Timewatch: Myths Of The Titanic

[Music] when Titanic and her sister ship Olympic were built in 1911 they were the largest and safest ships afloat and yet Titanic sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on the 15th of April 1912 of over 2200 passengers and crew only 705 survived all the rest were lost there was the loss of the Empress of Ireland in 1930 when then during the First World War there was a loss of Lusitania and then much later in the Second World War there was little uncle's love but Titanic is the quintessential shipwreck in the minds of the public it has all the drama or all the tragedy and that's really what Titanic represents the story is told and retold and a constant stream of books and films some of the stories are true many are myths time--which tries to unravel the reality from the fiction and account for the public seemingly endless fascination with Titanic there are many myths surrounding the Titanic but the central myth the myth which underpins all the rest was first told in Belfast in the shipyard where she was built well when I was a boy growing up and there first my father was working in the shipyard he did all the lovely wood work on the ships and he kept telling me of a discrete ship that he was having the bells called the Titanic so one Sunday he took me down to the Queens Road to the shipyard and he told me to look up and I saw the great Titanic and the gantry it was a huge piece of stained cedar each the sky it was so high I'm a cinema no endureth ever so long and I said the dad her could that big ship stay up on the water and there's words to this day I'll ever forget her significant they were so big ship will always stay off from the water and their first we called it the unsinkable ship she was the largest ship afloat her decks rising as high as an 11-story building and she was safe there were 15 watertight bulkheads if water got into one it couldn't get into the next two all intents and purposes Titanic was unsinkable and yet she sank and in that moment Titanic captured the public's imagination and has held it ever since but why people see the 1912 are our people dressed for dinner and they had manners and everything was the gilded age and today that's all gone well I think the Titanic had something like eight courses for us particularly meal this is what captivates the people of today they don't know such things people today are holding Titanic dinners now with the same menus that they had then to be a part of an era that will never live again the stories which captivated the public's attention in 1912 mostly came from the glittering first-class passenger list Colonel and mrs. Astor worth a cool 80 million pounds mr. B Guggenheim the famous millionaire playboy the young and beautiful Countess of Rothes with her cousin and maid mr. and mrs. Straus owners of Macy's department store in New York mrs. Molly Brown the rags to riches story from Denver Colorado and Jack Thayer traveling with his parents leading members of Philadelphia society also on board for this maiden voyage was mr. Bruce Ismay Chairman and Managing Director of the White Star Line which owned Titanic and Captain Smith himself the Commodore earning one thousand two hundred pounds a year where other captains were lucky to get half that amount Titanic is a is a wonderful example a cross-section if you like of society in 1912 where you have the the very top decks of the ship are devoted for first-class and then below them a second-class accommodation below them as third-class accommodation practically on the waterline and right beneath that in the bowels of the ship along with the boilers and the reciprocating engines of the turbine and where all the cargo was kept you have the the crew the firemen and the trimmers so you really have like a miniature city afloat but also within that city the class system itself all were embarked on the most luxurious ship ever built more like a Grand Hotel than a ship with its opulent staterooms panel smoking rooms fashionable dining rooms first class cabins with four poster beds and fireplaces with real coal and a gym swimming pool and Turkish baths plus the Marconi wireless room so that passengers could send and receive messages through the very latest invention of the wireless Telegraph there were over 800 officers and crew some 500 above decks and 320 below and they too would have their stories to tell Sid said Daenerys father was assistant to the third class chief steward my father's age already served on the Adriatic in the Olympic so this was an effect of promotion but he got fitted out going on during the ownership when you considered each pay was made a month and I imagine he must have gone into debt well of course moving on to the Titanic was a security future as I thought Barbara's grandfather was the Stuart in the first-class saloon serving the Countess of Rothes my grandmother was a passenger being served at the table that Bob's grandfather was on she was going to join my grandfather who was already in America she had a cousin as a companion and her personal maid was very excited at a time because he'd been on the Adriatic and went transferred to the oceanic and then when the Titanic came about being an artist ship at a time and most luxurious he was fortunate enough to go on the Titanic and he had worked himself up from third second-class and he became a first-class to insured and serves McKenna's Ross the last letter from the Titanic it was posted at Queenstown and it mentions he's got a five table and he's serving a young lady very sweet oh she was a first-class passenger certainly enjoying what they took to be what they were expecting read everybody waiting on him hand and foot literally a table number eight was the flamboyant mrs. Molly Brown of Denver Colorado who later became known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown molly was sort of a self-made woman which was something very different than most of the first-class women aboard Titanic the Browns made their money in Leadville Colorado and they struck the richest vein of gold that had ever been found in the United States up until that time they did come to Denver and tried to reach the highest levels of society that they could and Molly would always eclipse the other ladies in her opera gowns and in her dress but she didn't get invited necessarily to the most exclusive society parties it wasn't until her heroism and the and a disaster that the women of the sacred 36 which was the most elite of Denver society families invited her to a luncheon in her honor and really welcomed her with open arms on Sunday April the 14th life on board Titanic was proceeding according to plan Sunday service was over and the first-class passengers were promenade on deck the sea was calm the sky was clear only the sharpening air signaled the approaching ice field down in third class it was comfortable and warm the white style I made its real profit from third class passengers and Mail Titanic had taken on over a hundred Irish immigrants at Queenstown and another 275 of all nationalities at Cherbourg belowdecks the engineers and Stoker's and trimmers were making sure Titanic held to her speed of 22 knots in 1912 everyone knew their place Titanic was organized strictly according to class Titanic represents a whole of society from the very rich to the very poor and remember the poor people on Titanic they really work for because these weren't just poor travelers they were people looking for a new life a new world in America a life free of class distinctions on Titanic the first-class deck was for first-class passengers only on that fateful Sunday in 1912 passengers were unaware that i'ts warnings had been coming in to the Marconi wireless room throughout the afternoon and evening Jack Phillips the wireless operator was overworked sending passengers private messages the ice warnings were an irritating interruption he passed them to his assistant bride who took them to captain Smith and the officers on the bridge at about 9:00 p.m. Titanic entered the ice field ahead lay icebergs as high as skyscrapers and a solid as rock they were three thousand years old and weigh five hundred thousand tons but captain smith viewed icebergs as a natural hazard and steamed on at 10 p.m. the lookouts changed in the crow's nest fred fleet scanned the horizon he saw nothing but at 11:40 the iceberg loomed out of the darkness and Titanic hit it fleet raised the alarm but it was too late below decks the engineers and Stoker's went into frantic action on the upper decks people hardly looked up they'd only been a slight shudder some went on deck to see if they could spot an iceberg there was no cause for concern after all Titanic was unsinkable but the iceberg has sliced clean through five watertight bulkheads it was only a matter of time before Titanic would sink and so the myths of heroism and villainy began and have been told and retold ever since the midst of this Titanic started immediately as soon as the first news came by Wireless to the US and Britain and other countries in fact one of the stunning things about the Titanic disaster is that there were full-blown stories before there was any reliable information at all newspapers across the United States were already running a story explaining that John Jacob Astor than the Strauss's and Guggenheim had stood back heroically while they assured women and children into lifeboats to be saved and nobody had told anybody anything about these things and so it was it was what was expected it was what people needed to hear in the wireless room Phillips sent out frantic SOS messages but few ships had a wireless set and the liner Carpathia which was coming to the rescue was some 50 miles away too far to reach the Titanic in time but the passengers knew nothing of this and continued their evening as usual the Countess of Rothes had retired to her cabin with her cousin and her maid we struck the iceberg at a quarter to twelve on Sunday night and until one o'clock no one realized any danger or really knew what had happened then the order came to be dressed and have lifebelts on I sent my Oni up at once when the order came but she wanted to wait for us which was grand at a moment like that so they went up on deck but throughout of course they were all convinced that the ship was unsinkable so danger and panic and fear didn't enter the thing at all when you're in service your attention is to look after others rather than look after yourself perhaps there's no stays of us women and children first and the men stood back and did what they could up on deck officers began to organize the lifeboats women and children first [Music] some third-class passengers got up on deck but most were trapped five decks below with little chance of getting out it's the officers and the first-class men have a monopoly on heroism in this story steerage passengers at best are talked about in all at worst are described as the crazed crowds who are trying to crowd into the boats and have to be beaten back by the officers this myth of first-class heroism is everywhere in the culture in 1912 but the figures tell a different story 38% of all first class passengers were lost 58% of second class but 74% of third class in fact more men from first class survived and children from third class but despite this disaster captain Smith still became the greatest hero of them all the captain who went down with his ship it's quite an extraordinary myth that has grown up around Captain Smith and it's so difficult to say things against it because when you've got a bronze statue to somebody and books written about them even poetry stories of Captain Smith swimming in the water with a baby in his arms and putting the baby in the lifeboat and then waving goodbye saying good luck lads and he's never seen again all these stories all these myths grew up around Captain Smith blinding the public to the astonishing truth the Captain Smith failed everybody on that ship that night Smith was aware of the iced warning messages yes because there was a large number that came in very large number in the Marconi archives there are some hundred and forty ice warning messages not all to the Titanic but to the various ships involved in the world about 20 ships in the vicinity Captain Smith was aware of the ice situation but he tended to ignore them he preferred to continue at some 21 and a half knots almost full speed in a very serious situation you couldn't blame captain smith captain smith had died the myth factory says that he died like a man he died a hero's death they even had records produced be British stand by a post singing songs about Captain Smith this heroic ship master that did everything he possibly could to save his passengers the idea that dying on Titanic made a man a hero was developed further in Hollywood in the 1950s it was told differently in the 1950s for example in the 1953 movie Titanic with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck even though it's clearly set in 1912 it's very much about 1950s issues it's a very American film it's a story about domesticity about American wholesomeness about what constitutes healthy and happy family and marriage and you say there's no danger Julianna fade you don't have the Clifton Webb character this so pseudo aristocrat who's been corrupted by a life of frivolity and his wife Barbara Stanwyck takes their two kids it runs off from Europe and wants to bring them back to the wholesome American Midwest of the heartland will they'll grow up and uncorrupted remember number six I believe we're ready in the 1953 film they invented a fictional story that would tell a tale that resonated with American audiences in particular the Clifton Webb character has been a bad husband but in the end he redeems himself of course by saying lots of women and children and even though Clifton Webb goes down with the ship in effect he saved their marriage and saved their American family by doing so but for every hero in the Titanic story there is a villain and in 1912 the chief villain was mr. J Bruce Ismay chairman of the White Star Line well the the flipside of the the first-class men's monopoly on heroism is that if you were a man and you got off this ship alive then you had some explaining to do and so the villain of the stores J Bruce Ismay who was the director of the White Star Line and got into a lifeboat and got away and was widely vilified for doing it and it actually purulent his life the press themselves wanted to find somebody to blame for the loss of the ship those largely came from papers controlled by William Randolph Hearst he was a newspaper Baron in the United States a very powerful man and he and Bruce's may have met many many years before and the 2-minutes fallen out and then when Titanic sank I think Herstal well this is a golden opportunity to get my own back on Bruce Ismay and he did it with great relish the worst accusation against dismay was that as chairman of the White Star Line he was responsible for the lack of lifeboats on Titanic in fact the Board of Trade regulations had allowed this but the newspapers blame dismay for it and for much else besides and then you had passengers on the ship on the Titanic saying well yes I overheard a conversation where Bruce Ismay was saying that we're going to get into New York a day ahead of schedule and some of the passengers related these stories to the press so suddenly Titanic is not only being controlled by Bruce Ismay who's just a passenger now he's somehow an auxilary captain on board but he's also making poor Captain Smith drive his ship faster than he really wanted to thereby indirectly causing the loss of Titanic another myth that was created reinforced again and again and again by newspaper stories and it's William Randolph Hearst who's responsible for nicknaming Bruce Ismay J Bruce Ismay and saying that the white star flag should be changed to that of the yellow liver all the other myths surrounding is may came after that a suggestion that he wore a dress or in some way disguised himself or that he demanded to get into a lifeboat that never happened the crime really was that he his life was saved and that of many other people was lost he undoubtedly did wish at times that he had not survived the personal abuse that was heaped on him was wood was to him and would have been to anyone extraordinarily hurtful and the fact that many much of it was unfair and fabricated must have made the hurt even greater to him I think but the fact remained there weren't enough lifeboats to go round nothing like enough only 20 enough for 1178 people and there were over 2200 people on board who should be saved and who should die in 1912 it was women and children first second officer Lightoller was organizing lifeboats on the portside light allah was another officer hero and his story quickly became part of the myth of Titanic dramatically retold in the 1950s film a night to remember with Kenneth Moore playing Lightoller 1950s Britain he was so important to have films that would make the British public feel good after the horrors of the Second World War what better opportunity than to have a real thoroughly British film even though it's a tragedy it has got heroic characters in it that's the perfect vehicle to cast somebody like Kenneth Moore in a film like that we've got to get these boats away we are getting them away you want me to drown everybody because that's what would happen if I lower the boats too quickly so he was perfectly cast as the 50s matinee idol playing a British hero but the way the light hollow was portrayed in the film it's a complete distortion of what actually happened that night the fact is the real light Allah was sending off lifeboats quarter even half empty he stuck rigidly to women and children first so did Kenneth Moore in the film but his lifeboats were full if you were a male passenger in 1912 you had five times more chance of getting into a life built on the starboard side than on the portside light other side it's very difficult to criticize Lightoller because again the myth factory takes over he's the second officer of RMS Titanic he knows he was there when those conversations were being made that Titanic is going to sink nobody in their right mind would fill a lifeboat with women and children and when there are no more women and children left not fill up the remaining spaces with men and yet might Allah did that were still some 1,000 third-class passengers and crew were trapped below desperately trying to find a way up onto the boat deck as they climb from deck to deck the water seeped up behind them by 1:30 Titanic was beginning to go down and there were few lifeboats left I think the whole thing was a shambles it was quite clear there was no provisions at all for the event when it came no one knows where the third-class passengers were kept below on captain's orders but the fact is there were no lifeboats left she third-class passengers never had access like a second and inferred and they were in the extreme ends of the ship so every everything was really against from the moment that Smith realized that Titanic was going to sink Smith's command disintegrated onboard Titanic I think he had some sort of mental collapse I think the magnitude of the disaster the coming disaster was too much for him to take you know here he is the captain of the world's most famous passenger ship he's the Commodore of the White Star Line how could this possibly happen no one knew or cared in the mounting chaos as women and children were put into the lifeboats but now as Molly Brown's chance to make her mark and go down in history she grabbed an oar and began to row by the 1950s she become the subject of a Broadway musical and by the 1960s a story had made it to Hollywood Molly got the Unsinkable nickname right after the disaster when she came off the ship and the reporters met her they asked her how did you survive and she said Oh typical Brown luck I'm unsinkable Americans love a big colorful hero who's larger than life yeah I think the Molly Brown the story's really an American story of the self-made person they love the idea that maybe Denver society was stacked against her and that she prevailed despite them all and really showed them and then of course the myth that everybody would love to believe is that she and her husband got back together after the sinking of the Titanic when she was nearly lost that did not really occur she and mr. Brown remained separated they decided that the Molly Brown film needed to be a love story so they had to give payoff at the end and as you noticed there are no children shown in the story but of course by the time the Titanic sank Molly's two children were grown and she had one grandchild my father as Molly Brown rode away from the sinking Titanic the Countess of Rothes was still on deck waiting her turn while my grandmother and her companion found the captain putting people into the different lifeboats and she was told to get into lifeboat number eight with her companion and her maid which they did and then they the lifeboat was lured not I must say full but they were lowered because you had to get the boats away or somehow since there were only two crewmen the countess took the tiller as for mrs. Straus of Macy's store she refused to leave her husband we've been together for 40 years and we'll stay together now she said mr. Guggenheim went to change into his evening dress he meant to die like a gentleman mrs. Thayer got into a lifeboat watched from the deck by a husband and son Jack not long after Jack was separated from his father in the chaos he never saw him again Jack stood by the ship's rail and wondered what to do it must now have been about 1:50 a.m. and as far as we knew the last boat had gone so many thoughts passed so quickly through my mind I thought of all the good times I had had and of all the future pleasures I would never enjoy of my father and mother of my sisters and brother I looked at myself as though from some far-off place I sincerely pitied myself [Music] it was now 2:15 a.m. we could see the water creeping up the deck as I recall it the lights were still on even then to see all the men covered with the dirt and grime of the boiler room lined up on deck awaiting orders was a grand inspiring sight not a single engineering officer or engineer was saved Jack finally left off Titanic and survived but not the band they played on and went down with the ship just seven of the 1503 who died that night my father's body was famed on the 24th April and airing on the 23rd see release him we've got the satisfaction of knowing what did happen to him clearly he got up on death himself as the watch indicates well you can see it was about 10:00 to 2:00 and the last of the main lifeboats went at quarter to 2:00 so that's the time must have gone in the water and I often wonder just what happened but the ship's barber when he gave evidence he said he was helping with the lifeboats and it suddenly the Titanic gave it lurched forward and he was picks into the sea and he said eventually when he looked his box they have stopped at 10 to 2 so I don't know speculation I have my wonders if that's what happened to me Father [Music] why did no one come to the rescue it was captain Lord of the California who found himself blamed the California was a medium-sized freight steamer and lured a captain of many years experience Lord had taken the precaution of stopping at the edge of the ice field at about 10:00 p.m. and he remained stationary for the next nine hours he also got his wireless operator Evans to send out ice warnings including one to the Titanic and yet the British enquiry blamed him and the myth of Lords guilt persists to this day he was accused of being within eight to ten miles of Titanic when she sank and he did nothing he stayed in his charter on a sweep and did nothing and it was said by the court of inquiry my lord mercy president of the court that he could have rescued all the passengers had he gone when he was called Lord Mersey came to the inquiry determined to avoid a national scandal a barrage of lawyers and experts were assembled to look into the facts but one fact which conveniently escaped attention was that the Board of Trade had allowed the Titanic to go to sea with only 20 lifeboats enough for less than half the passengers and crew Mercy's tactic seemed to have been to divert attention to captain Lord the case rested on a light scene from Titanic at about midnight it remained on the horizon for some time then moved off this was the California the British enquiry suggested completely ignoring the fact that the California was stationary for nine hours he came to rest just on the edge of the ice floe and they stopped there all night the Titanic which had had all the ice reports and probably more than he had had just steamed straight on at probably 22 knots and I personally think that captain Lord has had a pretty raw deal because at 11 o'clock on the 14th he did give instructions to his wireless operator to send a message to the Titanic to say that they were stationary some 12 miles away and surrounded by ice what the inquiry didn't go into literally scores of other ships around I mean you'd think that was to judge by V myths you'd think those only that any Californian there were scores of other ships which were never investigated the unsuspecting Lord arrived at the inquiry as just another witness and with no lawyer by the time he left he was more or less blamed for the rescue disaster so this is very convenient for the British government the Board of Trade which was responsible for shipping and it provided a very convenient scapegoat for the public to focus on [Music] whilst lord was unjustly blamed jack phillips the wireless operator who went down with the ship became a hero his hometown proudly honored him with a memorial but one inconvenient detail was omitted from the story and it concerned the last ice warning received by Phillips at 11:00 p.m. from Evans on the California Phillips told the wireless operator on the California keep out because he was sending rich passengers messages so Phillips was a very courageous mayor because he stayed at his post right until the very end as the ship was going down I just think that he made a fatal error in not interrupting what he was doing at 11 o'clock some 40 minutes before collision and stopped sending important passengers messages to Cape Race and go immediately to the bridge and tell the officer of the watch the situation then it was up to them this didn't stop Marconi the inventor of the wireless Telegraph from cashing in on the story as he waited at the dockside in New York for bride his surviving wireless operator Marconi made sure he had a newspaperman with him to scoop the story Marconi was desperate to improve the share prices for his own company and the Titanic disaster was a perfect vehicle to do that he was very keen to show how Wireless had effectively saved over 700 people because Titanic had the ability to call for assistance if she didn't have that ability then perhaps more people would have died so Marconi made sure that the newspapers knew all about Jack Phillips and so another story of duty and self-sacrifice hit the headlines and added to the drama of Titanic the story which sold evermore newspapers the very first newspapers collectors items in their own right many of the big publishers would produce memorial editions and they came out perhaps four or five days after the ship sank and these would contain lurid stories of survivors most of them have just been cobbled together by journalists because they had to have something to rise yes it's a daily mirror of Tuesday thankful for 16 remember the Titanic sank early on the Sunday and this is a headline everyone safe so just imagine the feelings of all the relatives when later on to see they learned the truth one can only just imagine mcgrann mother received a telegram saying BER 34 Victoria Road Boston much regrets BER not saved so no after all the excitement of the largest laundry the day sailing from Southampton on the 10th of April 1912 to hitting the iceberg and receiving a rather dramatic telegram that grandmother lived till she was 98 and she was a widow right through to her phone or death it's a been married a bit roughly three years perhaps and the contents for the love letters you can imagine they mentions that he's away for eighteen days and that's a he be coming back and seeing his son again and seeing his like his wife so it's a sort of ended up on phrases very sad story in 1912 it was very very much women and children first so my grandmother survived I'm happy to say primarily of course she was a lady and the first-class passenger and she didn't die till 1956 so I knew her quite well where I was and she was a remarkable lady social differences were very Pro names to those days I mean an example that is when the bodies were picked up the first class parties were put in coffins and the rest in canvas bags so it's still carried on after after death as for the Titanic herself it was at the moment of her death that she gained her immortality we talked about the myth but the story the legend of Titanic began the moment that ship sank and I think that word Titanic has captured people's imagination from 1912 up to the present day today there are Titanic societies throughout the world but the original Society was started in 1963 by Edie commuter in Springfield Massachusetts because we have so much material here and most of it has a story behind it that's the important part you can take something from the gravesite a broken cup or a dish or a piece of luggage then if you don't know who it belongs to it's just a broken dish a broken cup but this this is real history [Music] top shelf are some examples of souvenirs of many souvenirs that came out right after the Titanic disaster we have here a play a piano roll the wreck of the Titanic is the title and then we have a glass slide lantern slide of course as they would play the music that we showed the slides and the screen and we have a record of 78 record if anyone really knows what they are anymore it's called the sinking of the Titanic and there was a lot of souvenirs that came out at the time sheet music it was sad when this great ship went down my sweetheart went down with the Titanic in fact I was just going through a Boston Herald as about April 19th 1912 and in the ad that the bottom of the paper was very interesting Hustler's come and get their ready titanic now we would never do that we would think how awful it would be to produce postcards showing a jet airliner striking a at our blog we would think that would be ghastly I mean you could imagine the person producing that would be hounded out of town but not in 1912 there were about 150 popular songs written in the year after the Titanic disaster then there are folk songs which are transmitted orally and aren't recorded until later until the 1930s but there's every reason to believe that those songs were being sung within months if not days of the disaster so [Music] songs about heroes who died and heroes who lived but in Southampton the hometown of 637 crew members who were lost there was nothing but grief [Music] there was hardly a straight entertain and I'd lost a relative in one school in Northland in Southampton one class every child had lost a relative the team must have been completely devastated one could really you can't imagine a feeble fell [Music] well of course life was going on as usual and Belfast and the Titanic was on its way and everybody was who can use papers photographs of the Titanic salmon on the Atlantic [Music] and you know I can remember vividly the day and the time a father heard the Titanic was sunk and I remember Lee heard the lease paperboy shared notes ate and he just couldn't believe it he couldn't get the Telegraph then you should give her quick enough and he opened it and he read these big headlines Titanic sunk and you know the corroborate well he just broke down and he cried like a child [Music] [Music]

Channel: Michael Petersen

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Length: 47min 0sec (2820 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2019