Doomed to Fail - Ep 96 - Doomed to Sink: The Olympic Class Ships of The White Star Line

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Even though Farz DID watch Titanic this weekend, he focuses this week on the two other totally doomed ships that were built simultaneously. White Star's Olympic and Britannic - part of the "Olympic Class' of ships, these monsters were supposed to revolutionize travel and make White Star a ton of money. They did neither. A war full of U-boats, rising prices, cutting corners, and things being in the way of a giant ship led to disaster again and again.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortlandthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for you. Boom. And we are off. Taylor, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

I am good. I'm going to do something I never do, which I'm going to introduce the show instead of forgetting. We are doomed to fail. I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor, who just did a try. trip, a little round trip from where she's at to Los Angeles to see the amazing Gant Carlin. Taylor, how is Dan? Incredible. I am still like, my face is very pink from yesterday playing baseball all day, but it was

literally a blur. I like went with my friend Nicole. I got like five. We had dinner. And then we went down, it was in downtown L.A., which, you know, I, would avoid if I could at any cost, but I would go for Dan Carlin. And a beautiful theater down there, somewhere down there. And it was hilarious.

It was like 95% dudes. And they all looked exactly the same. Nicole was like, everyone here seems familiar. I was like, they're exactly the same, Nicole. It's just like just exactly who you think. And it was great. And the show was great. It was two hours of Dan just like talking to another guy about the,

future, about AI, about how we can use history, to talk about the past, about the different things, you know, just like a conversation. And then I asked him a question, I heard of everybody. I said, Taylor from Doom to Fail podcast. I was wearing my Doom to Fell shirt. Nicole and I put the stickers everywhere, not like stuck to things, but like around. Oh my gosh. And then it was, it was so fun. And then afterwards, went to the bar next door. And then he came to the bar next door. And I like, this is like several glasses of wine made me do this, but I like jumped up. up and, like, went to his table, and I, like, put my hand on his back. I was like, Dad, I'm so sorry, but I'm just so excited.

He goes, oh, did you ask the 9-11 question? I was like, I did. That's 9-11 question. And then we talked a little bit about, like, history and our kids, and I gave him our sticker, and he said, I'll check it out. And it was just amazing. Did you get a picture? No.

And he was, like, at a table with, like, four of the people, and I just, like, bothered him. What was your question? Well, I asked about things that are happening now that are going to be history later. So he had talked about like, you know, the Bay of Pigs and things that were happening in like the early 1900 slash like ancient history. And I was like, what about stuff like, because you talk about 9-11 kind of in the same category as those things, that's a major historical event. But I'm here with my friend Nicole and we were there together. So Nicole and I couldn't go home for a couple weeks because we left her house after the second plane hit the second tower. So like what do how, like what am I supposed to do to make sure that my part of history, like I remember.

the way I want it to be, what do I do about that? And so he, you know, he was like, well, we should learn from you and from people who were there. And it was just very nice and it was very exciting. So recommendation, go see Dan Carlin if you can live. I mean, duh. I wouldn't say not to do that. So is it, it was an interview style? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have no idea who the other guy was. He introduced himself. They'd know each other for a while. But Nicole and I were like, we should go to the bathroom. There's not going to be a line. like you know that never happens for ladies at events so yeah it was funny yeah it was wonderful yeah so i don't know so we'll see but we met a guy at the bar afterwards and he was like oh yeah

he's like i was like i was going to talk to it i was like great i don't know if that might be fun so hopefully we get a couple more listeners from it too because i know those people would like it all of the the dan carlin fans i mean we're like zero percent of dan carlin in in a thing you know what mean like we reference him a lot exactly exactly like if you like dan carlin but are kind of dumb come on over you know you know taylor you were doing so good at the marketing until that that line i just i don't want anyone to think that i'm like comparing our show at dan carlin show because that would be ridiculous now i'm actually very hot i don't know where i put my fan but no it was it was it was very very fun and i have not recovered well that is a great way to spend a Thursday night so

It is. You drove back Thursday night or? I broke Friday morning and I got home by like 9.30, but I left really, really. Yeah, you probably have to. Cool. Well, that sounds like that's very, very exciting. It's very exciting than my week last week. I did not see Dan Carlin.

So. That'd be real fucked up. You were there and you didn't say hi to me. If I just stood up to and was like, I'm forced me to do you guys know each other or something? As far as also from doing it, if you're also wearing a T-shirt with both of our faces on it. I don't know her. Just totally different person. Sweet.

Well, let's go ahead and dive in. I think I go first today. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Are you using your cell phone to fan yourself with? I am. I should get like an actual fan.

I should put my fan on. I'm not going to use just my cell phone case to fan my face with. I think only to put on the screen. it was I spent a lot time outside yesterday keep going wait you put what on screen I need to put on sunscreen because yesterday I had two baseball games you know for the kids and it was so windy I had like dirt in my teeth it was just like the windiest day they were like we had to stop the game because of a tumbleweed like that's how windy it was so I mean you got to love you know the stuff I do recall driving around when I was living in Lubbock and seeing tumbleweed cross the street like

in old western and I was like that's kind of fun yeah they're everywhere so it was fun But yes, go ahead. Tell me a story. So I'm going to cover a really kind of like interesting old-timey fun doom-to-fail concept. It is the most doomed to fall concept I can possibly imagine. It is going to, it has to do with a line of ships from the olden era that were all essentially doomed to fail. Do you say olden era? Olden era. That was not an era?

It's old and times era. All right. I'm covering the White Starline Olympic class of shifts, but I'm not going to cover the most famous one because that one's on the death, so who cares. So I'm mostly covering the other two, but like whatever. If we want to talk about the most famous one, we certainly can. Obviously, everybody knows that the most famous one is a Titanic, but I'm going to basically be focusing on the rest of them because they're all kind of in the same class of just like doomed.

vessels um and is pretty was one of them lucidania is that one of them nope lucania is going to come up but not in this context we should do that someone should do that one sometime because that one's real good yeah yeah so wait wait can i guess their names is one of them the olympic yes yes what's the other one is it the one that found the titanic the carpacia or no no okay can you have a hint like it's Um, we, when we were kids, people would sell encyclopedias that brought, oh, Britannica. There you go. I mean, that was easy, but, yes.

Well, it was Britannic, but the books are Britannica. Yes. Close enough. Thank you. Same, same. Okay. All right, I'm opening a repair. Go for it.

That's what it's on this. You go. So, we're covering into the limit class of ships. Basically, these are like classifications when, when ships are being designed and built, you don't build one of the kind. You create, like, a template. like an archetype, and then you build them to that spec based on the type of ship you're trying to create. And for the White Star Line, that was the Olympic class of ships.

So there was three of them. We're going to get into that in a minute. And your ship is about to come up as well. So in 1906, White Star Line's biggest competitor was a shipping company, also a British one, called Kuhnard Line. And they had launched some flagship vessels called the Mauritania and the Lusitania, which you just referenced. At a time when they launched, they basically took the rain as being the fastest and most lingeria ships across the Atlantic. And at the time, the White Star Line had four ships known as the Big Four, all of which were pretty young. They were only a few years old at this time.

The oldest one was about five years old, and it was called the Celtic. The youngest ship actually launched a year after the Mauritania Lucitania launch. That was called the Adriatic. that launched in 1907, but because this new round of ships were coming out, this new class from Cunard, White Star wanted to compete and have the biggest, best, fastest, most lingerie, as safe as ships possible. And so they went to their shipbuilder, a company that is still in operation today, called Harlan and Wolf in Belfast, Ireland, and asked them to come up with a concept.

They came up with this class of ships, the original three ships that were, part of this class were in ascending order when they launched the RMS Olympic in 1910, the RMS Titanic, which we all know in 1911, the HMHS Britannic in 1914. Those are three classes of ships. Okay. I think I know where you're going to ask. Well, you just have three classes. Are those just three ships or no?

Yeah, it was three. They're all the Olympic class ships and those are the three that been into it. Wait, we're there for? Did you see the before? No, there was, so what happened was, I'm going to go into this, but White Star basically, like, the whole concept of doing transatlantic movements of people by a massive ships stopped being relevant. And so no additional plans were made for more ships in this class. What I thought you might ask me was, what does RMS and HMHS mean? Because I had no idea what that meant.

So, is it Royal Majesty's ship? Royal Mailship? Royal Mailship? Yeah. So RMS is Royal Mail ship, which means that it carried mail. And HMHS is His Majesty's Hospital Ship. And apparently you should only have those designations when you're doing those things.

When you're not doing those things, you're supposed to go by SS, which would sit for screw steamer. okay but it's the same thing but like if i'm i'm not titanic and i have a letter in my pocket am i a mill ship you might need more than one letter but you could be okay um yeah so it didn't get there it didn't get there so the term screw is just like it it's it means it's it's a prop engine and it's a steamer it's steam power that's basically the only oh i've i've seen the engines you've seen those you know the one when the guy falls on the propeller it's on Titanic? Taylor, I'm going to admit something. I actually stayed home last night and watched Titanic. Oh my God, did you? I'm never going to watch it again. I don't have the

emotional capacity, but how, what did you think? I, I fast forwarded all the, like, sappy stuff because I really, I wasn't there for the sappy stuff. I was there for the tragedy. Have you seen the, the, that's great. Have you seen the things where, you know, when he shows her his, like, sketchbook, like, the ladies, but, like, where, like, where and like Instagram they'll like cut it and it'll be like Pokemon cards. I'm not too much. Or like a drawing of someone doing that like S that like all the kids draw. You know?

Oh yeah. And she's like yay and he's like feel proud of himself. The chain link S is yeah. Oh my gosh. No it was it was fun to rewatch but then like the other thing I noticed that's so much of the movie was CGI obviously it probably I mean it had to be you don't you didn't notice that when you were like younger watching it and now watching it's like so obviously like bad but yeah they did the best they could so we're gonna start yeah yeah of course you won every award yeah so much damage emotional damage so the olympic i'm

going to start with the olympics i'm going to go in like ascending order so the olympic had the longest life of all the olympic class ships going into service in 1911 and retiring in 1935 with 24 year with a 24-year service cycle. One thing I learned, because I actually looked up a ton of other ships. Because every time you start researching this stuff,

it leads you to like the Q&R line of ships. What was Germany doing? What was America doing? And all this was weird. All these steamers had these, like, crazy low lifespans. Like, you would assume if you spend

the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars on these things, they would have to live for many multiples of decades. Most of them didn't. Most of them, like, 24 years was kind of like it. Like, that was like, lucky to get 24 years out of one of these things, which is kind of surprising.

But there you have it. Olympic and Titanic, they were actually built side by side in that Belfast Shipping Company's yard. And Olympic actually finished first and almost immediately started having accidents. Like, I don't know what was going, what funeral ground or grave site this thing was built on, but immediately they were starting having accidents there. So. I have a thousand questions.

Can I read my hand? I'm so sorry. You're going to regret. No, no, please. Are you going to go into conspiracy theories about the Olympic and the Titanic? No, I'm not going to eat that. So I was part of that maybe they were switched because the Olympic was like falling apart. So they switched it and pretended it was a Titanic because they knew it wasn't going to make it.

One. Two, this isn't a conspiracy theory. This is a question number two. How do you make a ship that big? What do you start with? Like the outline? So you start with, yeah, you start with laying. the keel, which is like the one through line, the backbone of the ship, the thing that

kind of breaks in half when Titanic breaks, for example, that's held together by the keel, and then the keel eventually rips as well. You start there, and then you build it from the hull inward. And so what happens usually is once the thing is built up with the bones, the scaffolding of it, you can take it out of dry dock and start assembling it, because at that point it can float and that's when you start fitting it with all of its luxury stuff on the interior that's kind of that the way they did it back then at least

also it's overwhelming to me to build like pieces of it obviously that's not my job even close so when it was I learned a little bit about this so like when they got this commission to build these ships they had to

they basically have to like we do their entire construction methods because every ship is bigger than the last ship. So the dry dock, for example, you had originally would have to be destroyed and a new dry dock would have to be built that would accommodate it. It was wild. It was like the whole thing. Like a new company was basically being created or new process was being created every time

a new ship was being commissioned. So what is the, they're Keenard lines. That's what you said? Or no, it was it a white star? White Star. So what does White Star do? They just pay for it? white star's the operator yeah so white star is the company that sells the tickets that

staffs the ship and does all that they are the operator like it's like american airlines oh that it totally makes sense because i'm also i think i'm also really really flustered because i'm about to take an american airlines Boeing plate to japan and i am going to need to be sedated i mean i just did too i just i got back from charles like two nights ago and I was on a Boeing plane and was like I'm just going to I'm just going to listen to them when they tell me to keep my seatbelt on but that but that totally makes sense and I get it thank you for answering that question for me you are not totally off about that first conspiracy theory though so sort of so like a lightweight version of it like a

diet version of it so what happened was immediately after Olympic was launched and started having these accidents. And all of them are actually tied to Titanic in some way. So, for example, its first accident was it was going through this straight in the UK. And another ship was docked alongside this straight. And given the size of Olympic, its draft and its weight was enough to snap the line holding that ship in place. And the bow of that ship collided with Olympic. And it was bad. Like, I looked at pictures of this. Like, that ship was very, very bad. damaged um it's called the hawk if you want to look it up um and the the the olympic stayed afloat go ahead have you ever seen a boat launching yeah they just like hip it off the thing they just like hope

for the best yeah so they actually big thing i forgot what it was it was like they used like 200,000 tons of like lard and like oil to like launch titanic or something i forgot what it was like it took a lot of grease and stuff to get it out to actually open water. But the point being that when Olympic had this collision, it had to be sent back to be repaired in Belfast. And that took eight weeks. And because they were desperately trying to get this thing operational, because every day of things in Dry Dock, it's losing money, right?

It's not revenue generating. And so they're like, do this thing as fast as possible. Titanic was still a ways from launching. And they're like just scrap, take the parts from Titanic and use them to rebuild. olympic and so that's what they did so they had like pieces of each other probably exactly in your life yeah the hawk is is is is fucked up yeah it got crushed yeah so that all happened in on november 20th um when november 20th 1911 is one olympic returned back to service it only took three months for her have another accident and i mean this case was an accident more like something went wrong

basically it lost his propeller blade in the ocean and at that point they had to return it back to the builder and again scavenged parts from the Titanic. So ultimately what ended up happening was this delayed the inaugural voyage of Titanic about about three weeks, which It would have made it warmer. It was going to the summer. Well, if you think about it in terms of like

time and space, maybe that iceberg wouldn't have been there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, yes, 100% it would not have been there. It's almost impossible. I mean, I don't know. Do I justers move that fast? Or like they would it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have happened in three weeks i think the ice will probably would have moved in three weeks i don't know how fast icebergs move i'm not going to look it up because that's not what we're talking about that is now we're talking about later okay so in 1915 at the height of world war one she was retrofitted from pasture service to military uh usage with the

addition of deck guns and also it was original capacity with somewhere around 3 000 pastures it expanded 6 000 soldiers like they basically did away with all the pretty stuff and was like Just, yeah. Yeah, like none of the niceties need to be there. In 1919, she encountered a German U-boat and rammed it. Apparently this U-boat was lining up to try and attack it and torpedo it, and the ship accelerated into it and tore a massive haul into the side of this U-boat. The crew ended up scuttling it and abandoning the ship.

Nine people were killed. Nine of the crew were killed on that one. Thirty-one were saved when a U.S. vessel spotted their distress signal. I don't know what the situation was, but I guess Britain was taking no Nazi or they weren't Nazis back then. I guess we were taking no German survivors at that time. Wait, so no, what on the Olympic died. Yeah, no, this is all UO people, all the UO people, yeah.

So the Olympic, yeah, it hit this thing, knew it hit it, knew that it was scuttling itself, and it just kept going like, screw it, whoever finds you, finds you. So this actually gives us the Olympic The distinction of being the only civilian vessel To ever sink a U-vote during the war Which is kind of cool So

Fun for the Olympic In 1918 The war ended and it was The Olympic was returned back to commercial service It was restored It was able to carry pastors again It looked pretty again It's interesting because

There's some things that if you look at On the Titanic It's actually not the Titanic It's the Olympic So any pictures, you see... Okay, then... Keep going. I think that's a conspiracy, like the windows and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. That's part of the conspiracy. So, like, for example, if you're to see the grand staircase, the Titanic's, like, coolest feature, I guess, or one of the most talk-about features. I know. We've all seen a movie. We've all seen it. I'm going to have such Titanic nightmares. And the nightmares aren't going to be about Titanic.

They're going to be about my life in the 90s. in the 90s I just like can't even talk about it and like mess with my brain yeah keep going but for example the grand staircase pictures you see of Titanic

those actually aren't Titanic those are all Olympic so they were very very similar in that regard and that's part of where your conspiracy theory that you originated comes from

I might as well have so this thing goes into past your commercial used again in 1918 In later years, basically what ended up happening was that the Great Depression hit the need and desire for luxury travel was diminished. And also the need and want to travel to the United States in general was kind of diminished. That was also around the time when the U.S. passed additional limitations on the number of immigrants it would accept in the country. And so as a result, less and less people were wanting to even go there.

So that gradually led to a decline in service. I forgot what year was I didn't write it down but it was something around like the preceding three or four years before they decided to give it up on Olympic

it had not turned a profit like basically it was losing money every time it operated essentially in 1934 under pressure for the British government

White Star Line and Cunard merged to form Cunard White Star and basically they joined forces because both them were running low on money because of all the issues

that I mentioned above and White Q. NAR already laid the keel in the hall for the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, but couldn't afford to finish it. And the British government was like, we're not going to fund this. You all definitely need the same business. So merge and we'll help facilitate that merger to assist you to complete these ships. And so that was basically what they did. Ultimately, the Olympic was sold for 97,000 pounds, which is the equivalent of 8.2 million pounds today. This feels super. for low. Yeah. It was like cool stuff? Yeah. Yeah.

You sold it the way it was. Yeah. And basically what ended up happening was that because of the economic downturn that happened after the war, this was purchased by a lord or baron or whatever, like some one of those guys, some rich guy. And he transported it to this city that was specifically having like significant economic issues so that he could hire the citizens of the city to basically scrap it. And so that's what he did.

The city was called Jarro, and he brought it to Jarro and basically hired this massive staff of people to discard this thing and scrap it. How do you do that? How do you start with that? That's another question of because remember how we've talked about like older ships, how they just like leave them on the beach? Yeah. You know, like, I mean, where do you start with that? Like, I'm going to take out the carpet, I guess. And then they can take out the doors.

I bet you had given the fact that a lot of the Olympic, the interior fittings of it ended up. So right now, there's places you can go and see parts of the Olympic. So, for example, there's a celebrity cruise ship that has an Olympic cafe, and the sightings and the panelings of this room that this cafe is in, that's all pulled out from the Olympic. And so that's what they did. They basically went in room by room, took pieces of it out, and then sold those to anybody who wanted like this beautiful luxury fitting. And then the metal, you just basically pull apart across the ribets and sell for scrap metal. That's basically it.

So one terrifying and also fun fact about the Olympic. So in 1929, it was traveling over the exact last known location of the Titanic. You know, that route is very well travel. Like, there's, I looked at all the ships go. It's the exact same route. And it was right over the last in location of Titanic when it started shuddering violently for about two minutes, scaring the absolute living shit out of everybody. Yeah, that's ghosts.

That's 100% ghosts. Literally wrote, unfortunately, it wasn't ghosts. I don't believe you. I have it right here in the outline. Nope, it was ghosts. No, I believe that you wrote that, but I don't believe you that it's not ghosts. Unfortunately, what actually ended up happening was a massive seven-point. point two magnitude earthquake had struck about 400 miles away from this spot and had

caused it to yeah on earthquake caused by ghosts and earthquake probably caused by ghosts okay so we both then agree to agree we're on the same page so the next ship that was launched was the obvious one do we need to talk about this at all does anybody does anybody is anybody ambiguous about like what the titanic was what happened to it um I hope not. Okay. I'm sure everyone knows. Do you want to give us a quick one?

Quick run through? Big ship, hit iceberg, sank, 1,500 people died, 700 were saved. That's it. I do have a story about a couple who died on the Titanic that I do want to tell someday. But it involves, it's not about the Titanic itself. So, anyway, that's all.

All right. Well, a nice little. cliffhanger. Not to spoil it. Join us next week for... It's not next week. It'll be someday. So let's go to the third ship. So the third ship has a pretty fascinating life.

So this is the Britannic. It, like the other two ships, was essentially designed as a pasture liner. And then immediately entered war service, given that it launched right at the start of World War I. I didn't know this, but I guess, like, back then, Britain could just, like, take your stuff. So, like, maybe just go to White Star. I'd be like, like, this isn't your pastor. ship anymore this is our ship yeah i think i also knew that because like well i think i don't think

that's exclusive to britain because i think other other ships that we've talked about you know they become ships for war and then go back to their owners or whatever yeah yeah um well also it's worth noting that like you probably don't want to take a pasture cruise across the atlantic when there's uboats and submarines like sinking everything in the way so that's that's to happen to Lusitania, yeah. Yeah, they probably didn't want to actually do this, so it was probably a godsend for them. But this ship entered service as a hospital ship. That's why I mentioned earlier, it had the distinction of HMHS, the H.S, and that is hospital ship.

So because of the Titanic sinking, the original design for Britannic, which was, again, this Olympic class design that was supposed to be uniform across the board, ended up changing. So part of what they did was they expanded the length of the double hull. to go alongside the engine room and also raise the watertight bulkheads higher than the Titanic had them. The theory being the higher those are, the less likely the art is still over the next one and cause flooding.

I still haven't heard what the rationale is for not making the top of these things. Like watertight, I don't get it. What happened with Titanic was like it dipped low and so water would spill from one top to the next top to next. I was like, Why wouldn't that always happen? Like, why would you ever assume that wouldn't be the case?

I don't get it. Right. Like, why don't you just seal up the whole thing? Right. I don't know. Okay. I was literally, I was just watching a video of that happening on Instagram recently because it's a thing.

Yeah. If you're a ship historian. Please, please write to us at doom to file pod at g1.com. So basically, this ship had a lot more safety features than Titanic had. They learned a lot from Titanic, essentially. and so good i mean yeah well this one for example had enough life wraps and stuff like that so um at 812 a.m on november 21st 1916 a little less than a year after it originally officially went to service uh she struck a mine in the keach channel which is like around the uk

And I guess like this is what this is what the U-boats would do is just go around and just put mines up everywhere in the shipping lanes, which is like terrifying. Can you imagine? Like who went back and found those? Okay. I have a really crazy story about landmines. This is not. This is weird. Okay.

I'm just going to tell you. I'm sorry. There's this band that the kids like called Perry Grip. It's like a band that plays like kids songs were like funny. One of them is about these hero rats. It's like hero rats saving people life. and I was like some of them are about true stories

like a monkey on a segue not true story they saw a video of it and they made the song but the song about the hero rats I was like maybe that's true I looked it up and there's places in the world

where there are landmines and they've trained giant rats to find them and the rats are not big enough to set them off but they can find them and then people can go and turn them off

am that cool well what do you do in the ocean? I have no idea but I'm just telling you I know I know this thing about giant rats that land is dolphins so we should make a movie or write a book about like a plane crashing in the

Atlantic and then as it crashes it hits like a World War II landmine you imagine how much bad luck that would be so much bad luck in one one sitting so this is where we are we're in 1960 November this thing strikes a landmine planted by a U-boat the watertight doors were ordered sealed but apparently the bulkhead and two of them was damaged to the point where the doors couldn't actually come down. They're like, you know, there's steel gurgers that just twisted.

Regardless of that, the ship could stay afloat with five the compartments completely flooded. And given the fact that two were non-operational, not a big deal, we'll just flood those two, have those two flooded, and the rest of the five will keep this thing afloat. That was the idea. And that was

actually a safety feature ahead of the Titanic. I forgot what it was. I think Titanic was only four could be flooded. And then it hit five and that's what caused it to go down so fast actually it didn't go down that fast it took like two hours and 40 minutes so the problem here even though it was just five compartments flooded was that a nurse who worked on the ship wanted to vettulate the floor that she was on or the deck that she was on and she had left the porthole window open despite the fact that there was standing order that you could never leave these vessels portholes open and so water started

flooding in this thing was listing because it was only hit on one side so five compartments filled it listed to one side it dropped below the water line of this one porthole on the first deck that had portholes in it and water just sort of cutting in through there that was it yeah so the captain at that point didn't know how bad the situation was he ordered that the ship be seared towards nearby land in an attempt to basically run out of ground. The explosion was in the bow, which lifted the rudder and propellers, like, out of the water, ultimately out of the water. So it was the same way that Titanic kind of ended up before it snapped in half.

As a result of this, it made maneuvering it incredibly difficult because your manner of maneuver and the propeller and rudder are not totally in the water. Right. At this point, the captain had yet to order lifeboats to be launched, but despite, this third officer, a guy named Francis Laws decided to do this on his own against the captain's orders. He ended up lowering two light boats filled with people.

An absolute hero. You want to hear all this ends? No. Do you do something wrong? Because that's exactly what you should do is not listen to your boss and get the fuck out. Continue. Listen closer to see if Taylor's correct. So, again, the captain

was trying to steer this thing to an island to run it ashore to limit the potential loss of life so the propellers were still moving but like I said the front of the ship the bow was coming was going deeper into the water what happens when that happens the stern and the propellers go higher in the water and they were partially out of the water as these lifeboats were being launched and as a result they ended up sucking the lifeboats into the spinning propeller blades and killing 30 people on them so so should we listen to taylor's advice or I mean, we absolutely should always.

You should always just leave because if you're in a burning building and you don't leave because your boss has you to stay, I think you should leave. Okay. I'm going to stand by that. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to stop my like thing that I stand by. I mean, that sucks, but also worth a shot.

Yeah, I guess worth a shot. Well, the sad part of that is that the only 30 people that died were those people. And there was 1,000,66 people on the, on the ship and 1,036 survived. So that was kind of where that ended up. So the reason there were so many more survivors were several very obvious reasons. One was the Titanic sank in 28-degree water. I read this that like if you survive 15 minutes in 28-degree water, you are incredibly lucky

biologically. Like you should not be able to. Like several minutes should be enough to kill you in 28-degree water. water. In the case of Britannic, it sank in 68 degree water, which is like much more, I mean, it would still suck, but it's much more survivable. The other incredibly obvious thing was, again, lessons learned from Titanic, they actually had the right amount of lifeboats on this ship. And so actually had as many lifeboats that needed for the pasture load that it was carrying is everybody was on the boat. And the other thing was that. Did they get in lifeboats eventually that? yeah yeah yeah so so what was obvious so what happened was the thing started capsizing is again it was hit on one side so one half was getting flooded it started capsizing and by that point when the rudders came out of the water and the power came out of the water the captain was like i can't steer this and also they suspect that his desire to try and run this thing or ground was actually causing it the flood way faster than it would have ordinarily so like i said before titanic ended up being totally flooded and sinking at about two hours and 40 minutes after striking the iceberg. In this case, it only took 55 minutes. So they think that the fact that he was trying to get this thing to land was rushing, forcing water in faster.

And so it became obvious to him at some point that he had to abandon ship, which is what he did. So the wreckage itself is actually only 400 feet in the water. It was discovered in 1975 by Jacques Cousteau. It came to rest on its side and holds the distinction of being. the largest pasture liner to sink which is pretty cool there have been man dives down to the wreck with some going all the way

inside of this thing which sounds absolutely terrifying like okay I have a big question now why don't I just do that and so try to go to the Titanic can't you be like close enough to the experience but I can like

go in it that sounds so scared you think it's scary I don't know I'm not by saying no that's like what they would love to do if they were able to do it god i'm getting scared in this room I'm just thinking about it yeah well i think

i mean that's i was actually like thinking about this so i was like why is it that titanic has such a drought of people like what is like so unique about it that like it's still a hundred ten years later people were still killing themselves to go down there i don't i don't totally get it so i mean i'm with you there's got to be something there

I don't totally understand it but despite that that doesn't mean that people aren't dying in this thing either so so far people have died going into the wreck because it's like our other advice like don't go into a sea cave

yeah it's just so I don't know what it is about this stuff it just like haunts me like I don't know if it's just if it's a me thing but it's so scary if you look at wreckage of this thing

it's like you imagine going down and being like I'm going to go inside this thing like it's unbelievable So that's where it is, and as for the owners of it, so in 1947, 13 years after that merger, I mentioned earlier, Cynard ended up buying out all of White Star Line's interests in the joint operation, about a 38% interest in the merge business. And that essentially just ended White Lines existence. So there is, there's a, I'll discuss what the concept of White Line currently means, but there's not like a company called White Star Line. So in 1989, Kuhnard was sold to Carnival, and Carnival basically retained the brand as it's like premium luxury brand and operates the Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth. The flavor of these are very much a market and like not tactually.

If you look up these ships, like they don't look like these stupid ships that you see right now with like giant like, you know, water parks on them and stuff like that. They're, like, very much meant for like an upscale clientele. Their event cruises, for example, include literal, like, literature festivals at sea and symphony orchestra cruises. So, like, that's their vibe. And so as it relates to the White Star brand, so Cunard, as its own brand under Carnival, they have certain concepts we refer to as like White Star. So, for example, their officer training program is called White Star, White Star program or school or some academy or something like that. It's like they retain some vestiges of the brand and the name.

But as far as like a company right now, it's, it's not really, it's not really a thing anymore. So that's my story. What did you think? Interesting. I like it. I can't believe that like there was, I can't believe that like just it all went so poorly for all of them. Yeah.

You know? It's like not just one, but like all of them it went poorly for. That's really bizarre. Which actually was, I thought about this because one, I think it's Kira, right? Broke for us and brought up the Queen Mary, which I think is or, I mean, it definitely was docked in Long Beach, California. And I sort of looking into that. And so thank you for your recommendation, Kira.

but then I sort of like again these things just take you down these weird winding roads and I was like what else was there with like everybody talks about titan like what else was there and I started going into this like okay like there like there's like a rich history that overlaps with World War I it overlaps with the Great Depression it overlaps like with a lot of stuff which is kind of interesting well the Queen Mary is definitely still there because I was there I was in LA and like before Halloween and for whatever reason it was Shaq was like the host of Shaq tober at the Queen Mary that's right you said it It was like Halloween slash Shaq. We said they don't do the Halloween tours anymore, right? I don't know. They probably do. It was Shaq Tober. I'm sure they do. No.

I thought we talked about that before and you're like they, some company bought it and decided not to do it anymore. I don't think so, but I don't know, but at least they were doing it last October. Nice. Nice. So yeah, that's my story. If you want to dive into conspiracy theories, Taylor just gave us a pretty good one, which is something I'm probably going to

look into, but TBD. So Cool. I have a little bit of, I do. I have some listener mail. Okay. So this is from Morgan. Do you remember last week when I was like,

oh, that guy Robert Reich who's always on the internet? Yeah. Well, I'm an idiot and I want to tell me, I want to tell you everyone that now I know who he is. And let me just read from his Wikipedia page. Robert Reich is his quote from Wikipedia. media. He's an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the

administrations of President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993, 1997, in the cabinet of Bill Clinton. He was also a member of President Barack Obama's Economic Transition Advisory Board. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's very, very accomplished, and I'm down for not knowing who he was. No, it's fine. I mean, we don't. I apologize to the world. Now I know. Now you know. he's um he was part of the yeah he was part of like this interesting there's a cohort of political consultants that like i am infinitely fascinated with and he was part of he's part of like that universe that is just like this old hat statesman you know like like just very much like steeped

and like almost like a historian as much as a politician so absolutely that's exactly right exactly right so you can like see what's going on now and be like whoa whoa whoa wait so somebody wrote to you and described to you who he is I mean my friend Morgan told me who he was she's a friend but she was you know wasn't a stranger but I'm sure people were thinking it thank you for not lambast and Taylor thank you um sweet well again write to us at doom to fell podage you go dot com find us on all the socials we'll go ahead and cut this off and rejoin you in a few

days cool thanks far thanks Taylor You know what I'm going to be.