Dan Snow's History Hit - TITANIC: A Night to Remember

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Depicted countless times in art, television and film, the night of the 14th of April 1912 has haunted and fascinated us for over a century. This is a dramatic moment by moment retelling of the sinking of the Titanic in the freezing North Atlantic after the 'unsinkable' ship struck an iceberg. Hear the stories of what happened on the decks and in the lifeboats; those who survived and those who perished. Dan is also joined by renowned Titanic expert Tim Maltin to debunk and explain the many myths about the sinking and offers an explanation for what really went wrong that night.Listen to part one of this series TITANIC: The Unsinkable Ship here.If you want more Titanic, you can find Tim's books here.This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges. Mixed and mastered by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.We need your help! If you would like to tell us what you want to hear as part of Dan Snow's History Hit then complete our podcast survey by clicking here. Once completed you will be entered into a prize draw to win a £100 voucher to spend in the History Hit shop.

At 7.30pm on the 14th of April 1912, First-class passengers on RMS Titanic sat down for drinks and a light dinner in the ship's Café Parisienne. The first of its kind on a passenger liner, brochures promoted the eatery as a replica of a Parisian sidewalk café, painted in white with ivy-covered trellises and dotted with wicker tables and chairs, a long green carpet that ran the length of the room, and a view of the Atlantic through French windows. The menu that evening offered oysters, salmon, roast duckling, sole on a beef, pâté de foie gras, peaches in chartreuse jelly, and chocolate and vanilla éclairs. If you were young and rich,

this was the place to while away the afternoons and evenings socialising. In the second class dining room, passengers enjoyed baked haddock, spring lamb and plum pudding. For many of the third class passengers who might experience scarcity back home, mealtimes on the Titanic were in comparison quite decadent. The evening offering of tea consisted of cold meat, cheese, fresh bread, stewed figs and rice. Two decks below, a huge team laboured around the clock in Titanic's massive galleys. More than 6,000 meals were prepared every single day. The galley featured serving pantries, a butcher shop,

a bakery, vegetable kitchens, specialised rooms for silver and china, rooms for wine, beer and oysters, and huge storage bins for the tonnes of coal needed to fuel the 19 ovens, cooking tops, ranges and roasters. Further down in the bowels of the ship were the firemen. The stokers who fed the hungry furnaces 600 tonnes of coal a day, driving the ship cleared across the Atlantic. It was back-breaking labour, and men worked stripped down to their waists in the ferocious heat. This is where we'd find the unsinkable stoker, Southampton man Arthur John Priest, whose remarkable tale of survival defies the odds. You'll be hearing more of his story later

on. The sea was calm and up to this point the weather had been mild. Most of the journey from Southampton had been an unremarkable 10 degrees Celsius with clear skies. But on the 14th of April, four days into the journey, the temperature started to drop. By the evening, it was just half a degree above zero. Titanic was southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, when it received a telegram from another ship. It read, SS America via SS Titanic. America, part two large icebergs. Titanic sailed on into one of the greatest maritime disasters in history. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. This year is the 110th

anniversary of the sinking of Titanic and we're marking it with a special mini-series. Over three episodes we'll bring you the dramatic chronicle of the story that has captivated people for over a century, testimony from the relatives of survivors and expert analysis of what really happened on that night of the 14th of April 1912. 9.30pm It is a clear, moonless night. The sky is filled with stars. Titanic, the largest moving man-made object in the world,

cuts through the calm, freezing North Atlantic towards her destination of New York City. At the helm, the finest captain backed up by the most experienced crew of the day. 9.59pm. Quartermaster George Rowe takes a log reading of Titanic's speed, 45 knots over two hours. She's making roughly 26 miles per hour, almost her full speed. 10pm. Quartermaster Robert Hitchens, a stocky sailor with a broad Cornish accent, takes his shift at the wheel. 10.30pm. A ship going in the opposite direction of the Titanic emerges from the distance. It signals to Titanic that there is an ice field

up ahead and Titanic responds that the message has been received. She continues. First Officer William McMaster Murdoch begins his watch on the starboard wing bridge. He stares into the clear dark night. Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee are high up in Titanic's lookout, also staring intently ahead. Fleet reports back that there's a slight haze on the horizon. It won't affect us, the haze. We can see just as well. At 11pm, another ice report is received. This one comes from another nearby ship, the Californian. However, this warning is not relayed to the captain or the bridge. Most passengers have retired to their rooms for the night. 11.40pm.

Fleet rings the bridge to alert them of an iceberg right ahead. Seeing the silhouette of the iceberg, First Officer Murdoch suddenly orders, Hard a starboard. At the wheel, Hitchens wrenches the helm right over. First Officer Murdoch realises just how fast the ship is going and rings down to the engine rooms all stop. In the engine and boiler rooms, the engineers and firemen respond by shutting the dampers,

lowering the steam and stopping the engines. They slow the ship, while the ship's helm is turned as far as possible, the rudder steering the ship away stopping the engines. They slow the ship, while the ship's helm is turned as far as possible, the rudder steering the ship away from the ice. Titanic turns, but not quickly enough. It grazes the hulking iceberg and chunks of ice rain down onto the deck. In fact, only 10% of the iceberg is visible above the water

and its protruding bulk below the surface has gouged a 30-foot gash in the Titanic's starboard side. Thousands of tonnes of seawater flood through the jagged hole in the hull. Passengers on the upper decks notice only a slight bump, unaware of the magnitude of the damage. Other than the officers, the coal stokers deep in the hull are the first to know about the collision. Down in his bunk, stoker Arthur John Priest is taking a nap between shifts when Titanic scrapes against the iceberg. He wakes with a start. Working and living in quarters in the depths of the ship means the impact is much more stark than for the passengers above. He makes his way out of his

cabin. Meanwhile, believing the ship may be taking on water, the officers ring the warning bell to alert the firemen and engineers in the ship's hull to get out before the watertight doors are closed and sealed. Getting caught behind a door would trap a person into a compartment without escape. Already aware of the situation, the stokers in the engine room climb the emergency ladders and rush out of the boiler rooms. First Officer Murdoch flips the switch to activate the watertight doors. They close in 10 seconds. Due to Arthur's proximity to the flooding hull, his escape to the top decks will be a difficult one. Captain Smith arrives on the bridge and is told that the ship has struck an iceberg. Shortly after, he's informed that the

mail room is filling with water. Titanic's designer Thomas Andrews is instructed to survey the damage in the flooded compartments. With 16 watertight compartments, Titanic was built to remain afloat even if four of them flooded. In the minutes leading up to midnight, Titanic has five flooded compartments. Andrews predicts that the ship has two hours at most before sinking. Midnight. The watertight compartments are not fully sealed. The walls extend only a few feet above the waterline. So floodwater now cascades over the top and into the next compartment. As water rushes into the starboard side of the ship's bow, Titanic begins

to tilt down at the front. Ten minutes past midnight. Captain Smith gives the command to rally the lifeboats and lifebelts. Passengers are ordered onto the deck. There is an eerie calm. Virtually all are unaware that their ship is about to be swallowed by the freezing North Atlantic, that there are not enough lifeboats for all, and that the ship, visible in the distance, is not coming to rescue them. There are only 20 lifeboats aboard the ship, space for 1,178. Including crew, there are 2,223 people on board. An order is given for women and children to board the lifeboats first, with crewmen to row. Fifteen minutes past midnight, Captain Smith gives an order for a distress signal to be sent out. Although SOS became the official distress signal several years earlier, many still use CQD.

CQ signifies a general call and the D is for distress. Over the next several hours both will be sent out, CQD and SOS. The German steamship, the SS SS Frankfurt is among the first to respond, but the liner is 117 nautical miles away. Other ships also offer assistance, including the Titanic's sister ship the Olympic, but all were too far. 20 minutes past midnight. The Carpathia receives a distress signal from the Titanic. Come at once, we have struck a berg. It's C.Q.D., old man.

The Carpathia, a Cunard liner, immediately changes course to aid the stricken Titanic. It is 58 nautical miles away. It will take the Carpathia more than three hours to arrive. As passengers wait to board the boat, Titanic's musicians, who initially played in the first-class lounge, move out to perform ragtime music on the deck. They hope to calm the passengers who start to notice that the ship is dipping down at the bowels. 45 minutes past midnight. Lifeboat number 7 on the starboard side is the first lifeboat lowered. It carries only 27 people even though it has room for 65. Many of the first lifeboats are launched well below capacity, partially because the crewmen worry that the

davits holding the lifeboats to the ship will be unable to support a fully loaded lifeboat. Despite an obvious list at this point, many passengers are initially afraid to leave the ship, believing it to be unsinkable. Titanic fires the first of eight distress rockets. A ship has been sighted less than 10 nautical miles away, but the crew is unable to contact it through telegraph or morselab. The rockets also prove unsuccessful. G-Deck starts to flood.

At the same time, a build-up of steam begins to escape Titanic's iconic cigarette-like funnels. The steam is normally used to power the engines but now it's in excess and it blows out of the funnel with a deafening noise that lasts over an hour. Stokers work desperately to extinguish fires in the furnaces to cool down the steam and avoid an explosion. 55 minutes past midnight. Number five is the second lifeboat to leave Titanic. As it's being lowered, two male passengers jump into the boat, injuring one of the female occupants. Number six is launched, containing Denver millionaire Molly Brown, and the lookout who first spotted the iceberg, Frederick Fleet. The lifeboat is commanded by quartermaster Robert Hitchens, who was at the wheel when Titanic

struck the iceberg. Later, his passengers would accuse Hitchens of refusing to go back and rescue people from the water. They referred to the bodies in the water as stiffs, and that he constantly criticised those at the oars while he was manning the tiller. Some lost their patience with Hitchens. Molly Brown threatened to throw him overboard. These events would later end up being depicted in the Broadway musical and film The Unsinkable Molly Brown. 1am. Lifeboat number three is lowered. It carries approximately 39 people, 12 of whom are part of the ship's crew. Water has flooded through the lower decks

and is now seen at the base of the iconic Grand Staircase on E-Deck. Lifeboat number one is launched with only 12 people. It can hold 40. Among its occupants are first-class passenger Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff Gordon and his wife Lucy. Seven of the occupants are crewmen and Duff Gordon pays each of them five pounds, reportedly to replace lost clothing and gear, but possibly, according to subsequent accusations, as a bribe to keep the crew from letting anyone else into the boat. 1.10am. Number eight is among the first lifeboats to be lowered on the port side. It's launched with only 28 people. Isidore and Ida Strauss offered seats on the boat. After a visit to their native

Germany, Isidore and Ida were travelling back to the United States. Though the Strauss offered seats on the boat. After a visit to their native Germany, Isidore and Ida were travelling back to the United States. Though the Strausses usually travelled on German vessels, the lure of the newly commissioned Titanic and all the luxuries she could offer proved too much of a temptation for the journey home. On the night of the 14th of April, Isidore and Ida are directed to lifeboat 8. However, the age aging Isidore refuses to board the lifeboat while there were younger men being prevented from boarding. Ida also refused to go into the lifeboat or leave her husband saying, where you go, I go.

Isidore and Ida are last seen together on the deck, holding hands before a wave sweeps them both into the sea. Isidore's body is recovered and he's buried in New York's woodlawn cemetery. Ida's body has never been found. 1.20am. Number 10 lifeboat is launched. Among the occupants is nine-week-old Milvina Dean from Southampton, who will become the last living survivor of the disaster. survivor of the disaster. 1.25am. The Olympic radios Titanic. Are you steering to meet us? Not understanding just how dire is the situation. The Titanic responds, we are putting the women off in the boats. 1.30am. Amid growing panic, several male passengers try to board lifeboat

number 14, causing 5th officer Harold Lowe to fire his gun three times. He is later placed in command of the boat. 1.40am. Collapsible lifeboat C, with a capacity of 47, is lowered. Among its occupants is White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay. Although he later claims that no women or children were in the area when he boarded the lifeboat, others refute that assertion. His decision not to go down with the ship results in many branding him a coward. Radio operator Jack Phillips continues to send out distress calls with growing desperation. Women and children in boats cannot last much longer. Women and children in boats cannot last much longer.

Eventually, stoker Arthur John Priest makes it to the deck. The route to the deck takes him and other members of the Black Gang, as the stokers are called, up through a maze of gangways and corridors before they can reach the deck. By the time they emerge into the freezing night air, most of the lifeboats have already gone. Number 13 is launched and is soon followed by number 50, which holds many third-class passengers. As it's being lowered, number 15 nearly lands on number 13, which has drifted under it. Sources differ on how long the ship's musicians perform. Right up to the end, some say. Speculation surrounds the last song they play. It's likely, nearer my God to thee. None of the musicians survive.

2am. Titanic's bow has sunk low enough that Stern's propellers are now visible above the water. Captain Smith releases the crew, sayingllers are now visible above the water. Captain Smith releases the crew, saying it's now every man for himself. Smith is reportedly last seen on the bridge. His body is never recovered. It isn't clear the fate of Titanic designer Thomas Andrews. Saloon steward James Johnson says that he saw Andrews before the ship went down, standing silently in the first-class smoking room, with his lifebelt lying discarded nearby. Others say they saw him on the deck,

throwing deck chairs into the ocean for people to use as flotation devices. He does not survive. 2.17am. Radio operator Jack Phillips sends a final desperate distress signal. He reportedly makes it to an overturned collapsible life raft but succumbs to exposure. His body is never found. Stoker Arthur John Priest makes a desperate escape from the sinking ship. Arthur and 43 firemen swim for their lives through water just marginally warmer than freezing, wearing only the shorts and vests they worked in.

Miraculously, Priest finds a spot on lifeboat 15. He develops frostbite, but is safe. 2.18am. The lights on Titanic go out, plunging the ship into darkness. As the bow continues to sink, the stern rises higher out of the water, placing great pressure on the midsection. The ship breaks in two, between the third and fourth funnels. Reports later speculate that it takes some six minutes for the bow section, travelling at roughly 30 miles per hour, to reach the ocean floor. The stern temporarily settles back into the water before rising again, eventually becoming vertical. It briefly remains in that position before its final plunge. 2.20am. The stern disappears into the ocean. Titanic is gone.

The stern lands some 610 metres from the bow on the Atlantic Ocean floor. Meanwhile, hundreds of people are in the freezing water. Although there is room in most of the lifeboats, crewmen are fearful the boats will be swamped. Several boats do eventually return, but too late. A few people are pulled to safety, but most die of exposure. Over the next several hours, a number of ships try in vain to contact Titanic. At one point, the SS Burma's wireless operator, believing that he's heard the liner, sends out a message, steaming full speed to you shall arrive six in the morning hope you are safe 3 30 a.m the carpathia arrives in the area firing rockets

4 10 a.m lifeboat number two is the first to reach carpathia it takes several hours for the ship to pick up all the survivors white star line Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay writes a message to be sent to the White Star Line's offices. It says, deeply regret. Advise you Titanic sank this morning, 15th, after collision iceberg, resulting serious lost life. Further particulars later. 8.30am. The SS Californian arrives after learning of Titanic sinking at approximately 5.30am. It searches the area for several hours but fails to find any survivors. 8.50am. The Carpathia carrying the 705 Titanic survivors, heads to New York City, where it will arrive to massive crowds on April 18th. 1,500 people perish in the icy water of the North Atlantic.

It's one of the greatest peacetime disasters in modern history. More on Titanic after this. Ever wanted to know more about some of the greatest stories in history? Kings, queens, knights, monks, peasants, battles, castles, love, hate, treachery and revenge. They're all waiting in the greatest millennium in human history. Well, yet anyway. I'm Matt Lewis and my co-host Dr Kat Jarman and I are waiting to tell you some of the most exciting, exhilarating, fascinating and less well-known stories of the Middle Ages. What are you waiting for? We've Gone Medieval with History Hit. Are you coming? I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

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Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Tim Moulton, world's greatest expert in Titanic and its loss. Good to have you on the pod. Let's do some of the theories here and then I want you to debunk them it's my favorite party game with you first of all no binoculars officer walked off the ship took the key to the binoculars locker and so they couldn't access binoculars and the ship would have been saved if they hadn't done that well everything you said at the beginning is absolutely true apart from the last bit because yes the binoculars should have been there yes the

key was locked away so they didn't have binoculars when they would normally have done so but what you have to remember is that at night the best way to spot ice is with the naked eye because it gives you a wide field of vision so binoculars in 1912 were for inspecting an object that you had already detected they were not for detecting an object. And therefore, all the captain wanted was for the lookouts to detect the object, not inspect it, just detect it, and then ring the bell three times to say, object dead ahead.

And that's exactly what they did. So had they had binoculars, it would have slowed them down. And going too fast. Well, absolutely. People say Titanic was going too fast. But in fact, in 1912, the idea was to stick to course and speed in clear weather and trust to be able to see the icebergs. And of course, the night the Titanic sank was one of the clearest nights in

history. All the survivors talked about they'd never seen so many stars before. The sea was so calm they could see every star reflected in the sea's surface. So Titanic's crew felt they were very lucky to have this most incredibly clear night available to them at the very moment of danger when they were going through the ice region. And the other thing about speed is Titanic was doing 22 knots. In fact, she made 24 knots between Belfast and Southampton as a top speed. So she wasn't going her full speed. She didn't even have all her boilers lit. And it was the plan the next morning to light all of her boilers. But of course, that never eventuated due to the catastrophe. They took shortcuts when they were building

her because she was so expensive. Yeah, people do say that. But the opposite is true. Titanic was built on a cost plus basis, which basically meant the more that Harlan and Wolfe spent on building Titanic, the more they got paid and Wolfe spent on building Titanic, the more they got paid. People who say that are wrong. And officers shot people to stop them crowding into lifeboats. Well, there is evidence that shots were fired down the side of the Titanic to stop people jumping from the ship into the lifeboats, which could have buckled the boats. I think that may be true. And I think now it has really been established that probably First Officer Murdoch, who was acting as the captain at the time of the collision, it does seem that he did put a pistol

to his head and shoot himself on the deck pretty much after all the lifeboats had left the ship. Well, lifeboats, full stop, weren't enough lifeboats because they'd ruin the nice lines of the beautiful ship. Well, people do say that and in fact her designers did envisage a change in the rules to make it that you would have to have enough lifeboats for everyone. But at the time Titanic set sail, because she was so well subdivided, the Board of Trade allowed her to carry less lifeboats within the regulations, less lifeboats, because they believed that lifeboats would only be needed to transship passengers from a stricken vessel to a nearby rescue ship. Speaking of rescue ship,

the Californian was close. Was there another ship very close as well at the time of the iceberg strike? That's right. At the time of the iceberg strike, the eventual rescue ship called the Carpathia was actually about 56 miles away. But only about 10 miles away, there was a mysterious ship called the Californian. And very tragically, she saw Titanic come to a stop. But because of the atmospheric conditions that night that was so clear, she actually judged that Titanic was a 400-foot ship five miles away instead of the truly 800-foot ship 10 miles away that she actually was. And the real tragedy to get one's head around, Dan, at this point, is that they had a map of who had wireless, who had radio on the North

Atlantic in 1912, because only the really big ships had it. So they knew Titanic had radio, but the ship they were looking at, which you and I know actually was the Titanic, but because they believed it was a nearer ship that they believed was smaller, they discounted the fact that she had radio. So they tried to signal to Titanic instead by morse lamp. But unfortunately, the stratified air around Titanic's crash site actually was causing the stars to flicker. And all of the survivors noticed how the flickering stars. But unfortunately, tragically, they actually caused the scrambling of the morse lamp signals. And so people just thought it was Titanic burning oil lamps. They didn't realise it was Titanic burning electricity that didn't flicker, but it was

the air that made it seem to flicker. And the Californian didn't have a radio operator at the station. That's right. So Evans was his name and he'd been working hard for 16 hours and he went to get some shut eye. I mean, even more tragically, the last message he did send was to Titanic to say we're stopped in ice. You better be really careful. But unfortunately, he didn't prefix his message with the magic MSG for Master Service Gram, which means this message you must pay attention to and this message must go to the captain. So he just said, say, old man, we're stopped in ice, which is a very casual way of speaking. And so they tapped back, you know, keep out, we're working Cape Race, you know, with important passenger traffic about, you know, stocks and shares buying and things like

that. So because the message was wrongly prefixed, it was in fact ignored. Tim, let's go with the Tim Moulton theory, the atmospheric theory. You've mentioned it a little bit there. What was going on that night that made this accident much more likely to happen? Well, I think the main thing to think about is after Titanic sank and the lifeboats looked around after daylight came up in the next morning, they noticed icebergs on every point of the compass. They counted 25 icebergs more than 200 feet high and dozens and dozens of others all over the place. And in fact, only seven minutes steaming time from where Titanic sank, there was an impenetrable barrier of ice, 75 miles long, three miles wide, and about six feet deep. I mean, to give you an idea, it was sort of ice that you could have played cricket on or rugby on.

All the passengers could have offloaded on there and lit fires and all the rest. It was the most amazing sheet of ice. And that's one of the reasons why the sea was so calm, because this huge barrier of ice had actually stopped the swirl and stopped the waves. And so you've got the huge amount of ice, but then also the atmospheric conditions. That's right. So normally, Dan, the Earth is a little bit warmer, even the sea, because it's heated by the sun. And then the atmosphere normally gets colder and colder and colder as you go out towards space. And as you know, space is very cold. But the night the Titanic sank, because of the enormous amount of ice in the area, there was what we call a thermal

inversion, which means the normal state of affairs is inverted. So what you had was the coldest part of the atmosphere was the air near the sea, low down. And then above that was probably 15 degrees Celsius air that had previously been warmed by the Gulf Stream current, which was in the area. But of course, Titanic sank in this Labrador current area, which was minus two degrees Celsius. And when you have very cold air and very warm air, you tend to get this thing called a capping inversion. And that causes things like smog in London in the 1950s was caused by this. And the problem with that was that it actually causes light to bend slightly differently than normal. So normally, light would bend slightly upwards because the air would be cooler higher up.

But because the air was cooler lower down, light did the opposite. Light bent downwards around the curvature of the Earth. And that meant that the night the Titanic sank, you could probably see about 80 miles, whereas normally you can only see sort of 20 to 40 miles. And you and I have conducted that experiment in a tank with a laser pen. So I've seen it in practice. And by the way, I just read David Abulafia's History of

the Sea and he talks about that phenomenon, as you do, in terms of the Vikings making the discoveries in the North Atlantic. So being able to see Iceland from a lot further away than was normal. That's absolutely right. The Vikings called it Hadringar, which means sea hedges. And that's because, Dan, when you can see an enormous way, imagine looking at a mountain range like the Blue Ridge Mountains or whatever, they seem to be blue and the sky seems to be blue. And that's called the Rayleigh scattering of light. And that's because the molecules in the air that you're seeing through actually scatter light and make it look like a haze. And I'm afraid the irony for Titanic and

what caught Captain Smith out is that they had a totally clear night, but it was so clear that they had a bit of Rayleigh scattering of light in the molecules, in the extraordinary depth there they could see through. And this created a very slight haze around the horizon. And the fatal problem with that is that it just reduced the contrast with the Berg. So the Berg was much nearer, but you didn't see it until much later because behind it, way behind it, the backdrop was almost the same colour as the Berg. So the Berg was much nearer, but you didn't see it until much later,

because behind it, way behind it, the backdrop was almost the same colour as the Berg. And they were so close to missing the Berg. So close. They were. I mean, the irony is, of course, that had they missed that Berg, they would then have rammed head on into this ice barrier that was only seven minutes steaming time away. And then they'd have been fine, because yes, 80 of the off-duty firemen would have been killed in the bow of Titanic. But when Titanic hits head on, she would have been absolutely fine. And then they could have got ladders down from Titanic and they could have all lived on the ice for, you know, a week or something like that and been absolutely fine. But unfortunately, she just hit an outlying berg rather than the barrier itself.

And the nature of the wound was so unusually fatal. That's right. If it had been a sort of head-on collision, it would have possibly destroyed the first two or even up to four compartments. But Titanic was perfectly equipped to deal with the first four compartments being flooded. What she wasn't equipped to deal with

was the first five being flooded. And I'm afraid that was, if you like, an Achilles heel in the design, because they didn't expect anything to cause damage over that length of the hull. And that is why Titanic was doomed. That iceberg, that's melted now, hasn't it? It doesn't drift back up into northern waters. No, it's a good question. So what happens is that the Labrador Current is basically freezing meltwater.

And as it flows south into the Gulf Stream, it gets warmer and warmer and the icebergs tend to melt away. So that iceberg that sank Titanic would probably have melted within a month or something of the disaster. Whose fault was it? Or who was held responsible at the time? Interesting. The inquiries kind of held Captain Lord responsible from the Californian that was only 10 miles away, because they said they really couldn't understand the atmospheric conditions and why he hadn't gone. But to give you an example there, the effect of this long distance that you could see actually had the effect of raising the horizon behind Titanic. And that's why she looked like she was within the horizon. And that's why she looked like she was only 400 feet long.

The other thing is the rockets from Titanic appeared to be low. looked like she was only 400 feet long. The other thing is the rockets from Titanic appeared to be low. And that's simply because in the warmer air higher up, they were very hard to see because that was normally refracting air. But in the lower, colder air, it was acting like a lens that was magnifying the rockets.

And so you could only see them when they were low down in the cold air. So when you understand the atmospheric conditions, you can understand absolutely what happened and absolutely why Captain Law was not to blame for not going to the aid of the Titanic. No one was imprisoned or punished, though? No, the White Star Line was ultimately found liable and had to pay compensation. So the insurance company Lloyd's had to pay out for the personal effects and things like that of

lives that were lost and material that was lost and cargo that was lost when the Titanic went down. But what we now know, or at least what I believe I've worked out, is that it was actually almost due to the power of nature. It was really caused by the extraordinary amount of ice in the area at the time. So there was a huge amount of ice. It was a cold year. That's right. I mean, this gets quite complicated, but basically the sun and the moon, I'm starting to sound a bit mad, but an astronomer came on and explained this to me,

that they were both pulling in the same direction at that time. And what that meant was they had a very, very high tide. And the very high tide lifted a lot of the ice that is grounded around the shores of Newfoundland. And that high tide floated all the ice, so suddenly it came down and disgorged itself. So the Labrador Current, that's normally a little river, if you like, that had burst its banks

and that had become a raging torrent. And it was that that carried down the immense amount of ice. It also carried down all the cold water that created the thermal inversion and then what the Vikings know as superior mirages at the time. in fact dan we looked at other ships records from 1912 from two weeks before the disaster and two weeks after disaster and a number of them mentioned abnormal refraction and miraging in that area brilliant tim that's the tour de force thank you very much thank you very much to tim malton for joining on the podcast. Make sure you subscribe to get

part three of this mini-series where I'll be looking at the city which was uniquely affected by the tragedy. Of the 685 crew members who perished when Titanic sank, 549 were from South Hamilton. I'll be with Andrew Skinner at the Sea City Museum to hear stories of survivors and the items rescued from the ship that made it back. And we'll bring you more about the astonishing fate of Arthur John Priest and the lives of those who would change forever. You've been listening to Dan Snow's History. This episode was produced by Marianna Desforges and mastered by Dougal Patmore.