Short History Of... - The Titanic

Episode Date: April 10, 2022

The Titanic was the largest moveable object in history: almost 900 feet long, and holding over two thousand passengers. But just four days into its maiden voyage, a collision with an iceberg was enough to send her to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. So what made the famously ‘unsinkable’ ship anything but? Who was responsible for so many deaths? And what was it like to witness the disaster first hand? This is a Short History of The Titanic Written by Duncan Barrett. With thanks to Susie Millar, President of the Belfast Titanic Society.  For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the 14th of April, 1912. 400 miles off the coast of North America, Frederick Fleet is calming the horizon with his eyes. He's approaching the end of his two-hour shift on lookout duty, and he can't wait to get back inside. The young crewman does his best to suppress a shiver. The night is still and clear, but up in the crow's nest, 90 feet

above deck, the temperature is only a few degrees above zero. In the dark of a moonless night, the sea ahead looks like black glass. Bright pinpricks of stars shine brilliantly overhead, but all around is nothing but darkness. Not for the first time, Fleet wonders why the lookouts haven't yet been equipped with binoculars. As he continues searching the horizon, his attention is caught by something dead ahead. A small patch of sky that looks even darker than the inky black around it. He squints, trying to make out what it is. With every passing second the strange object grows larger. Suddenly Fleet realizes what he's seeing. Frantically he reaches for the

bell in the crow's nest and rings it three times, the signal for a hazard directly ahead. With his other hand, Fleet lifts the receiver of the telephone that connects to the bridge. What do you see? comes a voice from the other end. Iceberg, Fleet replies. Right ahead. The response is clipped and professional. Thank you. Then silence. Fleet replaces the phone in its cradle. He counts the seconds as he waits for the great vessel to respond.

Ten, twenty, thirty. But still they just keep ploughing onwards. Up in the crow's nest, Fleet stares open-mouthed as the iceberg grows closer. He can see it more clearly now, pale and glistening in the artificial light cast by the ship. He's already bracing for a direct impact when, finally, the bow begins swinging round to port. His hands grasp the lip of the barrier in front of him. It looks like they might just make it. But, traveling at over 22 knots, the change in direction won't be enough. The RMS Titanic is on a collision course

with destiny. It was the largest movable object in history, an unprecedented feat of engineering that eclipsed even its famous sister ship, the Olympic. Almost 900 feet long, with a capacity for over 2,000 passengers, Titanic's state-of-the-art technology had seen it heralded as practically unsinkable. And yet, on that fateful night in April 1912, Titanic's state-of-the-art technology had seen it heralded as practically unsinkable. And yet, on that fateful night in April 1912, sink it did. Just four days into its inaugural voyage to New York,

a glancing blow from an iceberg was enough to scuttle the pristine new vessel. Less than three hours later, the pride of the White Star shipping line was resting at the bottom of the Atlantic, and more than half of her passengers were dead. But how could the famously unsinkable ship ultimately turn out to be so vulnerable? Who on board bore responsibility for its passengers tragic fates? And why, over a hundred years later, does this horrific maritime disaster still hold such a powerful grip on our imaginations? I'm Paul McGann and this is a short history of the Titanic. Titanic. Three years before the accident, Titanic begins construction in Belfast.

A collaboration between the White Star Line and shipbuilders Harlan and Wolfe. It's the brainchild of White Star chairman Bruce Ismay. His vision for the new Olympic-class vessels is born out of fierce competition with rival company Cunard for the passenger route from Europe to America. While Cunard's ships are faster, White Star's will be grander

and more luxurious. The biggest shipyard in the world, Harland & Wolfe has helped to put Belfast on the map. Among those working there on the construction of Titanic is Thomas Miller, whose great-granddaughter Susie Miller offers history tours of the city today. It's hard to believe now just how important Belfast was at the turn of the last century. You could compare it to Bradford or Manchester or Birmingham. Harland & Wolfe employed at its height over 40,000 people and it was like an army of men going into work for 6.30 in the

morning. You didn't need an alarm clock in this city because the tramp of boots on the cobbles would have woken you up as those men streamed into Queen's Island to start their long day in the shipyard. So yes, it was an absolutely pivotal part of Belfast's economy. A local lad and the son of a sailor, Tommy Miller has lived most of his life in the shadow of the great shipping vessels of the era. He grew up just outside of Belfast, a little town with the lovely name of Bonny before. It's more of a collection of houses, really, than anything else. 15 miles north of Belfast, on the shores of Belfast Loch.

So his childhood, he would have been watching big ships come and go up and down the loch in front of his house. So, you know, maybe that was part of the reason why he wanted to get involved in shipbuilding. At Harland & Wolfe, Tommy is assigned to work on Titanic's giant engines that are as imposing as they are powerful. There are some wonderful photographs taken at the time where you see them compared to the height of a man. So, you know, they're about four or five times the height of a six-foot person. And these were really cutting-edge stuff in terms of the engineering.

Some people would compare what was going on in Belfast back then to Cape Canaveral. It was really at the height of innovation. In charge of the vast construction project is Harland & Wolfe's chief designer, Thomas Andrews. A local man in his mid-thirties, Andrews is popular with the workers and passionate about the project. One night, after a long day at the shipyard, he returns in the evening with his wife to show her the great ship gradually coming together from the ground up. There goes my boys, Nellie, he tells her, as they watch the men at work on the gigantic hull. But Andrews isn't the only one to feel a great sense of pride in Titanic. Tommy too

makes sure to explain to his own children how important the new ship is for Belfast, and how happy he is to be playing his own small role in building it. Every evening he comes home and tells his two sons what he's been working on that day, keen to instill in them the same pride that he feels to be working on such a groundbreaking project. One day he even takes the boys down to the slipway to see the ship itself. By January 1912, work on Titanic is almost complete. But in the Miller family, tragedy strikes.

Thomas' wife, Jeannie, dies unexpectedly of tuberculosis. Now a single father to two grieving children, Tommy decides the family needs a fresh start. While the richer first-class passengers on the Great Atlantic vessels may be travelling for business or pleasure, the steerage decks are packed with hopeful emigrants looking to start a new life in America. Tommy decides it's just the sort of new beginning that his broken family needs. With Titanic's maiden voyage set for April, Tommy leaves Harlan and Wolf and gets a job with

White Star instead, working as an assistant deck engineer. Sure enough, he's soon assigned to the maiden voyage of the ship he helped to build. But on this first trip to America, Tommy will be traveling alone. There was no way that he could have brought his two sons with him on that voyage because he would have been working the whole time. He left them with his Aunt Mary back in the place where he'd been brought up, the village of Bonny before, on the shores of the Loch. And he thought that he would see them again within a few months. His plan was to get to New York, get himself organised and settled. them again within a few months. His plan was to get to New York, get himself organised and settled, and then on one of his voyages have the boys brought to either Southampton or Cove,

where he could be reunited with them and take them off for this big American adventure. So he had it all pretty well planned out as to how it was going to work. He just didn't envisage what was going to happen. On April 2nd, 1912, Tommy bids farewell to his two boys. Be good to your aunt, he tells them, and try not to fight with your cousins. He then reaches into his pocket and draws out a couple of pennies for each of them. Don't spend these until we're together again, he tells them. Later that evening, standing on the shores of Belfast lock the two boys watch as the majestic ship disappears into the distance they're still holding their lucky pennies and when they finally go back inside they realize how hard they've been gripping them the year 1912 embossed on the surface of the coins, is now imprinted on the palms of

their hands as well. A week later, on the 10th of April, Titanic is finally ready to begin her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. It's a cloudy day, and the ship's captain, Edward Smith, comes on board early in the morning to get his bearings. With his trim white beard and grandfatherly demeanour, Captain Smith is one of White Star's most popular officers. A veteran of more than 30 years' service with the company, he's earned the nickname the Millionaire's Captain for his easy manner with the most wealthy and illustrious passengers. Today though, Smith is more concerned with his crew. At 8.30am he orders all hands to muster on deck for a safety inspection.

Under the watchful eye of a representative from the Board of Trade, Captain Smith orders two of Titanic's starboard lifeboats to be lowered into the water. As an assistant deck engineer, Tommy Miller is responsible for the winch mechanisms that lift the boats off the deck and over the side. It's a brief demonstration, and half an hour later the Board of Trade inspector leaves satisfied that the mechanisms for lowering the boats function smoothly. He's more worried though about the number of boats on board. Titanic carries twenty in total, above the legal minimum, but still not enough to save every passenger on board.

I suggest fifty percent more, the inspector writes in his official report. But there's no time to think about that now, with almost 2,000 passengers to be boarded by lunchtime. Many of them have just arrived on special boat trains from Waterloo Station in London. First to embark are the second and third class passengers, who have their own separate gangways. On Titanic, such distinctions are rigidly enforced. For those travelling steerage, as the lowest class of accommodation is known, there are additional medical checks to be gone through.

The American immigration authorities don't want sick people arriving in their country. Finally, with just half an hour to go before departure, the first class passengers are boarded as well. Then, a little afternoon, the great ship finally leaves Southampton to begin its maiden voyage across the Atlantic. But it's not exactly a smooth departure. To begin with, Titanic is towed along gently by tugboats. But when Captain Smith gives the order to fire up the ship's engines, the suction created by the giant propellers is enough to snap the moorings of a nearby vessel, the SS New York. To those on board, the sudden release of the metal houses sound like gunshots.

Unmoored, the aptly named New York begins drifting towards Titanic's stern, and for a moment it looks as if the new ship is going to suffer a collision only minutes into her maiden voyage. But Captain Smith responds quickly, ordering the port propeller to be put into reverse. Meanwhile, one of the tugboat captains throws a line to the men on the New York, slowing the other ship's progress towards Titanic. It's touch and go for a few moments, but ultimately a disaster is averted. The tugboat crews get the New York back under control, and Titanic resumes its course. For the crew, it's been a distinctly stressful start to the voyage. But it's the real New York that's on most of the passengers' minds.

In less than a week, as far as 2,000 men, women, and children on board are concerned, they'll all be setting foot in Manhattan. As Titanic gets underway, the passengers begin to acquaint themselves with the facilities on board, which vary widely according to their class of ticket. Those in steerage share cramped cabins in the bowels of the ship, where the rumble of the engines is never far away. On the upper decks, wealthier passengers enjoy spacious, tastefully decorated suites. They have access to a variety of luxurious lounges, as well as squash courts, Turkish baths, and even a heated indoor swimming pool. On this maiden voyage, there's no shortage of

celebrity travellers. Mingling with the ship's designer Thomas Andrews and White Star Chairman Bruce Ismay are the famous businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, traveling with his French mistress. Ida and Isidore Strauss, the owners of Macy's department store, and one of the richest men in the world, financier John Jacob Astor IV. For the great and the good, the voyage offers not just a luxury holiday, but an opportunity for networking. Life on board Titanic seems to have been like a big party, definitely for the first-class passengers.

They were all sizing each other up to begin with. A lot of them were coming back from business trips, from London back to New York. So there was a kind of pecking order even amongst the first classes as to, you know, who was the most important there. Below decks, though, the priorities of the passengers are very different. In the other classes, particularly third, it was a one-way ticket. You know, you imagine you've left your

home in maybe Scandinavia or in rural Ireland, and you're on a one-way ticket out to New York to start a new life or even beyond in the United States. So for them, I suppose there was a sense of sadness that they'd left family behind and a bit of trepidation that they were going to this unknown new life in the US. For new crew members like Tommy Miller, the voyage is an exciting one, despite the hard work involved. He would have had to be sharing a room or cabin, but still it would have been fairly, I won't say luxurious, but definitely higher end than he would have been used to in his own house. I won't say luxurious, but definitely higher end than he would have been used to in his own house. And I suppose the whole hype around Titanic would have made this feel special.

Even if he was getting his head down and making sure that he was doing his job properly, you know, there must have been a great thrill to be involved in this most famous ship in the world. I'm sure that Tommy was just getting familiar with his job because bear in mind he was pretty new to this kind of work. He was an assistant deck engineer, so that means he would have been responsible for mechanical things up on deck. Things like winches and cranes and even the lifeboat mechanisms to swing out the lifeboats and lower them. Not that the lifeboats are much on anyone's mind during the early days of Titanic's voyage. Following their first brief demonstration on the morning of departure, a second lifeboat drill is scheduled for Sunday the 14th of April, four days later.

But Captain Smith decides to cancel it in favor of a lengthy church service. To most passengers, the idea that the boats might ever actually need to be used is unthinkable. Everyone knows that Titanic's safety features are state-of-the-art, with an elaborate system of transverse bulkheads dividing the ship into 16 separate compartments. Thanks to Thomas Andrews' ingenious design, even if the front four should take on water, the vessel will remain comfortably afloat. It's this new technology that has prompted Shipbuilder magazine to declare the Titanic unsinkable. The claim is not officially sanctioned by Harlan and Wolff, but it has seized the popular

imagination nonetheless. Even Andrews himself, who previously argued that they ought to carry enough lifeboats for every passenger on board before being overruled by Bruce Ismay, is unconcerned about potential risks on the voyage. That Sunday morning he tells another passenger that the ship is as nearly perfect as human brains can make her. It's a statement that he will come to regret before the day is out. After four days at sea, the passengers have begun to feel at home on board Titanic. But for those like Tommy Miller, who are making their first Atlantic crossing, the sheer scale of the empty ocean can be hard to process. It must have been quite a rare experience for him, you know, to see these vast stretches of

seascape and nothing else. I've done that crossing and you don't see anything for days. Now, you know, you can fly across the Atlantic in five hours, but when you're bobbing around on this vast ocean in a ship, you just realise sort of how vulnerable you are and how the sea has all the power. And for him, I'm sure some of those thoughts were going through his mind because he'd never been in a situation quite like that before. On Sunday morning, Captain Smith receives the first warning of icebergs up ahead, thanks to a telegram from the Cunard liner Caronia. Westbound steamers report bergs, growlers and field ice, the message says.

Then at noon, a second telegram is received, this time from the RMS Baltic. Passing icebergs and large quantities of field ice today, it reads. Wish you and Titanic all success. Two hours later Captain Smith shows the Baltic's message to Bruce Ismay, who, for some reason, decides to put it in his pocket. What Ismay makes of the warning is unclear, although he doesn't seem to take it too seriously That afternoon he cheerfully shows it to a pair of ladies taking a stroll on deck, whipping it out and reading it aloud to them As for what was said during Ismay's brief meeting with Captain Smith, the truth may have gone to the bottom of the sea with Titanic itself. Later, some will claim that Ismay put pressure on the captain to maintain speed,

determined to make the Atlantic crossing in record time. Either way, despite multiple warnings, Captain Smith makes no effort to reduce speed. That evening, the captain attends a dinner party thrown in his honour by some of Titanic's wealthiest passengers. Then at 9.25pm he retires to bed, leaving his second officer in command of the bridge. By now the air temperature has dropped to just one degree above freezing. Two hours later, the officers on deck here are ringing from the bell in the crow's nest. Three dings in quick succession. Everybody knows what

that means. First Officer William Murdoch, now in command, lifts the telephone and speaks to lookout Frederick Fleet. As soon as he hears the word iceberg, he springs into action. Murdoch gives the order, hard a starboard, bringing the ship's bow round to the left of the deadly obstacle up ahead. At the same time he sends instructions down to the engine room to apply reverse thrust, attempting to slow Titanic down. But the reduction in speed actually reduces the ship's maneuverability, and the last-minute swerve isn't quite enough to avoid a collision. Murdoch saves Titanic from a direct impact, but in the process subjects the ship to something much worse.

As the Berg scrapes along the starboard side of the ship's hull, great shards of ice are deposited on deck. It's the damage below the waterline, though. Where the majority of the iceberg is located, that will ultimately doom the ship. Tucked up in their beds, many of the passengers are suddenly awoken by an unfamiliar sound. One wealthy passenger later describes it as like a giant finger being drawn along the side of the ship. Another suspects something has come crashing down in the kitchen, where indeed the cutlery has begun to rattle alarmingly in the drawers.

Few, if any though, realize the severity of the impact. One woman who lived through the great San Francisco earthquake is reassured that the current tremor feels relatively minor. Another, still only half awake, tells herself the ship must be docking already. As the noise subsides, many passengers simply go back to sleep. Others decide to venture up on deck to find out what the commotion is all about. Most have missed the chance to glimpse the 100-foot tower of ice as it glides alongside a ship. But the evidence of its brief visit is plain to see. On the third-class deck, where large chunks of ice have been deposited, snowball fights spontaneously break out.

Even those who witnessed the terrifying spectacle of the iceberg firsthand are now experiencing a mixture of excitement and relief. As the berg recedes into the darkness behind the ship, they congratulate themselves on a lucky near miss. By the time Captain Smith arrives on deck from his cabin, he is already too late to catch sight of it. But he wastes no time assessing the damage. He summons the ship's designer Thomas Andrews to the bridge, and together they begin touring the lower decks in search of leaks.

Less than ten minutes after hitting the iceberg, several compartments are already under fourteen feet of water. The two men make their way past the flooded mailroom, where hundreds of soggy letters now float aimlessly, and along the squash courts, which have come to resemble a swimming pool. Just after midnight, back on the bridge, Andrews makes his report to the captain. Although the transverse bulkheads are preventing water from spreading between compartments, the iceberg has punched a series of holes along the starboard side of the ship, meaning that no less than five of them are flooding independently. The ship can float with up to four compartments flooded, Andrews explains, but not five.

Whatever they do now, the outcome is inevitable. Titanic, the ship's designer announces, will founder. The only question is how much time they have left. Within 25 minutes of the impact with the iceberg, Captain Smith orders the lifeboats to be uncovered and the passengers to be summoned on deck. But not all the sleepy travelers are willing to be roused from their beds in the middle of the night. Certainly amongst the passengers there was this idea

that they were on this extremely safe and, in their minds, unsinkable ship. So you can only imagine what it's like for them when maybe they've gone to bed for the night and there's a knock at the door by one of the stewards saying, do you see this unsinkable ship that you've been sold a ticket on? Well, it's sinking and you need to get off. And a sense of disbelief that this can't possibly be happening. You know, we're not going to sink. This is the Titanic.

It's the biggest ship in the world. There's no way it's going to sink. So you can understand why it took some time for passengers to realize the gravity of the situation and realize, yeah, we actually do need to get off onto a lifeboat underway even once the passengers do make it up on deck the procedure for filling the lifeboats is chaotic and inconsistent on one side of the ship the rule seems to be women and children only on the other side men begin finding their way onto the boats where there are spaces. But in the dark, freezing conditions, many passengers are still reluctant to leave the apparent safety of a 40,000-tonne ocean liner for a precarious wooden lifeboat.

As a result, some boats depart less than half full. One in particular left with 12 people on board, and at a push you could stick 60 people in those. So it was just a hurried way of getting the lifeboats away, and a reticence on behalf of passengers to leave behind this huge big ship and get on board a small wooden vessel and be lowered down into the dark ocean. And I guess they also thought, well, someone's going to come along and pick us up. There's got to be another ship in the area that's going to come and get us.

As it happens, another ship is indeed only 20 miles away. The SS Californian. But when the crew spot Titanic's distress rockets, they dismiss them as fireworks. crew spot Titanic's distress rockets, they dismiss them as fireworks. By the time Captain Smith orders his wireless operators to send out an SOS signal, the Californian's operator has already gone to bed. It's like a perfect storm of, you know, situation where you've got not enough lifeboats, you've got passengers who don't believe that the ship is sinking. You've got radio operators sending distress calls into thin air because no one's listening. And rockets being fired off, which are being misread as fireworks and celebrations rather than distress calls. So all these little things that come together to make it the disaster that it was.

faster than it was. It takes almost an hour and a half for Titanic's lifeboats to be filled and lowered. By now the ship is tilting badly enough that its propellers are visible above the water. Those involved in lowering the boats, among them Tommy Miller, know that their own chances of survival are slim. He probably knew for most of the time that Titanic was sinking that he wasn't going to have a chance. It must have been a terrible few hours for him because he was trying to give his kids a better life and he was actually ending up leaving them orphaned through no fault of his own. But those thoughts must have been going through his head that, oh, what have I done to my children? I've left them with nobody.

Some passengers actually turn down a place in one of the lifeboats, despite knowing that it's their only chance of survival. Ida Strauss, of Macy's fame, refuses to abandon her husband Isidore, insisting that they die together on board the ship. Benjamin Guggenheim, meanwhile, arrives on deck in his best evening clothes, announcing that he intends to die like a gentleman. Others, though, will do almost anything to make their way onto one of the boats. One man successfully boards disguised as a woman.

One man successfully boards disguised as a woman. Even more controversially, White Star boss Bruce Ismay takes up a seat on one of the lifeboats, rather than stoically going down with the ship. At 2 a.m. as the last boat is lowered, Captain Smith tells those men still on board that they're released from their duties. You can do no more, he tells them. Now it's every man for himself. Some leap into the water and start swimming. By now, a hushed calm has descended over the ship. Even the band has stopped playing. But with the lifeboats gone, there are still 1,600 souls on board,

and their chances of survival are not good. A few minutes later, a steward passing the first-class smoking room finds Thomas Andrews inside, staring off into space. His lifebelt lies discarded on a nearby table. Aren't you going to have a try for it, Mr. Andrews? The young man asks him. But the Titanic's designer is too stupefied to answer. At 2.18 a.m., Titanic's lights go out. By now, the bow of the ship is underwater,

and the whole vessel is tilted downwards by about 20 degrees. Eventually, the strain on the hull is just too much. And with a deafening screech, the giant ship is ripped in two. It lies for a moment on the surface, with its back broken. Then first the bow, followed by the stern, is dragged down to the bottom of the ocean. Those floating on the surface hear the rear section of the ship implode as it goes down. But they have no time to worry about that right now.

The water temperature is around 2 degrees Celsius, enough to kill most of them within half an hour. From the lifeboats, survivors look on in horror as the screams of their fellow passengers start to fall silent. Many of the boats still have plenty of room on board, and fierce debates ensue about whether to go back and try to help. Once the ship had sunk, there was this opportunity to go back and get more people in. But again, you've got some of the passengers who fear that they're going to be swamped with people and that they will tip over and things will get out of hand. So you have a situation where some of the lifeboats go back in and take up in more people and others decide to stay clear and just wait for the

rescue ship to come. Most controversial is the story of lifeboat one which still has just 12 people on board, seven of them crew members. Seeing the hundreds of tiny figures bobbing in the icy water, one of them suggests they go back and attempt a rescue. But after much discussion, and an exchange of money with one of the wealthy passengers, the decision is taken to keep their distance. It's a choice that will be heavily scrutinized in the weeks that follow. Is the cash simply compensation for personal kit destroyed in the sinking, as everyone involved claims? Or a bribe to stay away from desperate and potentially dangerous people? In total, almost 1500 people are killed when the Titanic goes down,

the vast majority from hypothermia rather than drowning. But even with the ship's limited number of lifeboats almost 500 more could have been saved. Perhaps my great-grandfather could have been rescued from the water. We just don't know. I try, I suppose, not to think about the physical aspects of what he would have gone through in those last hours of Titanic. While I've put myself in his headspace to a certain extent, I just find it difficult to think about what it must have been like for him in those final moments. A lot of the Titanic

museums nowadays and the exhibitions will have a reconstruction of the sinking, audiovisual and whatever, and that is something that I can't look at. Perhaps unsurprisingly, despite the women and children first policy, the type of ticket you're travelling on has a big impact on your chances of survival. 61% of first class passengers eventually make it to dry land, compared to 42% from second class and just 24% from steerage. Three quarters of Titanic's crew also go down with the ship.

Among them Captain Smith, First Officer Murdoch and designer Thomas Andrews. Among the luckier ones was my own great uncle, Jimmy McGann. At the age of twenty-nine, he had joined Titanic as a coal trimmer, one of the team of men responsible for stoking the enormous boilers that kept the ship's engines going. It was dirty, back-breaking work, deep in the bowels of the ship, and the trimmers earned the lowest wage of anyone on board. As Titanic was about to go under, Jimmy was working to launch one of the ship's collapsible lifeboats. Smaller crafts, made from a mixture of wood, cork, and canvas,

the collapsibles were little better than rafts with built-up sides. The collapsibles were little better than rafts with built-up sides. At 2.10am, Jimmy and some other members of the crew were trying to get collapsible B onto the launching davits that would allow them to lower it into the ocean. But much of Titanic was already underwater, and a great wave swept the boat off the side of the ship, leaving it bobbing upside down in the open water. Jimmy was one of about thirty passengers and crew who succeeded in clambering onto the wooden underside of the boat. They shivered in the sub-zero temperatures as they watched Titanic snap in half and slide under the ocean.

Even out of the water, several of them succumbed to hypothermia. By the time they were rescued, Jimmy was suffering from frostbite and he had to be admitted to hospital in New York. But he was able to provide a first-hand account of the sinking to the local press. Of particular interest was his description of Titanic's doomed captain, who, he said, remained at his post on the bridge up to the final moments. When the water reached Captain Smith's knees, he said, and the last boat was at least twenty feet away from the ship, I was standing beside him. He gave one look all around, his face firm and his lips hard-set.

He looked as if he was trying to keep back the tears as he thought of the doomed ship. I felt mightily like crying as I looked at him. Suddenly he shouted, Well, boys, you've done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you. You know the rule of the sea. It's every man for himself now. And God bless you. It's 4am, by the time the rescue ship Carpathia finally appears. Its chief engineer has shut down heating and hot water in an attempt to boost her speed. But even so, she arrives too late for most of Titanic's passengers. Several hundred men, women, and children float lifelessly in the icy Atlantic Ocean.

The bodies are surrounded by debris, deck chairs, tables, wooden doors, and more. The pallid faces of the dead display the cuts and bruises they sustained during the ship's final moments. Those lucky souls huddling in the lifeboats, exhausted, near-frozen, and traumatized by the events they've witnessed, are hastily brought on board. Compared to the luxury of Titanic, Carpathia is a distinctly workmanlike vessel. But the passengers and crew show great kindness to the bedraggled survivors. They give up their own beds and clothing to the new arrivals, as well as offering solace and sympathy to those who've lost everything in the disaster.

It's another four days before the smaller vessel finally docks in New York, completing the voyage Titanic's passengers and crew embarked on over a week earlier. It's a cold, rainy evening, but the ship arrives to a hero's welcome, besieged by reporters shouting questions at the survivors. Flashing camera bulbs light up the night sky. Tens of thousands of people have gathered to greet the new celebrities. For now, the mood is one of joy and exhilaration. But in the ensuing weeks, difficult questions will begin to be asked.

difficult questions will begin to be asked. In the popular press, heroes will be crowned and villains pilloried. Chief among the latter is Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line. Dubbed Brute Ismay and the Coward of the Titanic, his decision to take up a place on one of the lifeboats rather than go down with the ship is one he will never live down. Booted from the White Star board, he flees to rural Ireland. I never want to see a ship again, he declares, and I loved them so. But questions remain. The day after the Carpathia docks in New York, the nearby Astoria Hotel is turned over to an official congressional hearing,

aiming to get to the bottom of the tragedy. Over the next six weeks, more than 80 witnesses offer testimony. When the official report is published, it includes a series of recommendations. Foremost among them is a requirement that all ships must carry enough lifeboats for the number of passengers on board. The report concludes, The Committee finds that this accident clearly indicates the necessity of additional legislation to secure safety of life at sea. A month after the American inquiry wraps up, the British Board of Trade announces the conclusions

of its own investigation. Over the next couple of years, the existing maritime regulations, which had been in place since 1894, are overhauled. The big problem was the fact that the number of lifeboats was based on the tonnage of ships rather than on the capacity of passengers. So that was totally revisited so that there would be lifeboat spaces. And the whole idea of knowing what the procedure was for passengers, the safety of life at sea rules that we know so well today,

all came about as a result of Titanic. To not even have had a lifeboat drill was just crazy. You know, the fact that they had one scheduled and it had been put to one side by the captain. And, you know, today we just wouldn't tolerate that. Even if you're on a cross-channel ferry, you want to know where your muster station is and what the rules are for when things go wrong, if they go wrong. So yeah, Titanic had a huge impact on the safety of life at sea regulations that we know today.

The new rules offer increased safety for future travellers. But for the thousands of families shattered by the loss of Titanic, the years ahead mean gradually coming to terms with a sudden, unimaginable loss. Back in the tiny Irish village of Bonny Before, Tommy Miller's niece Ella is charged with breaking the news of his death to his children. The two boys still have the pennies their father gave them before he departed, which he made them promise not to spend until they saw him again. As a five-year-old, this was just so much for my grandfather to take in.

He used to spend a lot of time down on the beach at Bonny before, the little village where he was sent to live, and he used to sail his own little paper boat. He'd make a boat out of a piece of paper and sail it down the stream and launch it into Belfast Lock in the same way that his father had been doing up in Belfast. And that's what he was doing one day when his cousin Ella came to find him because she had heard the news and she'd been wondering how she was going to tell him. So she started to tell him what had happened to Titanic. And just as she got to the important bit, his little paper boat hit a rock in the stream and

it sank. And that gave her the ability to be able to tell him, you know, she said, look, oh, your wee boat has sunk. Do you remember the big ship that your dad sailed away on? Well, the same thing happened to it. It hit an iceberg and a lot of people drowned and your dad was drowned too. So even at that, he didn't really understand. He asked if his dad was coming home and Ella, his cousin, said, no, no, he'll never be home again. And it was over, I suppose, the few days after that, that he started to take it in and realize what had happened and made that decision never to spend the pennies that his father had given him. what had happened and made that decision never to spend the pennies that his father had given him. So, you know, these became a symbol of the connection between father and son. He'd been told to keep the pennies until they were all together again. That wasn't going to happen. And so he was true to his word. He never let them go.

110 years after the Titanic disaster, Tommy's pennies remain a treasured keepsake for the Miller family. To mark the centenary of the disaster in 2012, Susie undertook a memorial cruise, crossing the Atlantic in a Grand Ocean liner and finally docking in New York. It was an amazing experience. It really was something unforgettable. It was an amazing experience. It really was something unforgettable. To be above the wreck exactly 100 years later and to pay tribute to those who had been lost was extremely moving. to New York Harbor and get off on the island of Manhattan and just mentally say, there you go, Tommy, there's that journey finished for you a hundred years later. It was an incredible experience. It really was. Those on board, we had many descendants of people who'd been on Titanic, and we got together and had a discussion about what our various folks would have been doing and whether they would have met each other during the brief voyage.

For families like Susan's and mine that have a personal connection to the disaster, it's not surprising that Titanic has continued to resonate down the generations. But even for those not directly tethered to the doomed ship, the story of its sinking exerts a strong pull. More than a dozen movies have brought Titanic back to life on the silver screen. Among them James Cameron's 1997 epic, which turned the biggest ship ever built into the highest grossing film of all time. Looking back, the Titanic story offers us a window into another age, an era of industry and technological progress, but also of the cruel divide between rich and poor.

The two thousand odd passengers who set sail from Southampton in 1912 were like a society in miniature, and their fortunes in the face of disaster mirrored the lives they lived on land. But it's a story, too, of almost Shakespearean proportions, in which hubris leads inexorably to tragedy, of men who built something so huge and powerful that they forgot their own human vulnerability. I think the story of Titanic endures just because of the fact that it is such a good story.

Here you have the biggest ship in the world carrying the richest people in the world and also the poorest heading to new lives in the US. the poorest heading to new lives in the US, and this supposedly unsinkable ship which sinks on her maiden voyage after just a few days at sea. And within that bigger story, the smaller stories of humankind and of people and their circumstances, and the fact that we're still discovering things about those, I reckon that's why new generations keep coming to it. If you try to make up a fictitious story about a disaster at sea, you couldn't come up with anything better than the truth of what happened to Titanic. Next time on Short History Of,

we'll bring you a short history of the Russian Revolution. There was this bizarre kind of parallel universe in Petrograd where, you know, the poor people were all queuing around the block in the freezing cold for food. And yet the aristocracy, they were dressing up in the evening, going off to the ballet, to the Mariinsky Theatre or to the opera. But, you know, the basic rye bread that the people needed was in short supply. So while the aristocracy is still dining out and enjoying champagne and lovely suppers in the clubs and restaurants of Petrograd, the poor were starving, the workers were starving. And there was this crazy sense of unreality.

That's next time on Short History Of.