The Rest Is History - 432. Titanic: The Survivors (Part 6)

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

"Then it is I drown again, with all those dim lost faces I never understood… Include me in your lamentations.” The aftermath of the Titanic’s sinking saw different reactions erupt across the Atlantic, and the responses of both mourners and onlookers were visceral. Guilt-ridden survivors were both ostracised and lauded. Heroes became legends - the unsinkable Molly Brown and the band that played on till the frozen end - while villains were condemned forever more. Reputations were splintered and characters blackened as the investigation went on. None more so than J. Bruce Ismay, the head of White Star, whose survival was viewed as a weakness of character. But the key question needed answering: was anyone really to blame, and if yes, who? Join Dominic and Tom, as they discuss the terrible aftershocks of the sinking of the Titanic, as they unpick truth from legend, and analyse James Cameron’s 1995 film, which famously immortalised this extraordinary story.  *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London!  Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. A strict observance of the great traditions of the sea towards women and children reflects nothing but honor upon our civilization. Even I hope it may mollify some of the young, unmarried lady teachers who are so bitter in their sex antagonism and think men so base and vile. I cannot help feeling proud of our race and its traditions, as proved by this event. Boatloads of women and children tossing on the sea, safe and sound,

and the rest, silence, honour to their memory. In spite of all the inequalities and artificialities of our modern life, at the bottom, tested to its foundations, our civilization is humane, Christian, and absolutely democratic. How differently Imperial Rome or Ancient Greece would have settled the problem. The swells and potentates would have gone off with their concubines and pet slaves and soldier guards, and whoever could bribe the crew would have had the preference and the rest could go to hell. But such ethics could neither build titanics with science nor lose them with honour. So that, of course, was Winston Churchill.

And he was writing a letter, Tom, to his wife Clementine after he'd been reading about the loss of the Titanic on the 15th of April, 1912. And it's very Churchill, isn't it? To have a go at unmarried lady teachers. Yes. At the beginning. Yes, so I hope any feminists out there listening to this will feel themselves put in their place. But also to congratulate Britain and the Anglo-Saxon race, as he would have called it,

on their splendid performance in the Titanic drama. So the fact that Britain's most expensive and largest ship has sunk to the bottom of the ocean is a tremendous reflection. Hurrah for us. But also to offer some thoughts about history, profound historical lessons. So Churchill says, Tom, that the men of Imperial Rome or ancient Greece, the swells and potentates,

would have gone off with their concubines, their slaves, their soldiers, their eunuchs and whatnot, and the rest could go to hell. That's probably true, isn't it? He's not wrong. Well, I think it's an insane argument to have. If the Romans had built it. I think rather than try and answer that question, which I think is essentially unanswerable

or very, very complex. You know he's right. You know he's right. It's a fascinating example of the way in which the moment the ship sinks, people start projecting their political opinions, their cultural assumptions, the narrative that they want onto it. So in another letter, Churchill says to Clemmie that it's a very good story. And that sense right from the beginning, this is an incredible story. That influences the way that the news is received. But before we get onto that, how the story of the Titanic comes to be understood, should we just, as it were, literally pick up from where we left off?

We've got lots of people bobbing around in lifeboats and the ship that comes to their rescue a couple of hours too late is the Carpathia, isn't it? Cunard, of all things. So Cunard, they're great rifles. And Dominic, it's Captain. So you have gone on record as being a big fan of Captain Smith. Huge fan. And in fact, as we sit here recording this,

you have as your name on the screen, Captain Smith. Tommy, you're giving too many insights to the listeners into our working methods. But we now come to another captain, and I will leave the listeners to decide which of us this captain sounds like. So this is a man called Arthur Rostron, who is the captain of the Carpathia, small Cuyunada, carrying 743 passengers, three days out of New York, heading for Gibraltar and Mediterranean ports beyond that. And one of the officers on the ship says of Rostron, I had the greatest respect for him as a seaman, a disciplinarian, and as a man who could take a decision quickly.

He was not the burly type of jolly old sea dog, Dominic. Far from it. He was a thin and wiry build with sharp features, piercing blue eyes and rapid agile movements. Well, Tom, I hear you. The sad thing, though, is that everybody remembers Captain Smith, but nobody's ever heard of the other man. Well, this is what the rest of history is about.

And, of course, Captain Smith is the only one of those two characters who's played by the same person who played Théoden, King of Rohan. So, listeners can indeed draw their own conclusions from the Théoden and Denethor-like dynamic that's going on there. Right, so Rostron is the captain of the Carpathia. We said last time, didn't we, that his wireless operator was just going to bed. He was literally taking his boots off. He's got his headphones on because he's listening for acknowledgement of a message that he sent.

And he hears, actually what he hears, I misspoke in the last episode. I said he heard their transmissions. He doesn't. He hears transmissions that are from Cape Cod going to Titanic, basically saying, you know, how are you getting on? Have you sunk yet? So he then sends a message to Titanic saying, what's going on? I'm on my way. And they say, come at once.

We struck an iceberg. You're absolutely right to praise Captain Rostrum because he basically says right get everything ready they get there in three and a half hours they're firing rockets to say help is coming and they've got all their life boats ready and all of that kind of thing they got all their crew ready to haul these guys up and actually they perform splendidly don't't they? Tremendously. And they actually see the iceberg, which I hadn't realised. Yeah, a double-toothed iceberg, they describe it as, don't they? Yeah, double-toothed, looking very menacing. A hundred feet high, yeah.

Yeah. As they bring the survivors on board, Rostron says, the thing that strikes him is they are silent. There's no noise, no hurry. They came solemnly, dumbly out of a shivering shadow. I mean, they are broken. They're traumatized. They're frozen. I mean, they're incredibly cold. And among the traumatized is Ismay. Yes. Who is not saying a word. He's given a sedative, isn't he? And he basically stays hidden in the ship's doctor's cabin. The billionaire's

widows, so Asta, Thea, Widener, they're given cabins. By and large, they're put in the dining rooms and doctors are kind of going around, sort of sorting them out, giving them, I don't know, brandy or whatever they would do. And the terrible stories of mothers with very small babies having to use napkins as nappies or diapers as Americans would call it. Oh God, yeah. Anyway, but at least they're alive dominic yes what about the dead so maybe a little bit of a survey of their dead we don't know

exactly how many people died because we don't know exactly how many people are on the ship so the u.s official u.s estimate is 1517 people the The official British estimate is 1,503 people. Somewhere in between those two figures seems reasonable. And 700 of those are members of the crew. Yes, that's right. The biggest loss of life in maritime history other than in battle to that point. And in Britain, it's a greater loss of life

than the British had lost in any of the battles of the Boer War, which was the last big war they had fought. And actually, Richard Davenport Hines in his book, Titanic Lives, has really dug into the stats about why you live and why you die. And it is pretty clear that you live if you're a woman and you die if you're a man. That's much more important than class. But there is a slight class. Oh, there is an absolutely a class dimension. But if you're a third class woman, you are far more likely to survive than a first class man. But having said that, out of 324 first class passengers, 201 survive. Yes. Out of 277 second class passengers, 118 survive.

Out of 708 third class, 181 survive. Yeah. And I think a lot of this, the general sense is that a lot of this is determined by access to the boat deck. So first class passengers are closer. They have more stewards assigned to them per person, stewards who are getting them to the boat deck. So first class passengers are closer. They have more stewards assigned to them per person, stewards who are getting them to the decks. Of course, we described in the last episode how the gates are left closed, blocking third class passengers from getting up.

But not deliberately, just to reiterate that. Not deliberately, but for about half an hour or so, I think. So they're open about 12.30, aren't they? Yes. So actually longer than half an hour, in other words. It's about 45 minutes. If you're in a large family, you're more likely to die because large families- Are not going to break up. Yeah. And just to give the gender figures, Dominic, 74.3% of female passengers survive, 52.3% of children survive, 20% of men survive. Yeah. So that gives you a sense. And of course, basically what you want to be is a first class woman because 97% of them live.

Yeah. In third class, it's dropped to 47%. But that, as we said, is probably because of distance. One other thing that's really interesting is why the figure's not better for second class passengers. Because they actually have easier access to the deck than third class passengers. And Richard Davenport Hines suggests that actually there may be an element of second-class passengers. So these are people who are never featured in the film and popular accounts. These are your clergymen, your shopkeepers.

They are the people who are most likely to be conformist, obedient, to hang back, to be anxious about doing the wrong thing. And so that probably is what dooms so many of them. They are by definition- Not pushy. Yeah, not pushy. Exactly. Okay. So should we look at how the news reaches the world? Because there are all kinds of places across the Atlantic, both sides, that have a particular stake in it. So New York, obviously, which is a destination, Washington, the center of American power,

London, Belfast, Liverpool, Southampton. How does the news reach them? So the first hint of the disaster reaches the Marconi outpost in Newfoundland, Cape Race. And then it is transported to a steamship headquarters in Montreal. And that gives it to a Montreal newspaper, and that newspaper has an agreement with the New York Times.

So at 2 o'clock in the morning, a journalist from the New York Times telephones the American vice president of the International Mercantile Marine, so the holding company, the umbrella company, and he says, is this true? Philip Franklin, the guy's name, is the vice president of IMM. And for the rest of monday actually the guy from imm is is really bullish he says it's indestructible maybe there's been

a mishap but it's unsinkable they are telling people all day don't worry no cause for alarm and it's actually not until the monday evening so of course all this had happened on Sunday, Sunday night, early hours of Monday, it's not until Monday evening that they have confirmation that the ship has sunk and that hundreds of people have been killed. And they are just... So not good for the share price?

Not good for the share price at all. And the news spreads through the United States quite quickly. President Taft in Washington, when he finds out that Archie Butt is not among the survivors, he is floods of tears. No one to laugh

at his golf jokes or cheer him up when people call him fatty. Or to eat those terrible lunches with him. Yeah. Pickles and mustard or something.

Anyway, he has all flags at half-mast, doesn't he, in the United united states official flags he does yes reflecting the scale of the loss of life and in britain it comes to poldu doesn't it the uh marconi station in cornwall which you can still visit to this day and um so it's in the london evening papers monday night titanic sinking but at this point it's only in the next few days that the extent of the disaster

becomes apparent because at first a lot of the papers britain is a country at that point with you know very very successful regional newspapers in places like liverpool belfast southampton that will be deeply affected and the early editions of those papers say everybody has been saved. Very few people have died. And they give people kind of false hope. Now, Tom, you will know we have a Restless History Club, don't we? We do. And that community manager, James, is a very big fan of HH Asquith. He loves Asquith. Indeed, his nickname is Asquith. He was prime minister at the time. He's got a t-shirt with Asquith's face on it, Tom.

Would you believe? Asquith lets himself down, doesn't he? By weeping over breakfast. You think that's poor? You think that's unchurchillian? I think it's unmanly. Yeah. The complete lack of a stiff upper lip. Unmanly. So he does, because by Friday, the British newspaper said reports that Carpathia has arrived with the survivors. And so they now know pretty much exactly who has survived and who hasn't and Asquith and his wife Margo cry at breakfast reading the papers and then that evening Asquith has moved into a new house on the banks of the Thames and his children all turn up that evening for a housewarming party and they do what people

I think should always do at housewarming parties which is they read out incredibly moving and traumatic stories about the titanic from the papers to each other and all cry yeah sob over the bold eggs yes but i mean i suppose the place that that is most affected is southampton isn't it because lots of the crew have come from there yes i can't remember who it is compares it to you know a mining community where there's been some terrible tragedy and lots of lives have been lost underground or something yeah that the scale of the disaster it reaches across the entire city it does indeed yeah southampton a classic example of one of these places where the newspapers have reports that everybody's alive the southern daily echo for some hours great anxiety prevailed but fortunately more reassuring tidings reached us this afternoon when all passengers were

reported to be safe. And then the next day they say, actually, that wasn't correct. Yeah, corrections. When we said that. And the vast majority of the crew live in Southampton. And about, is it 700 of them have died? Yeah. So there's an example of one school in Southampton, 125 children lose either a brother, a father, or an uncle. Yeah.

The whole city is plunged into grief and mourning. Same story actually in Liverpool. So a lot of those men have actually come originally from Liverpool they'd moved to Southampton when White Star had moved so Liverpool 2 is a city that has lost hundreds of people and there's basically an entire city in mourning and the name of Liverpool is on the ship yeah so people who've seen the film will remember this is you know it's on the end of the ship as it prepares to plunge down so there's a sense of humiliation there as well. And there is also a sense of humiliation in Belfast, which had built it. Oh, Belfast, yeah.

And the fact that this unsinkable ship, the pride of the Harland and Wolfe shipyards, built by Ulster Protestants, has sunk, is felt as a kind of political humiliation, isn't it, for Protestantism in Ulster? I think it is because Harland and Wolfe and shipyards, they weren't just a symbol of the city, but they're a symbol of a kind of industrial ethic that the people of that city believed they had. See, they believed, in that episode that we did about number two in this series, the people of Belfast, the Protestant people of Belfast believed we are different from our neighbours. We work harder. We are more

industrious. We are more, you know, all of this kind of stuff, which, you know, people will raise their eyebrows at now, I guess. And at a time when they are sort of being ripped apart by the great ructions about home rule and the sectarian violence and stuff, for this to happen at this moment makes it all the more powerful again the sense of a metaphor yeah hoving into view yeah absolutely very difficult to resist that kind of conclusion isn't it totally because the moment it sinks people are stirred by the story in all kinds of ways often in kind of quite mad ways because there are people who kind of lay claim to the fact that they've lost relatives on the ship and they haven't at all and all this i mean yeah you've seen this guy

joseph marrington of philadelphia what a baroque story he has yeah he keeps a vigil for two days he said i'm looking for information about my friend uh william lambert of greensboro pennsylvania he was my closest friend on earth as dear to me as a brother. He saved my life several years ago in the jungles of Ecuador when we were searching for rubber. Well, unless, of course, he'd won a ticket in a card game in Southampton at the last minute. Oh, right. It's like, yeah. I mean, you never know. You never know.

But this boat, Marianton, just to be clear, this person he's looking for doesn't exist. I know. He's never been to Ecuador looking for rubber. It's just all a mad fantasy. And that obviously happens all the time with disasters and things, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. And of course, the other thing that happens in disasters is that people look around for someone to blame. Yeah.

So, Captain Smith. Blameless. Has gone down with his ship. Blameless, Tom. Be British. Isn't that what he said? So, he's not around. He's dead.

Yeah. But Bruce Ismay is alive. So he's the guy in charge of the whole shebang. And in a terrible state, it's fair to say, isn't it, Tom? I mean, he's sitting in that cabin shaking. Saying he should have gone down with the ship. Yeah. So Jack Thayer, who we've quoted before, visits Ismay in his cabin,

found him seated in his pyjamas on his bunk, staring straight ahead, shaking like a leaf. Thayer says to him, you did the right thing. Yeah. You should have got on that boat. And Ismay was always grateful to the Thayers for that and corresponded with Thayer's widowed mother for many years to come after that. But obviously Ismay has, it's a terrible blow to his professional reputation. It's also a terrible blow to his professional reputation. It's also a terrible blow to his

moral reputation. And on top of that, I mean, he knows that it's a terrible blow to the reputation and financial standing of the company that he's responsible for. Yeah. So in every way, he knows that things are bad, but when he arrives in New York, it's a shock to him, I think, to find out just how bad it is. Oh, he becomes public enemy number one, doesn't he? He is accused of being a coward. There are all the stories that he insisted that they break the speed records. Yeah, which we've already said before is not true.

Which you will see in the film. Yeah. So the picture of Ismay that you see in the James Cameron film is pretty much the picture that was presented to Americans, particularly in 1912, 1913, that he is the author of his own misfortunes, that he has effectively killed all these people, that he is such a weasel that he wouldn't stay there like a man. I don't think there's been a single film or TV series where he's not a weasel. So the Julian Fellows one as well, the TV series, he's even worse in that one.

And the fact that he is British in New York, obviously turbocharges it as well. Meanwhile, back in Britain, as you said, the attitude is kind of hurrah. We've come tremendously well out of the sinking of our largest ship, isn't it? It's very weird. Lord Beecham, a cabinet minister. In all our minds, there has been a thrill at the heroism and self-sacrifice. They were ordinary communal garden members

of the Anglo-Saxon race. It makes one proud to think that there were so many men ready to face death quietly and in a self-sacrificing spirit, making way for the women and children. And then he says, unbelievably, not only does it make us proud of our race,

it makes us sure there is a great destiny reserved in the world still for the Anglo-Saxon race. Well, and he's not unusual in saying that. I mean, there's a lot of commentary in the press comparing Anglo-Saxon sang-froid with the excitable gibberings of lesser breeds. I know. That's absolutely. They say, all the newspapers say, well, thank goodness the people on the ship weren't Italian or Chinese. It would have been a very different story. Yeah, yeah.

And so it's basically a tremendous success. As Richard Davenport Hines says, basically it takes its place alongside the defeat of the Spanish Armada. And Nelson's victory at Trafalgar is a great British naval triumph. Well, you've said how Lightoller, the most senior officer to survive,

goes on to take part in the Dunkirk evacuation. Yeah, which is, of course, a defeat. I mean, I suppose it's a kind of disaster that gets transmuted into a success. I think so. Yes. I mean, obviously, people have often said this about the British Empire, haven't they? That there was a strange sort of reverse alchemy at work in British imperial fantasies, perhaps born out of anxiety, conscience, who knows, where people loved heroic failures. I mean, General Gordon, our episodes about General Gordon, the retreat from Kabul, this is one of those. Right. But the emphasis has to be on heroic. Yes. So hence all the transmutation of things that actually happened into myth very early on.

So the band playing on and the women and children first and Captain Smith, be British, all that kind of thing. You see, they make gigantic sand models on Bournemouth Beach. Britannia mourns, Captain Smith at baby. Yeah. Women and children first. To the Heroes of the Titanic. These are the names of these great sand sculptures that are made in the following weeks. And there is a kind of sense of sort of morbid, sentimental celebration. Yeah.

Which again, I mean, we've looked at Ismay's reputation in America. I mean, this is terrible for him in Britain as well, because he has brought shame on Britain by getting into the boat in his slippers. By not dying, yes. As, of course, has Duff Cooper as well. Yeah. So the pair of them are seen to have failed the British race. Yes, exactly.

So there's a big memorial service, isn't there, on the 19th of April in London at St. Paul's. Thousands of people go and actually have to be turned away. I mean, it sounds very moving. There are people fainting. The music is kind of Rock of Ages, Eternal Father, Strong to Save, all the kind of classic kind of nautical hymns. But already, Dominic, people are starting to project quite profoundly moral metaphors onto it. So in your notes, you've got the heading, Woke Bishop.

I feared you would read that out. And this Woke Bishop is specifically Edward Talbot, the Bishop of Winchester. And he goes to Southampton, you know, the place where so many people have died on the 21st of April. And he gets into this thing that will be very, very popular. In fact, it's still popular to this day. The idea that it is an emblem of hubris. He believed God meant that the cruel and wanton waste of money, which was needed on every hand for the help of the needy, that this is a rebuke, the sinking of the ship with all its furnishings and fittings, that this is a sign of God's the sinking of the ship with all its furnishings and fittings, that this is a sign of God's anger with the wealth and pride and arrogance that the Titanic he sees as representing. And that is something I think that has been a kind of enduring concept, isn't it?

Oh, definitely, definitely. For our Restless History subscribers, we did a recent live stream about disasters in history, didn't we? Going all the way back to Sodom and Gomorrah. And the idea, disasters, I think, either stand for themselves, nothing but themselves, or they often come to stand for a sort of a critique of hubris, of political extravagance, of inequality, negligence, all these kinds of things. And right away, Titanic is that with knobs on. And what's fascinating about it is that because Americans and British

are both implicated in it pretty much equally, therefore the perspective that is cast on the disaster on either side of the Atlantic is very kind of revelatory about broader political and cultural attitudes. Yeah, because in America, a Senate subcommittee is set up under William Alden Smith, Republican Senator from Michigan. And this is a great age of populism in the United States. And it is an exercise in pure populism.

The evils of big business, the evils of plutocracy, British aristocrats in particular. Richard Davenport Hines, who i think it's fair to say writes his book titanic lies very much as a dark comedy yes he's very uh scathing about william walton smith he was all rush and humbug he says prone to sum up situations on scant facts he hunted clues to ismay's accomplices with all the salivating doggedness and random sideways lunges of a young Basset hound tracking hares. The most famous exchange where he asks the witness, what was the iceberg made of? The reply is ice, I suppose, which kind of sums up the level of the investigation.

However, we must not pat ourselves on the backs, must we? Really? What? Well, so the British report on the disaster, by contrast, censure so light it sounded like applause. Well, the British report, actually, I think it's fair to say the British report does go very easy on White Star, on Captain Smith in particular, on the officers. But actually, its findings are pretty much right aren't they being substantiated haven't they yeah it says you know they neglected the ice warnings they should have reduced speed they weren't however going faster than any other ship would have been going

they definitely weren't going because ismay had told no smith to get to new york early so that's absolutely definitively debunked. Yeah, that inquiry, which is Lord Mersey, I think it correctly identifies all the things that went wrong. Not enough light boats, not a proper procedure, all that stuff. But it says, I think fairly, this is not unusual culpability and negligence on the part of White Star or the crew. What they are doing is standard practice throughout the industry, as it were. And that is the issue. Rather than individual fault, the issue is the general culture and the fact that effectively, this was going to happen. It's incredibly bad luck that it's happened to

Titanic, but it was clearly at some point, if it hadn't happened to Titanic, it would have happened to somebody else, especially that issue, not having enough lifeboats. I mean, that's bonkers. Yeah. And so lessons are drawn from that, aren't they? And new regulations brought in. And so it becomes an obligation on ships to carry enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew. Seamen have to be trained to handle them. All kinds of regulations are brought in. They set up an international ice patrol to monitor icebergs. The shipping lanes are moved south of the ice-encumbered seas. But the idea that it was just an accident that happened, that it was always going to happen, people are not content with that conclusion. I think it's fair to say.

No, no, no. They want meaning, don't they? They crave meaning. So I think we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, let's have a look in the last segment of this series that we've been doing on Titanic to look at how the understanding of it has evolved over the decades and the way that the story has been told and retold. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. They said I got away in a boat and humbled me at the inquiry i tell you i sank as far that night as any hero as i sat shivering on the dark water i turned to ice to hear my costly life go thundering down in a pandemonium of prams pian pianos, sideboards, winches, boilers bursting and shredded ragtime. Now I hide in a lonely house behind the sea, where the tide leaves broken toys and hat boxes silently at my door. The showers of April, flowers of May mean nothing to me, nor the late light of

June, when my gardener describes to strangers how the old man stays in bed on seaward mornings after nights of wind takes his cocaine and will see no one then it is i drown again with all those dim lost faces i never understood my poor soul screams out in the starlight heart breaks loose and rolls down like a stone include me in your lamentations that's uh derek mahon wonderful poem after the titanic ventriloquizing bruises may who is essentially left a broken man by the aftermath of the titanic and ends up a retiree on the irish coast and he really is the archetype of one of those survivors of the Titanic, you know, whose survival is a kind of form of death. So he's publicly humiliated. He is criticized as a coward on both sides of the Atlantic. So Ben Hecht, at this point as a journalist, will go on to become

a very distinguished screenwriter, writes the screenplays for Scarface and Notorious and other kind of big films. He writes a poem comparing your hero, Captain Smith, Dominic and Ismay. To hold your place in the ghastly face of death on the sea at night is a seaman's job, but to flee with the mob is an owner's noble right. See, I think that's too harsh, Tom. I think that's much too harsh. It is too harsh. And Lord Mersey's inquiry would agree with you that actually, you know, he was cleared. We quoted in the previous episode that if he had not gotten to the boat when he was given the chance, he would have been dead. And what's the point? Yeah. But he, you know, he goes into a deep depression, partly, I'm sure, because of the public obloquy. But also, you know, he's lost this ship. Everything he is was invested in that ship and it's gone. And not least because he inherited the business. From his father.

Exactly. Yeah. So a year or so on from the sinking of the Titanic in June 1913, he has stood down from the chairmanship of White Star, effectively retires. He arranges a kind of life of organised routine. He goes golfing in Scotland. As I said, he spends his summers on the coast of Ireland and he never talks about it. And no one in his family ever and they are aware of a kind of silence that prevails over the house. It's not just that he's not talking about the Titanic. He's basically not talking about anything. And there is an occasion where one of his grandchildren asks him, you know, have you ever been in a shipwreck? And there's a kind of very long, embarrassed silence. And then there's another one who's been reading a newspaper and is very proud of his ability to read newspaper and tells Ismay that he had read in the newspaper how there'd been a train crash and 256 people had died. And Ismay retorts to this, how do you know 256 people died? Were you there? Did you count them? So that sense that in his mind, he's going over and over again. So he dies in 1937, gets buried in Putney Vale Cemetery. And on his tomb, there are carvings of ships.

And there is a biblical quote from James 3, 4. Behold also the ships, which though they be so great and are driven of fierce winds, yet are turned about with a very small helm whithersoever the governor listeth which is i mean kind of tragic which though they be so great so tom you know that poem that you were reading that is a wonderful poem the derrick mann poem guess where his father and his grandfather worked uh in titanic they worked at harland and wolf did they yeah so you can see why he would be drawn i think that poem lots of people do that poem In the Titanic? They worked at Harland and Wolfe. Did they? Yeah. So you can see why he would be drawn. I think that poem, lots of people do that poem in the equivalent of A-levels in Ireland,

Leaving Cert. It's like a standard text that they do. It's very powerful. Just before we move on, though, from Ismay and the mood that is articulated in that poem of a kind of living death, there is another figure who suffers similar obloquy, and this is Masabumi Hosono, who we mentioned as traveling on second class, the Japanese civil servant who'd been in Russia studying the Russian railway system and is going back to Japan via the Atlantic. And he reminisces about the sinking. He says that he is standing on the deck thinking how he would never see his wife

and children again, but determined to behave like a Japanese gentleman. So he says, I tried to prepare myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese subject. But he is then called by a sailor to get into lifeboat 13, exactly as Ismay was. Essentially, you you know there is a spare place there are no women and children if you don't take it you will die pointlessly and so he gets in and he survives and he gets to new york and he crosses america and he goes back to japan and there he is ostracized he loses his job oh my word but because he's basically i mean he's the only person in j who knows about Russian railway.

So they ultimately, they give it back to him. But his, his family are humiliated and ashamed for decades and decades. And what's fascinating about this. So I kind of vaguely knew of this story and had always assumed that it was a Japanese expression of, you know, of morality,

of public shame, all that kind of thing. But apparently not. So Margaret Mell, who's a German historian of 20th century Japan, she says, Hasono's failure to act as the Anglo-Saxon nations evidently expected their men to act caused embarrassment in Japan, but more because of the Japanese's acceptance of Western values than because of their own traditions. So that's kind of fascinating. Oh, so it's not because that's what a Japanese person should do. That's what a Japanese person should do if we're imitating the Anglo-Saxons, basically.

Yeah. They're condemning him in the way that the Anglo-Saxon powers are condemning Ismay. So fascinating. Right. It's interesting. I mean, the one thing that comes out of what happens afterwards is how many of the survivors are utterly traumatized by survivor's guilt. Yeah. So it's not just the traumatic experience, but for so many people, they are thinking afterwards, why did I live when so many died? Why did I live when my husband died? So Charlotte Collier, we started one of the episodes, didn't we, with the story of her and her husband the grocer from Hampshire and she has basically been forced into a boat against her will her husband dies

she dies two years later and she never ever recovers yeah Richard Davenport Hines has a list of people who take their own lives in the years or the decades afterwards. So we've quoted a few times Jack Thayer, who was then a boy, wasn't he? He goes on to become a Philadelphia banker. He kills himself in 1945. The lookout, Frederick Fleet, he killed himself in 1965. It's remarkable. I mean, maybe, you know, if you were being very cynical, you would say, well, statistically, there would be a number of suicides, but it is remarkable how many there are. And I think there is a pattern. So particularly women who have children, who lose their husbands, seem to have been particularly traumatized and devastated. So another example, you mentioned Charlotte Collier. Another example is Juliette Laroche, who is the French wife of Joseph Laroche, the Haitian. Yeah. The guy from the Caribbean. Yeah.

So he has been left and her and her two daughters have gone on the boat. They arrive in New York. They do not go on to Haiti because he's dead. They don't have any reason to go there. She doesn't speak any English, so she can't make sense of what's going on in New York. So she goes back to France and she of course was pregnant. And when she gets back to France, she delivers a boy and calls him Joseph. But she apparently never mentions her husband again. She never talks about her experience on that night. And she micromanages the lives of her daughters, never letting them out of her sight. And there is a photo of her with her husband and the two daughters just before they set out. And the younger daughter, who was only two at the time, very small, but the three-year-old girl, her face is kind of ablaze with happiness and joy. And it's like, it cuts through you like a knife

through your heart to see that photograph and know what is coming. And it's like, it cuts through you like a knife through your heart to see that photograph and know what is coming. And amazingly, the youngest of those daughters lives until 1998. So that's a year after the James Cameron films come out. She's still alive. I mean, it's amazing. And I think you do have the sense there that all of these people are characters in a story that they don't really control anymore because their fates, whether they die or survive, are objects of such passionate public curiosity that the story that they are part of is no longer theirs. So amazingly, the first film about the Titanic, it's called Saved from Titanic, appears four weeks after the Titanic's gone down. So in May 1912. And the star was on the Titanic.

Yes. Unbelievable. And she plays herself in the dress that she had worn in her lifeboat. Dorothy Gibson. I mean, that is mind boggling, isn't it? That within four weeks, she's reenacting it for the cameras presumably profiting from it so the walter lord book the very famous book a night to remember which has became the definitive account probably for the best part of 50 years really didn't it and that was based on survivors letters and things

wasn't it he interviewed lots of survivors interestingly, he didn't take any notes. He just said he remembered what they had said and wrote it down. And I mean, let's get to it, Tom, because you've been itching to talk about the James Cameron film. Well, so, I mean, this is the great cinematic analysis of it, the great cinematic retelling of the story. It's the one that kind of looms over the popular understanding of the entire narrative. So let's just stick with Ismay, who we've been talking about. We've said how he always gets represented as an absolute rotter. And he's one of the few purely contemptible figures in the film. He's awful in the film, isn't he? He is. So even Cal, the sinisterly camp. Yeah, he's Billy Zane, isn't he? Billy Zy zane i mean he has kind of redeeming moments he tries to save rose but ismay is hopeless so he is shown as

urging the titanic on faster and faster and there's um a kind of classic exchange where they're all at table and leonardo caprio's character is there as well. And Molly Brown, you know, who's a real figure, played by Kathy Bates in the film. Unsinkable. Yeah. Says to Ismay, hey, who thought of the name Titanic? Was it you, Bruce? And Ismay says, yes, actually, I wanted to convey sheer size.

And size means stability, luxury, and above all, strength. And that's exactly how people talk, of course. Yes. And then Rose, played by Kate Winslet. Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr. Ismay? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you. Oh, for God's sake. Yeah.

And of course, Ismay has never heard of Freud. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of Freudian stuff. Famously, when Rose arrives in Southampton and sees the Titanic for the first time, I don't see what all the fuss is about. It doesn't look any bigger than the Mauritania. And then Cal, the Billy Zane character. You can be blasé about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic. It's over 100 feet longer than the Mauritania and far more luxurious. And this whole thing about how proud everyone is that Titanic is three inches longer than the Olympic. And that sense that the Titanic is size. I mean, its size really matters throughout every retelling of the story. And it matters to the making of the film. It's the fact that the film is shot on a Titanic scale, that they have to build an entire new studio lot to film it in mexico in

mexico yeah and we've been talking throughout how the sea was very very calm on the night of the sinking and this is very very useful for james because it meant that he could film the whole thing with kind of water all around they build build this enormous, enormous ship. And the tank that contains it, I mean, it has 17 million gallons of water. All the fittings are done with immense precision. You know, all the upholstery, the furniture, the fittings, the plates, they're all kind of stamped with the requisite logos.

But at the time, Tom, I can remember when it was being made and then when it came out, the expectation was that the film would prove to Bob to be a crash. Yeah. A kind of reenactment of the Titanic. Yes. That this was a colossal folly because it was the most expensive film of its kind ever made. The James Cameron, who'd obviously famously done Aliens before it, was embarking on this vanity project of something, you know, rather Ismay-like.

Yeah. Something that had to be bigger and better on a bigger scale and was heading towards the iceberg of critical obloquy. Right. That Nemesis would punish his hubris. Yes. But actually, of course, it's a massive, massive, well, it's a titanic success. Very good. Yeah.

And within a year of its release, it's become the biggest grossing film of all time and actually overtakes Jurassic Park, which is another film freighted with 90s style metaphors. But not everybody liked Titanic, did they? It's regarded as a kind of a sort of nod back to the kind of classic days of Hollywood to some extent, isn't it? Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Do you know what he said, Tom? No, what did he say? I know you won't like it because you love Titanic.

He said, what really brings on the tears in this film is Cameron's insistence that writing this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only is it not, it's not even close. Well, how many films has he made? Well, okay, you want a filmmaker. Robert Altman, great American filmmaker. Oh, Robert Altman. Who cares about Robert Altman?

Has he ever sunk a large ship in a tank in a studio lot in Mexico? I don't think so. The most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life, he said of Titanic. I mean, the truth of the matter, Tom, is it's very spectacular, but it's really... Are you ready for this? Yeah. It's basically a film for 15-year-old girls, isn't it? it i mean that's what people say about it okay okay dominic that is what people say about it that is how it is now seen at the time it was not because of course there's the

romance i mean i don't want to gender stereotype but i'm going to yeah that girls tended to like the romance and boys tended to like the spectacle of large engines and ships crashing and everything. The funnels. Yeah. And it was a success across, you know, everybody watched it. Everybody liked it. Otherwise, it wouldn't have become the biggest grossing film of all time. Yeah. The film that replaces it in that list is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

But you have to combine them to get to that point, don't you? Which we would do, Tom, naturally. But the thing is about the Lord of the Rings, it kind of retains a status, I think one might say. And here I am quoting from a brilliant podcast, Sentimental Garbage, which kind of looks at stuff basically that women like that men don't. Hold on. There are other brilliant podcasts. Unbelievable. It's very, very funny. Well, so Caroline O'Donoghue, the novelist, a cork woman. Okay. Very good. Yeah.

So you love a cork woman. Right. And they do a kind of great look at this. And her argument essentially is that Lord of the Rings retains its status because boys like it. And Titanic is condemned as kind of romantic slush because it's a thing for teenage girls. And they also do great stuff about this whole thing that the ship has an enormous phallus. They kind of turn this, as it on its head right and say no actually the ship is is rose the kate winslet character okay that both of them are escaping the patriarchal hold so what do you make of that what do you think of that you're absolutely convinced they're not overthinking

it at all but it's a brilliant example of how the idea of the Titanic as a metaphor can be reinterpreted and reinterpreted. It can indeed, yeah. In very, very satisfying ways. If it's not a phallus or it's not an example of female emancipation, it's Europe before the First World War, isn't it? Or it's the British Empire. In fact, in Nazi propaganda, it often features as a kind of metaphor for Britain.

It's industrial capitalism. I mean, now I'm guessing that it would serve as a metaphor for everything that is kind of destroying the world. Yeah. That idea of not having lifeboats, but having gyms and kind of luxury spas. Well, that's sort of your capitalism point, I suppose, isn't it? So I think the two most potent of those. So first of all all i think the fact

that it's two years before the first world war is colossally important in explaining why it has endured i mean it would endure anyway as a great story i mean when we did our live stream about disasters for the subscribers context is important isn't it context really matters because some of those disasters are unbelievably harrowing we did did the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland where hundreds of children were killed and most people had never heard of it. And the reason is because it doesn't stand for anything beyond itself, particularly. It's just a terrible accident. Titanic, because it's 1912 and because the world is going to fall apart in 1914, it's always bundled in with those shots

in Sarajevo that kick off the first world war I think I mean we love a cliched metaphor on the rest is history this is your absolute classic dancing on the edge of an abyss the storm clouds of war are gathering and the iceberg is heading south exactly so iceberg, exactly. So there's that. And I think that's understandable because what is coming in the 1910s is a colossal smash-up, to use the lingo of the time, of European civilization to some degree. Right. And another ocean line in the Lusitania will famously be sunk. Exactly. By a German submarine.

And then the other thing is the awoke bishop, the Bishop of Winchester, saying it's about greed and hubris and it's capitalism. And I guess that is the one that ultimately will be the more enduring. Because you're absolutely right. We now in the 21st century are obsessed with that metaphor, aren't we? Because we are so conscious of our own civilization being imperiled by climate change and all these kinds of things. So the idea of this great luxurious, but actually the thing is, Titanic is very luxurious, but as you said, it is ultimately an emigrant ship. I mean, that's the thing. Well, so Dominic, you are a man who, when you hear a philosopher talk about a stone, likes to go up and kick it. I profute it thus, exactly. What is your take on all this? Do you think it has a profound metaphorical heft? No, ultimately.

You just think it's a ship that hit an iceberg. I'll amaze you, Tom. Okay. So clearly, as I said before, I think a similar disaster was clearly going to happen given the extremely by modern standards lacks health and safety regulation that's what health and safety culture exists for is to make sure there are enough lifeboats but that said i think actually that when you get closer and closer into the story what you're confronted with is actually the meaninglessness of it and it's the fact that it doesn't have a meaning, I think, that is more frightening. Because I don't think it's a metaphor. Well, it is, but I think- It's both, isn't it? It's ultimately, on a human level, it's more frightening as the eruption of the unforeseen, of that thing that can destroy your life in an instant. And these people, the Colliers,

they could have bought hundreds of tickets on ocean liners. And it was bloody bad luck that they bought one on a ship that itself suffered very bad luck because had they been on the other ships, they all didn't have enough lifeboats either. And yet they still made it back and it was fine. And it's just the terror of chance. That's my view. But you are a great man. You love a bit of meaning. I mean, I think you could say that the confidence to go slamming out across the ocean with all these wealthy fittings, sublimely confident that everything will be all right, that perhaps that is expressive of something of the spirit that leads Europe to war. If you wanted to, you could kind of push that. I agree. I mean, I think it is ultimately expressive of the spirit that leads Europe to war. If you wanted to, you could kind of push that. I agree. I mean, I think it is ultimately expressive of the fact that terrible things happen and that there isn't really a kind of a framing explanation beyond the fact that an iceberg broke off the ice sheet and at a particular moment happened to be where it was. But having said that,

I don't deny that with the sinking happening, its power as a metaphor is incredibly profound. And that's why people keep using it. That's why we've done the podcast. Because if it didn't have that resonance, I don't think people would be interested in it. Well, I think it's the combination of the mythic resonance of the ship and this leviathan that's been produced by the world's first industrial nation in collaboration with the world's rising financial superpower, the United States. So there's that side to it.

But also, for me, reading the stories, it's the human details that will linger in my mind. You know, that kid who'd put on his trousers. I know, I know, I know. I mean, it's a ludicrous story, but those trousers really do kill him. Yeah. I mean, on his birthday. It has been given for his birthday. Terrible.

Anyway, I think it's good to finish on that note of a boy who celebrates his birthday on the last day he's going to be alive, gets given a pair of long trousers, and is so proud of them that he refuses to take his chance to get on the ship. And I think we should finish with him. So thank you for listening to, I mean, it's been a Titanic series, hasn't it? with him. Yeah. So thank you for listening to, I mean, it's been a Titanic series, hasn't it? Six episodes. Yeah.

You really couldn't have reached for another word there, Tom. You just thought I'd go for it. I know, I know. And to those of you who have stayed with us. Yeah. You're still alive. Well done. We have hit the iceberg of time.

Oh God. But guess what? You see, the thing is when they got to the united states a new journey lay ahead for many of them they did probably by railroad so another journey awaits you if you like having got off the boat you can get onto the exciting railroad that sets off next week and that railroad tom carries the name martin luther because you will be taking us through the extraordinarily colourful and world-changing life of arguably history's most exciting, what would we describe him as? I was about to say history's most exciting theologian, but I'm worried we won't have any

listeners. He changes the world. He changes the world. He changes Europe and he changes the world he changes the world he changes Europe and he changes the world and we will be making that argument next week when we look at how the Protestant Reformation begins in the early 16th century

there's theological tracts there's fighting dogs there's poor behaviour on all sides the devil is present enormous amount of bowel related

yeah commentary so all to come yeah so that's next week's journey but thank you for joining us on this particular voyage. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

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