50 Facts That Sink Our Myths About the Titanic

Bright Side

There are a lot of myths about the Titanic, but here are some interesting facts that debunk them. For starters, the Titanic wasn’t actually billed as "unsinkable" before it set sail; that was more of a legend that grew after the disaster. Contrary to popular belief, the ship wasn't going too fast because of a race against time; it was actually moving at a regular speed for that era. Another myth is that the ship's band played "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as it sank, but there's no solid evidence to confirm this. Lastly, there were plenty of warnings about icebergs, but a combination of human error and miscommunication led to the tragic collision.  Animation is created by Bright Side. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV   Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other): https://www.depositphotos.com https://www.shutterstock.com https://www.eastnews.ru ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00:00 April 14, 1912. The Titanic crashed into a huge iceberg and sank. Yep, we've covered

00:00:07 that. But what if this time we use the ice to bring the ship to the surface? This requires

00:00:13 several thousand feet of wire mesh and a lot of liquid nitrogen. Our goal is to put the

00:00:18 Titanic in a huge block of ice that will raise the ship to the surface. Now to do this, you

00:00:24 need to wrap the wreck in a wire mesh and cover it with liquid nitrogen. The first problem

00:00:28 we face is the inability to wrap the ship completely. You need to somehow lift the ship

00:00:33 a little to put the mesh under it. Let's say that by some miracle you manage to do so.

00:00:39 Next, you need to transport hundreds of large tanks of liquid nitrogen. You're underwater,

00:00:44 opening the tanks, and it's so cold that the icy water of the Atlantic Ocean looks like

00:00:49 it's boiling. The nitrogen just sizzles, dissipates, and certainly doesn't create a block of ice

00:00:55 around the mesh. Alright, new attempt. Raise the Titanic with the help of huge magnets.

00:01:01 For this, you need a large cruiser and some powerful magnets. You attach thick cables

00:01:06 to the magnets and lower them to the bottom. Bright projectors illuminate the black oak

00:01:11 chandels. Parts of the wreck are visible. The magnets descend lower and cling to the

00:01:16 iron hull of the ship. The cruiser pulls the cables and magnets up. Some of them detach

00:01:21 from the Titanic as the iron surface is covered with reefs and corals. Some parts of the wreck

00:01:26 break away from the ship and rise. The power of the cruiser is not enough; one of the cables

00:01:31 is torn. Not only the weight of the individual parts of the Titanic, but also the colossal

00:01:37 water pressure interferes with the operation. The sunken ship can't be raised completely,

00:01:42 only its small parts. In reality, there has already been an attempt to raise the Titanic

00:01:48 in parts. The 5 million dollar operation failed. Nylon slings were attached to a large part

00:01:54 of the wreck. The other ends of the slings were connected to the diesel engines. For

00:01:58 the entire operation, they used a mini-submarine. A piece of the Titanic weighing 21 tons was

00:02:05 pulled up. But one of the slings broke because of the strong water pressure. Then, one by

00:02:11 one, the other cables began to snap, and a huge piece fell back to the sea floor. By

00:02:16 this time, all the participants of the rescue operation had run out of food supplies, and

00:02:21 it was far from the nearest shore. So, they decided not to make a second attempt.

00:02:27 A book was written and a movie was made about how the Titanic was lifted with compressed

00:02:31 air. In reality, no one even attempted this operation. To do this, you'd need several

00:02:37 hundred large cylinders of compressed air. At first, you install them inside the Titanic's

00:02:43 hull and wait for them to pull the ship to the surface. As soon as you lower the cylinders

00:02:47 under the water, they immediately float upwards. This greatly complicates the operation. You

00:02:53 need to fasten the cylinders with cables and pull them down to the bottom using a powerful

00:02:58 submarine or, better yet, several of them. Because of the high pressure, the cylinders

00:03:03 might burst. In this case, the blast wave would hit other cylinders and provoke a catastrophe.

00:03:09 Too expensive and unsafe. The most expensive and complex plan to raise

00:03:14 the Titanic is probably the one where scientists somehow extract hydrogen and oxygen from the

00:03:19 ocean water. Then, these extracted elements must fill special containers. Those containers

00:03:25 are attached to the ship, and the Titanic would rise to the surface. Even if you extract

00:03:31 oxygen and hydrogen from millions of tons of water, the rest of the ocean water will

00:03:35 replace it. A machine that will be capable of such filtering should cost billions of

00:03:40 dollars. Or you can come up with a chemical element that will use a chain reaction to

00:03:45 purify all the water. In this case, the entire world ocean will be left without vital oxygen.

00:03:52 Someone once suggested blowing up the Titanic. You'd need to lower several boxes of dynamite

00:03:57 to the ocean floor. The boxes must be completely sealed to prevent the dynamite from getting

00:04:02 wet. Next, you need to run several miles of wire conducting an electrical current to them.

00:04:07 Once all this is done, you sail to a safe distance. Now you're going to press the button

00:04:12 to pass the current through the wire and activate the dynamite. 3, 2, 1, stop! Why would you

00:04:19 do this? Even if it works, the wreckage of the Titanic will be scattered in all directions

00:04:24 on the seabed. It will be impossible to lift the Titanic from the ocean. Imagine a huge

00:04:30 hook that can fetch the Titanic and lift it from the bottom like a fish. This hook must

00:04:35 be huge to pick up a sunken ship. Let's say you created it. Next, you're on a huge cruiser

00:04:42 sailing up to the crash site and lowering the hook down like an anchor. It falls right

00:04:47 on the Titanic but doesn't cling to it. You need special equipment to attach a bus-sized

00:04:52 hook to the Titanic. It would include a huge submarine with mechanical arms. To build such

00:04:58 a device and make it work under enormous pressure is already next to impossible. But let's say

00:05:04 you finally manage to hook the Titanic. It's then you realize the cruiser doesn't have

00:05:10 enough power to lift the ship, weighing more than 50 tons, and the hook that adds about

00:05:15 10 tons more. To complete your task, you'll need a few more cruisers and a few extra million

00:05:20 dollars. Hmm. Once hot wax cools, it hardens and floats on the water's surface. What if

00:05:27 we deliver it to the ocean floor and pour it inside the Titanic? This may work, given

00:05:33 that wax is not an expensive material. So you melt the wax, pour it into strong tanks,

00:05:39 and pull them to the bottom with the help of a submarine. The tanks can withstand enormous

00:05:43 pressure, and the submarine has enough power to lower the wax to such a depth. The containers

00:05:48 are placed inside the Titanic. Through a remote control, you open the containers, but the

00:05:54 wax doesn't pour out. The deeper you go, the colder the water gets. While you were

00:05:59 delivering the containers to the ship, the wax was cooling down and getting solid inside.

00:06:05 Several containers are pressed against the top of the ship, but it's not enough to lift

00:06:09 the Titanic. Other containers simply float away to the surface. And even if the containers

00:06:14 were thermostatic and kept hot inside all the time, once released, the wax would solidify

00:06:20 in an instant. There would just be no time for it to spread and cover the Titanic from

00:06:26 within, so it would just float up as well. Alright, you fill several large and sturdy

00:06:32 bags with Vaseline. This substance acts just like wax in the cold – it gets solid and

00:06:37 floats. You want to put bags all over the Titanic, and just wait for the Vaseline to

00:06:43 bring it up. You load the bags into the submarine and descend to the ocean floor. Some parts

00:06:48 of the ship can't be reached because of the clinging corals. You decide to unload

00:06:53 all the bags in one place, but as soon as you take Vaseline out of the submarine, the

00:06:57 bags tear due to the strong pressure. Solid pieces of Vaseline float up pushed by the

00:07:03 water. Mission failed. The craziest idea is to fill the Titanic with

00:07:08 millions of ping-pong balls. Small plastic balls filled with air should push the ship

00:07:13 to the surface. But as soon as you start to lower them to the bottom, the plastic immediately

00:07:18 flattens and all the air from the balls pops out. You can deliver the balls inside a submarine,

00:07:24 but once you put them inside the Titanic, the pressure will crush them again. Also,

00:07:30 you can create balls made from strong ultralight material and fill them with air. In this case,

00:07:35 you will need much more money. As soon as you put the balls inside the ship, some of

00:07:40 them will immediately slip through the holes in the ship, and the remaining ones won't

00:07:44 be enough to lift the wreck weighing more than 50 tons from the bottom!

00:07:48 No one could ever have imagined that the unsinkable Titanic would collide with an iceberg. Except

00:07:55 for one man, William Thomas Dead. Well, not directly, of course. It's not like he jolted

00:08:01 out of bed one day, envisioning the fall of the Titanic. Rather, he wrote an empowering

00:08:06 short story called "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic by a Survivor"

00:08:12 on March 3, 1886, 26 years before Titanic sank.

00:08:17 Ok, let's do a super quick recap. Titanic was traveling from Southampton to New York

00:08:23 in April 1912 in the North Atlantic. The ship hit an iceberg, and less than 3 hours later

00:08:29 it was completely underwater. Out of 2,208 people on board, just 706 survived due to

00:08:36 the limited number of lifeboats and icy cold water. Another passenger ship, Carpathia,

00:08:42 heard the distress call, picked up the survivors, and brought them safely to New York.

00:08:48 The short story William Dead wrote was about Thomas, a British sailor, who got on a passenger

00:08:53 liner bound for the U.S. At one point, the protagonist realized there weren't enough

00:08:58 lifeboats for everyone on board the ship in case something happened. A couple of days

00:09:03 later, heavy fog covered everything in sight. Luck was not on the liner's side, and it

00:09:08 collided with a stray ship, just like Titanic struck an iceberg. Only 200 out of the 916

00:09:16 people made it safely to the U.S. The main character managed to survive by jumping into

00:09:21 the water and climbing into one of the lifeboats.

00:09:23 Now, you'd think that the story riled up everyone in the industry to add extra lifeboats

00:09:29 on ships. But sadly, it received very little attention when it was published. Even more

00:09:35 tragically, William Thomas Stead was on Titanic when it sank, and he didn't make it. The

00:09:42 survivors who knew Stead mentioned that he had always been cheerful and had loved to

00:09:46 chat during meals. He complimented the ship's design and how sturdy it was. Witnesses also

00:09:52 talked about how he'd been helpful when the ship had been sinking, having given his

00:09:57 life jacket to someone else. He was a journalist by profession and was on his way to New York

00:10:02 for a ceremony. One of his most important contributions to modern journalism was the

00:10:08 use of illustrations in every newspaper article. He also introduced newspaper interviews, and

00:10:14 they're still used to this day, along with illustrations.

00:10:17 But this story wasn't the only published work that predicted the disaster. Morgan Robertson

00:10:23 was an author and former ship captain who wrote short stories and novels. His most notable

00:10:28 novella is "The Wreck of the Titan." It's also known as "Futility." The book was

00:10:34 written in 1898, 14 years before Titanic. It was a fictional story about the Titan,

00:10:41 an ocean liner similar to Titanic, which was crossing the North Atlantic. It's also a

00:10:46 coincidence that Titan was just as fast as Titanic and shared many other similarities,

00:10:52 like size and design. The book described it as unsinkable and the largest ship to hit

00:10:58 the ocean at the time. That's what they said about Titanic, too. Another eerie similarity

00:11:04 was the limited number of lifeboats it had. The story took place in April, and that's

00:11:09 when Titanic set off on its journey and hit the iceberg. The Titan story also mentioned

00:11:15 that barely anyone had survived that horrible accident.

00:11:18 Unlike Stead's story, the protagonist of Robertson took a different path. The Titan

00:11:23 sinking happened somewhere halfway through the book, so after the accident, the main

00:11:28 character went on with his life. The book was brought back into the spotlight

00:11:32 after the Titanic disaster. How could someone describe the events that took place almost

00:11:38 a decade later so accurately? Many started to believe Robertson could see the future.

00:11:44 But the reality was that Robertson knew his way around a ship. It was easy for him to

00:11:49 write down the nitty-gritty of things without doing more research. Realistically, one of

00:11:54 the biggest threats for ships at that time was hitting an iceberg or colliding with other

00:11:59 ships. The next story sounds somewhat mysterious.

00:12:03 Once, Alex McKenzie heard a voice that warned him not to board Titanic. But when he turned

00:12:09 around, there was nobody there. As he continued walking, the voice spoke to him again, but

00:12:16 this time it was louder and more distinct. He took the warning seriously and decided

00:12:21 to cancel the trip and go back to Glasgow, Scotland, his hometown.

00:12:26 His grandparents weren't too happy to find him back home instead of on Titanic. After

00:12:31 all, the ticket was very expensive. That disappointment very soon disappeared when

00:12:37 they heard that the ship had struck an iceberg. John Coffey was a member of the crew of Titanic,

00:12:43 but he decided to ditch the ride when the ship stopped at his hometown in Queenstown,

00:12:48 Ireland. His inner voice told him to get off the liner, and he did. He was only 23 at the

00:12:54 time, and for someone his age, it could be a major career boost and an opportunity to

00:12:59 grow. Despite the horrible tragedy, the guy signed

00:13:03 a work with the RMS Mauritania just months after the Titanic's sinking. Talk about

00:13:08 commitment! Some added info was revealed about what may

00:13:11 have contributed to the fall of Titanic. The constructors insisted that the ship was unsinkable,

00:13:18 but many people later theorized that the vessel's steel plates had been too frail for the freezing

00:13:23 Atlantic water. It may have caused the rivets to pop, allowing ocean water to seep inside.

00:13:30 Another theory is that there may have been a fire in the hull of the Titanic that had

00:13:34 been raging for 3 weeks before the voyage. The fire softened the steel, allowing the

00:13:40 iceberg to cut through it like a hot knife through butter. Some pictures before the ship

00:13:45 set off on its journey show black marks on the hull, which could have been caused by

00:13:50 fire. Either way, the iceberg would have caused significant damage in any case, no matter

00:13:55 if there was a fire or not. It was the very beginning of the year 1912.

00:14:02 A giant chunk of ice broke off a glacier in southwest Greenland. The ice was made up of

00:14:07 the snow that had fallen about 100,000 years before the event. That was the time when mammoths

00:14:14 were still roaming the planet. The iceberg started its journey. It was a huge

00:14:19 thing, more than 1,700 feet long. It weighed around 75 million tons. It was also a very

00:14:26 peaceful chunk of ice. It steered clear of ships and busy transport routes, not that

00:14:31 there were many in the place where the iceberg was born. And then, it somehow floated much

00:14:37 further to the south than other bergs did. Our iceberg was lucky. Others melt long before

00:14:43 they get to these latitudes. Out of 15,000 to 30,000 icebergs that drift away from Greenland's

00:14:50 glaciers, only 1% ever makes it all the way to the Atlantic. That's why it's so amazing

00:14:57 that in April, our iceberg "The Traveler" was already more than 5,000 miles away from

00:15:03 the Arctic Circle. Even after melting into the water for months,

00:15:07 this block of ice still weighed an impressive 1.5 million tons. It's almost twice as

00:15:13 much as the Golden Gate Bridge. The iceberg's top part was towering over the surface of

00:15:18 the ocean for more than 100 feet. And still, if you noticed it floating next

00:15:23 to your ocean liner, it would've looked harmless, but only at first glance. Like only

00:15:29 a tiny part of a jumbo piece of ice. The largest part of any iceberg is always hidden under

00:15:35 the surface. A mere one-tenth is normally visible above the water. And the berg we're

00:15:41 talking about wasn't an exception. Several days before our iceberg made it to

00:15:47 the Atlantic Ocean, a magnificent ship left port. It was a luxurious steamship carrying

00:15:53 more than 3,000 passengers and crew members. At that time, it was the largest ship ever

00:16:00 built. The liner was called the Titanic. It was considered unsinkable. At the very beginning

00:16:07 of its journey, it nearly collided with the steamship New York. Luckily, the Titanic managed

00:16:13 to pass by the other vessel with a couple of feet to spare. The people crowding the

00:16:18 liner's decks let out a collective sigh of relief. Little did they know what was awaiting

00:16:24 them in the nearest future. Meanwhile, the iceberg was approaching the

00:16:29 area the Titanic was going to cross on its way to New York. It happened on April 14th,

00:16:36 when the ship was in the North Atlantic Ocean, 370 miles away from Newfoundland.

00:16:41 At about 11.40 pm, people who were still awake on board the Titanic toppled down, pushed

00:16:47 over by some mysterious and powerful force. Those who had already gone to bed got catapulted

00:16:54 to the floor. Both the passengers and crew members were screaming, panicking, and confused.

00:17:01 Just minutes before the commotion started, an iceberg had appeared right in front of

00:17:05 the ship. It was our wandering iceberg. Why hadn't the crew noticed it earlier? There

00:17:12 might've been several reasons. I'll tell you about them a bit later.

00:17:16 Anyway, once the liner collided with a huge chunk of ice, it was doomed. Unable to divert

00:17:22 its course, the ship ruptured at least 5 of its hull compartments. They started to fill

00:17:28 with water with alarming speed. The Titanic's compartments weren't capped at the top.

00:17:33 That's why the water spilled over and started to flood each succeeding one. The front of

00:17:38 the ship began to sink, causing the back part to lift vertically into the air. And then,

00:17:44 with a deafening roar, the liner broke in half. The rest is history.

00:17:50 But few people know what happened to the iceberg after the ship had hit it. It gets us back

00:17:55 to the question of why no one had spotted the floating ice mountain until it was too

00:18:00 late. Let's track the events of that fateful day.

00:18:05 At around 6 PM, Captain Smith finally decides to change the Titanic's course. He's been

00:18:11 receiving iceberg warnings throughout the entire day. The ship starts to head further

00:18:16 to the south, but the speed remains the same. At 9.40 PM, another ship informs Titanic about

00:18:24 a vast ice field packed with icebergs. Unfortunately, this message never reaches the liner's bridge.

00:18:31 At about 11 PM, yet another steamship radios Titanic. They say the ice has surrounded them,

00:18:38 making their ship stop. This message also gets ignored. Meanwhile, most of the passengers

00:18:44 on the luxury liner have already retired to their rooms.

00:18:48 At 11.35, the sailors in Titanic's crow's nest notice the iceberg. They ring the bell

00:18:54 three times, which means something's ahead. Then, they call the bridge. The engines get

00:19:00 reversed, and the doors to the supposedly watertight compartments close.

00:19:06 Just 5 minutes later, the huge liner's starboard side collides with the iceberg. The mailroom

00:19:12 begins to fill with water. Soon, other reports come. They don't sound encouraging, at least

00:19:18 5 other compartments are flooded. It becomes clear Titanic has just a few hours before

00:19:24 it sinks. The night was exceptionally calm, with no

00:19:28 moonlight, no wind, and no waves. And since the waves weren't breaking against the iceberg,

00:19:34 it was difficult to perceive the giant. But there's also a theory that what sank Titanic

00:19:40 was a blackbird. If you had to draw an iceberg, I bet it would

00:19:45 be a white, towering chunk of ice covered with snow.

00:19:49 But those who have visited Antarctica know that icebergs come in millions of hues. They

00:19:55 can be multicolored, patterned, or stripe-like candies. Icebergs can also be black.

00:20:01 There are two ways such an unusually colored shard of ice can form. First, the ice might

00:20:07 be extremely pure, with no air bubbles or cracks whatsoever. In this case, there's

00:20:13 nothing to scatter the light. The iceberg will absorb it all and look black. Or an erupting

00:20:19 volcano can cover a glacier with volcanic ash. Then the ice that breaks off this glacier

00:20:24 will be dark-colored too. Experts don't know the true reason why Titanic's

00:20:30 iceberg looked so dark, or whether it was really the case. But one of the sailors who

00:20:35 was in the crow's nest testified the ice was black. The other said it was either gray

00:20:41 or dark gray. There's nothing exciting or mysterious about

00:20:46 the so-called black birds. They're icebergs that roll over after their top part is melted,

00:20:52 which changes the weight distribution. If their lower part is smooth enough to absorb

00:20:57 light, they look dark. Plus, they usually aren't exposed to the air long enough for

00:21:02 the white frost to build up. But let's say this theory is wrong, and

00:21:07 the iceberg wasn't actually black. And still, the only reason why you see things is because

00:21:13 light gets reflected from them. The less light there is, the less likely you are to notice

00:21:19 something. The ocean surface will always reflect the

00:21:22 Moon and starlight. But an irregularly shaped, almost vertical iceberg will have fewer chances

00:21:29 of doing so. That's why it'll look almost black against the glimmering water surface.

00:21:35 At night, icebergs can be rather difficult to detect without a radar.

00:21:40 In any case, our iceberg wasn't noticed in time. Titanic crashed into it and sank.

00:21:46 End of story? Apparently not. On April 15, the German ocean liner SS Prinz

00:21:53 Allebert was sailing through the North Atlantic. It was traveling a few miles away from the

00:21:58 place where Titanic had sunk several hours before. The German ship's chief steward,

00:22:04 who hadn't learned about the disaster yet, saw an iceberg. What drew his attention was

00:22:10 a fairly large streak of red paint going along the iceberg's base. Surprised, the man took

00:22:16 a photo of his discovery. He thought the paint meant a ship hit the iceberg during the past

00:22:22 12 hours. The next person who saw the infamous chunk

00:22:26 of ice and took its photo was the captain of the vessel used to lay deep-sea telecommunications

00:22:31 cables. The ship was sent to help in the area where Titanic had sunk. The captain later

00:22:37 claimed the iceberg he had seen had been the only one in that area. Plus, the red paint.

00:22:43 It wasn't difficult to connect the dots. In 2015, one of these photos was sold at auction

00:22:50 for more than $32,000. And still, experts are unsure whether the image really shows

00:22:57 the infamous block of ice. It might be another innocent iceberg that was floating nearby

00:23:03 at that time. We know Titanic from so many stories, even

00:23:09 a movie. But now we have its first full-sized digital scan. And nope, it's not like those

00:23:15 models from before, where we mostly imagined what the ship was supposed to be like. This

00:23:20 time we got a real digital scan. A team of experts really mapped the deep-sea floor around

00:23:25 the Titanic together with the ship itself. We basically got a 3D view of the entire wreck,

00:23:31 which is like going deep down beneath the ocean's surface and seeing Titanic as if all

00:23:35 the water has been drained away. So the story of the wreck started in 1985,

00:23:41 73 years after the Titanic went down. The explorer named Robert Ballard stumbled upon

00:23:46 it somewhere between two submarines that also went down in that area. He was actually on

00:23:51 a different task back then, so he didn't even have time to explore the ship properly. But

00:23:56 as he was searching for the submarines, he realized how ocean currents affect sinking

00:24:00 debris. He noticed the heaviest object sank quickly and left a trail of debris behind,

00:24:06 the trail that followed the currents. Using this knowledge, Ballard made a hypothesis

00:24:10 the Titanic had broken in two and left a debris trail as it sank. Before he found the wreck,

00:24:16 everyone thought the ship just went down in one piece after hitting an iceberg. So everyone

00:24:20 knew where the ship was so the adventure could start, or not. It was hard to explore it.

00:24:26 The ship is enormous and the dark depths of the ocean make it really difficult to capture

00:24:30 its whole body in one go. So we mostly relied on glimpses of the decaying ship and had to

00:24:36 settle with teasing scattered parts of the whole picture and filling it up with speculations

00:24:41 and stories. But in the summer of 2022, we finally got something different. A team of

00:24:47 experts from Magellan loaded a company specializing in mapping the deep sea teamed up with Atlantic

00:24:53 Productions who were making a documentary about the project. They embarked on a mission

00:24:58 to capture the complete view of the Titanic. They use submersibles. Those are vehicles

00:25:03 that go underwater, remotely controlled by a team of skilled explorers. These submersibles

00:25:08 dove deep into the ocean. It wasn't an easy job. They spent over 200 hours collecting

00:25:13 information about the entire length and breadth of the wreck. It was like a real life treasure

00:25:18 hunt. But instead of finding gold and jewels, they took something even more precious. Over

00:25:25 700,000 images of the Titanic from every angle possible. Yep, they took photos of every tiny

00:25:31 part of the ship, even the not so interesting bits most of us would usually skip. Even mapping

00:25:36 the muddy parts was an important part because it helped fill in the gaps between the more

00:25:41 exciting things they discovered. This was a way for all of us to finally get a detailed

00:25:45 3D reconstruction. Even though it's been more than 100 years, you can still recognize the

00:25:51 bow of the Titanic, covered in rust that hangs down like stalactites. On top of the bow is

00:25:57 the boat deck, where a big hole gives us a glimpse into the empty space where the grand

00:26:02 staircase once stood, like a window into the ship's glamorous past. Its stern is now a

00:26:07 wild mess of twisted metal. As the Titanic went down, this part collapsed and spiraled

00:26:12 into the seabed. The bow and the stern ended up separated by about 2,600 feet. There's

00:26:19 a vast field of debris surrounding this giant, stuck on the seafloor. This debris is like

00:26:24 a scattered treasure trove, full of intricate metalwork from the ship, statues, and even

00:26:30 unopened champagne bottles. There are also personal belongings that went down together

00:26:34 with the ship, like dozens of shoes resting across the seafloor. It was a tough task to

00:26:38 do, go down and take all those pictures. It may not sound that hard at first, considering

00:26:43 it was the vehicle that really immersed itself into such deep parts of the ocean, not the

00:26:47 people. But studying the ocean is hard. We haven't explored, mapped, or even seen over

00:26:53 80% of it. The conditions are harsh, and the pressure becomes more intense the deeper you

00:26:58 go. And their vehicle had to dive down to nearly 13,120 feet below the surface. That's

00:27:05 like 12 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. Plus, you have strong currents in that

00:27:10 area, so it was probably like trying to navigate through a watery maze, and submersibles weren't

00:27:15 supposed to touch anything. Even the slightest wrong step can damage the wreck that was already

00:27:19 so fragile. It seems like the Titanic is frozen in time, so it will always be there waiting

00:27:25 for us. But in reality, it's slowly disappearing. It's pretty obvious that the ocean water ruined

00:27:30 it considering how long it has been down there, but it's not just that. The wreck itself has

00:27:35 become a home for a specific type of Bacteria Hallimonis Titanicae that even got named after

00:27:40 the famous ship. These bacteria have a special ability. They can survive inside rusty formations

00:27:46 known as rusticles. They kind of look like icicles, those spikes of ice that form when

00:27:51 water falls from something and freezes. These bacteria have a taste for iron, which is abundant

00:27:57 in the ship's hull. For them, it's like a real buffet down there. And as time goes by,

00:28:03 these bacteria will keep eating away at the iron in the ship, bit by bit, until one day,

00:28:08 the feast comes to an end, and the whole ship is gone. It's like a slow but steady recycling

00:28:13 process. So this 3D model we got because of the hardworking team and technology comes

00:28:19 at the best time because we never know how much time we have left with exploring the

00:28:23 famous wreck. This time we might even understand the collision with the iceberg better. You

00:28:29 know how movies always show the Titanic hitting the iceberg on its right side? Well, we can't

00:28:34 even be certain about that. The scans could help us figure out if the ship actually grounded

00:28:39 on the iceberg, like getting stuck on it. We can study the stern and analyze how the

00:28:44 Titanic struck the seafloor. That will also help us understand what really happened during

00:28:48 the sinking. Maybe we'll get a chance to discover if there was really a strong fire that sealed

00:28:55 the fate of the Titanic. One theory says that the coal fire had been raging for a whole

00:29:00 three weeks before the ship even took its first and last trip. And this could have made

00:29:05 its hull weaker, which means most of the work was done. The iceberg just delivered the final

00:29:11 blow if there even was an iceberg, as some people wonder. There's an alternative theory

00:29:16 they suggested where the Titanic may have actually hit a hidden mass of pack ice instead

00:29:22 of a typical iceberg. Pack ice is made up of large sheets of ice that float near the

00:29:26 ocean's surface and can be difficult to spot. They believe this pack ice might have drifted

00:29:31 into the Atlantic from the Arctic Ocean. According to one professional mariner, Captain L.M.

00:29:36 Collins, that stands up with that idea. If the Titanic had struck a regular iceberg,

00:29:42 the ship would have sunk much more quickly than it did. And since the Titanic managed

00:29:46 to stay on the surface for a relatively long period of time, less than three hours, maybe

00:29:52 this was a different type of collision. The mariner also said there are "differences"

00:29:57 in what people said they saw when the Titanic sank. He thinks these differences might be

00:30:01 because of optical illusions. In this case, when people were looking at the ocean that

00:30:06 night, the way the light was reflecting and the conditions at sea might have made things

00:30:10 appear closer or distorted. So when they saw something in the water, it might not have

00:30:16 been exactly what they thought it was, whether it was an iceberg or something else. Binoculars

00:30:23 might have helped the crew members to spot the potential danger, but unfortunately, they

00:30:28 didn't have any. It appears they were locked inside a cabinet and no one knew where the

00:30:33 key was.

00:30:34 Can you guess how many theories of the Titanic's sinking exist? Right, loads, including a theory

00:30:40 of my own, which I'm going to share with you today. And then you can decide which one seems

00:30:45 most likely to you.

00:30:48 One Piece Theory

00:30:50 The very first version of the events was the "One Piece Theory." It's very simple and basically

00:30:56 claims that the sinking happened without any breakups.

00:30:59 2.15 a.m. The ship collides with an iceberg.

00:31:04 2.18 a.m. The lights go out. The ship reaches an angle of 45 degrees and then quickly begins

00:31:10 its final plunge into the ocean depths.

00:31:13 2.20 a.m. Only about three minutes later, the RMS Titanic disappears under the surface

00:31:19 of the ocean for good. The liner doesn't break. It just goes down as a whole piece.

00:31:26 Of course, this can't be true. In April 1912, the Titanic was not only the largest ship in

00:31:32 the world, but also the largest ship ever built. It's hard to believe that such a heavy

00:31:37 vessel could have gone down without breaking. That's just impossible.

00:31:41 Well, I mean, you can't blame the theorists. Before we found the wreckage, there were no

00:31:47 other theories. Wait a minute, or were there?

00:31:51 The day after the disaster, the survivors gave their interviews. They talked about what

00:31:56 had happened, and some of them claimed that the ship had actually broken in two when it

00:32:01 had been flooded.

00:32:02 For example, Jack Thayer, a 17-year-old boy, outlined the sinking as he remembered it,

00:32:08 and L.D. Skidmon drew a sketch based on his description. The picture clearly showed the

00:32:14 ship breaking in half.

00:32:16 But no one believed Jack or other witnesses. There was no evidence, so their claims were

00:32:22 received with a grain of salt. But in 1985, things changed.

00:32:28 Titanic Breakup Theory That's when Robert Ballard found the wreckage

00:32:33 of the Titanic in the depths of the ocean. When people saw the wreckage, it became clear

00:32:38 that Jack and the other survivors had been right. The Titanic did indeed break in two

00:32:43 when it sank.

00:32:44 So, it's time for a new theory.

00:32:48 2.15am The keel breaks, the starboard list eases, and the hull continues to bow and crumble.

00:32:56 2.17am The galley sections break off. The towers immediately drop under their own weight.

00:33:03 The lights go out. The stern is pulled into the air. The bow breaks off and starts sinking.

00:33:09 The aft is barely hanging on to the starboard side of the stern section superstructure.

00:33:14 The stern section slowly lists over to port as it begins sinking again. It rises up one

00:33:20 last time and pivots in a semicircle as it sinks.

00:33:25 It all sounds pretty convincing, right? But people began to find plot holes in this theory.

00:33:31 For example, the Titanic couldn't have held together until it reached such a high angle.

00:33:36 The breakup would have had to begin much earlier.

00:33:40 This only meant there was still a vast field for research and speculations. So, people

00:33:45 started to come up with their own possible scenarios. How about we look first at the

00:33:49 ones no one likes?

00:33:52 V-Break and Aaron 1912 V-Break

00:33:57 According to the first breakup theory, the Titanic reached a high angle, and the weight

00:34:01 of its unsupported stern caused it to crack from the top down. But it's physically impossible.

00:34:07 So, are there any other ideas?

00:34:11 In 2006, Roger Long, a naval architect, decided to research a so-called "V-Theory."

00:34:17 2.17 a.m. The breakup begins at a shallow angle, perhaps as little as 11 degrees. The

00:34:26 upper structure fails and starts to crack. At this moment, only its double bottom is

00:34:31 holding the Titanic together. But it starts to bend under the strain too, failing the

00:34:36 ship. Water is pouring through the crack. It increases the weight in between the two

00:34:42 sections, bending the Titanic the other way and pulling it into shape somewhat resemblant

00:34:48 to the letter V. The upper decks get mangled and bent together. The bow heads for the bottom,

00:34:54 and the stern is the last to sink.

00:34:58 This theory has since been disproven many times, though. Roger Long believed it because

00:35:03 the broken edges of the upper decks and the Titanic's bow section were all mangled and

00:35:08 crushed. However, we have learned that it happened because of the so-called "hydraulic

00:35:13 downburst," the force of the water crashing into the deck as the Titanic hit the ocean

00:35:18 floor.

00:35:20 Another V-break theory states that the bow had risen out of the water after the break.

00:35:26 This theory was mainly peddled by one former Titanic enthusiast. But not only has this

00:35:31 theory been proved to be physically impossible due to the bow's incredible mass, it was

00:35:36 also inspired by incorrect information.

00:35:40 Remember Jack Thayer? Well, it was based on his sketch and the words of a couple of passengers.

00:35:46 But the truth is, none of them had ever seen the Titanic break down like this. Jack himself

00:35:52 even stated in an interview that the sketch was completely out of context to what he had

00:35:57 actually seen. It was drawn by a passenger on the Carpathia, the ship that received the

00:36:02 Titanic's distress signal and came to its aid. It couldn't be used as evidence.

00:36:07 The night was dark and scary. A few hundred people were sitting in lifeboats, not knowing

00:36:13 what would happen next or what their lives would look like from that moment on. All they

00:36:18 knew was the giant ship they had been sailing on just a couple of hours earlier disappeared

00:36:24 in front of their eyes. They were alone, waiting for help. Is anyone even coming? They had

00:36:29 no idea if the rest of the ships that were traveling relatively close to them had heard

00:36:34 their call for help. There was nothing else to do but wait.

00:36:39 The Titanic, an iceberg, and one night, April 14, 1912. It's one of the most famous stories

00:36:47 from modern history that everyone talks about even now, more than 100 years later.

00:36:53 The 16 lifeboats on board could only accommodate a little more than 50% (1,178 people) of the

00:37:00 total number of passengers that were on board, and many of them were still half-empty. In

00:37:07 one of them, there was a little two-month-old girl, Milvina Dean, the youngest passenger

00:37:12 on board the giant ship. Her parents had decided to leave England because

00:37:17 they wanted to build a better life in the United States. Her father had some family

00:37:22 in Kansas, and he hoped they could start their own business there. The Dean family didn't

00:37:27 actually choose to be on board this giant legendary liner, but because of a coal strike,

00:37:33 they got transferred there, so they boarded it at Southampton as third-class passengers.

00:37:38 Milvina's father felt when their ship hit the iceberg on that cold and seemingly peaceful

00:37:43 night. He immediately went up to investigate. When he saw that people were panicking and

00:37:49 that the crew members were giving warnings on the actual danger of the situation, he

00:37:53 rushed to their cabin to find his wife. He told her to dress the children and quickly

00:37:58 go up on deck. The crew members gave the order to get the

00:38:02 lifeboats ready and start transferring women and children there first. It was a chance

00:38:07 for at least some family members to get to safety. Milvina, her mother, and her brother

00:38:12 got in lifeboat 10. They were among the first off the liner out of the 706 crew members

00:38:18 and passengers who managed to escape the sinking ship. Later, the liner called Carpathia heard

00:38:24 their call for help, came for the passengers, and took them to New York. Her father, unfortunately,

00:38:31 stayed behind them and didn't manage to save himself.

00:38:35 Milvina grew up in Ashurst, England, which wasn't far from where she set sail on the

00:38:39 ship. She spent her life working as a secretary and an assistant in small businesses in Southampton.

00:38:46 She never married. Milvina always used to say she never spoke about the whole Titanic

00:38:52 thing because she remembered nothing about it, so she didn't want people to think she

00:38:56 was just drawing attention to herself. But in 1985, a French-American team got together

00:39:03 and located the wreck of the Titanic. It was around 370 miles east of Mistaken Point, Newfoundland,

00:39:10 in water that was more than two miles deep. That's when they confirmed the ship split

00:39:15 in two. For decades, people believed the ship sank in one piece. They thought the only significant

00:39:21 damage was the damage the hull got from its contact with the iceberg. In reality, it broke

00:39:27 in half right between its third and fourth funnels. It happened shortly before the ship

00:39:32 disappeared under the surface of the water, and the whole thing, starting from the moment

00:39:37 when they hit the iceberg, lasted around two hours and forty minutes.

00:39:42 People didn't pay that much attention to the Titanic until this team of researchers found

00:39:47 the wreck. In the last year of her life, she sold some of her family's possessions at auction

00:39:53 to pay for her stay in a nursing home. The items she sold also included a suitcase filled

00:39:58 with clothes that her family got when they arrived in the U.S. and compensation letters

00:40:04 her mom got from the Titanic Relief Fund. The compensation letters outlined the financial

00:40:09 aid that certain passengers received who had survived the loss of their loved ones.

00:40:14 She lived until the age of 97, when she caught pneumonia. She was the youngest of the 705

00:40:20 people that survived the whole event. The Titanic was the world's largest ship. Since

00:40:26 it was so big, some thought the vessel should have had four exhaust stacks, but Thomas Andrews,

00:40:32 the man who designed the ship, believed that only three were necessary. So, the Titanic

00:40:37 basically had one purely decorative stack. 2,200 people were on board when the ship sank.

00:40:44 There were 908 crew members and the maximum number of passengers on board, which was 3,500.

00:40:51 As you probably saw in the movie, there were different classes of passengers. The estimated

00:40:56 overall wealth of those in first class was about $500 million. And researchers estimated

00:41:02 $6 million worth of things went down to the ocean bottom, together with the ship. In first

00:41:08 class, this liner was a place of luxury. It had four restaurants, two libraries, two barbershops,

00:41:15 reading rooms, and a photographic darkroom on board. There was also a heated swimming

00:41:20 pool, but only first-class passengers could use it, at a price of one shilling a time.

00:41:26 The ship also had Turkish baths and electric baths, and passengers could use each for four

00:41:31 shillings at a time. The cost to build this massive giant was $7.5 million, but that was

00:41:38 back in 1912. Today, it would be about $200 million. First-class tickets cost $2,560 at

00:41:47 the time, which is today's equivalent of $61,000. What would you get in these expensive cabins?

00:41:54 A sitting room, two bedrooms, two wardrobe rooms, and a bathroom. Hmm, would you pay

00:41:59 that much for those luxuries? Teams of researchers still haven't explored many areas on the Titanic.

00:42:06 It's still very, very hard to access them with underwater vehicles.

00:42:11 There was a lifeboat drill scheduled for the same day the Titanic sank, but it was called

00:42:16 off for some reason. The crew had done just one lifeboat drill, and that was when the

00:42:20 ship was still docked. But even if the crew members had been properly trained, and each

00:42:25 lifeboat had been filled, the capacity was still not enough to save each and every passenger.

00:42:31 The Titanic was the biggest movable object in the world at that time. On May 31, 1911,

00:42:38 its immense hull made its way down the slipways and ended up in the River Lagan in Belfast.

00:42:44 Over 100,000 people were there to see the launch, which took just a little more than

00:42:48 a minute and went off without a hitch. The people who were in charge of the ship immediately

00:42:54 towed the hull to a mammoth fitting-out dock. Thousands of workers spent most of the next

00:42:59 year there working hard, building the decks and constructing all those luxury interiors

00:43:04 that gave the Titanic its specific look. They were also installing the 29 giant boilers

00:43:10 that would power the ship's two main steam engines. All that to get the title "unsinkable."

00:43:17 The ship had more than just one fatal flaw. You may have heard of one of its design flaws.

00:43:22 The airtight bulkheads weren't completely sealed on top. This allowed water to flow

00:43:27 from one compartment to another, which eventually sank the liner. And Titanic had more flaws.

00:43:35 High sulfur content, cold temperatures, and high speeds largely affected the steel of

00:43:40 the vessel's hull and the iron of its rivets. The steel here shattered, while the rivets

00:43:45 popped out relatively easily. This was the reason the Titanic sunk 24 times faster than

00:43:51 we'd expect. Once a famous giant, the largest ship of that time, now two grand pieces lying

00:43:59 on the ocean bottom about 2,000 feet apart, torn by the catastrophic collision of time

00:44:05 itself. The stern of the Titanic got completely ruined after hitting the ocean floor. But

00:44:11 you can still recognize the bow since many interiors were left preserved. There's a type

00:44:17 of bacteria found on the ship's rusticles. A rusticle is this brownish formation of rust.

00:44:23 It occurs deep underwater when the wrought iron the ship is made of oxidizes. It means

00:44:28 the bacteria eat the iron of the Titanic's hull piece by piece. And it seems they might

00:44:34 finish their snack by 2030, way sooner than when anyone would expect the wreck to be gone

00:44:40 forever. You may think it would probably be easier to take the wreck out of the water

00:44:45 so that we got to keep it, but it would fall apart if anyone tried to do that. It's been

00:44:50 in the water for more than 110 years now, and is now so rusty that no one would be able

00:44:56 to reconstruct some parts, even if we managed to get the ship out of the ocean depths. What

00:45:03 do you think? Could any of about 700 people that had survived the sinking of the Titanic

00:45:09 hear it hit the ocean bottom? The largest ship that had ever been made till then disappeared

00:45:13 literally before their eyes after all. But sound most likely wouldn't have traveled from

00:45:18 water to air. We can't hear that well in water because our bodies are not designed to hear

00:45:24 in such environments. And although passengers were close to the sinking site, the Titanic

00:45:30 still hit the bottom a long distance away, 12,500 feet. There are so many underwater

00:45:38 landslides and earthquakes we cannot hear, and they make way more noise than a single

00:45:43 ship slamming into the ocean floor. Most vibrations and sounds must have dispersed over a large

00:45:49 area. Also, the down blast of water which many believe hit the Titanic after it had

00:45:54 touched the bottom of the ocean would have pushed back the majority of the potential

00:45:58 acoustic vibrations. Plus, the bottom of the ocean is not hard enough to produce such loud

00:46:04 noises. Many survivors said they had heard terrifying noises as the Titanic was breaking

00:46:11 apart, but none mentioned hearing anything after the ship disappeared below the surface

00:46:16 of the water. Some survivors shared how chaotic it was when passengers, mainly women and children,

00:46:23 were getting into lifeboats. There weren't enough boats, and still, some of them weren't

00:46:28 even filled to their full capacity. No one knew how to react properly in such a situation.

00:46:34 The lifeboat drill had been scheduled for the morning before the Titanic hit the iceberg,

00:46:39 but for some reason it got cancelled. A giant ocean liner everyone believes is unsinkable

00:46:46 takes a trip across the ocean. On its way, it strikes an iceberg and sinks. Yeah, we

00:46:52 all know how the story goes. But what's scary is that it's also the plot of The Wreck of

00:46:57 the Titan, a novel published in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic went to the ocean bottom

00:47:04 or was even constructed. In the novel, the Titan, what a scarily accurate name too, didn't

00:47:11 have enough life jackets, vests and lifeboats for all the passengers on board. It was also

00:47:17 the largest ship of that time, almost identical in size to the Titanic. And both the Titan

00:47:23 and Titanic sank in April. Dorothy Gibson was an American silent film

00:47:29 actress. She was also one of the Titanic passengers. She survived the catastrophe right after she

00:47:36 came to New York. She started filming Saved from the Titanic. The film was released only

00:47:41 one month after the ship sank. Dorothy was even wearing the same shoes and clothes she

00:47:46 had worn when she had actually been on the ship. The movie was successful, but it got

00:47:52 destroyed in a fire, so it only exists in memories like Jack Dawson.

00:47:59 The Titanic wasn't all alone in the restless waves of the cold ocean near the iceberg it

00:48:03 struck. The SS Californian was relatively close. Their radio was shut off for that night

00:48:09 though. At one moment, the crew members noticed mysterious lights in the sky. They immediately

00:48:15 went to wake their captain up to tell him, but he issued no orders. Some believed it

00:48:20 was just fireworks. They never realized it was actually a call for help. The flares crew

00:48:26 members of the Titanic sent off to the sky, hoping someone would notice. By the time the

00:48:31 SS Californian got the SOS message, it was already too late.

00:48:37 Some say a full moon may have been the reason the iceberg crossed paths with the gigantic

00:48:42 ship. A full moon may have caused incredibly strong tides that eventually sent multiple

00:48:48 icebergs southward. Right when the Titanic was crossing that area.

00:48:52 If you watched the movie, you know the ship didn't plunge immediately after the icy

00:48:57 doom had happened. The whole process lasted a good 2 hours and 40 minutes. But the situation

00:49:03 was hard. There were 2,200 people to take care of, including crew and passengers. And

00:49:09 things happening on the ship were chaotic.

00:49:15 The chief designer, Thomas Andrews, soon realized they wouldn't be able to stay afloat. By

00:49:20 midnight, the entire crew had begun preparing the lifeboats for launch. They had 20 boats

00:49:26 with space for only 1,178 people, which was just a bit more than 50% of the people on

00:49:32 board.

00:49:35 The order was to get women and children to safety first. Crewmen were there to row and

00:49:40 guide the boats.

00:49:43 The scene over the next 2 hours gradually started escalating. The crew members had a

00:49:48 task to wake up passengers and warn them something bad was happening. They wanted to place them

00:49:53 into a fleet of lifeboats as soon as possible.

00:49:59 At 12.15 am, some crew members sent out a distress signal. A steamship called Frankfurt

00:50:04 was among the first ones that received the message and responded, but they were about

00:50:09 170 nautical miles away. Some other ships also got the message and offered their assistance,

00:50:15 but sadly, they were too far away as well.

00:50:21 At 12.20 am, the canard liner Carpathia got a distress signal from the Titanic and changed

00:50:27 its course right away. They were 58 miles away at the time, and it would take them more

00:50:32 than 3 hours to get there.

00:50:37 Twenty minutes later, the crew was lowering the first lifeboat. It was carrying only 27

00:50:42 passengers, although it had room for 65. Many of the lifeboats that were launched first

00:50:48 were well below capacity.

00:50:53 Crew members were worried, thinking the Davids wouldn't be able to hold a fully loaded

00:50:57 lifeboat. And in the beginning, many passengers were just too afraid to leave the ship. They

00:51:03 still thought Titanic was unsinkable and couldn't imagine the scenario that was going to happen

00:51:09 1-2 hours later.

00:51:13 The crew was firing the first of 8 distress rockets. Unsuccessful. No one was close enough

00:51:18 to help.

00:51:21 By 1.20 am, they lowered 10 lifeboats. Number 8 had only 28 people in it. One of the passengers

00:51:28 on the number 10 was 9-week-old Melvina Dean. She would later become the last survivor who

00:51:35 lived until 2009 and turned 97.

00:51:40 It was 2 am already. Three of the collapsible boats were the only lifeboats that remained

00:51:45 on the ship. The bow of the vessel had sunk low and had tipped far under the surface.

00:51:51 People around it could now clearly see stern propellers above the water.

00:51:58 Crew members were lowering collapsible lifeboat D from the roof of the officer's quarters

00:52:03 with over 20 passengers in it. As the ship's bow went under, the water was washing collapsible

00:52:09 A from the deck. Those 20 people were struggling because their boat was partly filled with

00:52:14 water.

00:52:17 As crew members were trying to release collapsible B, it fell. Before they righted it, the water

00:52:22 swept it off the ship. 30 passengers still managed to find safety on the overturned lifeboat.

00:52:31 At 2.17 am, the ship's wireless operator decided to transmit one last distress call.

00:52:37 A minute later, the light on the ship finally went out. Titanic and all left on board plunged

00:52:43 into darkness. The bow continued to sink, and the stern was rising higher above the

00:52:48 surface, which placed great strain on the midsection.

00:52:54 Horrible sounds were filling the night. Titanic, this massive legendary ship, so many people

00:53:00 placed their hopes in and were excited about, broke into two between the third and fourth

00:53:05 funnels.

00:53:09 Reports would speculate it took about 6 minutes for the bow section to reach the ocean bottom.

00:53:14 The stern settled back in the water before it rose again into a vertical position. It

00:53:19 remained in this situation until it finally disappeared into the ocean.

00:53:26 At 2.20 am, the stern apparently retained air inside, and water pressure crushed it

00:53:32 as it went down. The stern landed about 2,000 feet away from the bow.

00:53:39 People consider the Titanic the fastest ship in the world. They thought it was unsinkable

00:53:44 because four of its compartments could be flooded, and that still wouldn't cause a

00:53:49 critical loss of buoyancy.

00:53:51 You know SOS, don't you? Three dots, three dashes, and three more dots? It's an easy

00:53:57 enough signal to tap out in Morse code. It means "save our souls" or "save our

00:54:02 ship."

00:54:03 The crew of the legendary Titanic had been desperately trying to send this signal for

00:54:07 two hours the night of April 14, 1912. There were other ships not too far from the spot

00:54:14 where the iceberg took down the mighty Titan of the Sea. But the call for help seemingly

00:54:20 disappeared before it could reach them.

00:54:22 The passenger ship SS Mount Temple did pick up a signal and try to respond, but the Titanic

00:54:29 never got the answer. So what was silencing the ship's cries for help? Some unknown

00:54:34 Bermuda Triangle of the North Atlantic?

00:54:39 Consider this. Eyewitnesses say the sky was painted with a brilliant aurora borealis that

00:54:44 covered the sky for a long time. It was a cold, fateful night. Beautiful, yes. But on

00:54:50 that day, the northern lights may have sealed Titanic's fate for good.

00:54:55 You see, the aurora borealis forms thanks to geomagnetic storms. Sounds complicated,

00:55:02 but those are basically fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic sphere. And what causes

00:55:07 those is the Sun itself. The magnetic sphere is like a protective bubble that surrounds

00:55:12 rays, winds, and other cosmic dangers from reaching us. Without it, life on our planet

00:55:17 wouldn't be possible. Earth would look more like Mars.

00:55:21 You also have it to thank for compasses pointing north. Experts know the Earth's magnetosphere

00:55:27 affects navigational equipment, or disrupts it. Which brings us back to the Titanic.

00:55:33 Recently, a published weather researcher named Mila Zinkova proposed a theory that solar

00:55:39 flares, which provoked a geomagnetic storm, could have played a major role in the Titanic's

00:55:45 untimely demise. Solar flares make themselves known on Earth

00:55:49 all the time. Some people are especially sensitive to the magnetic storms they cause. These unlucky

00:55:55 folks can feel weakness, fatigue, headaches, and even mood swings. On usual days, the pressure

00:56:02 is the same on both sides. The magnetosphere blocks all the bad stuff, and we're all

00:56:07 happy. But sometimes, explosions occur on the side. They can be massive, Earth-sized.

00:56:13 These flares shoot out a wave of charged particles that collides with the magnetosphere at high

00:56:18 speeds. Our protective bubble then goes on the defense. It shrinks, deforms, and pushes

00:56:24 those particles toward the poles. Enter those brilliant lights dancing above

00:56:29 the Titanic that night. In the north, we know it as Aurora Borealis.

00:56:34 In the south, Aurora Australis, or the Southern Lights.

00:56:39 When the magnetosphere pushes those solar and cosmic particles toward the poles, they

00:56:43 collide with molecules of different gases. That's why you get the range of colors. For

00:56:49 example, oxygen can be green or red, depending on the distance, and nitrogen is blue or purple.

00:56:56 What multiple people saw that night was exactly this phenomenon, including the second officer

00:57:01 from the rescue ship Carpathia. He wrote it down in the logbook before getting the distress

00:57:06 call from the Titanic. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

00:57:11 Auroras are a visible sign of a geomagnetic storm. Now, about navigational equipment.

00:57:16 This applies to satellite and radio frequency devices. Remember, they didn't have iPhones

00:57:21 back in the Titanic days, so the average person couldn't notice their gadgets going haywire.

00:57:27 But navigational devices and wireless telegraph did exist and were actively used.

00:57:33 Rewind back to the Middle Ages, when sailors noticed that, on some days, compasses wigged

00:57:39 out. The arrows spun in all directions, and people back then had no idea why. It wasn't

00:57:45 until the 18th century when French scientists found out that such problematic days occur

00:57:50 at the same time as black spots appearing on the sun.

00:57:55 After flares, the mystery was solved. Now, the Titanic had the most advanced well-known

00:58:01 radio equipment at that time. They tested it thoroughly to make sure it worked for distances

00:58:06 up to 2,000 miles away. Titanics passed them all.

00:58:11 On April 10, 1912, the massive liner left Southampton and set off for New York. The

00:58:17 very next day, the crew started getting the first reports of drifting icebergs and ice

00:58:22 fields. They put dots on the map to mark the coordinates and let out a sigh of relief.

00:58:29 All the troublesome spots were north of the Titanic's planned route. But after a couple

00:58:34 of days, the warnings were moving farther and farther south, encroaching on the majestic

00:58:39 ship.

00:58:40 On April 14, Captain Edward Smith decided to change course to the south in hopes of

00:58:45 bypassing the ice. This ended up being a huge mistake.

00:58:51 After the magnetic storm, if it was throwing the navigation equipment off, even by a tiny

00:58:56 error of half a degree, the captain could've been mistakenly taking the ship right toward

00:59:02 a cluster of icebergs. What's even worse, the radio operators ignored warnings coming

00:59:07 from other ships. That, or they simply forgot to hand them over to the captain.

00:59:13 As hired contractors from the radio company, they were more interested in transmitting

00:59:17 paid telegrams from passengers on that luxurious liner. The radio transmitter kept going out

00:59:23 of order that evening, probably because of all this private traffic. When it was finally

00:59:28 fixed, operator Jack Phillips received another message from the SS Californian at 10.30 pm.

00:59:35 Their operator was trying to warn Phillips about the coordinates of drifting icebergs,

00:59:40 but he paid them no attention. He was nervous and in a hurry.

00:59:45 Is the magnetic storm to blame for his frayed nerves and bad mood? We can only speculate.

00:59:51 But as you know, some people are more sensitive to these things.

00:59:55 The weather was fine, the ocean was calm, the water was smooth as glass. Despite all

01:00:01 the warnings, the ship continued to sail at a maximum speed of over 22 knots. An hour

01:00:07 later, Titanic collided with the infamous iceberg.

01:00:11 On April 15 at 12.14 am, in the middle of the night, Titanic's operators started to

01:00:17 transmit the first emergency signals. The SS Californian was sailing just 20 miles from

01:00:23 the Titanic. They could've easily come to a quick rescue. But 10 minutes before the

01:00:28 disaster, the Californian's radio operator had gone to bed. He was the only one who understood

01:00:35 Morse code on the ship.

01:00:37 According to this new theory, the magnetic anomalies possibly blocked Titanic's messages

01:00:42 to other ships. For example, the steamer SS La Providence didn't receive any signals

01:00:48 from the sinking ship at all. Yet they were still getting transmissions from another giant,

01:00:54 the Olympic, which was 500 miles from the Titanic.

01:00:58 That night, the signals were acting strange. They simply got lost somewhere in space, or

01:01:04 they were like a jumbled riddle, impossible to solve. The SS Mount Temple did get a message

01:01:09 and rushed to Titanic's aid. But as fate would have it, the rescue ship got stuck in

01:01:15 ice. She did arrive at Titanic's last known coordinates, but the luxury liner was nowhere

01:01:21 to be seen. So were the coordinates accurate at all?

01:01:25 The steamer Carpathia was about 60 miles away. At 12.30, their radio operator told the Titanic's

01:01:31 crew they were rushing to help. The ship famous for coming to the aid, Carpathia, was going

01:01:37 full steam ahead.

01:01:39 But here's the odd part. At first, they headed to the wrong spot. The magnetic storm

01:01:45 could've thrown its equipment off. Good news is the steamer did end up reaching the

01:01:49 right place when they saw the lifeboats full of passengers.

01:01:53 Interestingly, once she reached land, the Carpathia didn't have any problems with

01:01:58 her equipment. The blackout happened just around the wreckage site. The following investigation

01:02:04 blamed radio amateurs for blocking signals. We now might know otherwise.

01:02:09 Zinkova explains that at that time, they didn't know exactly how and to what extent the Sun

01:02:15 influences the Earth. No one could've guessed that the Sun could tamper with these massive

01:02:20 ships' navigational equipment. Especially one that had the best of the best at the time.

01:02:25 That's it for today! So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like

01:02:30 and share it with your friends! Or, if you want more, just click on these videos and

01:02:34 stay on the Bright Side!

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