ADMIRAL_LORD_WEST DR_MARTHA_NEWSON FRED_BARRETT INTERVIEWER JEANNETTE_WINTERSON JJ_CHALMERS NADIFA_MOHAMED PROF.SUZANNAH_LIPSCOMB PROFESSOR_SUZANNAH_LIPSCOMB PROFESSOR SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB The story of the Titanic is a story of the human condition spread out, pinned on a board for us to examine. DR MARTHA NEWSON We had this unique opportunity to understand the sinking of the Titanic from the perspective of those who were actually there. We�re starting to piece things together but we�re working with people�s memories. In reality, memories are going to distort. And there might be a bit of bias where people will try and make sense of what was going on. INTERVIEWER They swung the ship�s bough away from the object? INTERVIEWER Was there much of a jar to the ship. INTERVIEWER Did it alarm you when it struck? INTERVIEWER You thought it was a narrow shave? DR MARTHA NEWSON When there�s that sudden cut of the engines it�s going to be really noticeable, something�s going on, something�s not right, something�s not as it should be. DR MARTHA NEWSON In that particular time we know in England certainly there�s a strong very hierarchical class system, getting the message from authority figures that everything�s, okay, even though the ship is stationary and they�re out at sea and it�s dark and it�s cold � for most people that�s enough. ADMIRAL LORD WEST There had been an accident, a collision and yet there was a sense of complacency rather than a sense of urgency to discovery what exactly has gone wrong. Thomas Andrews was saying to people everything was fine, it�s all safe when he didn�t have any data about what the damage to the ship was. And that was not a clever thing to do. FRED BARRETT There are eight firemen in the No. 6 section. The second engineer shouted, �All hand stand by your stations.� That�s for the men to stand by your fires. JEANNETTE WINTERSON For Fred Barrett and his crew, they need to manage the fire in boiler room 6, and he�s worried that there�s gonna be a miner explosion because the freezing water is hitting the hot coals. Fred Barrett is in the boiler room next door, and the only way to assess the damage is to climb out of boiler room 5 to this overhead gangway that�s above boiler room 6. INTERVIEWER What did he say? INTERVIEWER He didn�t say anything to you? JJ CHALMERS You�re now at a point where it is mathematically certain that this ship is going to sink. Now that the front five compartments are flooded, the water will start pouring over the top of the bulkheads. Picture an ice tray, you start filling it at one end and eventually it will rise up over the line, and the next compartment and the next compartment and it just continues to fill and fill, and that is ultimately what is going to draw this ship to the bottom of the ocean. JJ CHALMERS It�s these small decisions, these little butterfly effect moments that change the outcome. JJ CHALMERS It doesn�t matter whether it�s a ship all the way down to a section of Marines in my circumstance, there is a system in command structure. Everyone had a job to do and this is the point where the ship just begins to tick over. The navigation crew that are at the top of the ship are settling into their evening routine. The engineers that are down in the boiler room are working on a four hour shift to just keep the ship moving. The captain is retired to his cabin, comfortable in his crew that ultimately have been at work since the ship left Belfast are very much in control. Really it�s the beginning of what should be another calm night on the Titanic. JJ CHALMERS You know, up on the top deck people are thinking to themselves, that was close but we got away with it, you know, it�s just a near miss that somebody writes down in a log. But they don�t know that this iceberg had a very large section jutting out of it underneath the water. JJ CHALMERS But equally, it�s not just a case of sending somebody up quickly. A lowly boiler operator or a stoker goes up and tells the Captain what�s happened. There is a chain of command. JJ CHALMERS But then the situation gets worse. The captain learns that a third compartment is flooded. The captain knows that this is a terrible circumstance but equally, Titanic was built to endure that. Th captain is sitting right at the moment of what is known as Event Horizon. Once you tip over that precipice the ship is going to sink. Any captain worth their salt is ultimately going to prepare for the worst and actually not even expect the best. You have to be preparing for things to continue to worsen. It�s a Sunday. First class passengers have probably spent the day enjoying themselves. They had eaten roast duckling and sirloin of beef and foie gras and truffles and lamb with mint sauce, and stuff zucchini and chocolate eclairs. Maybe they�ve gone to the sauna in the Turkish baths or they�ve played a round of squash or gone to the gym. Perhaps the men had gone to the smoking room, they�d had a cigar, a pipe, they played a round of cards. Maybe the women had gone to the reading and writing room to have a moment of quiet. They�ve had a joyful, relaxing day. They�re full of anticipation that they�re going to be arriving in New York in 2 or 3 days� time. It�s been the perfect day. PROF.SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB The Titanic is a ship of dreams. The epitome of modern technology of luxury and opulence. It looks like a cross between The Ritz and an English grand country house. JEANNETTE WINTERSON As the iceberg strikes, the rivets give way. And the water starts pouring to boiler room number six, that�s on the starboard side of the ship. But Titanic is designed to have watertight compartments in the event of an emergency. There�s 16 compartments and they always do what they�re supposed to do � come down, seal off the compartments and protect the rest of the ship. For Barrett and his boys, they escape this wall of water. At the moment they are safe. But the thing about the Titanic is nobody had thought to put in a direct communication system between the boiler rooms which could flood � and the bridge. JEANNETTE WINTERSON So, there was no way that Fred Barrett could tell the captain straight away what was happening, and that lost time. JEANNETTE WINTERSON What do you do if you trained at sea? You try to avoid the obstacle. It�s a split second decision and there�s just a clich�, isn�t there, in the way we talk about trying to turn the Titanic. You can�t turn this giant boat in time. JEANNETTE WINTERSON There are people who will deliberately distort and mislead but mostly, you know, it�s just that people do remember things differently. We�re not looking for the stone cold truths, we need to bring together all of those memories, see what seems to be consistent through it all, but also to recognise that every individual has a different experience and we have to respect that. JEANNETTE WINTERSON Lightoller is trying to say, �I knew this was important, it should have gone to the bridge and it didn�t and it�s the wireless operator�s fault�. But that�s not true because the message didn�t have the crucial prefix of MSG � Master Service Gram which would have meant that Jack Phillips would have immediately prioritised it and sent it up to the bridge. That didn�t happen. JEANNETTE WINTERSON It�s a tense situation in the wireless room because the equipment broke down the day before and so, he�s got this great backlog of work to do. And he�s focused on it, he�s concentrating on it. The last thing he wants is new information coming in. JEANNETTE WINTERSON It�s a split second decision. What would you do, what would I do? NADIFA MOHAMED Can you imagine the chaos and the fear and the terror of finding water in your cabin and you�re in the bowels of the ship? It makes me panic just thinking about it. NADIFA MOHAMED It�s a misconception that Titanic was first and foremost a luxury ship. Titanic was primarily an emigrant ship and it was to ferry people, working people from Europe to America. About three quarters of the Titanic�s passengers are in second or third class, and it�s really not surprising that people did not want to go to bed. This might be the first time they�ve been away from home, and maybe it�s the first taste of freedom from very oppressive environments. They are young people embarking on a new life to a new world. It would have been wonderful. NADIFA MOHAMED By collating all of these memories from different parts of the ship. Memories that could easily have been lost to history � that�s the way in, that�s how we understand the story of the Titanic. NADIFA MOHAMED Passengers were really left in the dark. There was no tally system or announcement of what was going on or what to do. They had to work it out for themselves. PROF.SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB Different people will react to the situation in different ways but a number of passengers have no qualms at all about going up onto the boat deck and finding someone to enquire what�s going on. JEANNETTE WINTERSON When he tries to get back down into boiler room 6 he can�t because there�s 8 feet of water in there and the whole place is already filled with steam. But I think when Fred Barrett saw the situation he would have been still feeling that everything could be contained, this was how the ship was sold to passenger and crew alike. JEANNETTE WINTERSON Remember the mindset is this ship is unsinkable. If you believe a ship is unsinkable you�re not looking for trouble. Imagine it, wandering about this vast ship looking for water. He�s not gonna find it because he doesn�t go down to the boiler rooms. NADIFA MOHAMED Go back to bed, Daniel. I really understand where that voice is coming from. Something that I hear from immigrants nowadays is this belief that you�ve entered a world of order and protection and security, so you don�t have to worry about anything. This is the safest ship in the world that�s ever been built but it�s so wrong in this context. JEANNETTE WINTERSON At last, Boxhall gets himself some concrete information. The carpenter he meets is talking about one of the tarpaulin�s upon G-deck that�s covering a cargo hold. The air in there is being pushed out at speed, at pressure by the volume of water coming in. In the cargo hold there�s all the passenger�s luggage, there�s goods that are being shipped from companies across the Atlantic. There�s a Renault car all boxed up belonging to one of the first class passengers, there�s cases of feather boas, there�s all kinds of crazy things in there but it is the entirety of everyone�s possessions. Then on his way to investigate, Boxhall gets some more news. JEANNETTE WINTERSON The captain goes down to inspect, accompanied by Thomas Andrew. Here, they can see with their own eyes the mail room has been flooded and that means another compartment is gone. The Titanic was a ship designed to carry mail from Great Britain and there were about three and a half thousand sacks of mail on board, already these mail bags are beginning to float away, the mail clerks have tried to salvage some of them but they can�t because the water is everywhere. This doesn�t look good for Rule Britannia. PROF.SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB Many first class passengers report this unearthly scream that comes out of the funnels. It�s the steam which has been diverted from the engines now emerging from the funnels. For those who have their rooms closest to the boat deck suddenly this is very alarming indeed. It�s a moment where they realise things are not where they should be and maybe they should be worrying. PROF.SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB On board the Titanic in first class are American millionaires. There are people like Colonel John Jacob Astor the Fourth who is an American business magnate, he�s one of the richest men in the world. And Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon sees Astor stride over to Captain Smith and have a private little word with him. The first class passengers know Captain Smith, they are able to mix with the senior crew, they have exclusive access. It means they are part of the inner circle and other people are not. From the get-go first class passengers are in a kind of chumocracy with the senior crew, and that means that they get the information immediately when others don�t. They have a distinct advantage from the word go. NADIFA MOHAMED I can imagine them in my mind, middle of the night they wake up and then suddenly there�s the terror of finding water and you�re in the bowels of the ship. You are not being told anything, there�s no announcements, you�re left to work out what�s going on and how that impacts on your own safety. It�s such a jarring break from this very beautiful experience I think they must have been having up until this point. PROF.SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB If you are a family you will be separated. JEANNETTE WINTERSON Nobody is telling anybody what�s going on. JEANNETTE WINTERSON It�s a split second decision. What would you do, what would I do? ADMIRAL LORD WEST Captain Smith, the Captain of the Titanic was a very experienced seaman, a very highly respected seaman, he�d served in the Royal Naval Reserve as well as in the Royal Merchant Navy. He was coming to the end of his career and he must have been very, very proud that he was taking Titanic, this world beating ship across the Atlantic and that would be a wonderful end to what was a glittering career. And suddenly of course, there�s a collision, it�s the last thing he wants. He would have been annoyed as well as keen to solve the problem as quickly as he could. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Titanic was the showpiece for the shipping line. Built by Harland & Wolff, the famous shipyard in Belfast. She is absolutely huge � 10 decks, 840 cabins. An absolute masterpiece of human engineering. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Thomas Andrews was a highly respected, in fact probably a most respected ship designer in the UK at this time. Titanic was the pinnacle of Andrews career, he�d been building up to this moment, this amazing liner that was going win all these different prizes and it was the Queen of the Seas really. He knew a great deal about ship design. He understood buoyancy, stability; all of these issues. She�s got 16 watertight compartments, that�s far more than most of the liners that were steeling around. And of those sixteen, four of them could be flooded and the sheep was still stable and would stay afloat. And that�s why Titanic had bene billed as an unsinkable ship. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Captain Smith looked at the inclinometer which is a sort of spirit level type gage which shows whether the ship is stable or not, and realised there was a five degree lift in the ship to starboard. Captain Smith knows that probably there�s water. The problem is where is this water coming from and what the hell is going on? The Titanic of course was a massive ship with a huge number of compartments, therefore finding out what�s happened is a difficult and complex task because the ability to communicate between parts of the ship was very, very poor indeed. Therefore, you have to send a person, a runner to go down and look and then come all the way back to the bridge to tell you what on earth is going on. ADMIRAL LORD WEST The fact that water was seen on the deck at the level where Daniel Buckley had a cabin would seem to indicate that a second watertight compartment had actually gone as well as the boiler room, and that water was rising up the bulkhead in that compartment and that, of course, is extremely worrying. But who exactly knew that is a different issue. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Seeing the speed with which the water levels were rising must have been quite a sobering moment for both of them, and of course, this is not what the captain had hoped would be his final crowning glory in command of this splendid ship. This was going to be the ultimate test for him. He was going to have to prove himself as the sort of captain that he thought he was and that other people thought he was. ADMIRAL LORD WEST There�s 16 compartments, 4 of them could be fully flooded and the ship will still sail and wouldn�t sink. If another one, a fifth compartment started to be flooded then that changed the equation completely. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Because there�s no instant communications between large parts of the ship, Captain Smith and others still did not know fully what the damage was to the ship. During his inspection, Andrews must have learnt that a fourth compartment had flooded, but problems in the boiler room he was still completely unaware of. When Andrews went down into the boiler room he was horrified, Horror-struck. Water was rising and it was rising in spaces that they had not realised it would be in. Earlier on Andrews had said about Titanic that she was nearly as perfect as human brains could achieve. He�d put all of his knowledge into Titanic to make her as safe as she could be but unfortunately, the ship was doomed. ADMIRAL LORD WEST Thomas Andrews was seen by another passenger running up to the bridge with a look of terror on his face. There�s no doubt he realised for the first time, my god, we can�t save the ship. His unsinkable ship was going to sink.