Stuff You Should Know - How the Titanic Worked: Part Two

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

After the Titanic sank recriminations and blame followed, sometimes ruining careers unjustifiably. As the decades wore on and she was found almost 2.5 miles down, history rehabilitated some people. The question still remains how to preserve the ship. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry over there and this is Stuff You Should Know, Titanic edition part two, the sequel.

When we last left off, the Titanic had just set sail. I'd like to say it was in fine shape, but it had almost sucked another ship into it and it had a coal fire aboard. But other than that, it was doing just fine. I wonder if the captain, after they averted hitting the New York, was like, did you see those guys? They were totally pooping in their pants. Yeah, give me another toot toot. Don't mess with me. So yeah, I don't have the impression that the captain, I don't know if we said his name or not yet, Edward Smith. He should say his name. I don't know that he, well, he certainly doesn't in retrospect have a Sterling reputation. No, no. I was going to say he doesn't have a reputation that is

like that of a maverick necessarily. No, I think he did have a Sterling reputation up until then at least. Exactly. Like he was, I saw in a, I think a PBS documentary that, that like captains like this at the time were likened to rock stars of today. Like they had their own fans and like it was a, like you knew what captain you were sailing with and it was a big deal. And he was one of the most famous and well, well respected, if not revered as far as the captains go, but over time. Like stewing. Yeah, exactly like stewing, but over time, because of like the inquiries and the desire to place blame and to find like simple answers and compartmentalize everything, he's been kind of painted with an inaccurate brush that loses

a lot of nuance. And one of the ways that he has been mislabeled that makes him seem like a maverick is that he was going full speed ahead, trying to break speed records and wanted to get there as fast as possible to show up those cunard jerks. And that seems to just be not the case at all. And in fact, yes, the Titanic was going very, very fast, but according to a, a, an Irish journalist who's done a lot of research on this, uh, CNN Maloney, I believe, uh, is their name, uh, they were going that fast because they were trying to, they were having to use up more coal to keep that fire from spreading. And that he didn't really have that much of a, a say in how fast the thing was going because they had to keep the coal fire under control.

I'd like to slow down. Are we still on fire? Well, we can't slow down. Full steam ahead. But that really kind of goes to show you, it's like, like really teaches you like, oh, yeah, we've lost a lot of like the details here, or I shouldn't say that pop culture has lost a lot of the details. There are plenty of people out there who know details like that. And those are the people you should listen to. Those are the people who we've listened to. So you can feel pretty comfortable listening to us for the last episode in this one. Let's begin now to. All right. Fast forward, uh, from April 11, when it set sail to April 14, we all know what happens over those three days. There's some steamy love making in the back of

a car in the cargo hold. John, you're like one of your French girls. Wasn't that a good Kate Winslet? I thought you were doing Leo. No. Either one would have been funny. Okay. There's room for me on that door. That was Leo. Yeah. And she said, no, there's not. Oh man. We just lost a bunch of listeners. No, no. I mean, we can joke about that. So it is the night of April 14th, 1912. This is the third day out. It is very cold.

The water is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit, negative 2.2 Celsius. And around noon that day, some things started happening. They had this really cool modern Marconi wireless system where they could receive messages wirelessly. And the operators on board started receiving the first of at least what would be four messages about ice and like big, big ice that's in the water. A second one comes in at 535 from an actual ship that said, hey, icebergs, 19 miles north of from right, you're headed right toward, toward these icebergs. And you know what they say, like they don't look big on top, but there could be serious trouble underneath. They really fill out under water. I don't think that's the saying.

And about an hour before the collision, at 1140 p.m., the Californian, which was a nearby vessel, said, hey, we're stopped. We're surrounded by ice. And the operator on the Titanic said, literally, shut up. I am busy. I'm working Cape Race, which apparently was a relay station in Newfoundland. And they were busy sending out messages for the passengers. Yeah. The passengers could pay about 65 bucks to send a Marconi gram to basically show off to their friends and family back home that they were sending a hello from the middle of the ocean. Yeah. Because the postcard they sent was just in the mailroom aboard the same ship at the same time as them. This Marconi gram could go out immediately. So the first class passengers were sending out little hellos to the tune of

about 250 of them, I believe, just that day. Wow. So the Marconi operators were very much overworked, which is why he told the other one to shut up. Apparently he said it twice. He said, shut up, shut up. Two exclamation points too. So 250 first class passengers sent out messages just that day. It's like there were only 300 and something first class aboard. So that was most of first class. Yeah. Well, hopefully there wasn't just like some obnoxious one that had sent out like 10 or 12. But who knows Billy Zane. Right. He was like, I want to send another Marconi gram about Picasso. Yeah. So he, I was just thinking of Billy Zane again. The Marconi operators, like the presence of this, this Marconi wireless thing on board was just as cutting edge as technology

got at the time. Yeah. It was a text basically. There were so few ships that had wireless aboard that it was just nuts, which is why so many people were sending Marconi grams to show off. But at the same time, the fact that there were these wireless radios on some ships, including ships that were in the area, means that the Titanic did have warning that there was a ice flow like in between them and New York. And they started, you know, like you were saying, they were receiving warnings about the icebergs and ice flows. And again, Captain Smith is depicted as having ignored this of just heedlessly headed on full steam ahead into an ice field, even though he'd been warned against it. And from what I saw, this is again a mischaracterization

because he didn't receive any warnings that would warrant slowing down or changing course or anything like that. He knew that there were icebergs. It's just kind of like if somebody was saying, there's an iceberg 20 miles ahead of your projected course, you know, heads up, you'd be like, okay, good to know. But that wouldn't require you to do anything about it. But there was one, the very fateful one that really may have sealed the fate of everybody aboard the Titanic. And that was that last one that came in at 1140 that said we're stopped and surrounded by ice that apparently did not make it to the captain as far as I know. Yeah. So like, the deal, you're right. The deal was is icebergs were very common. It wasn't like, oh my god,

there are icebergs, we got to stop everybody. Like they were used to dealing with icebergs. It was just a heads up. And that that last one may have been a big difference maker. Right. So they knew that there are icebergs, but there was nothing to be worried about as far as they could tell. And when Captain Smith handed over command of the ship for the night to, I think, Charles, second officer Charles Leitholer. So when he handed it over Leitholer, he said, hey, if conditions become hazy, let me know and we'll, you know, we'll slow down. But until then, full speed ahead. And it turns out that the night of April 14th, 1912 in that area of the North Atlantic was incredibly calm. The sea was like glass. It wasn't hazy at all. It was totally clear.

And there was no moon and lots of stars. So they couldn't see very far because there wasn't much light. They didn't have binoculars in the lookout. But also because the sea was calm, there were no waves to give out any telltale characteristics of breaking against icebergs. It was just nothing but clear water everywhere they could see. So there was not a lot of chance of them spotting icebergs under the conditions that they were dealing with. So speaking of the moon, did you ever hear that theory about how the moon could have impacted the fact that the iceberg was where it was? No, there was apparently on January 4th, a few months before the Titanic, the moon made its closest approach to earth in about 1400 years, which also coincided within six minutes of a

spring tide, which is the semi monthly alignment of the sun and the moon with the earth. And basically all of this ends up in especially high tides and tidal currents. And this was a really big year for icebergs. There were about double the amount of icebergs than average. And what usually happens is when they kind of calve off from where they start, they end up getting kind of hung up when it gets into sort of shallower lanes. And that almost always happens. It kind of keeps them in place. But because of this strong spring tide, it may have like sent more icebergs out to see the normal. That's nuts, man. Yeah. And you know, again, it's one of these things that other people are like, you know, everyone's trying to find these retroactive things to blame. But I think it all

kind of adds up when you start looking at sort of the sliding doors theory of fate, that it all sort of ended up impacting what happened that night. Yeah. And I think that's another reason why people are so engrossed by it. Because again, it's like, it just seems almost preordained. Yeah. And that is very often traced back to this hubris that kind of infested the whole origin and idea of the Titanic, that it was unsinkable and that it was just the biggest thing ever made. And we're going to send it out as fast as we want. That that is, that just seems like they were sailing into fate just from those things, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's, it is like a Hollywood script or something. But you know, it really happened. I know somebody should make a

movie out of it. So and get someone else to write it. Oh, man, eight hours long. Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee were in the crow's nest. And I think Fleet is the one that later said that binoculars could have really helped. Yeah. Because Fleet was the one who was close to the end of a shift when he saw this iceberg. He sounds an alarm down to the bridge. And first officer William Murdock was up there in about 37 seconds said, stop the engines go full speed of stern, which was very common maneuver to sort of try and dodge something if you're in a big ship like that. And, you know, this again, in retrospect, this was not a great idea. They some people posit that if it had just gone straight and hit this thing head on,

it might not have sunk, but it ended up turning just enough to hit a very and especially when you factor in that fire, if that actually was a thing that weakened it, it hit the hole at a very vulnerable spot. Possibly it's most vulnerable spot because of that fire, but also even had that firing up in there was like that was the Achilles heel of the, the Titanic that area. And, you know, it's tough to to fault Murdock for, you know, trying to spin away from it, but it was what you do. Well, it isn't an acceptor. It was an accepted technique to also just ram an iceberg head on. But the reason Murdock chose probably why he chose not to do that was because if you did that head on, you're going to send everything and everybody lurching forward because it's a head

on collision when you side swipe something that's much less jarring. And in fact, the passengers who did survive the Titanic later said that there was a slight jar when this thing hit the iceberg so much so that I think a passenger said had even holding a full glass of water, not a drop would have been spilled. So he did it, I think out of instinct because nobody wants to hit anything head on, but I think he also did it to spare the passengers and the crew and the cargo being jostled and jarred as rudely as they would have been had they hit it head on. Yeah. And this is where those rivets come into play as well because it is theorized that because those rivets didn't hold like they should, it ended up buckling the ship right there. And

apparently it's that buckling that really sort of put the nail in the coffin for the Titanic. Yeah. Like it might have survived the gouges had it not been for the buckling apparently. Yeah. So I guess the buckling kind of pulled the rivets or the seams apart and that allowed the water in. Is that the idea behind it? I think so because they started Murdoch said, let's get all these watertight door shut, which was a really, really great move. But it was too late and there were five of them that were filling up. They originally thought, you know, Captain Smith was like, there must be a 300 foot hole in this thing. And I saw a couple of different numbers. This article from How Stuff Works says

3.2 square feet for these six slim lacerations on the boat. I saw about 12 square feet. Even still. Yeah. I mean, I saw it like into about two sidewalk squares. Wow. Like that took down the Titanic. I know. Can you imagine? Isn't that nuts? Like of course you would think Captain Smith would be like, it's got to be a 300 foot gash just to have that kind of water. And he wouldn't know. It's not like he could see like this was beneath the water. It struck the iceberg under water. So it was just an estimate. But yeah, now we know from going down and looking at the Titanic using sonar, just how small they were. So just a couple of sidewalk squares, huh?

Yeah. And you know, the really brutal part is Andrew's kind of just like in the movie, Victor Garber, once he got word that there were five of those cavities filling up with water, he was like, that's it, man. Like we could have survived four, but and I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but the ship is going to go down. Yeah. So I mean, you remember, I think in the first one we said that the thing was designed to be just fine with two and that four, it could probably make it. But five was the magic number with five. It was like, this is not going to end well at all. And even with four compartments full and sealed off, there's a good possibility that the Titanic would have sunk, but it might have

taken so long to sink that all of the, everybody aboard would have easily made their way off. But that five, that fifth compartment was just, it was just terrible because not only was the Titanic doomed to sink, it was doomed to sink very, very fast. I think Andrew's estimated two hours basically when he found out how many compartments were filling. Yeah, it was really the speed. And if you're saying to yourself, but Josh, how can you say that when they were short lifeboats? As we'll see, there were other ships nearby that likely would have gotten there quicker or not gotten there quicker, but gotten there quick enough, had it sunk slower to get people off of that thing. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, I think so. I could use one, buddy.

All right, let's take a break and we'll talk about what happened after that chunk of ice fell near Kate and Leo right after this. Or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids,

relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. The situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So when Thomas Andrews explained to Captain Smith like this is going down and it's going to happen in about two hours, Smith basically gathered his crew and said, hey, this is, you know,

the ship is sinking. We need to get everybody to the lifeboats. He started lowering the lifeboats. But apparently from what I've read aboard the Titanic, you wouldn't have known that the ship was sinking based on the activity and the behavior of everyone aboard. Most people were kind of going about like their business, hanging out in the lounge still, sleeping, getting ready to go to bed, because this is, I think around 11 or so when it struck the iceberg. And like I said, it was such a faint jar that I think people couldn't believe that the Titanic would be taken down by something that only produced that faint of a jar. And so a lot of people just kind of acted like nothing was wrong. Yeah, I mean, crew included, I think it was,

I think when the message went out from the captain, there was a lot of disbelief all the way around. Like surely if we hit an iceberg bad enough to sink it, we would, it would be, you know, it would be evident, like just standing here, like, but that's just not the case. And, you know, because it was so large, you know, like you said, you wouldn't even spill a glass of water. So no one, except Leo and Kate, they saw that chunk of ice fall. Yeah. So they knew. Oh yeah, they, I forgot they were witnesses to it. They knew what was going on. I forgot about that. Yeah, they were out there king and queen of the world. Right. All right. So 1215, the captain is sending out messages and I mentioned that ship nearby. There were a couple, but the Carpathia was a

Cunard line steamer and they were like, Oh, you need help. Do you? I knew you'd be back. No, they, they, they acted fast, of course, but they were about 58 miles away and they knew they like, there's no way we can get there in time. No, especially not if it's going to sink in a couple of hours, but again, had, you know, even just the only four compartments not flooded the Carpathia probably could have made it there in plenty of time. But there was actually Chuck, another ship, though, the Californian that was closer to the Titanic. And as we'll see in the inquiry that followed, it's basically the Carpathia hero, California villain. The Californian was accused of basically refusing to render aid. And that just wasn't the case. There was a mystery ship

that very much did refuse to render aid and just pretended like it didn't see what was going on. Oh, really? Yeah. It was actually a ship called the Mount Temple that was kept in by a man named James Moore, Captain James Moore. That was, I believe, within 10 miles of the Titanic the entire time that some passengers and crew later said they could see the lights. They could hear the lifeboats being lowered. They could hear the cries of people in the, in the water. And that survivors said they saw another ship. They, there was close enough that they could see some of the porthole lights. Like, that's how close it was. And that it just sat there. It wouldn't come. And it was because the captain made the decision that he wasn't going to risk going into

the ice flows. Well, he also didn't come forward and say, yeah, that was me. He let the captain of the Californian, Stanley Lord, take the blame. And Stanley Lord went to his grave, basically a disgraced captain, even though he would be vindicated when they finally found the Titanic and said, oh, wait, you were way far away. And also, more to the point, you didn't realize that the Titanic was in distress. So history has rehabilitated a lot of people. But at the time and for many, many years, you know, we like simple stories where there's a hero and a villain. And the Carpathian was the hero and the Californian was the villain. That's right. Good story. I think so, too. So they're giving out these life jackets

made of cork, plenty of those. And they, I think there was room for 1,176 passengers on lifeboat. If they're all full, there were about 2,200 and change of passengers and crew aboard. So at 12.25 a.m., the captain says, start lowering these things. Let's get those first-class passengers in there first. I think there were 14 of the lifeboats were the big daddies that could carry 65 people. There were, I think, two emergency ones that could carry 35 each and then four collapsible boats that could carry 49 people each. And I see different numbers bandied about, but supposedly that first lifeboat and maybe the first few were not full. And I think that first one only had anywhere from 25 to 28 people out of 65. Yeah, mostly because there are a lot of people

aboard who are like, I don't believe the Titanic is sinking. And that getting in that lifeboat seems way more dangerous to me than staying aboard the nice warm toasty Titanic where there's lots of brandy to be had. Yeah. And that's why some of those first lifeboats, that's what I was saying, it was apparently eerily calm and quiet and not at all chaotic. And then when it finally became apparent that, yeah, the ship was sinking and no, there's not enough lifeboats to save everybody, that's when it became rather chaotic. And then suddenly people were not only getting into lifeboats until the capacity was full, they were jumping into lifeboats that were being lowered and injuring people already in there. Like it became kind of pandemonium all of a sudden.

Yeah, like when your drink was sliding off the bar, then it got real, you know. That's right. So first and class, I'm sorry, first and second class passengers are being going up to the highest deck, which is where these lifeboats are. They just like in the movie, the third class passengers were, you know, kind of locked down there for the time being, because they were waiting to get other people out of the way, and then they were going to let them out. And that John Hart, third class steward John Hart, basically was like, a lot of you people haven't even been out of third class, so you don't even know where to go. So John Hart spent a lot of time directing people to the proper route to get them to safety,

or at least an attempted safety. Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of like stories of heroics, of everyday heroics of people who were just like, you know, this is my job. I'm going to die doing my job, trying to make, you know, people as safe as possible. And that that's, that's a, John Hart's a very good example of that. Totally. So the first officer Murdoch and second officer Lightoller were in charge of overseeing the lifeboats on the port side and the starboard side. And they kind of approached it differently. I believe Murdoch was basically like, Hey, you're breathing, get in a lifeboat, or you're just going to try to get as many people out of here as possible. Whereas Lightoller was like,

if you're a woman or a child, come on, but if you're a man, I'm going to shoot my gun in the air. Because by the way, all of the officers who were in charge of overseeing lifeboats were issued pistols, basically keep people in line. And in worst case scenario, shoot people who tried to get aboard lifeboats that otherwise shouldn't have been. And I think Lightoller shot or no, not Lightoller, I think one of the, the fourth or the fifth officer had to fire his gun in the air to basically like get people to come back to their senses. Cause they were, it's like men were starting to try to push aboard lifeboats while women, yeah, exactly. While women and children were still there. So again, it was, it was nice and calm and everybody was, you know,

following the order of women and children first. And then, you know, that, that kind of started to crumble in places, not everywhere, but in some places. Billy Zane grabbed a kid. I have a child. Remember that? Yeah, yeah. And that was in another movie I saw recently. What Billy Jane or Billy Zane stealing a kid to get in the lifeboat? No, I'm trying to think there was another movie that was made recently where this couple, it's like a kind of a post-apocalyptic thing or something's going, this isn't going to be interesting. I'll try to figure it out and tell you later, but somebody else did the same thing. Grabbed a kid and used a kid. Yeah. And you don't realize it until about two thirds of the way through the movie. And then

you're like, Oh my God, like that's, it's a, it was really well done, but I didn't realize that they'd stolen that from Titanic. All right. Well, let me, let me know. So the band really did play on one. That's, that movie scene is straight out of reality, apparently right down to the song. I think they say the last song was either Autumn or Nearer My God to Thee. And I think Nearer My God is the one they played in the movie. Very, you know, say what you want about the movie. That was, there were some really, really gripping scenes in the second half of that film. And that was one of them. The other one that really always got me was, and this is kind of the point where we are now with how this thing actually sank. When Kathy Bates as Molly Brown is in that lifeboat

and sees that those propellers up in the air, it was pretty remarkable. Yeah. The, the, that those lacerations in the hull, they took on like water toward the bow. So the front of the ship was suddenly much heavier than the back of the ship. Yeah. And the ship was built so strongly, even with those sub-substandard rivets, the wrought iron ones, that the, it didn't just break immediately. That it actually lifted up the rear and the propellers became, became, um, visible first and then it kept going higher and higher and higher. And then the pressure on those, on the plates that were, that held the whole thing together became so enormous that it was something like 17 and a half tons of pressure per square inch.

That's how much pressure was being exerted on the, basically the, the halfway point where the, where the, where the, um, Titanic split in two. And finally it did split in two, but it didn't break into two immediately. The bottom of the hull, the, the, um, that connected the front to the back still hung on and almost became like a hinge. And so the whole bow, uh, went underwater, but just dangled there for a little while until it finally filled up. And at one point the stern, the, the, the back half of the ship was straight up in the air, basically, and was about as tall as a 25 story building. Dude, can you imagine being in a lifeboat and seeing that? I can't. I cannot. Like, I can't. Like all of this, all of these things that you're seeing, you're like,

this shouldn't be happening. None of this should be, should exist right now. And it was, and it was all still, it was going pretty fast too. I mean, like they launched the first lifeboats about two hours before the stern was now suddenly like 25 stories into the air. Finally, the bow part fills up with enough water that it breaks off. And it, it was so heavy that it traveled the, about 2.4 miles down to the seafloor or the Titanic rest today in like six minutes. That's how fast it traveled down there and just hit like a, like a missile. Basically, it hit the seafloor. Yeah. And you know, obviously this is when they start losing, like remarkably, they had electricity and even, I think, um, radio, uh, that Marconi was still working for a while.

But obviously when this thing splits in half, that's when these flickering lights even go out. And that was also a very, you know, pretty emotional part in the movie when it goes quiet, when, you know, there's so much chaos going on. And when those lights go out and the boat is finally, you know, when both halves fully go underwater, then you're just left with screaming human beings. Yeah. There was a survivor who said that it sounded to him like the sound of all the people crying and screaming and yelling for help in the water, that it sounded like the sound of cicadas on like a summer night. It was just that kind of frenetic and all-encompassing. But then I saw another survivor who said that the worst part was when those,

when it started to like fall silent, when there were like fewer and fewer people yelling, because you knew that the people who'd just been yelling a few minutes before were now dead, they'd frozen to death. Apparently the, the, the temperature of the water was so cold that you would lose consciousness in about six to 12 minutes, basically. Yeah. And, you know, we've been joking around and stuff. I think the adage comedy is tragedy plus time. You can apply here, but we do not take any of this lightly. It's, at this point, it is one of the most horrific scenes that anybody could ever imagine being a part of. Absolutely. Which is, again, why, why so many people celebrate Molly Brown, because there were so many people out in the water still

with those cork life jackets. The guy who, I think the quartermaster, Robert Hitchens, who was basically the captain of the lifeboat that Molly Brown happened to be in, refused to go try to pick up survivors who might be in the water. He said, they're all dead. And she's, she threatened apparently to throw him overboard if he didn't go find people. And what was amazing is that some people did actually survive. The chief baker, his name was Charles Jofflin, or Joffin. He survived paddling around for two hours. Cheese. Two hours. And then he finally found a capsized lifeboat and clung to that, climbed aboard that. And some people did survive like that, but, but, but he, he was in the water for a couple of hours. And weirdly, they attributed

to him getting drunk before he went in the water. But this was apparently after he had helped save a bunch of people. The first thing he did is he went and stocked as many lifeboats as he could with bread and provisions. Then he started actually physically throwing women who refused to get into lifeboats into the lifeboats. And then after there was no one left to help, he went and started drinking. And for some reason they think that that kept him alive where otherwise he might not have, just maybe by freaking out, like it kept him from freaking out. Yeah. Well warmed him up too, maybe? I don't know. No, I think it's supposed to do the opposite of that. Yeah, that is the opposite. Yeah. Like don't, don't take that advice. No, I don't. You're stranded in the cold. Don't

drink. That's right. Chuck, there was one other story I saw talking about the sound of the, like the people who were crying out. There was a young survivor, I think he was like nine or 10 or 12. And he later on, his family was moving to America. And he found out the hard way that he couldn't go to baseball games because the sound of the cheering crowd took him right back to the sounds of the people crying for help with Titanic. And he just wanted to love baseball, but absolutely couldn't because, because of that basically. He had PTSD basically. Yeah. That's very sad. But let's take our last break here. Okay. And we'll talk about what happened after 2.20 a.m. after the Titanic made its way to the bottom of the ocean.

Or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure

to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you it got weird. It got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages,

K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So the Titanic is underwater at this point. It is chaos and death and despair everywhere you can see. The Carpathia finally arrives at about 4.30 a.m. on April 15th. And these lifeboats were adrift. They had no compasses, no lights. They were freezing.

They were, I think, the Carpathia recovered 14 boats and 712 people, which is remarkable. One of those people, only one of those, I think, died on route to New York. And, you know, the world starts getting word that the mighty Titanic has sunk. And it's, you know, it's front page news all over the world, basically. Yeah. When the Carpathia finally made port in New York, it was surrounded by smaller boats that had been rented by the press. We're trying to get scoops by shouting up to people aboard, asking for quotes and all of that. Like there was gobs of money thrown at people by journalists to try to get their story because this is as international news as news gets.

Yeah. So, apparently, the Californian looked for bodies and did not find any, may not have accounted for the drift and, you know, may have been looking sort of in the wrong place. And White Star said, as you would say, nuts to that, let's send out a bunch of search vessels to see what we can do. And I think they knew at that point they were not going to find anyone alive, but they were at least trying to recover bodies. And they sent out a few boats and one of them found 306 bodies. One found 15 and one and then another couple found four people and one person. And again, all these people died in the most tragic way you could imagine. They were waterlogged. They were so heavy that it took several people to lift them aboard. The first

class passengers were put in coffins. They were embalmed. This is really gruesome. But sometimes they had to break their frozen limbs just to fit them inside. It was sort of no time for the formalities of burial, it seems like. It was a mass casualty scene. And so they were just kind of doing what they could, I think. Yeah. Some of the crew was actually buried at sea, which I would be like, don't bury me at sea. That sounds like the opposite of okay to me. Right. I've never been okay with burial at sea, okay? You're telling me this, though? Yeah, I'm just going on the record. In case we ever go on a cruise together. Yeah. All right. So the US kind of like really insinuated itself into this tragedy to a questionable degree in some people's minds at the time.

You know, the Titanic was a British ship. The White Star Line was a British company. And yet the US held public inquiries, the Senate did, on the Titanic tragedy before the Brits could even do it because they started this inquiry, I think one or two days after the Carpathia made port. That's how quick the inquiry was launched by the US Senate. And so all of these people who were subpoenaed as witnesses before they could leave New York had to stay and give their testimony before they could go back to England. So the British had to wait to hold their public inquiry until the American one was over, which I think kind of chafed everybody a little bit. But between the British inquiry and the American inquiry,

they both basically reached the same conclusions. And they were threefold lifeboats, lifeboats, and lifeboats. Yeah. And not just the amount, like kind of the stuff we've already been over. Like there was no system. It seems like, and this is all because it's true. It seemed like no one knew how to load these things. It seemed like there was a lot of indecision about where you actually do the loading. There were a lot of opinions flying about, about who should be loaded, about how many crew members you need on these lifeboats. And there was just, there was no direction at all. There was no uniformity and there was no plan. And that's, like we mentioned at the beginning, because so many of these crew members just kind of showed up at the last minute

and they, they didn't even have training in how to do this. Yeah. And like we said, the Californian was vilified. That was another thing. But the, it was, you know, even at the time it was explained by the Californian's captain like, look, the wireless operator went to bed. He didn't hear these distress signals. Yes, they were shooting off rockets, but we thought it was another boat that was mainly doing it to navigate through the ice. Like it didn't seem like a distress thing to us. Yeah. And again, history has kind of exonerated him. But at the time he was not very well thought of. Neither was J. Bruce Ismay, who survived because he got in a lifeboat. Yeah. He was vilified as a coward who didn't go down with his own ship. He was painted as

having dressed up as a woman to get aboard. Like just basically anything you can think of that's despicable. He was described as having done to get aboard a lifeboat to save his own skin. The only way that he could have had any honor or dignity is if he had like willingly died with the ship. He didn't do that. And supposedly in retrospect, he was probably unfairly characterized. He went to his grave saying that he, there was no women or children anywhere near where he was. Like they were not around. And he decided to get into a lifeboat that had space. But even still, like he's just considered this despicable figure because of this kind of historical trend that was initiated during the public inquiries. Yeah. And of course, Andrew's the designer

and Captain Smith, you know, as in the movie, you see them both go down with the ship and that another very impactful emotional scene with Victor Garber, I think doesn't he like set the time correctly on a clock or something? Like I think he went and rearranged the deck furniture, the wicker chair. No, he didn't. I think he set the clock, right? He's just such a cliche. I seem to remember him setting the clock. He set the clock. Sure. And you know, this is as things are sliding off tables and it's a good movie. Now that I'm talking about it, I kind of want to watch it again. Okay. All right. There were other people that were hailed as heroes. The captain of the Carpathia was knighted by King George V for his actions and saving people.

The Marconi operators and just the Marconi operating or wireless system in general was viewed as heroes because had it not been for those instant distress signals that were sent over Marconi wireless, who knows how long those people would have been out there in lifeboats and how many more would have died. So yeah, a lot of people could be saved, could have been saved. I think the number I've seen most widely used as 500 had the lifeboats been properly filled with passengers and other 500 people were to survive. But you also have to say, well, how many people would have died had the Marconi wireless not been in operation at that time too. So Marconi himself is actually hailed as a hero for having, you know, come up with this wireless,

even though I don't think he invented the technology. Benocular locker. Maybe it doesn't need a lock. Yeah. Davey Blair was like, Oh God, I've got that key in my pocket right now. Maybe just put it in a, in a basket right there in the crow's nest or just tuck it in your cheek. You know, I don't mean the key. No locks. You don't need a lock. Okay. I'm afraid they're going to, people are going to walk off with the binoculars. Right. They, what they did, there were a lot of, a lot of reforms that came out of this. They started launching ice patrols, wireless operators started appearing on ships far more prevalently and they were, there were operators sitting there around the clock to help with the stress signals.

But I mean, you know, and these probably saved thousands and thousands of lives, but because these things hadn't existed at the time or were ignored like the lifeboat regulations, then, you know, a lot of people died. Brutal. So Chuck, the Titanic wasn't, it, it went down and was not discovered until 1985, I believe, right? Yeah. I mean, that's when things got really interesting. I think anyone who had any even passing interest in the Titanic has marveled for years like we were talking about in episode one about these images. And especially, you know, the way these things are lit with these sort of, you know, these little swimming robots and their flashlights and the dark down there, it adds this

eerie quality to it with the suspended debris and how easily this thing, you know, would, would kind of come apart if it was knocked against or something, just really stunning, stunning footage. And that's, I think, like drove James Cameron. He got really into it. Oh, yeah. The guy who discovered the Titanic was Dr. Robert Ballard. And he, I saw a talk by him where he was talking about one of those early ones where they were using one of their remote vehicles with equipped with like a spotlight on it. And he said in from the inside the gloom of the Titanic looked like a light came on. He said he and the rest of his crew on the vessel aboard on the surface, just like stopped breathing. Like that was the

eeriest thing he'd ever seen. And he realized that the, the searchlight had just was reflecting off of one of Titanic chandeliers that was still hanging there. I can't imagine what that sensation would have been like, just terror, but also just total awe, you know? Yeah, totally. So the Titanic is falling apart thanks to a kind of iron-loving bacteria, I believe, called halomonas titanicae. Yeah. I think that's right, right? Surely that's on purpose. Yeah, yeah. I think they discovered it from evaluating the Titanic, right? Yeah. Okay. And so they're, they're, they basically don't think it's going to be around much longer, but Dr. Ballard is saying, no, no, we can, we can do something with this. There's actual underwater technology that uses epoxy paint where you can

paint underwater. And he has a proposal to save the Titanic by painting it and turning it into an underwater museum because outside, outside in the debris field, like bodies were, you know, dissolved and eaten within a very short amount of time, but there's still plenty of objects that are still there. Inside the Titanic, there's no currents and a lot of areas inside the Titanic might be anaerobic. So it's quite possible that there are bodies generally preserved in there and that a lot of the like rooms and different areas in the bowels of the Titanic are still in relatively good shape. So he's saying all, like it's imperative that we keep the Titanic from rupturing and opening up and exposing its innards to the currents and the, the oxygen in the ocean.

And we can do that by painting it the outside of it. So I'm really hoping that he, he's successful in that quest. Very cool. Yeah. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I got one more thing. We could not talk about the Titanic without talking about Futility, the 1898 book that was written by a guy named Morgan Robertson. And it's about the biggest ship ever built, the Titan, that is headed from Liverpool to, or New York to Liverpool when it encounters an iceberg in the North Atlantic in sinks. And like the description of the Titan almost matches the Titanic even though it was built 14, or it was written 14 years before. Very cool. We covered that on something else at some point. Didn't we do an episode on Coincidence once? I don't know. Because

if so, I'll bet that was it. Well, if you want to know more about the Titanic, have a good rest of your life because there is a lot to learn. So go forth, find your favorite Titanic based podcasts or website and start there. And since I said start there, it's time for finally Listener Mail. You know, instead of Listener Mail, let's do the old call for reviews that we do once every five years. All right. Let's do it. Yeah, I didn't have a Listener Mail ready. So, you know, occasionally we like to ask people for reviews and ratings on iTunes because we were told 10 years ago that that helped. Yeah. I mean, I think it still does. So if you want to go on to Apple podcasts or whether you're on Spotify or wherever you are, there's probably a way to leave a review. And

if you can leave us a nice review and a rating, like, yeah, that definitely, at the very least, it boosts our spirits, right? That's right. And also, tell a friend, I mean, we don't try to grow the show very much, which is weird. We've never been great at it, yet somehow it happened. Right. But we've always counted on you guys to spread the word. So if you could tell a friend or family member about us, that would be wonderful. Yes. So I guess thanks to all of you leaving us reviews and ratings, preferably good ones. And even if you don't, thanks a lot for listening. We appreciate you all, each and every one of you. Agreed. If you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, while you're leaving a review to say, hey, I just left your review or I will never leave your review,

it doesn't matter. Even if you just want to say hi, you can shoot us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted

Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.