The sinking of the Titanic is, to this day,
one of the worst catastrophes to come out of a long chain of unfortunate and untimely
events. And that chain that would decide the cruel
fate of the great Unsinkable Ship started with… a tiny key. It seemed like such an insignificant little
thing. So trivial that the man who’d had it with
him completely forgot to hand it over to the person who’d desperately need it at a critical
moment. That man was 37-year-old David Blair, and
he was holding the key to the locked cabinet where all the binoculars for the lookouts
were stored. And there’s nothing unusual about the keys
being with this man because Blair was to be the Titanic’s Second Officer. He’d worked on the ship during all its test
runs, and up until she was ready for departure, he was supposed to be onboard for the voyage. But as fate would have it, just before the
biggest ship of its time was ready to depart Southampton and head across the Atlantic to
New York City, there was a last-minute change of plans… White Star Line, the shipping company that
owned the Titanic, decided to replace David Blair with Henry Wilde, the Chief Officer
of the Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic. They saw him as a more experienced mariner
with better skills of running such large ships. Blair wrote in a postcard to relatives that
he was pretty upset about being replaced. In a hurry by the unexpected change or perhaps
because of this distress, Blair forgot to hand the key to the binocular cabinet over
to Officer Wilde! It might not seem like such a big deal, but
you must remember that sonar technology wasn’t a thing at the beginning of the 20th century. That’s why binoculars were of vital importance
because they were the only way to detect potential dangers early while navigating. Soon after the Titanic left the port, the
crew realized they wouldn’t be able to open the cabinet. But it’s not that they were panicked or
anything. The lookouts had sharp eyesight, and the ship
had been built and advertised to be “unsinkable” after all! They were confident that they could keep watch
without the binoculars, perhaps a little too confident… Fred Fleet was the lookout on duty that tragic
night the ship sailed its first and final voyage. Fleet would end up surviving the catastrophe
and later told the investigators that if he’d had binoculars, he would’ve noticed the
iceberg earlier and the crew would’ve had more time to steer the ship out of the way. Now, most people would be thinking, “How
on earth do you not see a giant iceberg big enough to take down the Titanic waaay before
the ship is even close to it? Witnesses say this thing was sticking out
of the water anywhere from 50 to 100 feet in the air, and it was around 200 to 400 feet
long. That’s almost too big to be a sudden surprise,
don’t you think? Well, here’s where you get more links in
that chain of unfortunate events that would defeat the unsinkable. Yes, the huge iceberg could’ve been noticed
earlier even without binoculars, but perhaps in different conditions. You see, it was the middle of the night, and
they were in the middle of calm ocean waters surrounded by nothing but silence and stark
blackness. No street or city lights, and, more importantly,
no moon… When you’re sailing at night on calm waters
under a moonless sky, believe it or not, it results in the worst conditions for nautical
visibility. There were no waves crashing up against the
iceberg to give an audible warning, and there was no moonlight reflecting off the giant
hunk of floating ice to make it sort of glow. Essentially, this thing really did pop up
out of nowhere, at least in the lookout’s field of vision. Not to mention, it’s believed that the iceberg
had turned upside-down shortly before the collision. It had probably lost more weight on one side
because of melting, which would cause it to flip over. This, in turn, exposed its lower part, which
was full of water and much darker than the upper one. Once Fred Fleet finally saw it at 11:39pm
on April 14, 1912 and famously reported “Iceberg! Right ahead!” to the command bridge, it
was already too late. They only had about 30 seconds to steer the
ship out of the way, and that wasn’t enough for a vessel this size going almost top-speed. And that’s where we run into another problem:
the decision to try and steer around it. First Officer William Murdock made the call,
but it might’ve been a better idea to just ram the iceberg head-on. Surprisingly, the consequences could’ve
been less dramatic. The bow of the ship would’ve been crushed,
and, yes, part of the crew and passengers from the front cabins wouldn’t have survived. But only 2 watertight compartments would’ve
been flooded. With that kind of damage, the Titanic could’ve
stayed afloat long enough for other ships to make it and save the rest of the passengers
and crew. But, they had such little time to weigh the
options. At 11:40pm, the 46,000-ton ship smashed into
the iceberg in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Her right side scraped 300 feet along the
ice, the hull buckled, the seams broke, and the water rushed into the damaged compartments. Thomas Andrews, the Chief Naval Architect
who’d designed the ship and was onboard as well, confirmed that the Titanic couldn’t
be saved. The passengers had to be evacuated immediately. Well, it was only downhill from there. Another cruel twist of fate is that there
was a desperate shortage of lifeboats, with 2,224 people on board and only enough boats
to save 1,178 lives. The ship was constructed as an unsinkable
one, so nobody seriously believed that the boats were needed at all. On April 15, at 2:20am, the Titanic sank to
the bottom of the ocean. Only 706 people survived… So what ever happened to David Blair and that
cursed key? Well, he realized his mistake too late. But he continued to work as a mariner and
even received a Bravery Medal from the Royal Humane Society in 1913 for saving a crewmember
of the Majestic. Blair, who was First Officer on that ship,
jumped into the water when the man fell over the side. Although the lifeboat sent to retrieve him
reached the man first, Blair was commended for his selfless act. As for the notorious key, for a long time
he kept it as a reminder of the tragedy he’d miraculously avoided. Then he passed it on to his daughter Nancy. In 1980 she gave it to the International Sailors
Society, but it’d later be sold at an auction held by Henry Aldridge & Son. The auctioneer said that it was one of the
most valued artifacts from the ship. And who’d argue with that? This key could’ve completely changed history
and saved the Titanic had it been onboard. It was sold in 2007 for £78,000, which would
be about $135,000 by today’s rate. That makes this key the 7th most expensive
artifact from the Titanic. On the 100th anniversary of the sinking, they
sold a letter written by 33-year-old Wallace Henry Hartley, a violinist and the bandleader
on the Titanic. He wrote to his relatives that the ship was
great, and he liked the guys from the band. He was going to come home on Sunday – the
next day after the Titanic was to arrive in New York. He sent the letter from Queenstown, Ireland
– the last stop before the doomed ship sailed into open ocean. The letter was sold for £90,000 (equivalent
to $125,000 today). But the most expensive, and no doubt the most
exclusive finding, is Hartley’s violin. He and his band famously kept playing on deck
while the ship was sinking to calm down the passengers and help them overcome panic. The brave musicians played up to the very
end, and, tragically, none of them survived. Later, newspapers wrote that the musicians
of the Titanic were among the noblest people in maritime history. Hartley’s violin was found almost immediately
after the sinking, and the instrument was given to his fiancée. She’d given it to him as a present before
he departed. After the tragedy, she passed it on to the
British Salvation Army. But for almost 100 years, the violin was thought
to be lost until it reemerged in 2006 when an amateur musician found it in his parents’
attic. After that, experts spent 7 years examining
it and finally announced that the instrument was authentic. It was sold for a jaw-dropping price of £900,000
($1.3 million today). Most of the people who buy these sorts of
artifacts are Titanic memorabilia experts and collectors with the goal of keeping such
historical items safely preserved so that they – and what they remind us of – are
never forgotten! So now it’s your turn: Do you think that
key could’ve changed history, or were there too many untimely coincidences that sealed
the Titanic’s fate? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. If you learned something new today, then give
this video a like and share it with a friend. But don’t go looking for any more missing
keys just yet! We have over 2,000 cool videos for you to
check out. All you have to do is pick the left or right
video, click on it, and enjoy! Stay on the Bright Side of life!
