PBS Documentary: Lost Liners [2000]

[Music] [Music] in the town of Rimouski in the Canadian province of Quebec there is a graveyard and a memorial it commemorates a maritime disaster that happened less than five miles away on the Saint Lawrence River in May of 1914 two years after the Titanic went down within sight of land an ocean liner sent 1012 people lost their lives including 159 children but the story of who they were and how they died is almost unknown even the man who found the Titanic had never heard of a ship called the Empress of Ireland well over the last 15 years I've traveled literally all over the world visiting the great liners that it didn't make it but I'd never gone to the Empress of Ireland in fact quite honestly I didn't know it existed in fact I was embarrassed when someone pointed out to me that the Empress of Ireland actually had more passengers died on it that the Titanic and it's odd why did no one ever hear of the Empress about [Music] for Bob Ballard there are always questions to be asked and the answers can sometimes be found in that mysterious underwater realm that has fascinated Ballard since he was a boy well as far back as I can remember I wanted to be an undersea Explorer I want to be captain evil and fortunately people didn't laugh when I said that I was always wondering what was under the ocean oh we got to stick my head under water I think from the moment I could hold my breath I did just that stuck my head and went underwater Bob Ballard has spent the last 20 years of his life exploring the ships that have perished at sea each one is a little piece of history preserved in a place that is unimaginably difficult to reach the deep sea is a preserver of history it's a it's a giant Museum things that fall to the deep sea sort of going to sustain a suspended animation all of a sudden I realized these ships are in a very high state of preservation and that sort of caused me to want to see more of them wanna see all of them in the years since he located the wreck of the Titanic Ballard has traveled to all of history's famous lost liners except one this visit will be his last clearly before I could end this journey and hopefully move on to some other phase in my life I had to come to the Empress of Island [Music] the rest of the world paid little attention when the Empress of Ireland went down [Music] but Canadians have been haunted by the sinking for generations the spectacle of sea disaster of a great ship plummeting for the depths it's possible to forget the human element the individuals who died sometimes horribly in these circumstances each of them had a very special life of their own there's so much to learn from a shipwreck it's not just a kind of spectacle a horror story there's more to it than that there are lives that were radically changed here on the st. Lawrence River where David cratons grandparents lost their lives Ballard has invited Creighton to visit the ship that changed his family's history in a disaster like that where so many people are affected I mean losing their lives that every Jena it's passed on and it's been multiplies so you take over a thousand people and then their families and families and and so by the time you get to the present there are thousands and thousands of people that were affected by that and carry it with them to this day I want to go out a form and I've teamed with a camera will be Ballard's and cratons eyes underwater it should take about two days to photograph the Empress from bow to stern if the seas remain calm today is a gorgeous day just beautiful and you forget that when the disaster took place it was it wasn't like this at all it was windy and cold and dark and that this is a very sad place and yet it's such a gorgeous day today you have to remember what's beneath this right now is still a grave there are a lot of graves in this part of the world the North Atlantic has a distinction of being the most dangerous ocean in the world it's the fog is the iciest the stormiest even the saltiest it could be unconscionably unkind ocean and it didn't matter it was a winter or summer it was an unpredictably uncomfortable ride most people hated to cross the very first immigrants came to America in sailing ships a journey that could take up to a month and it was perilous I mean that people died on those trips people were certainly miserable for most of the trip seasick being thrown around like a little cork in a washing machine if you really had to want to make the trip but with the introduction of steam power things began to change wooden hulls and masts disappeared replaced by iron and steel that meant you could make bigger ships for the growing immigrant trade in American factories immigrant labor had produced an explosion of wealth and a few very rich men who understood the power of the new technologies with the right kinds of machines nature itself might be mastered immigrants from Europe streamed into America to run the new machines and there was money to be made taking them across the ocean in ships that were bigger and faster than anything that had gone before we were able to make ships of Steel all of a sudden the ships could be much much larger and money was in volume and so they made him as big as they could and put as many people in them as they could it was simple math make him big fill him with people and make him as fast as you can so you could do it again and again and again [Music] the ocean line is one of the immigrants per se of the most profitable person Jers they took up less space and required less service could be fed indifferently it didn't matter what they they just survived the crossing and they were used to not very distinguished surrounding so it didn't matter to them they were anxious to get to America so the companies built ships that were large enough to accommodate in their lower halls packed with immigrants and we always remember the elegance and the luxury on the upper decks of these ocean liners but what really counted for the companies was the the Warrens of steerage compartments or third class cabins below the waterline you had people from really all walks of life in third class you had people who came from maybe ordinary families and we're just traveling as cheaply as possible but you also had people who came from homes that had no floors who you know had dirt floors and grass roofs or whatever and so for these people to suddenly have you know running water and electricity and electric lights and all the food they could eat and they didn't have to work for it and they got to have a vacation for seven days at sea they didn't have to do anything and they'd never had that before in their lives and this is wonderful so even third-class it had it far better than they did on shore they loved it and it's an interesting thing that the posters advertising steamship service across the Atlantic never said America they said New York New York was a sign ashore of freedom New York and the Statue of Liberty was what really was the objective that these millions of huddled masses as Emma Lazarus have so haptic christendom cross the Atlantic the sea the arrival in the Port of New York is huge ocean liners with their decks packed with immigrants would all be crowded to the portside railings to see the Statue of Liberty the ships would literally list port as the vessels came in and that enormous Hegira of passengers wanted to crawl to the New World with what made the Atlantic Line is so big they were far bigger than liners on any other ocean like any commercial enterprise the moving of people across the Atlantic and ships was a competitive sport and for many many years the Germans held what was called the blue ribbon which meant that they were the fastest ship they were the greyhound so each company would try to build a ship that could go faster than the last one faster than the last one and it became a sense of pride as well and it became a sense of national pride and for ten years from 1897 to 1907 you could say it was a German decade on the North Atlantic the Kaiser Wilhelm The Grocer for instance or the Deutschland these incredibly fast ships held a blue ribbon and attracted the best passenger traffic there was Kunar couldn't stand the thought of this that they didn't have a blue ribbon so Great Britain's Cunard Line decided to build a pair of ships that could make the trip in under five days they would be revolutionary in design at once the biggest and the fastest ships in the world one would be called Mauritania Lusitania would be her sister it would be the technological wonder of its age we will be the ship of the future and the the specifications are absolutely enormous everything was oversized to over speeded the Lusitania engines at 68,000 horsepower or 75% bigger than any known engine of the time construction on the twins started in 1904 no ship this large had ever been attempted but in an era filled with optimism about the potential of technology few doubted that it could be done in two separate shipyards one in England one in Scotland the radical new designs were forged in iron and steel Lusitania was the first ship to use for propellers she had 25 boilers twice the number of her German counterparts and her hull was double skinned in case she needed to see service as a warship the Lusitania was on a three-months track ahead of Mauritania so she was launched first it was to her went the armor of that terrible launch for the first time of a sixteen thousand ton hull nobody ever done it before but the engineers had done their homework the largest ship ever built was launched without mishap and a year later she was ready for her trial runs in the open sea she made an astonishing twenty five and a half knots but vibrated badly she was pulled into drydock where her hull was strengthened then it was time to furnish her if the ship's designers look to the future in planning the machinery that powered her Lusitania x' decorators took their inspiration from the past her public rooms were based on the simple delicate lines of the Georgian period and featured white plaster highlighted by goldleaf walls were paneled in highly polished mahogany and walnut floors were covered with luxurious rose-colored carpets chairs and sofas were upholstered in silk her music room had vaulted ceilings with 12 stained glass panels each one symbolizing a month of the year finally in the fall of 1907 it was time for Lusitania maiden voyage [Music] on that first trip she fell 30 minutes short of the German record but on her second crossing Lusitania beat the record by about four hours [Music] the Blue Ribbon was back in British hands and the Mauretania came in November and beat the Lusitania and for the next few years the two ships Lusitania Mauritania would shave perhaps a few minutes off each other's crossing time and didn't matter Cunard had the blue ribbon and whether he would Lusitania Mauritania didn't matter what mattered was as a German threat had been bested the Cunard liners were also as profitable as they were Swift a fact that didn't escape the attention of American financier JP Morgan who held a majority interest in canards chief British rival the White Star Line Morgan's railroads carried immigrants across America now he wanted a piece of the lucrative transatlantic trade and he thought he had the right formula to make it happen white star decided that they would have to build ships to counter cue knobs lead not faster ships but bigger ships and better ships better in terms of comfort deluxe instead of dispatch and it was their idea to make their ship so comfortable that passengers wouldn't mind the additional day at sea the white starlight that we can get them very fairly quickly you know not absolutely as fast as Cunard but let's do it in a nice way you know let's get them there in the lap of luxury let's provide greater amenities and do they're really that the equivalent of a five-star hotel at sea and so side by side in a shipyard in Northern Ireland the largest moving objects in the history of the world began to take shape rivet buy rivet plate by plate beach was over 880 feet long and 110 feet high half again as big as Lusitania one was called the Olympic the other Titanic the Titanic in the Olympic were the largest structures in the world they were larger than any skyscraper in the world at the time and they moved so imagine when they launched them this huge gigantic moving object heading towards the water and I'm sure the engineers were wondering if it would even float when it hit the water [Music] [Music] on April 10th 1912 a young man named Frank Brown paused on a gangway at the white star pier in Southampton to take a photograph of an incredible behemoth sitting on the waters of the river test her name matched the impression spectators had of her Titanic [Music] the photo Brown took shows portholes running down the side of the ship until they disappear below the wolf line the second-class gangway over 500 feet away can barely be seen as the ship set sail Brown stayed on deck snapping pictures two tugboats nudging the liner into the channel well wishers dockside waving goodbye minutes later he took a photo of a narrow escape the stern of the liner in New York drifting on a collision course after the American vessel snapped her moorings in the suction of Titanic's massive propellers the two ships missed each other by a few feet Brown was only going as far as Queenstown Ireland so he made use of his one day on board taking photos whenever he could short story writer Jacques Foote rel was headed from New York he wouldn't get there neither would TW McAuley the gym instructor Marconi operator Jack Phillips would die while his partner Harold bride survived Brown also took a picture of the Marconi room where they worked a ghostly double exposure at Queenstown Brown boarded a tender and captured Titanic's massively plated starboard bow which would be slashed by an iceberg within three days his final photograph showed Titanic sitting in the harbor waiting to take on her Queenstown passengers today the city of Queenstown is known as Cove it's still a port city but ocean liners seldom stop here anymore today the docks at one service Lusitania Mauritania and Titanic are home to cruise ships and the occasional trawler the train station that once brought immigrants from all over Ireland on the first leg of their trip to the new world now lies abandoned but for Bob Ballard the old port is a very special place more than 85 years ago over a hundred and twenty Irish immigrants walked out on this dock to get aboard the RMS Titanic shuttle boats that the Titanic itself was out in the channel this was her last port O'Call this is a Queenstown at least that's what it was called back then it was the last time anyone ever saw the ship until we found her on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and 12,000 feet of water in the early summer of 1985 a French research vessel made its way slowly across the North Atlantic on board was a young ocean Explorer named Bob Ballard who had been dreaming of locating Titanic's final resting place for most of his adult life I'm a deep-sea Explorer and you know there are only so many Mount Everest is in the deep sea and clear the Titanic is the the quintessential of all sunken ships if you look at the lost liners it's the only one that was really still lost we knew where the Andrea Doria was we we knew where the Britannic was we knew where the Lusitania was and preserve Island everyone knew where those ships were but the Titanic was really lost to find the site of history's most famous shipwreck Ballard needed help so he joined forces with a French oceanographic team led by Jean Louie Michele the French possessed a highly prized piece of technology a sleek red torpedo shaped sonar system balint expected the friendship would find the titanic using sonar then be joined by an American vessel to photograph the wreck since there wasn't much interest in ballads quest he had to bring along his own ad-hoc film crew to document his discovery if and when it happened and the skeptics had every reason to believe he would fail since no one could be certain exactly where the Titanic was when she hit the iceberg there were hundreds of square miles to search but by calculating the position of other ships in the area at that time Ballard believed he had narrowed Titanic's final resting place to a rough square 10 miles on a side through June and most of July the French Boat crisscross the search area and came up empty by the time the French expedition was over we had searched 80% of the search area but we'd found nothing and my biggest fear was that it was covered by the 1914 earthquake and that avalanche had covered the ship and no one would ever find who was unfindable so when we came back from the expedition I had to conclude that maybe there's no Titanic to find Friday April 12 1912 Titanic's first day on the open sea [Applause] in the Marconi room the two young wireless operators were just getting used to their brand-new surroundings although Harold bride was only 21 years old he had already served a tour of duty on the Lusitania Jack Phillips a veteran of many Atlantic crossings had celebrated his 25th birthday just the day before now they sent out a steady stream of messages mostly from first-class passengers [Applause] [Music] by Saturday Titanic's passengers had settled into shipboard routine a young mother and her parents among them my grandfather had tickets on another ship but he decided to go on the Titanic and that's what he did and my mother for some reason decided to go with her parents back to Milwaukee and I was left in London in a boarding home my mother was a little disturbed because she had left me but the Titanic was such a beautiful ship and so luxurious but she had a pretty good time on board ship it was a wonderful time people dine very well and in the morning when you got up after you had breakfast you walked on deck and around 11 o'clock they used to serve hot bouillon and of course they served tea in the afternoon and they had an orchestra that played and people enjoyed themselves they played cards they wrote letters and the mute orchestra was lovely to listen to a tea time it was luxurious [Music] my mother was a nursemaid to several to do lady and my father had a pub and my father decides after time after a lot of letters from his relations in Kansas urging him to go over because there was more opportunity there that he decided to emigrate I was the youngest of the family I was nine weeks old my brother was under two years old so it was quite an undertaking so this is how they were oldest items for many of the passengers Titanic was more like a floating city than a ship it had four dining rooms two libraries a squash court and a swimming pool fully booked it could carry about 3,500 people including a crew of just under a thousand the price of a steerage ticket was $33 the most expensive stateroom cost over 100 times that much the equivalent of $50,000 today and for its maiden voyage Titanic has attracted more than its share of the rich and the famous at first class you were sort of looked to as celebrities people didn't have movie stars to look to back then and so you always followed what the well-to-do were doing because they always you know where the fashionable they did the right things and all the fun thing is whatever and so you had some of the biggest names in society at Guggenheim's and asters and you know all the big names that everyone recognized and so those are the kinds of people who took you know maiden voyages of the greatest ship in the world and I know that there were even people in second class who would have traveled first on other liners but in some cases their agents had told them you know well you might be more comfortable in second class on this ship because these people will be you know big names would be incredibly you know well known and you know you'd probably feel a little inferior the Titanic was about 400 miles south of Newfoundland when a series of wireless reports reached the ship's Marconi room warning of icebergs to the north and west [Applause] it was just performed noon Saturday April 13th 1912 on the bridge captain Edward Smith decided the ice posed no threat to his ship and maintained full speed ahead he wanted to be in New York when he was due the whole schedule was built up for arrival in New York picking up the maiden voyage eastbound passengers are going back and Titanic was entering service and and Captain Smith a master was a senior Commodore the line you shortly to retire was a pretty complacent man all that afternoon and into the evening the wireless operators continued to receive warnings from other ships of pack ice dead ahead Jack Phillips and Harold bride busy with first-class telegram traffic probably neglected to send all the reports to the bridge 1912 April was a bad year for ice and it was further south and in greater quantities than normal and Smith just barreled on he didn't stop his ship and he ignored six radioed ice warnings that said clearly there was enormous ice field and inevitably he ran afoul of the odds but the odds were probably not on captain Smith's mind the Titanic was afterall unsinkable the White Star Line didn't so much publicize the Titanic as unsinkable but there was certainly a common knowledge that it was amongst the employees they were telling people that whether it was in the literature or not and there are several instances where people would comment to one of the crewmen or maybe someone at the White Star Line office in New York or London about you know the the possibility of an accident and they would always say well this ship is unsinkable the seas were calm visibility was excellent the four days at sea had been utterly tranquil - tranquil some would recall later my mother sent him a postcards - my grandmother from Queenstown to say that everything was fine up to now shattered really a bit ominous there were other portents the near collision with the American liner at Southampton the grimy face of a Stoker peering over the fourth funnel while the ship was anchored at Queenstown looking down at the passengers like some grim death's-head and there were series of premonitions III still onboard ships passengers will come up to me and say you know my grandmother or grandfather or my uncle or my priest all came to Southampton were all ready to board Titanic and they saw the ship and they had a premonition of disaster and they decided not to sail well my theory is if you put all the premonitions together they'd stretch into end from New York to Southampton the last meal served in Titanic's first-class dining room featured filet mignon Lili roast squab and roast duckling with apple sauce steerage passengers were served porridge cold beef and pickles the first-class dining room closed sometime after 10:00 around the same time Captain Smith left the bridge and went to his quarters one sees that were almost glassy the great ship sailed on the lookout spotted the iceberg about 15 minutes before midnight on the bridge the officer of the watch tried to avoid a collision by turning his ship to port but it was too late Titanic scraped the iceberg leaving four long thin slashes under the waterline 14 square feet of her hull less than the size of a door was now open to the sea if it ran did the bow might have crumpled like tin foil but he'd have stayed afloat but he tried to get around it and in so doing you exposed the side of the ship to that raking blow of ice the irony of the Titanic sinking is that the weather was so good that the Titanic sank if the weather hadn't been as good it wouldn't have hit the iceberg at all very often what you do is you cite an iceberg by looking for the ring of foam that's breaking against the base by the waves and there were no waves that night and so here they had this perfectly calm ocean and the Titanic you know all by itself ran into an iceberg without any help from an outside ship or anything and that just that alone was amazing in the Marconi room Jack Phillips and Harold bride sent out their first distress call they used a new signal that would soon become synonymous with a call for help three dots three dashes three dots s Oh s at about the same time captain Smith was receiving his first assessment of the damage the news couldn't have been worse within an hour two at the most titanic was going to sink the nearest rescue ships were over four hours away there weren't enough lifeboats [Music] people were going to die the only question was how many imagine if you will family on the Titanic at 11:40 at night children have long been in bed the parents are about to go to bed suddenly there's a long grating grinding crash along the side of the ship the vessel stops crewmen are rushing around my brother and I were in bed and suddenly my parents heard a crash so my father said he would go up on deck to find out what happened he went up came back down and said a Perry the ship has struck an iceberg get the children out of bed and on deck as quickly as possible my mother went out into the hall and she met my grandfather and he said Harriet don't worry the ship is in trouble but her watertight compartments will hold her up until help comes people had this this faith in this unsinkable ship and you know they go up on deck and the stewards would say well no there's nothing that's wrong go back to bed whatever and a lot of people did they just didn't think anything had happened my mother went up to the top deck and she looked at the iceberg and here was this huge white mountain and as she turned around she met one of the officers of the Titanic and he says go downstairs immediately and put on your life preserver so my mother went to her cabin and she was so upset she said to herself I don't know what jewelry to take so she would pick up her jewelry different pieces and throw them down she did that several times and she ended up with my baby pastor and that's all she saved and the clothes that she had on her back they felt the ship wouldn't think it was unsinkable but my father didn't take any chances so he got my mother and we children up on deck and said goodbye to my mother and said hope to see you later and suddenly the implication is as women and children are asked to end of the lifeboats that the fathers will not go with them it's the terrifying moment terrifying for the wives particularly for the children and the fathers tried to make the best of it by saying we'll we'll be coming on another ship will be coming on a later boat or will we'll join you tomorrow [Applause] [Music] and my mother was helped in July fruit number 13 I was put in a sec because I was so small and then put it in July for number 13 and after my mother reversed in the life o she discovered she didn't have it Bertram my brother so that was another worry for her but of course she couldn't do anything about it but luckily he be looked after by when the other passengers in the Marconi room Phillips and bride continued to send out distress calls until Smith gave the order to abandon ship their last message was sent a little before 2:00 a.m. the lifeboat rolled away from the ship and my mother said they didn't talk very much but they were bailing water all night because in the lifeboat there's a big cork and for some reason or other they didn't have any cork in there so they had to bail water and one of those survivors even wrote years later you know how strange it was to be sleeping at one point you know on board the greatest ocean liner in the world and within half an hour is she found herself rowing a lifeboat staring back at the social minor and it was sinking [Music] my mother said that when the ship went down it went down this way bow first and she said the cries were just horrible just horrible and then after the ship went down it was the silence was ghastly now those who were her words she said it was ghastly it was so silent [Music] one lady I knew actually said that she wouldn't get into a lifeboat there was one thing she always made sure that people knew when she told about the Titanic was that people wouldn't get in the lifeboats and just how awful that was and of course the other thing that show is made sure people were aware of because it is a fascinating story and people you know loved the Titanic and they loved to hear about it but she always made sure that everybody knew how awful the screams of the dining were because when a ship finally went down and all these people were freezing to death in the water and there was no help coming for them and she just said it was horrible and for her and early for many of the survivors it never left her it was never out of her ears to the day she died she could always hear those screams and why haven't you father well he dragged and I don't think the body's ever been found I haven't heard some of them were found but I've never heard his he was found and that is why I will never see the film because if I saw it I would wonder what happened to him then we stayed in a hospital for two or three weeks prior mother to recover a little bit and then we came back to England because we had nothing we had no clothes we had no money and of course she was so brokenhearted she just want to get home [Music] when Titanic sank when newsboys on Broadway was shouting the news they didn't know much about it they just do the ship had struck an iceberg gone to the bottom women coming out of the theaters on Broadway fainted not women who had family or friends on ball they they swoon just from shock and this was the disbelief that attended this event [Music] we learned from the Titanic unsinkable ships do sink we learned that you can't be come to completion you know you can't you get too arrogant about certain things it may very well have been the age of innocence that ended that night of one lady wrote afterwards that all the things that seems so important before the Titanic didn't matter anymore I think Titanic does in the sense serve as a benchmark as a time that people's stopped taking things for granted I think III equate it with the explosion of the Challenger in our own time when we were all watching that rocket going up into orbit that suddenly before our eyes had exploded this inexplicable massive failure of Technology right in front of us this is the this is the impact the Titanic had the last week of August 1985 Aled and jean-louis Michelle were back in the search area for the second time that summer this time on the American ship norm and this time using a camera sled called Argo instead of sonar to search the bottom my strategy was completely different than Jean Louise he was looking for the Titanic I wasn't looking for the Titanic I was looking for its debris eyewitness accounts seem to suggest that Titanic had split in half just before going under that meant that everything from dining tables to engine room equipment might have spilled out in its long plunge to the seafloor it was on this telltale debris trail that Ballard was pinning his hopes and aiming his cameras that area of the ocean has millions and millions of rocks from pebbles to houses and that would confuse your sonar but your eye can tell the difference between a boulder and a boiler by the end of August ballot had retraced most of the area the friendship surveyed earlier with similar results I was starting to realize we were gonna fail just as we'd done on the French expedition and I knew what an awful feeling that was and for everybody it was like going to a funeral by midnight on August 31st the noir had surveyed every bit of the 100 square miles where Titanic must have gone down except for one tiny sliver at the northernmost point the Jama we Michelle was the watch leader for that watch so at 2:00 in the morning just as he's about to get to where he had done his search they pick up a debris trail nothing definitive but they're the first debris trail we've seen and just Bam Bam Bam as fast as I could I got down to the control van came blowing into the control van just as they were going over the boiler and the place explode everyone was just excited exploding and and we were celebrating my we-we-we we went from this agony of defeat to the joy of success and then someone made this innocent comment gee the Titanic sinks in 20 minutes and it was just devastating common because we were dancing on someone's grave and and I was high I of us deeply deeply moved the discovery of Titanic created a sensation and an insatiable appetite for artifacts since Ballard never claimed ownership others were free to strip her bare and they did finding the Titanic has been goodness and bad news I mean it's changed my life tremendously mostly for the good I guess I was just naive to think that that people would leave it alone many ships 'el there they'll never be the pretty young ladies they once were they're just old corpses in many ways but it's just like you've when you bury your grandma yet put some put a necklace on her and give her some earrings or something in it sir to give some dignity to the old lady in her grave I look at the ornaments on the ship as they're her jewelry and I just think that she added she deserves that [Music] with the sinking of the Titanic an age of innocence began to end it turned out we weren't able to master nature after all bigger didn't always mean better [Music] the world was changing life was becoming more modern and more dangerous five years after he found the Titanic Ballard decided to explore the wreck of another tragedy at sea but this one wasn't an accident it was an act of war [Music] and if the loss of Titanic signaled the waning of an age of innocence what happened on the Irish Sea in the spring of 1915 launched an age of despair [Music] [Applause] this time the victim was the Cunard liner that had revolutionized ocean travel the ship known as the Greyhound of the Seas Lusitania for eight years Lusitania had journeyed across the seas of a changing world without so much as a hint of trouble [Music] according to the rules of war a ship carrying civilians was off-limits but the rules of war were changing in Europe the first war to employ modern weapons was creating a battlefield of unprecedented carnage new supplies of bombs and bullets were needed daily on the western front and some of them came from America officially the United States was neutral privately it turned its back when war materiel from American factories found its way aboard British vessels including passenger ships few people knew it at the time but as the Lusitania prepared to leave New York in May of 1915 she was carrying bullets and shrapnel fuses in one of her forward cargo holes [Music] she also carried 1959 passengers most of them women and children Lusitania sail from New York on a Saturday bound for Liverpool she had made over 200 trips across the ocean since recapturing the blue ribbon eight years earlier [Music] this journey would be her last [Music] [Music] the North Atlantic has always been a dangerous ocean but in the spring of 1915 there was more for Seger's to fear in the water than icebergs or violent storms it lived underwater a new kind of war machine the u-boat that carried a new kind of weapon the torpedo the war in Europe had become a war of attrition England needed supplies and they had to come by ship German u-boat captains had standing orders to sink any vessel that might be carrying war supplies that usually meant tankers or cargo ships but not always [Music] on the morning Lusitania set sail and no disappeared in a New York newspaper a warning in small type which attracted little attention passengers leaving America then departing for England were assured immunity from Germany if they took passage on the American learners but American learners were slower than they that the Lusitania was the ocean Queen the the Greyhound of the seas and there was a magnetic attraction about its high speed and the opulence of the ship and the surroundings and there was also a feeling of more excitement if we travel on the Cunard vessel we get some hint of the war we may see a submarine we may see a mine explored or a torpedo of course it won't happen to us but that would be more exciting voyage there was the sense of bravado prevailing [Music] my father did book tickets on the Titanic but I think as my mother was pregnant by her first child they probably thought better of and said we won't go we wait for the Lusitania [Music] they're very close to United family we were if we all survive we would have been sitting full of families or educated in England the rules traveled first class and love traveling there is such fun - Gabe I see anyway it's wonderful the life the board ship when I was actually ours wonderful it was a beautiful ship there's a lot of children on board a lot of them babies some from my age some older it's a shame [Music] not quite three years old it was a month before my birthday it happened in May and I my birthday's in June it's just my mother and I my dad stayed in the States she wanted to go home to see her mother and naturally she took me with her she wasn't gonna leave me behind and so that's why we went but Dad he was working he couldn't go and so he stayed here - very sweet very sweet person you can tell just by looking at her face [Music] after an uneventful crossing that took her six days Lusitania reached the coast of Ireland [Music] the seas were calm the weather was clear with patches of fog it was a little before two o'clock on a Friday afternoon in the first-class restaurant lunch was still being served and those who finished lunch came out on deck then two leaned over the rail to see if they could get any glimpse of this First World War they had been hearing about and some looked out for submarines or objects than in the water one even expressed a wish that a young lady expressed a wish to her father she said I hope we will get some trail before we reached Liverpool meaning some incident and war some wartime incident and she was not disappointed none of the passengers would have been aware that about 13 miles away a you vote on her way back to Germany was watching Lusitania through her periscope as it rounded the corner on the southeast coast of Ireland near the old head of kinsale the area was covered in fog the captain had to close on land he had to actually leave the channel and head in to get a bearing and ironically at that time the submarine was beyond range you could see that the ship but it was too far far away to fire at it [Applause] at 1:40 p.m. captain Turner made a 30 degree turn to starboard a maneuver that would bring him directly into the submarines line of fire [Music] aboard the u-boat captain Volta Schrager couldn't quite believe his luck it's interesting to guess what might be on his mind firstly he would have known that had he surfaced and give the fair warning there was every reason that he would be rammed by captain Tundra who had received hostile orders in 1915 that if he said his submarines he was to charge forward and RAM them with a sharp ro and if he sank one then he would get a handsome cash reward of 1,000 pounds so those thoughts must have gone through schwarz mind and he would also have very good reason to know that he was torpedoed in his ship carrying munitions to slaughter his fellow countrymen Schrager one small torpedo left not powerful enough to do much damage to such a large ship nonetheless when the liner had closed to seven hundred yards he launched it it was a few minutes past 2:00 o'clock [Music] on the bluffs above the Irish Sea the Henderson family was having a picnic female 7th as far as I was concerned the small boys mr. nordley day we went down for a picnic on to her favorite spot which was Kinsale beautiful Harbor and southern ireland glorious afternoon sun shining seemed calm a nice bluish gray sea and my father suddenly pointed out a big ship coming around what was court McSherry bay that point according to Cherry Bay interview I had never seen as big a ship as this before for massive funnels 300 smoking away merrily and we were fascinated as this ship came more or less towards us as she came up the channel and she was well was just about opposite us when there was 215 explosion we were having lunch or at the end of the lunch period and I was standing at the table with a spoon in my hand but my mother was on deck and standing with somebody who was I think smoking cigars I'm he said you see that it's a torpedo and that was it it just jerked the boat so everybody was scared we walked from the dining area straight out onto the deck if we've been lowered down we wouldn't been able to get up we didn't know what had happened but even on the lands it appeared the ship shuddering and very quickly afterwards there was a second explosion after the torpedo strike then of course within a minute the second mystery explosion occurred in the forward part of the ship and the effect of that has to cause a power failure so the ship has no blackout below decks almost immediately the ship began to list to starboard cold water rushed into the boiler rooms and the ship lost power the first class elevator stopped between floors trapping everyone inside below deck passengers trying to make their way to the lifeboats were plunged into darkness those who did make it topside found chaos lifeboats careening down the decks while capsizing when they hit the water 15 minutes after the explosion Lusitania 's decks were underwater three minutes later she was gone I was told my mother jumped overboard I have been told that I was saved by a purser who picked me up in his arms and jumped overboard with me in his arms into the lifeboat the last lifeboat because the ship was about ready to go down and very gradually the boughs went down and as the bars went down the stern came up until the propellers were out of the water and she was quite clear of the water and as an angle I would think of about 45 degrees she set poised and then as if just on the slide she slowly slid down quit quite dramatically pollute the waves the sea was boiling and the liner disappeared [Applause] behind her Lusitania left a trail of debris bodies and survivors that stretched for several miles only eight of her 48 lifeboats had made it into the water safely the first rescue vessels arrived over two hours after the liner had disappeared most of those people who hadn't made it into a lifeboat had already perished from the cold [Music] news of what had happened spread quickly so did the sense of outrage the one was appalled and shocked to learn that 1200 civilian lives had been slaughtered and [Music] they were especially shocked to read a constant of the days and shearing survivors limping ashore at Queens so late that evening and many of those survivors had appalling injuries from the explosions on the ship and many died within four or five hours of being landed ashore at Queenstown and the one was also shocked to hear tales in of lines of boats that followed in their rescues bring in a grim cargo of date clocks from the Atlantic and these dripping bodies were laid out on the walls and piers of Queenstown my mother said was one of the most awful things decisions she had to make because we were in Ireland for some time at Queenstown but go bed and she was there waiting for three months because waiting to see of my sisters when I would turn up which of course they didn't [Music] it was a horrifying business about 11 of 1,200 people killed largely Americans and it was popularly supposed to abroad America into the war but in fact America didn't enter the war for two more years but more than bring America into the war or service outrage it really served as an indication to Qun are done to the British and the Americans and the French to all the Allies that total war met civilians as well as servicemen and so that single torpedo that was fired at the Lusitania in May May 7 1915 served as a wonderful ending to a period of curiously myopic innocence if you look at all the lost liners I think the Lusitania is the the most tragic the Lusitania was a was a tragic act of war the captain of the German u-boat knew what he was firing at he knew it was a luxury liner with women and children and elderly people aboard it was an act of aggression a wanton act of war but how could one small torpedo sink such a large well armored ship in 1993 Ballard went looking for the answer if the Lusitania had been carrying contraband explosives that caused the second explosion then some of the blame belonged to Great Britain well there's a lot of controversy around the second explosion everyone knows that there was two explosions the Germans say they only fired one torpedo and all the evidence suggests that's all that happened they fired one torpedo and that was the blast everyone heard initially but followed moments later was this much stronger secondary blast and all sorts of theories have evolved over what caused that some say it was a war material that was stored aboard the ship and we do know that the Lusitania was carrying warm material but the Cunard Line claims it was non-explosive war material using an ROV named Jason Ballard mapped most of Lusitania exposed hull and was able to determine that the magazine where the explosives were stored were still intact a finding that seemed to exonerate Great Britain so clearly whatever was in the magazine war material or not did not explode so that leads us to other theories some people say that just back of the magazine there was gun cotton stored we have no evidence whatsoever that there was gun cotton aboard and so I don't know about that one no there's absolutely no evidence supporting that we have other people suggesting that there was a fine grain aluminium dust aboard and that that caused it but we have no evidence to support that when we were out there the only evidence we could find to support a theory other than the magazine exploiting which we know it didn't was that there was a coal dust explosion yet there's no record of any coal dust explosion of occurring during World War one on any other ship so we're still left with this mystery we'll probably never know what happened aboard Lusitania in the moments after the torpedo struck we do know what happened when she sank [Music] nearly 1200 people lost their lives including 100 children [Music] it was something that was sticking in my mind as it has done for the rest of my life and although time fades the little gray cells get worn out I can still sit here now and see that liner just sliding beneath the waves [Music] [Music] mid-summer near the mouth of the st. Lawrence River only a few miles from the site of a tragedy at sea that rivaled Titanic and Lusitania for loss of life [Music] at the turn of the last century a ship called the Empress of Ireland passed the small hamlet of Rimouski on its way to the Atlantic Ocean [Music] she never made it yet few people have heard the story of what Center to the bottom in 14 terrifying minutes [Music] for Bob Ballard what happened to the Empress on the night of May 28th 1914 and what's happened to her since is a story worth telling well what brings me here now is to visit the Empress of Ireland to go beneath the seed with the team of divers and explore the Empress see her for the first time I've never seen her before and I really just wanted to complete that final phase that final missing liner and make sure that people realize that the ship's still here and there's still a lot to to explore and and understand and to protect with Ballard is David Creighton whose grandparents were aboard the Empress when she sank there's so much to learn from a shipwreck it's not just a kind of spectacle a horror story there's more to it than that there are lives that were radically changed David and Bertha Creighton were images in a photograph every Creighton home had that photograph on their on their piano and the children would see this picture of old people and they've asked who are those people and then they would learn about a ship called the Empress of Ireland I went through that experience like all my cousin's and as I've got older they mean an enormous amount to me the river is beginning to widen here but land is still in sight as Ballard and his team approached the place where the Empress went down we came out of Rimouski out past the sea buoy then took a bearing of zero three five eight point two miles to the side of the wreck which is right of the distance from actually where it's sank to shore is less than five miles but no one could have made that the currents are too strong and the temperature is freezing so they would Ballard's first glimpse of the Empress comes as an image on the sonar scan [Music] ballard has come here with a trio of canadian divers who have spent years underwater exploring the wreck so i think the first thing is to sort of give a good reconnaissance from bow to stern they'll show the team's underwater cameraman bob cranston the rope photograph that part of the ship did philippe Beaudry has been diving on the Empress since 1965 so Mark Reynolds joined him in 82 mark Stanfield will provide technical support what is the most dangerous part of the ship I mean obviously deep penetration but it is possible as you're swimming along if you're not being very careful you can swim me into an overhead environment without realizing it and then as you raise up expecting to find water above you you find that you're actually have swimming swimming underneath the deck right that was earlier when we were working on the Titanic we tended to always use this upturned hull as our highway and then we would penetrate in come back to the highway full-on penetrated and come back I mean that's just how I've always worked these big ships if you got an eye if you start here can you end up on the bow or do you have to reenter the boat to go to the bow well that's a fair swim but it's I mean I've never dove on a 600 foot ship before I you know I don't know you'd be surprised you know it's a couple times down a football field yeah two football fields now I understand there are actual human remains aboard the ship now where are they located well one of the areas that there's the greatest concentration of them is in the Stewart's quarters whether or not we'll see anyone we're diving is are just very difficult to say the the silt inside shifts from you know week to week and sometimes they're exposed sometimes they're covered back by the silt I think you know we just want to personalize the ship and let people understand I mean the thing that so amazing about the Empress of Ireland is most people never heard of it I mean it had more passengers died on the Empress of Ireland and Titanic and yet you ask about the average person over the Empress of Ireland she's I don't know who is she and they think of it it's some human being as opposed to Canada's greatest maritime disaster [Music] among the passengers aboard the Empress was a middle-aged couple from Ontario this was a Sperry special trip for David and Bertha Creighton to be able to go together to England - best of our knowledge she'd never left the Canadian chores so it was keenly anticipated they were going to the Salvation Army International Congress in in London my grandmother Bertha Creighton was married at quite a young age she raised five children and she raised children with a great deal of humor and tenderness and strength and we see this in herself only in one letter that has survived and it was written on the train from Toronto to Quebec City and as the Train moves along she describes things seen out the window some chickens some people coming on in the province of Quebec and we're speaking French the trip from Toronto took about eight hours aboard a Canadian Pacific train then they would board a Canadian Pacific ship which carried passengers back and forth from the interior of the North American continent it was one of the company's selling points that someone could travel from Tokyo to Liverpool and never have to leave a Canadian Pacific conveyance in the early afternoon of May 28th the cratons arrived in Quebec City and went directly to their ship [Music] she was a large to funnelled vessel called the Empress of Ireland [Music] along with her sister ship with the Empress of Britain she was the pride of the Canadian Pacific Fleet a seasoned veteran that across the ocean nearly 200 times she was a fairly typical of for chef of her time that is to say of about the turn of the century built in nineteen and four and she was a big transatlantic liner by the standard supposed to the ships of those days [Music] she had an enormous crew who were largely concerned with the engine room she had over 130 people working in our engines putting coal and the boilers and generally keeping the ship moving [Applause] on this voyage 1,057 passengers were listed on the manifest first and second class were modestly booked third class as usual was nearly sold out and we must remember that the immigrant trade which we think of as being old one way was in fact not people used to go to the states and they would go out there for a while and then it would come back bringing their money with them and in the case of the Empress Thailand she was caring a large number of people who've been working in the States at the Ford Company in Detroit and when Ford took one of their cars out of production all his people went back to Ireland or Russia or where they come from [Applause] at 4:30 in the afternoon the Empress of Ireland set sail below-deck people got their first glimpse of their new accommodations they would be taken down to their quarters below deck and lodged probably in six or eight or ten berth cabins so if they were a large family and they frequently were they would have a cabin to themselves if not they would almost certainly share a cabin with several other people it was better than dormitory class accommodation but not very much better the cratons traveling second-class had their own cabin it had a bunk beds a nightstand a sink a writing table [Music] the first night aboard a ship was traditionally more casual than the rest and the cratons probably ate dinner their last meal around seven o'clock a veteran traveler like David would have consoled his wife that seasickness wouldn't be a problem until they reached the Atlantic until then they'd be on the st. Lawrence River where the seas were always calm and land was never very far away and if thoughts of the Titanic disaster two years earlier crossed anyone's mind passengers were assured that the Empress had more than enough lifeboats and a well-trained crew to man them so there really wasn't anything to worry about except perhaps getting a good night's sleep there would be plenty of time to explore the ship in the morning on the first day of exploration Ballard's command boat is anchored into position just above the Empress a boy warns divers that the Empress is protected by the Canadian government no artifacts may be removed one of the men responsible for the ships protected status is Philippe Beaudry Beaudry spent 30 years of his life diving on the Empress of Ireland taking whatever he could find then he had a change of heart and began an intense lobbying effort to protect what remained I think Philip voudrais change of philosophy is reflective of this change on the part of society if he can see the light then a lot of people should see the light the kind of voice you know that I heard you know almost from from heaven from God whatever and I felt an eye yet a mission you know to protect it why I know I really don't know why because that way yeah no reason someone had to and you became to someone yep yep now how long ago did Canada pass laws to protect the ship only a year ago so only recently yep very recently because the Empress lies in less than 200 feet of water it was possible to dive on it just after it sank using the primitive technology of the times those early divers blasted a hole in her hull to recover some silver bars she was carrying as well as the male then she sat there untouched and forgotten for half a century in 1965 Filippo dream made his first descent on the wreck and others soon followed [Music] in those days every part of the ship was considered fair game for salvagers [Music] phillipe Beaudry himself took so many artifacts from the Empress he was able to start a small Museum [Music] Mark Reynolds was another diver who took things from the wreck and then like Beaudry began to see his actions in a different light I didn't think that the removal of a plate or a comment had any impact on the wreck itself and through the through the course of diving over that many years I came to realize really that it's it's really not a commodity right it is a piece of history and everything that's removed from it diminishes it [Music] [Applause] may 28th 1914 a little past 9:00 in the evening the Empress was now about ninety miles out of Port dinner had been served and throughout the ship stewards were preparing the stateroom and cabins parents spent the last few moments with their children before sending them off to bed a few hands of cards were under way in the first class smoking room in the second class lounge The Salvation Army Band gave an impromptu concert [Music] and in his cabin David Creighton wrote a quick letter to his family our ms amperes of Ireland May 28 1914 my dear son bless you and Edith and Willy and Arthur and Cyrus and give us in due time the pleasure of meeting again with good news at all well enclosed is the note and will which you will have placed in that little ledger book I do believe you will all honestly try to be helpful to each other and do your best during our absence it was really brave of you all we will have a good budget of news to mail you when we land at Liverpool our very best affection and love for all let the others read this letter Papa and Mama around 1:30 a.m. the Empress passed the town of Rimouski two miles downriver she dropped off her pilot and the mail pouch [Applause] and it was David cratons letter the Empress was now in the hands of her captain George Kendall Kendall was 39 years old and had years of experience but this was only his second transatlantic crossing with the Empress and the first time he'd taken her down the st. Lawrence the Empress was now 200 miles out of Port most of the passengers had gone to bed and on the bridge of the Empress the first officer noticed the mast headlights of a ship approaching upriver he reckoned it to be about eight miles away and closing slowly on his starboard side our first thought I would like to go to the Val see the capstan Caesar winches see maybe done the the main mass which is broken and that's that's with V yet we made the go you know to the crew quarter because it's an easy place to go in but for the first die if I feel like according to our worst safety factors we don't want to go any further bhava first look over the top of the bow where that anchor is put the lighthouse put some lights on that anchor and then kind of go up over the side of the bow and of reveal that foredeck a little bit that's cool let's go in the water the beautiful one more excuse ya know it's a gorgeous let's jump in the water to take advantage yeah okay getting warm here so let's go all right let's go even in mid-summer the water in the st. Lawrence River is cold just a few degrees above freezing so the divers want to cover every bit of exposed skin they can all right Jay Paul says I'm more tender than many hours old I've worn again the Empress lies at a depth that's about the equivalent of a ten-story building so unlike Titanic and Lusitania this ship is easily accessible to divers I've never looked at one of these liners the same way each time it's been different when I found that Titanic it was with with undersea robots but then I actually got in a submarine closed the hatch and went down and and visited the Titanic on the ocean floor when I went to the Lusitania it was a combination of robots and a submarine here we're using divers and divers are carrying down camera systems and I'm hooked up from the surface I'm actually able to to talk with the divers and direct them as we penetrate into the ship and go and explore its exterior so again another way of doing it I've never done it this way a 300-foot length of coaxial cable connects the camera to monitors in the control room onboard the ship in just a few minutes Ballard will get his first look at the Empress and David Creighton will see something he's wondered about all his life images from his grandparents grave in these same waters nearly a hundred years ago the captain of the Empress stood with his first mate watching the lights of an oncoming ship it was now about two miles away captain Campbell was preparing to make a routine right side to right side pass when he and the other officers on the bridge thought they saw something unusual a sign that the approaching ship was changing course the officer the watch of the still stand made I think a an understandable but mistaken decision that the Empress was on his left-hand side and he ordered the ship to be put over to the right but the Empress wasn't on her left hand side she was on their right hand side at almost the same moment Campbell noticed a dense bank of fog rolling on to the river from the shore but wherever you get two ships or even one ship meets with disaster you nearly always find this this inexplicable element of sheer bad luck and I think that is true particularly at the Empress of Ireland within moments both ships were lost in the fog can Ville cut his engines and signaled with his foghorn that he was doing so then he waited uneasily all aboard the Empress the offices of the watch were looking out watching for the ship which they knew was somewhere close to them what they didn't expect to see was what they were horrified to see which was the inhalation colour coming straight towards them through the fog for about ten seconds Kendall watched helplessly as the unknown vessel bore down on him knowing that a collision was inevitable and she hit the line at the ship's most vulnerable point which was the bulkhead between the two engine rooms and she just cut her open as somebody said like like a cannon [Music] on board the Empress all anyone noticed was a gentle shudder within 30 seconds of the collision the ship's wireless officer sent out an SOS but was told the nearest rescue vessels were at least a half hour away for a long moment the star stats stayed lodged in the gas she had created then she broke free and was lost almost instantly in the fog water began pouring into the ship at the rate of 60,000 gallons a second much of it directly into third and second class cabins [Music] within a minute of the collision the liner's boiler rooms were flooded and the electrical power failed belowdecks over a thousand passengers were trapped in a ship they barely knew in the dark so far as the passengers in the third-class accommodation were concerned and afraid it's a very short story because most of them were drowned in their bunks a wall of water came through the hole which had been made by the Norwegians and they had no chance of getting out most of the survivors were from cabins higher in the ship or they were the crew who had been on duty and we're able to escape because they were up and dressed and alert at that time ten minutes after the ramming the Empress was on her side her funnels touching the water a few dozen passengers and crew stood on the hull as the ship sank then simply stepped into the sea when she submerged it all happened in the space of 14 minutes the water was extremely cold and people were not dressed for it they were not equipped for it they were not trained for it and even if they had been able to swim I think the shock of the cold water would have killed them almost immediately I think most people died very quickly which is perhaps one of the Meneses of the whole terrible incident meanwhile the store start lowered her own lifeboats and moved slowly back through the thick fog to see what had happened there was no sign of a ship but they knew where to go by the sound of the cries in the fog the first survivors began to appear visibility was so bad that people only a few feet from the lifeboats couldn't be seen most of them were still dressed in their night clothes the store starts lifeboats made their first trip back to the Collier packed with survivors including Captain Campbell on the second trip only a few of those they found in the water were still alive on the third trip they began picking up bodies of the ships complement of 1477 passengers and crew only 357 survived including four children and 11 members of the Salvation Army band David and Bertha Creighton were not among them [Music] moving along the railing half towards the anchor line we're letting out more tether Bob we're letting out more tether [Music] [Music] [Music] well it's very much like the Lusitania it's just the feel of it it's a shallow-water wreck so you have a lot of growth on it it's not that pristine surface like you get on that other Titanic or or even on the Britannic it's heavily encrusted because it's shallow it's a rich nutrient water of this high 48 degrees north so you get a lot of growth and that gives you limited visibility and everything is encrusted [Music] [Music] [Music] this is something that the family is not completely sure of but there's a notion that they were in a statement quite close to the area of collision where they click and if so it would mean an especially horrendous death and then if guard laced quick it would be quick it's hard to come to terms with it the sense of loss of disorientation almost sometimes those shots almost gives an ethereal effect ok are at the winch's at the base of the mast so you look like you're a midship [Music] or every time you come to one of these ships it's it's really a mixture of feelings but certainly sadness is a big part of it all because so many people's dreams ended here and that's sad I mean people began these journeys with great expectations in many cases hoping to start a new life and instead of starting a new life they ended their lives and and so when you come here that's an overriding feeling you have is that this is a very sad place and then the fact that the ships are no longer pretty in fact they've become corpses and in many cases very unattractive corpses it adds to that sense of sadness and an adze all in some ways a level of macabre stew it yeah [Music] it's sloping up to the right [Music] [Music] as long railing I think they have been that's reality at the bridge since we may not possess the only one that would be plunging down would be a transfer but that's they must be down here at the mask that's not gonna work [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the Empress of Ireland sank in 14 minutes David and Bertha Creighton perished in some way we know not how and their bodies were never recovered so at this time these two feelings are in conflict I I feel so excited to be with with people that are interested in the Empress of Ireland and the horror of it is is really starting to come through [Music] that's the anchor so they are a mission that's our line looks like they're headed back up [Music] now what's the most memorable declare eyes and you go you must have countless times closed your eyes and gone back into the ship where does your memory take you sometimes they're finding some what otherwise might seem an insignificant kind of artifact inside the ship for example there was a small set of children's doll furniture and at first I thought well isn't it wonderful that this piece has been preserved over the years and hasn't deteriorated and then you start to think of the connection it's not just a set of doll furniture it was something that on the father likely bought on on his travels you know with the expectation of taking it back to you know joyful little squeals from his daughter right and then the tragedy starts to seep back in it invades the whole diving experience here [Music] coming to this spot and thinking about the Empress of Ireland there's something religious about it I feel I'm doing homage to people who might deeply respect I feel I have a chance to think more deeply about what a family connection is what an individual can do in the space of a lifetime I feel that they made a huge contribution in their limited span of life I'd like to do the same if I are able to say anything to my to my grandparents at this time I'd say job well done may you rest in peace god bless you [Music] leaving the side of the Empress was for me fulfilling the Empress was my final lost liner and and did end 15 year journey of exploring the the great lost liners these ships are no longer lost they're found and we will deal with them forever they will never leave our consciousness [Music] [Music] some say afros later [Music] ah see a turn Oh [Music] ha but you who [Music] you [Music] two years [Music] turn No a costly to remand I was I'm tethered was I [Music] for without I [Music] ha what are you cool [Music] you took ah [Music] [Music] [Music] to [Applause] it's you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is PDS [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 455,392

Rating: 4.7407684 out of 5

Keywords: robert ballard, titanic, lusitania, ocean liners, empress of ireland, pbs, documentary

Id: gD_1_tm82EA

Length: 109min 9sec (6549 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 23 2019