After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Titanic: The Doomed Ship (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Part 1/2. Come on board the White Star Line's latest marvel, the splendour of the sea, the Titanic. Today we begin the story of the most ill-fated voyage in history.Maddy Pelling tells Anthony Delaney the story this week with special thanks to our guest Marnie Wood a cultural historian and a producer on Titanic: In Colour.Written by Maddy Pelling. Edited by Tomos Delargy. Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AFTERDARKYou can take part in our listener survey here.After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal is a History Hit podcast.

Noah and Sarah have been trapped miles below the Denver International Airport. They faced horrors from aliens to human experiments in a shadow government agency hell-bent on their demise. This season on Escaping Denver, the tables turn as the hunted become the hunters and Noah and Sarah go on the offensive to protect the fate of the world. I don't think you brought enough men. I'm not scared! Then why do you sound scared? Escaping Denver, batch four. Listen on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for 20 years and have taken people into haunted places to uncover macabre tales and dark secrets. On my podcast, Haunted Canada, I share bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Then join me if you dare. The morning of the 10th of April 1912 is crisp and clear. All along the docks at Southampton and in the shadow of sprawling warehouses, crowds

bristle with excitement, pushing their way to the water's edge. But they can hardly miss the vessel they're here to see. Rising up before them, a great wall of black and white metal glinting windows and topped with four enormous funnels each the height of a house, is the RMS Titanic. Built by the Harland and Wolfe Shipyard in Belfast for the prestigious White Star Line and to the tune of £1.5 million, this is already tipped as the largest and most luxurious ocean liner in the world.

It's an extraordinary feat of cutting-edge engineering and human ingenuity said to be unsinkable. At 269 meters long, 28 meters wide, and standing 11 stories tall, the Titanic is a floating city ready to be inhabited. Beside it, on the quay, hundreds of passengers wait to board, ushered into lines by a 900-strong crew all under the watchful eye of Captain Edward Smith. Among them are some of the wealthiest men and women on the planet, all with their entourages of children, servants, governesses, chauffeurs, cooks, and pets. There are also some of the

poorest. Some are heading to America for the first time, intent on crossing the ocean in search of a new life and hope. For others, this journey will be a homecoming. The course to New York City is chartered with luggage, cars, carriages, furniture, artworks, animals all loaded now. There's nothing left to do but to head out to open water and begin on this, the maiden voyage of all maiden voyages. But as Titanic moves off to the sound of applause and cheering, there's a brief moment of danger. The SS New York, a much smaller vessel, has come loose from her moorings and is drifting towards the Titanic. A collision is coming. The two ships are now only four feet apart.

The attentive crew hold their breath. It's averted. The way forward is clear. For those on board, the idea that there might be more serious peril awaiting them is simply unthinkable. For now, the tea rooms and bars have opened, stewards guide the way to private cabins, and on deck, Titanic's passengers lean, relaxed on her rail, watching the south coast of England disappear. You find yourself once more aboard HMS After Dark. I'm Anthony. And I'm Maddie. And this is part one of a mini series on possibly the most infamous maritime disaster in history, the sinking of course of the Titanic. Now across these episodes, we are going to be stepping aboard this record breaking ship

to explore what life and as you probably already know, some of their deaths was like for its richest and poorest passengers. We'll be following some individual stories, examining artifacts and looking into how our collective obsession with this history has taken us to some surprising places from a Hollywood water tank to a wheelchair auction house. So, Anthony, we're going to get into what is a huge amount of detail because I mean, I was aware of this going in, but I'm really acquainted with the fact that there is so

much information about the Titanic out there and we're going to obviously not cover all of it. We've got two episodes to do this in, in this little mini series. We're going to cover as much as we possibly can. But before we get into that, I want to know how you come to the story of the Titanic. Where do you know this history from? Matthew McAllister Slightly pathetically, the movie, initially. Emma Cunningham I don't think that's pathetic. I think that's the way that most people will know this story. Matthew McAllister I was a kid when the movie came out. It was huge at the time. I think it was probably

like, I don't know, 10, 11 or something like that. Thought some feelings on the movie? I can't really remember. I haven't seen it since, but I remember going, oh, that's an interesting thing. But what I will say is I grew up, this is so tenuous, but I suppose everybody has this kind of thing, about 15 minutes from where some of the carpets for the Titanic were made in the Republic of Ireland. And so when there's that local history. Oh, the glamour.

I know, I know. So if you're having avileaks guys, why you would be, I don't know. It's actually quite nice. But that's where some of the, not all some of the carpets were made, but it's an enduring history because my five year old nephew, Danny, he absolutely. Shout out to Danny. Shout out to Danny. Shout out to Danny. He adores the history of the Titanic. He's obsessed with it. He knows loads of facts and figures. So as you say, like, and he's never seen the movie. So it really is this enduring

history and it spans generations. And I think it's having a moment again. Yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, in 2023 in June, there was the sinking of the submersible Titan that went down to the wreck. And I think that's really brought the story back into the public imagination. The Titanic is, let's be honest, rarely out of the news cycle anyway. There's lots of debate, and we will get into some of it, about what we should do with the wreck site, how it should be treated, whether objects from the ocean floor should be brought up out and put in museums or sold on the private collector's market. There's a sort of Titanic tourism, I suppose, that exists, which is, as we've seen tragically in 2023, is dangerous, is incredibly dangerous. For me, it was the

film as well, I think very long. And I think now famously some pretty dodgy CGI, but impressive for the time. You say that you grew up near where the carpets were. I grew up close to Stoke-on-Trent in the Staffordshire countryside. Staffordshire is the home county and Stoke, the home city of the captain, Edward Smith. See, I bet so many people listening to this have some kind of a weird anecdotal connection to it. So, yeah.

And I will say for any Stokeys listening to this, we're really proud of him. Right as well. Somebody has to be. I mean, he arguably sunk the Titanic. We're really proud of him and Reginald Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire. Oh, well that's- Which is a little bit better. Okay, that's different.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Stanley Matthews, who was a footballer. Don is a little bit better. Oh, well, that's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Stanley Matthews, who was a footballer. Don't know who that is. That's the extent of my footballing knowledge. So that's how I came to it initially. Now, last year I was lucky enough to contribute a small part as a talking head to a documentary that is on channel four called Titanic in Colour.

And as part of that, I got to go up to Anick, which is in Northumberland, not too far from the Scottish border. I went to a hotel there that was actually closed to the public entirely over, it was just I think a few days after Christmas, so it was completely eerily dead. Their dining room has been put together in an extension at the back of what is an 18th century building on the town high street. In this space is the complete wooden paneled, still with its original fixtures and fittings, its lights, everything, dining room from the Titanic's sister ship identical to her sailing around the world at the same time, the Olympic. So it's completely identical to the Titanic. And I spent a full day filming in that space. We got in there pretty early on in the morning and we did all these little pieces to

camera and just outside the room there as part of the wooden staircase. And immediately I know everyone's picturing the grand staircase from Titanic. it was a piece of that but from the Olympic, which was broken apart in the Northeast in I think the 1930s and this hotelier had bought these parts. But we spent the whole day in there and as the sun went down at the end of the day, we carried on filming. We had a lot to do and a lot to get through. And it felt really eerie to get dark in that space. There wasn't really a view. It was just, I think, from memory, the brick walls just beyond the windows. There were the original windows that would have been looking out onto the ocean if you were on that ocean liner.

It felt very claustrophobic, but my brain of imagining that the ocean was just beyond the windows there. I found it very moving. It was a really unique experience and it's one of the moments I felt closest to the past actually, even with all the camera equipment and the director and the AP and the camera guy and all of that and all that modern kit in there. It still was a really amazing, amazing experience. So that's how I come to this story. And that is why I really wanted to do these two episodes now, because I spent a lot of time thinking about the interior of the Titanic as it would have appeared in its sort of heyday in this moment of its launch, but also what it looks like now on the bottom of the ocean. So we have this idea that there are these places that you can visit now, including the location you've just described, that is some way linked or position themselves that they're

linked to the Titanic. Obviously Belfast is another one of those places, incredible museum there. But there is an actual historical context to this and we're going back to 1912. So give us an idea of what the world looks and feels like at this time, just before the Titanic sets sail. Sure. So in Britain in 1912, and we're going to start at Britain, we're going to expand outwards so never fear, George V is on the throne and Asquith is the Prime Minister. Now the big thing that's going on in London in particular in 1912 is that the suffragettes in the west end of London are having this campaign of smashing windows. They are going around with

hammers and stones in this really unprecedented campaign. This is, as far as I'm aware, the first time that they're doing this and it's really shocking. So there's women's rights changing, there's politics out on the street and violence out on the street. This is a society in flux. We think of, potentially thinking about the Titanic film, especially the wealthy guests, part of this very staid, opulent, polite society. But actually the reality of Britain and America in the early 20th century was huge social change going on and Titanic sits absolutely within that context. The other thing that was happening, and I think this is interesting

talking about the political landscape and think about not only women's rights, but workers' rights, there was a national coal strike going on in Britain. The coal for the Titanic actually at its launch had to be taken from other ships in Southampton. It was a panic, a last minute scramble to get enough coal to have on board. That gives a sense of what's happening there. Now in Ireland, we're also getting protests that are really mounting and picking up in this moment against Home Rule. In April of 1912, a quarter of a million orange men march against Home Rule in Belfast. Interestingly, this isn't just a debate that's happening on that side of the sea as well. In the Royal Albert

Hall on the 10th of May, MPs actually gather to debate this very question. Again, we're seeing Britain, its empire being reassessed. People from all walks of life in Ireland, in Britain are questioning the status quo. Everything is changing, social class is changing, gender politics is changing, the geography of the empire is about to change as well. Well, it's funny you should talk about geography because the world is also starting to feel a little bit smaller. And one of the reasons for that is innovation in travel and transport. So can you tell us some of the different advancements and changes that we're seeing in that world? Because obviously the Titanic is part of this. What else is

going on in terms of travel and transport? Yeah, so there's really exciting things happening. One of the big things is flying. Flight is becoming a huge thing. We're obviously two years out from the First World War starting when planes begin to be used in the military, but we're getting the Royal Flying Corps being established in this moment. Dennis Corbett Wilson is the first man to cross the Irish Sea in a plane and he flies from Goodwick in Wales to Crane in Ireland. I do not know where that is. No, I don't. We should look that up afterwards.

We're not just venturing out to sea and into the air as well. We're also heading to the North and South Poles of the planet. So on the 17th of January, Robert Falcon Scott and his team actually reach the South Pole. And of course, that is an ill-fated trip. They never make it home. We must do an episode on Scott at some point. I've never even heard of him. There's a lot in this episode I haven't heard of apparently. What? I'm just stepping out boys. I may be some time.

Congratulations. I'll see you later. Okay. Wow. We will do this episode. This is 20th century Britain. So this is the audience. But it's absolutely your bag. It's history of masculinity. We're doing this. We love a snowy landscape. We do. We do. We're doing it. Okay. Stay on track. This is another thing that's happening, which is really good fun. In Missouri, Albert Berry makes the world's first parachute jump from a plane. So planes are not just going to be used in war. They're being used for daredevil recreational stunts as well. So we're getting

all kinds of vehicles, all kinds of travel, different ways of exploring the globe really. And as you say, the world is getting smaller. I'm Professor Susanne Lipscomb and on Not Just the Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry VIII, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers, mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. below the Denver International Airport. They faced horrors from aliens to human experiments in a shadow government agency hell-bent on their demise. This season on Escaping Denver, the tables turn as the hunted become the hunters,

and Noah and Sarah go on the offensive to protect the fate of the world. I don't think you brought enough men. I'm not scared! Then why do you sound scared? Escaping Denver, batch four. Listen on Apple podcasts, Amazon music, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for 20 years and have taken people into haunted places to uncover macabre tales and dark secrets. On my podcast, Haunted Canada, I share bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Then join me if you dare. So we're going to get a little bit closer to the ship itself and the passengers that

are on it. But before we get to the passengers, because a lot of people will maybe know some of those names already, I want to know a little bit more about the ship. Because I know a little bit about Harland and Wolfe because I've passed those iconic yellow cranes mannies at times. But give us a little bit more about the ship itself. So the ship is really this physical embodiment of ambition and aspiration. I think that's the way to look at it. It's this absolute triumph of engineering, of technology, of innovation, of luxury, of also artisanal craft and taste. It's an expression of the place that the world

on both sides of the Atlantic wants to move forward into. It's futuristic. It's a symbol of hope. Instead of me running through all of this information, I have a bit of an interview for you to listen to, and I'm really excited for you to hear from this person. We're going to be hearing from Marnie Wood. Now Marnie was the assistant producer on the Channel 4 documentary that I worked on. She did so much research for this show. I've worked with her many times and she's an incredible cultural historian in her own right. I think it's fair to say, gets pretty obsessive when it comes to detail. And she spent a huge amount of time thinking about the interior of the Titanic, thinking what it would have felt like to be in that space, but also the detail of what

you would have seen, the layout of it, what it would have felt like and what you could expect if you stepped on board. So we're going to hear from Marnie to tell us a little bit more about the ship itself. The first time I encountered you was Covent Garden. Yes. And we were looking into all sorts of filthy almanacs concerning the ladies of Covent Garden. That's right. Yeah. And there was a lot of green screen. I remember that. I had to do a lot of walking around pretending to look at historic buildings. So we most recently got to work together on a show you did all about the Titanic, the Titanic in colour, and as part of that

you did an incredible amount of research on the ship and you spent a lot of time imagining the interior of the ship, thinking about its layout. Can you just give us a sense? Because I think for modern audiences now putting aside the famous 90s film, I think it is quite difficult to imagine. So can you tell us a little bit about the ship, how it would have felt and how it was organised? Well, we had a lovely sleepover, didn't we? in the White Swan Hotel in Anik, which has the first-class lounge of the Olympic, which is the sistership Titanic, ripped out and transplanted into the hotel. We were in a room full of wood panelling, with this extreme level of carving, of musical instruments, there's stained glass, there's mad carpet.

instruments, there's stained glass, there's mad carpets. We absolutely got to appreciate in that moment not only how opulent Titanic was, but also this little secondary level of function that you don't perhaps think about immediately, so we noticed in there that you had these little electric buttons that you could press to call to your drinks. And I think Titanic is exactly this. You are existing kind of almost in a floating exhibition of what Britain can do at this time, what we can export across the Atlantic. And it's almost got this kind of fairground feeling, I think, when you're in this space as a first-class passenger. We've got this incredible opulence, this freshness, this innovation going on,

but there's huge amounts going on behind the scenes as well. We know that Titanic is sailing with a crew of hundreds of people. Tell us a little bit about the behind-the-scenes spaces. We've got all sorts going on behind the scenes, from kitchens obviously to the boiler rooms. There are hundreds of staff on Titanic. We've even got a dedicated ship's printer, so a lot of the things like the menus were being printed every day on board Titanic. There's a whole room dedicated just for storing eggs. There is a room full of dogs downstairs and we've even got accounts of a poor staff member that has to take them for exercise in the

swimming pool room on one occasion. A lot of these staff members are quite young, I think is something to bear in mind. We've got lots of, you know, 17, 18, 19 year olds running around in the background of this ship. There are also a lot of hardened, experienced and seasoned crew members that have worked on Asian liners for eternity. You mentioned there we've got dog kennels at the bottom of the ship, but we've also got things like the Turkish baths. There's a gym on the Titanic, which I didn't realise until you and I did our filming for the documentary. It blows my mind that does feel incredibly modern. We've got tea rooms, we've got cafes, we've got a swimming

pool. Tell us about these spaces and which passengers were using them. Titanic has all kinds of inventive, luxury, comfortable spaces with the Turkish baths in particular. You know, it's entertainment, it's frivolity, you've got all sorts of devices in here. So what might look like you and me today is like a tanning bed. They would have as an electric bath, which is quite literally a bath with some current put through it that you just sit in. I'm not sure what the benefits are. You know, it's all very playful, I think. That's something people might have not had the opportunity to necessarily experience until they were on Titanic, but it certainly wasn't available to the third-class passengers. And I think there is additional layer of irony there in the

fact that the quantity of third-class passengers that were from the Ottoman Empire, so people that might be actually familiar with the concept of this bath space, weren't allowed to use it. The thing that stands out to me there the most is such a small minor detail, but it's the switch for drinks. I really like that idea where we see some of these images and we can imagine actually what it might be like to be in an oak paneled room because we spend time in oak paneled rooms. But what we failed, well, you know, in museums or whatever. But like there are times when you're like, oh, how did they get their drinks? And so there is these switches around the rooms that you can order.

And that's the detail that I really like about this. But also, and I suppose what everybody knows about the Titanic is this class system where people are living side by side and in very close proximity, even if there's a division that they wouldn't necessarily always be so close if they were out in the real world. And that's something that Titanic really, and you know, it's part of the movie as well. So it's clearly something that fascinates people how these different parts of society are coexisting within this ship. I think that's so interesting that, you know, we famously know that there are first, second and third class passenger spaces. And then you've got

the crew as well. And you've got all these different iterations and these different strata that I think maybe were starting arguably to fade a little bit on land in this period. There's so much social change going on and yet Titanic, even though it is this absolute bastion of modernity, it does have this feel of being slightly conservative in terms of how it's organised its space and how people express their class and are limited to their own social standing in terms of the spaces that they're welcomed into. It's also interesting that you say about the electric buttons to call for your drinks because electricity on the ship is a massive innovation in this period across the first, second and third

class spaces. So you've got things like electric radiators, hot water heated by electricity, reading lamps by the beds, absolutely luxury. You've got obviously the bells for the Stuarts, like we said, but you've also got electric lights. There are chandeliers lit by electricity everywhere. You've got fans, electric fans in bedrooms for if it's going to get too hot. Ironically, we know it's going to get incredibly cold. There are things like lino, which was a kind of new thing. We've got, as you mentioned earlier, Anthony, these very plush carpets going on. From RV Leagues. All right. Do you have a share in there?

No, I don't think they exist now. There's things like the post room, which is sending telegrams all day every day, telegrams, new technology, sending it back and forth across the Atlantic. We've got also just another shout out to Staffordshire, we've got crockery and glassware with the white star line logo on it. So much of that was made in Captain Edward Smith's hometown of the potteries, which were the absolute height of sophistication and the place to get that high quality goods. There's so much craftsmanship here, there's so much innovation. The other things that I love in the first class staterooms, which are possibly the most recognisable today, the things that we see the photos of the most

and they're obviously recreated very accurately in the 1990s film, but so many of them were historically themed. We've got rooms built in the Italian Renaissance style, in a Jacobian style, Dutch style. We've got a Regency room for women to take tea in in the afternoon. We've got French styles, things that are copying Versailles, that are copying English stately homes. Absolutely amazing. Of course, you've got to remember, so many of these passengers would have come from their own copying Versailles that are copying English stately homes. Absolutely amazing. And of course, you've got to remember, so many of these passengers would have come from their own homes that looked a lot like that. And so this is really a home from home in a lot of ways.

And if I'm not mistaken, that's kind of what I'm looking at now. So in After Dark Tradition, I have two pictures in front of me. One is I would imagine a first class suite. Now I have seen a very similar version to this in person in the Titanic Museum in Belfast or its portion of a room very similar to this at least. Although what's clearer from this picture is the suite nature of it. So I'm now looking at the bedroom slash sitting area, but then I can see through a door that there's a more kind of sitting room type setup. And then I have the picture below, which is obviously a third class cabin and there's four bunks in there. And actually

the third class cabin looks quite chic in its own way. I mean, to a modern eye, it certainly does it seems in one sense in terms of early Edwardian decor, it's quite sparse and quite plain but actually to modern eye, it's quite chic. It was absolutely luxurious in terms of third-class steerage in this moment. It wasn't that long before this that people are really sloshing around the bottom of the boat with the briny water. You know, and now, admittedly, it's still, it's not first class. So in the room that you're looking at, we've got these four bunk beds, two on either side, and there is a sink with running water for people to wash and a little

mirror to shave. There were however only two baths available for all of the third class, hundreds of third class passengers. The other thing to say in the third class image of course is the floor is red. Now this doesn't seem very exciting, but this was a massive innovation again. This was a completely new technology where you would pour this substance into the bottom of the boat. Unlike other materials that have been used before, it sealed the boat from water without trapping water and rusting it. So this is real engineering. But I also, I just think it's so eye catching as well, this red floor. And you do see it in the James Cameron Titanic. They even got the red floor in the third class

spaces. I'd be fine in this. I could be in that bunk, definitely. Now only with somebody that I knew and only with one other person that I don't want to be in there with fourth people. But like that looks comfy. I'd rather be in the first class suite. Ah yeah. Like, yeah, that goes with the same, but I could survive. I could, I could survive down there. Yeah, no, it looks, it looks great. And I will say that's one of the things about the Titanic Museum in Belfast is you really get a first class sense of that. And again,

for kids, it's really interesting because when we took Dan there this summer, that's one of the points that stuck out to him where he was looking into the rooms and he was wondering what it would be like in there. And so it's a great way to kind of entice this. This is not sponsored by the Titanic Museum in Belfast, but it is a great way to entice the imagination of children into imagining what that world would be like. Now that's all well and good, but we all know this is not heading for a great end. We've been shown to our rooms now, we have an idea of what it's like in first and what

it's like in second and third, and what it's like to maybe work there, but what's it actually like functionally when we set sail? When the Titanic left Southampton in the early afternoon of the 10th of April, it did not immediately head for the Atlantic. There were, after all, other passengers still to collect. The first stop across the English Channel was Cherbourg on the northern coast of France. Completing the 84 miles from Southampton in just a few hours, Titanic stopped only briefly here, taking

on a further 274 passengers before setting sail again, this time for the final port of call before New York City, Cove in the southwest of Ireland. Dropping anchor two miles offshore, Titanic waited as small groups were ferried to her from the mainland. It was here that many of the poorest of her passengers joined the voyage, 113 third-class ticket holders, and only seven second and three first, all looking to the American coast now and a fresh start. This was the last time the ship would see land and as well as taking on new passengers,

Titanic's crew delivered 1,385 bags of mail to the shore. Those already on board had been quick to set down their early experiences in letters. For many families, these missives would be the last tangible connection to their loved ones on the ill-fated ship as it's set out now into the open ocean. The boat is giant in size and fitted up like a palatial hotel, American businessman Oscar Holverson wrote to his mother as the voyage finally got underway. Everywhere lights twinkled, pianos and strings struck up in the first and second class decks, and bouquets of flowers added flashes of brilliant whites and reds. You cannot imagine how pleased I was, exclaimed Ida Strauss,

millionaire wife of the Macy's department store owner from her first-class cabin. "...to find your exquisite basket of flowers in our sitting room on the steamer. The roses and carnations are all so beautiful in color and so fresh as though they had just been cut." as though they had just been cut. The feeling of optimism was infectious. Lancashire-born violinist Wallace Hartley hired as Titanic's bandleader to entertain the wealthiest passengers, certainly thought so. This is a fine ship, and there ought to be plenty of money on her.

I've missed coming home very much, and it would have been nice to have seen you all, if only for an hour or two, but I couldn't manage it. We have a fine band and the boys seem very nice. I'm glad Mother's Foot is better." For some though, there was already a strange undercurrent to the ship's grandeur, as though the sensory feast it offered up was just a little too good to be true. As artist Francis Millet put it, "...the sweets, with their damask hangings and mahogany oak furniture, are really very sumptuous and tasteful. You can have no idea of the spaciousness of this ship and the extent

and size of the decks." As for his fellow passengers, Millet remarked, "'Queer a lot of people on the ship." For others, the smell of fresh paint coupled with the lurch of the ocean beneath them was enough to put them on edge. "'The only thing I object to is new paint so far," complained second-class passenger Kate Bus. Little Lillian Asplund, just six years old, agreed and would later recall how several of

the third-class passengers deep in the ship propped open their doors to aid the flow of air. Others were more vocal still in their uneasiness. Seasick London housewife Esther Hart, travelling with her husband Benjamin and her daughter Ava to a new life in Canada, wrote to family of the equal joys and ills to be found at sea. My dear ones all, I was very bad all day yesterday. Could not eat or drink and sick all the while. But today I have got over it. This morning, Eva and I went to church.

As she was so pleased, they sang, Oh God, our help in ages past, that is her hymn. She sang so nicely. She sang out loudly. She is very bonny. She has had a nice ball and a box of toffee and a photo with a ship bought her today. Everybody takes notice of her through the teddy bear. There is to be a concert on board tomorrow night in aid of the sailors home and she is going to sing. So am I.

Well, the sailors say we have had a wonderful passage up to now. There has been no tempest, but God knows what it must be when there is one. This mighty expanse of water, no land in sight and the ship rolling from side to side, I shall never forget it. It is very nice weather, but awfully windy and cold. They say we may get into New York Tuesday night, but we are really due early Wednesday morning. I shall write as soon as we get there. I'm Professor Susanne Lipscomb and on Not Just The Tudors from History Hit we do admittedly cover quite a lot of Tudors, from the rise of Henry VII to the death of Henry VIII, from Anne Boleyn to her daughter Elizabeth I. But we also do lots that's not Tudors, murderers,

mistresses, pirates and witches. Clues in the title really. So follow not just the Tudors from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Noah and Sarah have been trapped miles below the Denver International Airport. They faced horrors from aliens to human experiments in a shadow government agency hell bent on their demise. This season on Escaping Denver,

the tables turn as the hunted become the hunters, and Noah and Sarah go on the offensive to protect the fate of the world. I don't think you brought enough men. I'm not scared! Then why do you sound scared? Escaping Denver, batch four. Listen on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Right, we've heard from some of them there, but give us a flavor of the passengers. We've talked about the setting, but tell us about the people now.

Well, in researching this, I came across so many different people. And I should say there is so much research out there because obviously there are survivors from the Titanic and their descendants and indeed there are descendants of people who tragically lost their lives in the disaster. And so there's so much family history research, there's so much amateur research, so much professional research that's been done. There are so many layers, so many sources to go through. And I just want to give a flavor of some of the people here because as we've been discussing,

Titanic had an absolute cross-section of society on board. Society in Britain, society in Ireland and society in America. And I think that's so fascinating. And we get these different characters coming through, but we had everyone on board. We had, of course, millionaires. We have emigrants traveling from Britain, from Ireland. We've got so many honeymooning couples, which is so tragic. We've got priests, we've got many children. There are a lot of animals. We've heard that there are dogs on board. So many of these are little lap dogs. There's some chow chows. Have you ever seen a chow chow? Oh, they're so gorgeous. Did you ever watch Gilmore Girls? No.

Oh, okay. One of the characters has chow chows on that. There are cats. There's a canary, which I believe wasn't really traveling with anyone. It had its own ticket, presumably to be delivered to someone in America. There are chickens to lay eggs. And of course there are an undisclosed number of rats, of course. Wait, that just got on or that somebody that like shouldn't be there? That would, yeah. This isn't like a rat dealer. What's that about?

The rat room aboard the Titanic. Um, so let's go through some of the people and I've just picked these out sort of at random. There are people that interested me for various reasons. So in the, let's start with the first class. We've got business magnates, we've got property developers, we've got stockbrokers, we've got heiresses, we've got the kind of people you very much would expect to find there. We've got the business magnate, Benjamin Guggenheim, ever heard of him. We've got, as we've said, the Macy's department store co-owner, Isidor Strauss and

his wife Ida. Now in the James Cameron film, they're depicted as the old couple who drown on the bed at the end. Yeah, it's a really evocative image. We've got the millionaire Colonel John Jacob Astor, who is on board with his 18-year-old pregnant wife, Madeleine. We have the Titanic's own architect, Thomas Andrews, aboard, which is really important. The designer of the ship, and he's here for her maiden voyage and is absolutely basking in the limelight of this until it all goes wrong, of course. There's

also a professional tennis player aboard and there is also Margaret Molly Brown, who later becomes known as the unsinkable Molly Brown. And again, she's character people will recognise from the film. I think there's a musical about her. I feel like there should be if there isn't. In the second class passenger list, we have got one family called the Colliers. Now they are really interesting to me. We've got Harvey and Charlotte, a married couple, and we've got their daughter Marjorie, and we are going to encounter them as the story goes on.

So bear the Colliers in mind, Harvey, Charlotte and their daughter Marjorie. They're from Leatherhead in Surrey and they had planned to start a new life on a farm. They were going to buy a farm in America. Prior to boarding Harvey converts all their worldly goods into cash and he sews it into the pockets of his coat. Oh dear. Spoiler alert, it was a mistake to do that. Does he survive? We'll find out.

You'll have to wait and see, but I can tell you at the very least, the coach does not. Then we have Joseph Philippe La Roche, who was 25 years old and he was Haitian. He was a Haitian engineer and potentially the only man of colour aboard the Titanic. Yeah. He is there with his pregnant wife who is French. We don't have her name, unfortunately, but we do have the name of his two daughters who were traveling with them, Simone and Louise. Third class. There are a lot of Irish passengers, as we've said, who get on in Ireland at the last stop. There's also a lot of Swedes, like a lot of Swedes, emigrating, which I didn't

expect. We've got people like Ernst Persson, who is 25 as well. He's Swedish, he's emigrating to America. He had the ticket number 347083 and he bought it for £7, 15 shillings and sixpence. So it's a pretty pricey ticket. It's not unaffordable, a third-class ticket, but these would have been prized possessions. He was traveling, like many of these immigrants, with his sister and his niece. We've then got Miss Anna Catherine, who is 20 from County Mayo, and she is going to Chicago, all the way to Chicago. You've got family groups, you've got people traveling alone, you've got people who are incredibly wealthy, people who are some of the poorest in society hoping for something better once they dock on the other side of the water. But we know, of course, not all

of these people are going to make it, unfortunately. One of the most tangible things that you can imagine is this sense of excitement, even in the third class, where you know you are experiencing a once in a lifetime opportunity to be on this. This is a mega ship. This is like going to space in our day where civilians going to space. It's that big. It's that special. But of course, to a modern audience, all we have is this foreboding feeling in our tummies going, okay, all these people, all these names, all these hope, we know for a lot of them where this is going to end.

So lead us into that, Maddie. By day four of her voyage, Titanic was making good headway. She was by now around 400 miles off the Newfoundland coast, deep in the North Atlantic and powering ever closer to her destination. She might even arrive early, beating all records for the crossing from England. In the distance, her crew knew. Vast, frozen mountains loomed out of the water, icebergs the size of skyscrapers that would cleave a ship in half. They would need to go carefully, even on this clear, star-filled night. Moving at 22 knots, they were almost at full speed.

For now, everything was as it should be. In the wireless room, operators were busy sending and receiving messages, telegrams from and to passengers, exchanging nothing but pleasantries, news of friendships forged on board, of the progress of a honeymoon, all the contents of the day's menu. Slowly, the gentlemen's smoking room and lounge began to empty as those passengers still awake retired to their cabins, slipping into a deep sleep and each happy to forget the dark, endless ocean that slid by beyond the metal walls that held them. Titanic's deck was virtually empty and its bridge stripped to a skeleton crew confident

in their expectation of a night's quiet work. Below, a couple straggled behind the last of the evening's diners to share a kiss. A portly businessman, grown tired of talking of stocks and shares, and red in the face from one too many brandies, fumbled the lock at his cabin door. Floors below, an anxious mother held the back of her hands to the heated forehead of her dreaming child. Nothing out of the ordinary on this floating metropolis, loaded with hope and promise. And then, in the crow's nest high above, look out Frederick Fleet's heart plummeted.

Without binoculars, he and his fellow Reginald Lee had been forced to peer into the dark, their eyes narrowing as they strained to see the way ahead. It was already too late. As Titanic tore on, a terrible sight rose up to meet them. Blood rushed deafening in Frederick's ears, and it was all he could do to shout, Right ahead! Now we all know what happens next. A tragedy for the ages. But how does it happen? Next week we'll follow RMS Titanic

and its passengers after the iceberg strikes. Now if you've enjoyed this piece of maritime history, then you should definitely go and listen to Dan Snow's history hit. Dan is an absolute maniac for maritime history, then you should definitely go and listen to Dan Snow's history hit. Dan is an absolute maniac for maritime history. Most famously, he was part of the team that discovered the wreck of the Endurance. And you can listen to that on his podcasts now. And special thanks to Marnie Wood for her contribution. The documentary Titanic in Colour is on the Channel 4 player now, as is another documentary that Marnie

and I worked on called Queens That Changed the World. Marnie is absolutely brilliant, so go and check her workout right now. So that's it for part one, but join us again next week for the next instalment of this mini-series. If you've enjoyed this episode, do check out our back catalogue, which includes a lot of other maritime history. Leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. Until then, happy listening. Noah and Sarah have been trapped miles below the Denver International Airport. They've faced horrors from aliens to human experiments and a shadow government agency hell-bent on their demise.

This season on Escaping Denver, the tables turn as the hunted become the hunters, and Noah and Sarah go on the offensive to protect the fate of the world. I don't think you brought enough men. I'm not scared! Then why do you sound scared? Escaping Denver, batch four. Listen on Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I'm Nadine Bailey.

I've been a ghost tour guide for 20 years and have taken people into haunted places to uncover macabre tales and dark secrets. On my podcast, Haunted Canada, I share bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Then join me, if you dare.