Whale strikes did happen,
and there were angry whales that would pursue boats of whalers when they were out hunting
them to take them down. Hi. I'm Jim Delgado. I'm a maritime archeologist and historian. I've been in the business for 45 years and worked on over 100
shipwreck investigations. Today we're going to be
looking at shipwrecks in movies and TV and
judge how real they are. Lost. Not gone. Didn't happen. It's pure Hollywood. We're talking about Magellan's ships. Fernão de Magalhães,
or Ferdinand Magellan, as he was called, went out into the Pacific
in the early 16th century. He starts out with five ships, and basically one gets home. The wrecks that were left behind, one went up on a beach and was burned, the other one sank. So discovering a ship from Magellan in an underground cave in the Philippines, ain't gonna happen. Cloves. Those cloves would have been, first off, not even still in a barrel. They would not have retained any smell. But there's more to it
that also just makes me go, "Oh, yeah. Right." They're sitting in a cave. It's open. Rain's going to get in there, and dry rot is going to set in real fast. The fact that you still have sails intact after 400 years, no. That you have the wood intact,
that you can walk around, no. Here's your gold you've been looking for. You happy now? Oh, no. I've only worked on one wreck where we found a tiny little
bag of 58 silver coins. This myth of shipwrecks having treasure has been disastrous for archeology. We know more about ancient
Roman wrecks, for example, than we do about the ships
from this time period because everybody thinks
they're full of treasure and treasure hunters have just
torn them apart in the past. That drives me crazy. Holy s---. The gold? Yeah. It would have survived. It would've been that way, but you start kicking gold over like that, that beautiful mask would've been dented. Gold is soft. So unless he wanted to melt it down, he was really not being
a smart treasure hunter. That chopper would not have been able to pick this big, heavy thing up. It's not only got the
whole entire wooden hull, it's got ballast. It's
full of rock at the bottom. The condition this thing is in, no matter the net or not,
it would've broken open. Whenever we raise a ship,
we do so piece by piece. For about every dollar we
spend in excavating a ship, we spend over $10 to take
care of it and to preserve it. So it's rare when we'll
actually raise an entire ship. I'd give this a one out of
10 just for the eye candy. No way. I'd never try to thread
a needle like this. It's way too tight, and all the wrecked ships would be a clear warning sign to me to not go there unless I
had a really good reason. What we generally call a setting
like this is a "ship trap," dangerous places where
you've got a narrow passage. They're places with reefs that generally aren't seen
until the last minute, and that includes spots
like Bermuda and its reefs, where there's plenty of wrecks, or the Dry Tortugas,
famous in pirate lore, off the coast of Florida. Terrible as that is, you see sharks occasionally around wrecks because wrecks usually attract fish. For sharks, that's
ringing the dinner bell. I'll give it a three out of 10. OK, take her up and over the bow rail. The submersibles are real. They're the Mir-1 and the Mir-2. They're no longer working,
but I've dived in those subs. I was part of an expedition in 2000, and I came back as chief scientist. We completely mapped all
of Titanic on the outside. These subs are 6 feet in diameter. Nickel steel, really thick. Those tiny little portholes are set in, made of thick Lucite, because you have to withstand 6,000-pounds-per-square-inch pressure. This gives you a sense of
just what the pressure is. This is an ordinary Styrofoam cup that I brought down in a mesh bag tied to the outside of the sub. This full-scale Styrofoam
cup was made this small and this tough by
6,000-pounds-per-square-inch pressure. That's real footage. So, in making the movie, Cameron's actually explored
a great deal of Titanic, and those things that dangle down, we see them on deep-water metal wrecks. They're called rusticles, but it's not really a
process of corrosion. There's a bacteria that lives down there called titanicae Halomonas that
was discovered on the wreck, and it actually eats the metal. Titanic is slowly being eaten, but it's not going to
go away anytime soon. The scientists that we've worked with estimate that there will still be a recognizable hull of
Titanic for hundreds of years. OK, let's drop down to B deck. OK, A deck. This is absolutely 100% accurate. These robots are ROVs, for
remotely operated vehicles. In my last mission to Titanic, in 2010, we didn't go in subs, we sent those down, and with these robots and
with lighting systems, you could see so much more of Titanic. Brock: That's Hockley's bed. [James sighs] This brings back a lot of memories. Everything we saw, for
the most part, is real. You see personal items. I've never seen the piano,
but it makes perfect sense. Having seen other footage that
didn't make it into the movie from Jim's dives, where you see remains of chests that still have chinaware in them. When they went into that cabin, the first thing you
saw was that fireplace. That's real. The bed is real. Now, then they reproduced that in the film to give you that sense of being inside. So I can see the difference
in what was shot on the wreck with what was shot on set. Those are the crisper,
clearer, more color in them. Whereas on Titanic, the
stuff's a little bluer, and thanks to that work
that Jim and the team did, we have a much better sense
of the interior of Titanic that we never would've had before. I'd give this film a 10 out of 10. Hit. Hit. Yes. Oof. There's always a bit
of license in a movie. But I think this is a
pretty good impression of what happened when the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by the
Japanese submarine I-58 towards the end of World War II. Of close to 1,200 guys, 316
were ultimately rescued. This is the single greatest loss of life in a single ship that
the US Navy suffered. It looked like three torpedoes
were launched from the I-58. We have a sense from survivor accounts and looking at the wreckage
that at least two hit, and one did hit near the bow
and basically blew it off. The other one hit amidships,
which we also see happening. Hitting it amidships, right in the heart, not only opened up another big hole, it also killed the power. And you see that the engine
room is not responding. They have lost steam.
They've got fuel oil on fire. Electrical systems are down. That was the fatal blow. Jump now! As to whether or not the torpedo's
going all the way through or that's other things, it's hard to say. Now, I've looked at a
merchant ship torpedoed by a Japanese ship using
the same type of torpedoes. What I saw was it creates a bubble of super-pressurized water that just tears through the
steel like it's wet cardboard. Jump! You couldn't stay on the ship. It was going to be sure death. If you can't get that fire out, the smartest thing to
do is to abandon ship. Generally, abandon ship is supposed to be a more orderly thing, but
in something like this, you have flames everywhere, and men were walking through those fires, they were being burned,
and it's full of fuel oil that is rapidly spreading the fire not only throughout the
ship but on the water. Clearly, in that case, there's
no time to get everybody in the boats and do this
in an orderly fashion. So, pretty accurate,
particularly in wartime. The way they depict the sinking more or less confirms not
only what the survivors said but also Capt. Hashimoto of
the I-58, who, with his crew, witnessed the end of Indianapolis. But what also helps inform it was the rediscovery of the
wreck deep in the Pacific. And that is how a big ship like that, even a heavily armored warship, no power, no pumps, fires everywhere, the ship open to the sea is
going to go down that fast. I would give this a nine out of 10. I can't watch this without thinking, "There but for the grace of God go I." This story speaks to a ship
that only became famous because an amazing book
was written about it and then a film. But in 1991, Andrea
Gail, a fishing vessel, sails out in this perfect storm that claimed them and other ships. Many years ago, I was part
of a team that went out to try to find Andrea Gail,
and we didn't find it. But what the film shows is them encountering,
basically, a rogue wave. Rogue waves usually are not storm waves. They're a big wall of water
that's formed elsewhere and come out of nowhere
on a otherwise calm sea. They used to be misbelieved.
It was a sailor's story. But now that we have satellite views, we can actually see them from
space forming and moving. This wall of water is pretty big. Bigger than perhaps I might have thought. I think there's a little bit
more of Hollywood in that. There was nothing they could do other than try to go over that wave. If you turned around and tried to run, it would've came right down on them and sent them straight to the bottom. In some conditions, ships do capsize. When a ship capsizes, it's basically caught by
the sea and rolled over. If there's air trapped inside the hull, it can stay afloat for some time. In this case, what we see is that the air gradually comes
out as the ship is moving, and the crew deep inside are trapped. This movie captures the essence of what it means to have
to go to work on the sea and not be able to come home. For that, I give "The Perfect
Storm" a 10 out of 10. Dory: Hey, look, balloons! It is a party! So, what we see is a wartime wreck. It's a submarine. As to
whose it is, hard to say. Looks sort of like an American-type
sub from World War II. In a minefield. The type
of mine with those horns? Yeah, that's a little more common to, say, the World War I era than
the World War II era. But yes, there have been submarines that have been found in naval minefields, but you just wouldn't have
everything still floating around, because after wars, they
spent a lot of time and money going around and getting
those mines out of there. That torpedo would've been deadly. Explosives can last a
long time underwater. Anytime we've been on
the bottom or on a wreck, you stay away, because they could go off. Depending on how deep the water is and the length of the bubble
created by the explosion, it might not be seen on the surface and maybe only as a
slight little bubble bath, as the two pelicans experience. My granddaughter loves it. And so in terms of Kaylee's satisfaction, Grandpa'd give it a 10 out of 10 for that. In terms of accurately
depicting a shipwreck, I'll give it a five. What we see here is what we
call progressive flooding. Ships are designed to keep water out. So when water starts to come
in, if you can't get it out, if you can't keep pumping it out -- pumps are the only means that you have to keep water
outside of the ship -- then you lose your buoyancy
and the ship will go down. This gives us a sense of when
you are caught in a storm and your ship takes a battering and you just can't stop
the water from coming in. I've been in a storm at
sea in weather like this. If they hadn't been able
to get the power back and to get the ship upright, I'd be down at the bottom of the sea now with the rest of the team. So this brings back a
pretty powerful memory of how easy it is to go
from ship to shipwreck. I'd give this film an eight out of 10 in terms of depicting
a high-seas shipwreck caught in the grip of
the sea and bad weather. Whale strikes did happen,
and there were angry whales that would pursue boats of whalers when they were out hunting
them to take them down. What we're looking at
is Hollywood's depiction of Nat Philbrick's book
"In the Heart of the Sea," which tells the story of the whaler Essex, which on the Pacific in 1819
was stove, as they said, or rammed by a whale and sunk. But the whale damages more in this scene and in a different way
than what history tells us. Owen Chase is the mate. His story, as well as the
account of the captain, talk of a whale that may
just have been confused, and in that, the edges of
the planks held together and keeping the water out
were pushed by the force, so the water began to come in. But not so fast as to
immediately sink the vessel. The way they depicted things
was a little more rushed. It stayed afloat for enough time to elapse so these guys could get supplies, get their boats ready,
and leave without a panic. But what they're doing
is absolutely right. You take sails and other
things so that you can rig cover for your guys in
the sun as well as sail. And the fire, that didn't happen. I'll rate the film, based on
Nat's book, about a seven. What these guys were trying to do is probably turn the steering a bit, and they're turning that
starboard bow thruster to push their vessel
off of the other side. So, turning bow thrusters alone,
which are down in the hull, and they basically have propellers, they're not really there for navigation, and I doubt they would
have had enough effect. So, plausible that they knew
what was going to happen and were just trying to
keep it from striking in and to give them a little extra leverage to stay off the other ship. Given the angle they had
it hit at, it's plausible. Those vessels are built strong. I could see that not punching
through and hanging up. Striking the other vessel like that could have ended in them locking up, certainly slowing them down a bit. [laughs] Wow. It's possible they could
have gone a little further given the speed they were, but what kind of a seawall is there? If it was running up on a
beach, then yeah, maybe. I would say that the ship probably would've stopped before that. But then you wouldn't have had that moment where it comes in and scares the tourists and the guy with his fancy car and the great scene with
the dog bark in defiance. I mean, that's just Hollywood
at its most dramatic best. I'll give this a seven out
of 10, just because it's fun and it does give you a
sense of the power of ships and why we try to keep them
from hitting each other. It's entirely possible for a ship to break apart and to split, particularly in the early
days when they're coming up with welding as opposed to
riveting ships together. So what we're looking at
is a depiction in film of a real-life event where two tankers, and the one we're looking at is Pendleton, split in two in a storm
off New England in 1952. They're World War II-built tankers. Quickly assembled, welded, and these T2 tankers, as they were called, some of them had welding problems. And what happened with these ships is they broke in two, bow and stern. It's entirely plausible. These ships, particularly
wartime-built ships, were built knowing, with the battle of the Atlantic
and U-boats torpedoing, with watertight bulkheads,
if you lost one portion, you could stay afloat. In terms of navigating it, purposely being steered into a shoal, that's not what history says. What history says is
that it drifted up there, and it was driven there by the force of the storm and the waves. So while this is a
dramatic Hollywood moment, you do get the sense of
these guys keeping their head and keeping steam up and some
power so that they had light. I'll give it a nine out of 10. At 800 feet. Passing through thermocline. All my life support is in the green. Wow. I've worn one of those suits in a moon pool to test it out. They're called a one-atmosphere suit. Basically, it's like a suit of armor that you wear like a sub. Hard suits were rated to go initially about
1,500 feet down to 2,000. The depth they're at, perfectly right. Salazar: It's a phantom jellyfish. The phantom jellyfish is absolutely real. I think all told, less than 30 have been
spotted on deep-sea missions. They do glow, and those arms,
they can be about this big. They can be as deep, we've seen, as up to 21,000 feet. And it's another reminder that there's so much life down
there that seems alien to us but that we are constantly encountering. Salazar: I've never seen one this color. Salazar, we just lost Jackson's vitals. Checking vital signs is
absolutely part of a mission. You gotta do it. You got a human being in that. Not counting Namor and
vibranium and all of that, in terms of depicting what these suits do, I'd give that scene a 10 out of 10. My favorite shipwreck in a movie or a show has to be "Titanic," because it's a wreck that everybody knows, and it's a wreck that has been depicted in movies throughout time. And all of them ultimately focus on why I, as an archeologist,
study shipwrecks. These are people stories, and through shipwrecks we
learn more about people. Thank you for watching, and if you enjoyed this video, why don't you click on the video above?
