really overwhelmed by it all, almost to the point of a

paralysis taking place.

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. And not only that, he is at risk, along with 2 ,200 other people.

After the collision, the amount of water flooding into Titanic was fatal.

The flooding was far beyond the capacity of the pumps to keep up with.

They struggled to even flow it down, and Titanic was simply doomed.

25 minutes after the collision.

Captain Smith orders his senior officers, Murdoch and Lightoller, to

lifeboats, which can only hold half of the more than 2 ,200 lives on board.

Worse still, as Lord Mersey noted during the inquiry,

the crew is unfamiliar with the lifeboat's state -of -the -art train

They cancelled the drill earlier in the trip.

Regardless, They're now faced with a thankless task, having to spread the

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.

We actually need to see that the ship is sinking to see that something is wrong.

Though his passengers may not have believed the warning, Captain Smith is

aware of the slow -motion catastrophe unfolding around him.

He makes a beeline for the Marconi wireless room and its operators, 25

-old Jack Phillips and 22 -year -old Harold Brahe.

Who else can he turn to other than these two wireless operators who suddenly are

his only source of help?

This was now their only lifeline if we're contacting the outside world.

And Captain Smith must have wondered perhaps this was the miracle that would

rescue him.

Of course, Smith has no idea that Light Toler'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.

Still, the SOS fans out, and some ships respond instantly.

Putting about and heading for you, replies veteran Captain Arthur Rostron

SS Carpathia, 58 miles away.

Despite having 740 passengers of his own, he lights up his coal burners, and

sets a course for Titanic's position.

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.

In those days, The fellows that worked in the wireless rooms on board ship

clocked off at a certain time.

At that point, the Californian was deaf to the world. He didn't know.

With the Californian hunkered down for the night, across the same ice field, a

chaotic scene is unfolding on Titanic.

More than an hour after the collision, the first of Titanic's lifeboats begins

lowering into the sea.

Around 12 .45 a .m., Captain Smith gave an order, and that order was to load the

lifeboats with women and children.

This leads to the next revelation from inside Lord Mersey's box.

During the British inquiry, Mersey makes a note in his journal referencing the

testimony of Second Officer Light Holden, who says that he didn't load the

lifeboats to capacity because he worried the new Davids wouldn't hold the

weight.

Obviously, Second Officer Lightoller had to have some excuse for not loading the

lifeboats to full capacity.

That was his excuse. I can't believe that Lord Mercy would have bought it.

Ultimately, Mercy did not. In his final report, he discovers there are a number

of explanations why the lifeboats weren't full.

Specifically, he writes that Lightoller's worry about the weight

unfounded apprehension.

The fact is that lifeboats went into the water with less than a full capacity.

Those crewmen should have been pulling people by their collars to put them into

the lifeboat.

As Officer Murdoch fires the first of eight distress rockets into the night

the makeshift evacuation continues.

On deck, confusion reigns.

Dr. Samantha Montano studies human response to disaster.

In 1912, there was no formal emergency management in the way that we have it

today.

Because there was that lack of training, that lack of planning about what to do

in a situation like this, nearly the entire response was completely

With Titanic's bow sinking lower, And the stern slowly rising against the

blackness of the sea, the panic begins.

The remaining passengers of all stations surge towards the few remaining

lightboats.

It's life or death.

We do see more of that panic. It tends to be when people feel the threat is

imminent. There is still a chance of escape, but that chance is dwindling.

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

One of the crews says, Mr. Ismay, there's a space in this boat, and

a split second to make a decision.

When the opportunity presents itself, he gets into the boat.

Ismay is one of many men who displaces women and children during those last

desperate minutes.

Lifeboat 15 was one of the last lifeboats to be lowered on the starboard

and the vast majority of its occupants were men.

It opens the question as to why there weren't more women and children in the

lifeboat.

Inside the box... Mersey notes his concern.

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.

68 who were saved, who went in the lifeboat, were made up of 61 men, double

underlined, and seven women and children.

This was an age in England where honor and chivalry prevailed.

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.

How could that possibly be? What happened to the women and children first

all? Was it a case that men had rushed to boats?

with the ship minutes from sinking.

Titanic's eight -member band, under the direction of Wallace Hartley, segues

into a rendition of Nearer, My God, to Thee, all while the last of the

lifeboats are launching.

One of the last orders attributed to Captain Smith was poking his head into

wireless shack and basically telling Phillips and Bride it's every man for

himself, boys.

He knew of the magnitude of the tragedy that was going to unfold when the ship

sank. Some of the firsthand accounts say that he goes to the bridge, locks

himself in, waits for the tide to come in.

Titanic's bow submerges, and the stern rises nearly perpendicular to the water,

its propellers completely aloft.

Just then, the once mighty, unthinkable Titanic splits in two.

and slides into the icy depths.

For many of the thousand -plus free -falling victims, the end, while

and violent, is also swift.

Some of these people may have been injured, hit by falling objects, hit by

lifeboats. battered by the sinking of the ship.

If the person gets submerged, they're going to get a lung full of very cold

water, and they're going to drown almost immediately, and they're going to die.

Those who survive the smack into the sub -freezing ocean experience excruciating

pain.

Second Officer Charles Lightoller would equate it to a thousand knives driving

into the body.

Shia Hrabowski is a medical legal investigator and forensics consultant.

That makes sense because extreme cold is going to feel like extreme heat.

At 28 degrees, there's a physiologic response that happens, also known as a

shock reflex.

And that's followed by repeated, very rapid gasping.

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

your voluntary control.

I remember talking to a survivor, Eva Hart, and her saying, Charles, it was

the screams that unhinged me.

It was the silence that came afterwards.

when the cold had done its work.

It gives you an idea of just how deadly this exposure was.

Because of the 1 ,500 or so people that perished, we can assume that hundreds,

perhaps, could have been rescued.

Only around 40 or so people were pulled out of the water and survived.

Those 40 are picked up by two lifeboats that turn back for them.

They are the only ones out of 20 lifeboats to do so.

Another boat, lifeboat number one, turns away from the victims in the water

despite having enough room for them.

Here's an instance where a lifeboat left with only 12 people. Instead of 42, the

boat could have easily gone back and picked up others.

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.

Sir Cosmo decides to give the crew five -pound notes.

It certainly didn't smell too good.

The Duff Gordons were called to the British inquiry to testify, and of

they simply denied they were driving.

the crew not to go back and rescue others

the duff gordons are the british

inquiry's only testifying passengers

as

titanic sinks to the bottom rms carpathia is less than 30 miles away and

to the rescue

Captain Rostrand, he went charging off in the middle of the night into an ice

situation that had already sunk the world's largest ship.

Rostrand became the hero of the day.

What did he do? He risked all those people's lives.

The sun was about to come up over the horizon when he found the lifeboats.

And so they brought on as many of the survivors as they could find, responding

in a human way to the suffering of people around them.

One boat to come alongside was the boat that carried Lightoller, and he was

immediately escorted to the bridge.

And Rostron said to him, where is the Titanic?

And with his voice cracking, Lytola said, she's gone down, sir.

As the morning sun arcs over the horizon, the last of Titanic's lifeboats

paddles up alongside Carpathia.

Escorted on board is White Star President J. Bruce Ismay.

quaking from the cold.

For the owner of the ship to come home in a lifeboat seemed shameful.

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.

The ship that made his name was now threatened to ruin his name.

Ismay was in such a delicate frame of mind.

That the surgeon of the Carpathia put him on opiates to ease the pain

Rostron

set sail for New York where Carpathia is expected on the evening of April 18th

Meanwhile Titanic's Marconi operator Harold bride is plucked from a

lifeboat and dispatched to the wireless room An anxious world awaits.

A ship containing some of the richest, most powerful, best -known people in the

world had sunk.

Everyone wanted to know what had happened.

The President of the United States wanted to know about his friends who

board ship.

What happened to Colonel After? What happened to Benjamin Guggenheim?

The rest of the world was screaming at the Carpathians to let them know what

happened to the Titanic.

And they chose to rebuff information, and they chose not to answer.

But that doesn't stop a now lucid Bruce Ismay from sending a cryptic message of

his own to White Star offices in London.

Titanic crew aboard Carpathia should be returned home earliest moment possible.

Suggest you hold Cedric sailing.

Yamsi.

I think the use of the reversal of the names, let's say Yamsey rather than

Ismay, it might now look rather suspicious and you wonder what's going

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.

So if there was an inquiry, everyone would be singing from the same page of

hymnal.

You've probably got 20 to 25 crew members who really have stories to tell.

You want to get them back to Blighty. You want to find out what those stories

are before the Americans can get to them.

After rescuing the last of Titanic 705 traumatized, grief -stricken survivors,

Captain Rostron's Carpathia set the course back from where she started, New

City.

But on board, White Star President J. Bruce Ismay is becoming increasingly

panicked.

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.

There's that editorial cartoon of Ismay looking like a maniac in a lifeboat

filled with nothing but grieving women.

And, of course, the byline is Jay Brute Ismay instead of brute.

In Washington, William Alden Smith, a hard -charging senator from Michigan.

is gearing up to lead an American inquiry into the sinking.

It's set to begin the day after Carpathia's arrival in New York.

So Ismay is desperate to dash back to London.

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.

But unfortunately for him, Senator Smith's plans put a stop to that.

Turns out Senator Smith was tipped off by the U .S. Navy, which intercepted

Ismay's telegram.

So Smith prepares subpoenas to give to Ismay and Titanic officers upon arrival

in New York on the evening of April 18th.

Lining the banks of the Hudson River were 100 ,000 people from the battery

the way up to the White Star Line pier at West 14th Street.

All of New York's policemen had been summoned to patrol the crowds because

people knew this was going to be mayhem.

As Carpathia snakes its way up the Hudson, a tugboat filled with

follows the ship to Pier 54.

The flash of cameras lights up the sky, revealing

Carpathia's deck crammed with terrified passengers.

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 what became of my father, what became of my husband.

The terrible fate of all those men, women, and children is all too evident.

The crew of the cable repair ship Mackey Bennett, joined by the SS Minia, have

completed the grim task of recovering over 300 bodies, 116 of which

were buried at sea.

On April 26th, the Mackey Bennett steams back toward Halifax.

For the living, the voyage is surreal.

The wind and motion of the ship causes the tarpaulins to rise and fall,

producing the illusion that the bodies have come to life.

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

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.

How more nightmarish can this get?

The arrival of Mackie Bennett in Halifax on April the 30th was a huge deal.

All the church bells in Halifax ring a death knell for the Titanic victims.

There's a fleet of horse -drawn hearses.

waiting at the dock to take the bodies off to the Mayflower Curling Club

to be processed, to be identified.

And that's just one more surreal touch to add to the whole thing.

With nearly 200 distended corpses laid out on the curling rink height,

each body is tagged, numbered,

noted.

This is Fairview Lawn Cemetery here in Halifax, and for 121 of Titanic's

passengers, this is where the maiden voyage ends.

This whole series here of headstones have one thing in common. No names. Just

died April 15th, 1912.

For every identified body in Fairview Lawn Cemetery, there's two that are not.

This is all classes and walks of life represented from Titanic, and that

volumes as to the tragedy of Titanic.

While the dead are being brought to Halifax, 600 miles away in New York

the next phase of the spectacle is beginning.

In a packed ballroom in the Waldorf Astoria, a day after the Carpathia

Senator Smith gavels in the United States inquiry, a moment not lost on his

counterpart in Britain.

Inside Lord Mersey's personal papers are two copies of the official United

States Senate inquiry into the sinking of RMS Titanic.

The hearings start on April 19, 1912, two weeks before the British inquiry.

The American inquiry is like a three -ring circus, and you have Senator Smith

from Michigan who is doing his utmost to make Bruce Ismay look like the worst

villain since, you know, Pontius Pilate turned Jesus over to the Romans.

Ismay is the first witness called, and his testimony is damning.

He claims that he was just a voluntary passenger, and that no one else was on

deck when he decided to save himself.

Senator Smith roasted Ismay left and right and condemned him in the speech

he gave before Congress.

The vitriolic American attack on Ismay, a leader in the shipping industry,

crosses the line.

The United States inquiry is seen as an affront to honor and a threat to

Britain's national interests.

This wasn't just a ship.

The Titanic was the pride of Britain.

It was very important for the British government that Britain's maritime

interests weren't threatened as a result of the Titanic disaster.

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.

We have a copy of the Daily Mail, which is

Wednesday, April 24th.

1912, and it's got a little piece on him, a man who fears nobody, Lord

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. I think for him, the Titanic must have been an opportunity to

really get to the bottom of, you know, this appalling tragedy.

As the fallout from the hard -hitting U .S. inquiry continues to rain down on

Great Britain, the eyes of the world are on Mersey.

He awaits his turn on the dais.

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.

The British inquiry begins on May 2nd, 1912.

During its first week, many of Titanic's surviving crew members testify.

Soon, though, the focus turns to another ship entirely.

The Californian. The ship that didn't hear Titanic's distress calls because

they'd turned off their wireless and gone to bed.

Inside his personal box, Mersey's copy of the American Inquiry contains the

bruising examination of its captain, Stanley Lord.

Stanley Lord has really posed these difficult, difficult questions.

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.

Lord Mersey wanted to investigate how far Californian was from Titanic

and what action could Californian have taken in order to

try and rescue Titanic's passengers and crew and come to Titanic's assistance.

Earlier, the Californian was 19 and a half miles north of Titanic's position

when it saw the ice field and telegraphed the warning.

The wireless operation on board the Californian sent a message.

We're here. We're stopping. It's dangerous.

And it was received by the Titanic as almost like an aside.

They were told to shut up.

The wireless operation on board the Californian then went to bed at the end

his day. And at that point, the Californian then was cut off from the

world.

Captain Lord was now finding himself amongst all these powdered wigs in

London, far from the sea as you can get, and he's being grilled mercilessly.

Captain Lord asserts that his ship was 30 miles from Titanic when she sank.

But separately, Californians crewmen testify that they were close enough to

ship lights and flares.

that could have been Titanic.

These witnesses made the inquiry think that they were inside the Titanic and

failed to act. It was a very serious accusation.

Among a stash of saved letters in Lord Mersey's box is one from Rear Admiral

Arthur Gough Telford, a naval assessor and senior legal advisor to Mersey

the inquiry.

Rear Admiral Cawthorpe is really throwing doubt on the whereabouts of the

California. Obviously, this was a very hot topic for the inquiry, and the guilt

or innocence of Captain Lord depended very much on it.

Gough Cawthorpe writes Mersey a passionate letter refuting Captain

testimony that he was too far away to mount a rescue.

There is a strong presumption that Californian...

was not where she says she was. 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.

What does this do?

This now tells Lord Mercy that what he heard may not be accurate, even if he

found Stanley Lord to be credible.

When Lord Mersey issues his final judgment on July 30th, 1912, he blames

collision on excessive speed with the disaster compounded by a lack of

lifeboats.

Despite concluding that Titanic's Captain Edward Smith made a very

mistake, Lord Mersey states that it is, in my opinion, impossible to fix Captain

Smith with blame.

However, Mersey's final report did take aim at the Californian,

concluding that Captain Lord could have come to the assistance of the Titanic.

Had she done so, she might have saved many, if not all, of the lives that were

lost.

Captain Lord, he was blamed for not doing enough.

The personal impact on him was probably stronger than the financial

impact of it.

He tried to clear himself, but time ran out on him.

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

Since Titanic's demise in 1912, a century worth of historians have sought

to Lord Mersey's innermost thoughts, wondering whether they differ from his

public pronouncements.

The notes in his journal were kept private throughout the years until now.

If we didn't have these notes, we wouldn't have known.

that Lord Mercy was taking in all this information and clearly recognized the

problems.

After a careful review, it's clear.

His final public judgment largely matches what is in his private box.

There exists no evidence to prove Lord Mercy was compromised in any way.

In the view of many historians, Lord Mersey's inquest was fair, his judicial

responsibility uncompromised.

The British inquiry was not a criminal trial.

No one ever went to jail, and there were very few lawsuits filed against White

Star or the Board of Trade.

And so, with Captain Smith going down with his ship, and his crew largely

absolved, Popular perception of the disaster has been opened to

Many who have retold Titanic's story have latched on to the narrative of a

tragic act of God.

But Mersey knew better.

Mistakes were made, and more than 1 ,500 men, women, and children lost their

lives.

While the story of Titanic never faded, the ship itself disappeared from view.

And then, seven decades later, a final piece

of lost evidence emerges.

In 1985, oceanographic explorer Robert Ballard made the discovery of a

Ballard spots Titanic's boilers, its tell -tale bow,

and confirms something equally significant.

When Titanic was finally found, its position was about 13 miles from where

was reported to be.

The discovery of Titanic's position on the ocean floor may speak to one last

mystery. Could its passengers have been saved if only SS Californian had

heard her distress call and come to the rescue?

Maybe not.

When Titanic hit the iceberg, her Marconi operators sent out an SOS, but

gave the wrong location.

because Titanic officers had taken a bad sextant reading earlier that evening.

Carpathia was only able to find survivors because her crew had seen a

fired from one of the lifeboats.

The absolute miracle that night was that in going towards the distress position,

which we now know is not accurate at all, that the Carpathia stumbled into

place where the lifeboats were.

Does this exonerate Captain Lord of the Californian?

Had he steamed immediately to the location of the SOS, he would have found

nothing.

Years later, the British government reassessed the role of Californian in

disaster.

In 1992, there was a subsequent inquiry that exonerated the captain.

Even if the Californian had left immediately on receipt of the first

message, it could not have arrived in time to make any difference.

Today, the Titanic lies in an eerie state of decomposition.

rusting on the bottom of the Atlantic.

But it's still as mesmerizing and captivating to the public as it was 108

years ago.

We're fascinated by the Titanic because it is like a myth. It's like something

from a biblical story.

It contains greed, human ambition, vanity.

This vast, modern and beautiful ship full of hope and ambition collided with

fate in a spectacular way.

Although this was an accident, it was clearly an avoidable one.

The crew didn't steer away from the iceberg.

They didn't reduce the speed. They didn't load the lifeboats like they

have.

Many more lives could have been saved.

The Titanic is the one event that the last century will always be remembered

for.

It's the combination of pride, hubris, playing fast and loose with the

regulations of the time.

And it's an incredibly tragic event the world will never forget.

Lord Mersey's British inquiry led to crucial shipping industry changes across

the globe.

Adding more lifeboats to passenger ships.

24 -hour radio communications.

and the formation of the International Ice Patrol, to name a few.

106 years after it was created, no ship heeding the warnings of the Ice Patrol

has struck an iceberg.

Titanic's legacy lives on.