Titanic in Colour S01E02 (2024)
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00:00On the evening of the 14th of April, 1912, on its maiden voyage,
00:07RMS Titanic is steaming into drifting ice.
00:11It looks for a second as if the Titanic is successfully going
00:16to dodge this enormous iceberg ahead of it.
00:20And then a tremor is felt running through the ship.
00:24Less than three hours later,
00:27the world's largest and most glamorous ocean liner is on the seabed,
00:32many of the passengers and crew going down with the ship.
00:36One of the men in the group turned to my dad and he said,
00:40There's nothing for it now, lad. It's every man for himself.
00:43You have reports of gunfire, you have reports of fighting,
00:47you have just sheer chaos.
00:50This series reveals the Titanic and those on board in their true colours.
00:56Photographs and film footage of the Titanic and her sister ships
01:00are colourised, some for the very first time.
01:06It makes you realise that these people didn't exist in a black and white world.
01:10They existed in a world as colourful as ours.
01:13Possessions and artefacts help tell the stories of passengers and crew,
01:18victims and traumatised survivors.
01:22I don't think it's possible to experience a disaster on that level
01:27and not be affected in some way.
01:29And bringing to life the horror and the aftermath
01:33of one of the 20th century's most notorious disasters.
01:39It's only a month later that these photographs are taken
01:42and they're all still reeling from the fact that their father won't be coming home.
01:53Over a century after the sinking of the Titanic,
01:57fascination with the ship shows no sign of waning.
02:01In Wiltshire, in the south of England,
02:04an auction of ocean liner and Titanic memorabilia is underway.
02:08The bids will be from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand,
02:14heavy presence in the United States, UK, Middle East.
02:21So it literally is a global phenomenon.
02:26The artefacts on sale include a rare Titanic deck blanket,
02:31a first-class dinner menu,
02:34a promotional calendar
02:37and a Jewish passenger's water-stained pocket watch.
02:41What these objects do is, if you look at the calendar, for instance,
02:45it's a vivid, bright red promotional item
02:49and it brings 1912 to life, it makes it real.
02:52For the collector, each artefact is a direct link to those on board.
02:58The Hebrew watch instantly transports you back.
03:01That came from someone, that was someone's story, that was someone's history
03:05and you're straight in the room with that person and that gives you the chills.
03:10For me, it's one of the most powerful objects that we have in this house.
03:14There's an old auction cliché on what things will sell for
03:18and something is worth what two people are prepared to pay for it.
03:22In this case, in my professional opinion,
03:25for what it's worth, between £50,000 and £70,000.
03:36Sunday 14th April, 1912.
03:398am. Titanic's last day.
03:42First-class passengers were woken by a bugle call.
03:46Film shot nine years later by the white starline of the Titanic's twin, the Olympic,
03:51shows both ships' identical routines.
03:55There are only very few differences between the two ships
03:58so this footage allows us to see what the Titanic would have looked like as she sailed.
04:05But only in black and white.
04:08Now, after expert restoration, removing scratches,
04:12sharpening the images and then adding colour, the ships come to life.
04:20Five days previously, the Titanic set sail from Southampton on its maiden voyage.
04:26Her destination, New York, is about 1,500 miles away.
04:32Everyone settled into their routines.
04:35It's a bright, clear day. There's a well-oiled machine going on at this point.
04:41Passengers took the air on deck.
04:46Alone at the bow was 54-year-old American Helen Churchill Candie.
04:51Helen broke conventions.
04:53She was a divorcee travelling alone and a pioneer of women's rights.
04:59She literally wrote the guidebook for young women
05:03at the turn of the 20th century on how to make it on your own.
05:09Rosemary Gillum is Helen's great-granddaughter.
05:13She describes standing at the bow of the ship,
05:17looking out in this crystal clear, bright blue sky
05:22at the waters parting from the bow of the ship
05:25and the sort of majesty and the glory of this boat cutting through the waves.
05:31The monarch of the seas, she described it.
05:35On a deck, first-class cabin A36 was full of plans and blueprints of the ship.
05:41Staying there was the Titanic's designer, Thomas Andrews.
05:45Andrews is bought breakfast, as usual, by his steward.
05:49He's a guy called Henry Etches.
05:51And Etches sometimes makes suggestions to his boss
05:54about how the Titanic and the Olympic could actually be improved.
05:58Now, some bosses might say to their steward,
06:01go away, but actually Andrews, to his credit, always takes note of them.
06:08Elsewhere on the Titanic,
06:10passengers were taking advantage of the world's most luxurious ship.
06:16Gymnasiums were the latest craze, and Titanic's was state-of-the-art.
06:24It was open to first-class passengers, men, women and children,
06:29all strictly segregated.
06:34There are a lot of people who are travelling on board the Titanic
06:37who are very aware that they are being served thousands of calories every day,
06:42particularly at dinner.
06:44In the first-class dining salon,
06:46quite a few of the passengers make jokes about the fact
06:49that they need the gymnasium after a week at sea.
06:52In the heart of the ship, the squash racquet court was already in use.
06:57This is the court in the Olympic, filmed in 1921.
07:01Squash is a very popular game with upper-class Edwardian men at the time,
07:06and so it shows a shrewd awareness to the white star line
07:10of who they're trying to market this to.
07:15But many first-class passengers were preferring to take it easy
07:19and relax in the comfort of the first-class lounge on the promenade deck.
07:24A hotel in Annick, in the north of England,
07:27has the interior of the first-class lounge from Titanic's sister ship,
07:31the Olympic.
07:33It's really easy, being in this space,
07:36to imagine the last day aboard the Titanic.
07:39People would have been socialising, chatting, drinking tea,
07:43drinking alcoholic drinks, playing cards.
07:48Below deck was a hive of activity,
07:51as the 430-strong whittling department,
07:54who looked after the food and drink on board,
07:57catered for over 1,300 passengers.
08:01You have to have bakers producing enough bread
08:04for all three classes and the crew.
08:10The bedrooms have to be cleaned, there's a mail room to sort the letters,
08:14the wireless room is constantly sending telegrams to America.
08:18The Titanic never really stops.
08:23Jean Legge's father, 18-year-old Sidney Daniels, worked as a steward.
08:29On the Sunday, he said it was such a lovely atmosphere on board,
08:33it was bitterly cold, so people tended to stay down below to keep warm
08:39and to stay inside, so it was a very busy day.
08:42But he said that was fine, everyone was happy, just thrilled to be there.
08:49Breakfast was being served in the second-class dining saloon on D deck.
08:56Eating there was a couple, Henry Morley and Kate Phillips,
09:01travelling under the names Mr and Mrs Marshall.
09:05Henry was a 38-year-old confectioner
09:08with a business and family back home in Worcester.
09:11Kate was 19 and one of his shop assistants.
09:16They planned to start a new life together in San Francisco.
09:20Beverly Roberts is their great-granddaughter.
09:24They ran away together because they fell in love.
09:27A man doesn't up sticks and leave his wife and child for no reason at all.
09:32Kate was pregnant.
09:35Whether she'd conceived just beforehand and they knew
09:38and wanted to escape the scandal, or she'd conceived on the Titanic.
09:43But running away together, OK, it was a scandal, but they loved each other
09:47and their whole focus would have just been on each other and enjoying themselves.
09:53For many passengers like Kate and Henry,
09:56the voyage was the start of a new life in a new country.
10:01From the moment they step ashore,
10:03they don't have to tell people about their past.
10:05It's an opportunity for people to reinvent themselves
10:08and they can forget things that they don't want to remember about their own past.
10:15Many of those in third class,
10:17sitting down to eat a breakfast of porridge and vegetable stew,
10:21were fleeing persecution or poverty in Italy and the Middle East
10:25in the hope of making their fortune in America.
10:30Most travelled as a family, but one group of around 20
10:34came from the Lebanese village of Kafar Mishki.
10:37They carried the hopes of the entire community.
10:42There would have been collective pooling of resources
10:45to enable to buy the tickets.
10:47The gamble was taken collectively by the whole village
10:50on the understanding that then remittances would flow back,
10:53that people would earn higher wages somewhere else.
10:57They were also aiming to support all the people who were back in Lebanon.
11:02At 12 minutes past nine,
11:04the Titanic's wireless room received a message
11:07from the liner Koronia, warning of icebergs ahead.
11:13The Titanic's captain, E.J. Smith, thanked them for their message.
11:18He was used to the perils of the North Atlantic.
11:22Smith has captained 17 white star ships
11:25in a career that's lasted 30 years.
11:28So when he's asked by a newspaper to describe his time at sea,
11:31he simply describes them as uneventful.
11:35Smith had no intention of slowing his ship for the ice.
11:39To do so would have significant repercussions
11:42for White Star's reputation.
11:46Having that regular, reliable service is everything.
11:50Because much like today, where we would miss a flight
11:53and then miss connecting flights,
11:55passengers aren't ending their trip in New York.
11:58A lot of these people are going to other places in the US.
12:01They've booked carriages, they've booked taxis.
12:04It's all been prearranged.
12:06Being delayed into New York is terrible PR for the White Star Line,
12:09for the ship's maiden voyage,
12:11and also extremely inconvenient for the ship's passengers.
12:15Captain Smith was trusted by those on board,
12:18and his vast, speedy ship seemed unstoppable.
12:22Not all passengers were happy being on the Titanic, though.
12:26A few days earlier,
12:28fashion journalist Edith Rosenbaum wrote to a friend.
12:33It is a monster, and I can't say that I like it,
12:36as I feel as if I were in a big hotel instead of on a cosy ship.
12:40I'm going to take a much-needed rest on this trip,
12:43but I cannot get over my feeling of depression
12:46and premonition of trouble.
12:48How I wish it were over.
13:06As Sunday drew to a close,
13:08the Titanic was sailing through the icy water
13:11faster than at any point in her voyage.
13:14It was a perfect evening in the North Atlantic.
13:17A lot of passengers had gone to bed early.
13:21There is a sense of stillness throughout the Titanic.
13:25However, there was potential danger ahead.
13:30Six other ships had sent the Titanic warnings about icebergs,
13:35but Captain Smith was unmoved.
13:38Because it's so unusual,
13:40Because it's so unusually calm,
13:42he figures that anything ahead will be spotted in time
13:46and orders Titanic's bridge to maintain speed and heading
13:50and takes the ship through the ice field.
13:55The Titanic is going at 22 knots as they approach the ice field.
13:59That's quick.
14:01I mean, that means it's travelling at about, what, 38ft a second?
14:05At 11.40pm, the Titanic's captain,
14:08At 11.40pm, Frederick Fleet, one of the ship's two lookouts,
14:13spotted an object high above the water.
14:18Dorothy Kendall met Fleet in the 1950s.
14:22What he saw, he said, was something black in front of him
14:27and he realised it was an iceberg
14:30and he called down to Officer Emerger
14:32and told him, iceberg ahead, iceberg ahead.
14:3746,000 tonnes of steel and wood
14:41collide with half a million tonnes of ice.
14:49The iceberg punctured the Titanic below the waterline multiple times.
14:56Now, those holes aren't big. I mean, they're only like an inch high,
15:00but they are along 250ft of the hull.
15:04After tight compartments were breached,
15:07Titanic could survive damage only to the first four.
15:12Dorothy Kendall's mother was asleep in second class.
15:16It wasn't a bang, she said.
15:18It was like a shiver, a violent shiver that woke her up.
15:23In her first-class cabin,
15:25Helen Churchill Candie almost fell over with the force of the collision.
15:30She opened the door and called for the steward
15:32and he was saying,
15:34there's nothing wrong, go back to bed,
15:36don't frighten other people, there's nothing wrong.
15:39As a precaution, the Titanic's engine stopped.
15:43Her giant propellers were still.
15:47The ship fell silent.
15:49Many passengers realised for the first time, something was wrong.
15:54They've been on this liner, this big, sturdy ship,
15:58with heaters and music and food and restaurants,
16:02and the constant hum of that ship running underneath them
16:07has always been there.
16:11At midnight, Captain Smith received some chilling news.
16:15Fourth Officer Joseph Boxall reports
16:18that the mailroom on F deck is flooded.
16:21I mean, there are letters floating around.
16:24So by now, the ship has taken on about 7,000 tonnes of water.
16:30Smith gave the order to swing out the lifeboats
16:34and to get the passengers on deck.
16:36Jean Legge's father, Sidney Daniels,
16:39was one of the stewards given the task
16:41of getting first-class passengers to the lifeboats.
16:44The reactions were varied.
16:46One reaction was, what does this young man know?
16:49He's 18, he's not much more than a boy.
16:52This is an unsinkable liner. Can this be right?
16:55He'd go to another cabin and they'd say,
16:58but our children are asleep in bed.
17:00They're warm in their bunks.
17:02If we take them up on deck, they could get a chill.
17:05And yet another reaction would be, we sort of understand what you say,
17:09but we'll just pack a few things and we'll come up,
17:12you know, we'll follow you up later.
17:14Many of those who do go up on deck
17:16took refuge in the first-class lounge,
17:19encouraged by the Chief Purser.
17:23To prevent the passengers having to go out on deck
17:26in below freezing temperatures,
17:28he turns on the electric fireplace,
17:30cocoa, brandies and coffee are being served.
17:33The band arrives to play an impromptu concert.
17:36So all of a sudden, the evacuation has taken on the air
17:40of what one first-class passenger calls a very stupid picnic.
17:47At 12.30am, word reached the passengers on deck
17:51that the squash court close to the bow was now 10 feet underwater.
17:58The fact that the squash court is flooded
18:00is a portent of Titanic's doom.
18:03It means water is now flooding through spaces
18:05that shouldn't be flooding.
18:07These aren't machinery spaces, these are now passenger spaces.
18:10The Titanic's designer, Thomas Andrews, knew his ship was doomed.
18:15He saw stewardess Annie Robinson not wearing a life preserver.
18:20Andrews absolutely insists he pleads with Annie to put her life belt on
18:25because he really wants her to set an example
18:28to all those many passengers
18:30who simply do not realise the danger they're in.
18:34Now, Annie's really reluctant, but Andrews just says,
18:37if you value your life, put your belt on.
18:43Helen Churchill Candie and a friend headed up to the lifeboat deck.
18:48They were about to step on a stairway that was a ladder,
18:51but they had to stand back because the stokers were coming up
18:54from the engine room in a line, faces blackened with soot,
18:59grim faces, anguished faces,
19:03as if they knew what nobody else knew
19:07and that the boat had been badly damaged.
19:10And then she heard the captain shout,
19:14and made them turn around and go back down into the engine room
19:19where they knew that they would not survive.
19:34At the auction of Titanic artefacts in Wiltshire,
19:38lot 275 is about to go under the hammer.
19:42A rare Titanic deck blanket,
19:44taken into a lifeboat by a passenger fleeing the sinking ship.
19:50So, away we go, and we start off at £60,000.
19:56It's an iconic Titanic moment, I think,
19:59to imagine particularly the first-class passengers on a chair on deck.
20:03They've got their cup of warm tea and their blanket on,
20:06but of course the night of the sinking,
20:08the blankets took on a completely different use and meaning.
20:14A lot of passengers have left their rooms, grabbed their lifebelts,
20:18they are not dressed appropriately,
20:20people are in pyjamas, people are in nightdresses,
20:23and so blankets become this weird symbol.
20:26They represent survival, they represent warmth.
20:3075, 76, 76.
20:35He says 77.
20:37At £76,000 for the last call...
20:46An hour after the iceberg hit,
20:49the first lifeboat was lowered into the cold Atlantic.
20:53The Titanic had 20 lifeboats.
20:56Together, they could hold just 1,178 people.
21:00That was barely half the number on board.
21:03But for 1912, the ship was considered well-equipped.
21:07It had four more lifeboats than regulations required.
21:11Other liners had even fewer lifeboats.
21:14If the German ship America, for example, had sunk,
21:17you would have had 2,000 passengers in crew
21:20who would have very quickly discovered there were no lifeboats for them.
21:24The first lifeboats were launched half empty.
21:27Many passengers refused point-blank to leave the security of the ship.
21:33Lucy Duff Gordon, a passenger in lifeboat one, wrote...
21:37I shall never forget how black and deep the water looked below us,
21:42and how I hated leaving the big homely ship for this frail little boat.
21:49Beverly Roberts knows very little about what happened that night
21:53to her great-grandparents, Henry and Kate,
21:56but their daughter, Beverly's grandmother, gave her one clue.
22:01When she was being chastised as a child, Kate would say,
22:04don't give me that look, don't look at me with those eyes,
22:07because that's how your father looked at me
22:09when I was going down into the lifeboat.
22:16It was almost two hours since the Titanic hit the iceberg.
22:20Lifeboat 14 was being lowered down the side of the ship.
22:24Passengers were wrapped in overcoats and blankets against the cold.
22:29Dorothy Kendall's mother and grandmother were on board.
22:33As they were going down in the lifeboat,
22:36they were looking through the portholes
22:39and they could see passengers just grabbing what they could
22:43and then making their way to the boat deck.
22:46And then the next one down, they were doing the same.
22:49And then when they got right to the bottom,
22:52there was water already in the cabins.
22:56Meanwhile, in the wireless room,
22:58the two operators were sending out desperate pleas for help.
23:02One liner, the Carpathia, had responded and was heading for them,
23:06but it was 60 miles away.
23:08On the Titanic, panic was setting in.
23:12You have reports of gunfire, you have reports of fighting,
23:16you have reports of just sheer chaos.
23:18This picture, drawn within weeks of the disaster,
23:22for the newspaper The Sphere,
23:24is one of the most realistic depictions of the drama on the boat deck.
23:28To make it as accurate as possible,
23:31the artist, an Italian called Fortunino Mattania,
23:34spoke to a steward from the Titanic
23:37at great length to get the details just right.
23:40The steward remembered the single shoe on the deck
23:43and the man in the dinner jacket not wearing his lifebelt.
23:47Second-class passengers Joseph and Juliette Laroche
23:51and their two young girls were caught up in the confusion.
23:55Juliette got separated,
23:57and then she's thrust onto this lifeboat with one of her children.
24:01But apparently, Joseph is seen holding his other daughter
24:05above all the chaos.
24:07Everyone's panicking, but he wants to get her safe.
24:10So he finds his wife and his other child,
24:13puts her in, assures his wife that there'll be other lifeboats.
24:17I wonder if he knew at that point if there would be another lifeboat,
24:21but it's about getting his wife and children to safety.
24:27As second-class passengers,
24:29the Laroche family could join first class on the lifeboat deck,
24:33but those in third class were hindered by American regulations
24:37concerning the spread of disease on liners.
24:40You have a crew that have been told
24:42they need to keep third class separate from first and second class
24:45unless in an emergency,
24:47and that even when they do realise it's an emergency,
24:50they're struggling to communicate with them.
24:52And many passengers in third class,
24:54indeed many passengers on the Titanic,
24:56belong to an inherently conservative and respectful generation.
24:59And in this particular set of circumstances,
25:02that is to their disadvantage
25:04in that they are waiting to be told what to do.
25:07And as no firm instructions are coming,
25:10many of them simply sit and wait until it's too late.
25:18By 217, all the lifeboats had gone.
25:23Hundreds fought their way up the sloping deck to the stern.
25:28The massive funnels started to fall towards the people in the water.
25:33These incredible pieces of machinery,
25:35each standing about as high as a four- or five-storey building,
25:38were coming down onto the very heads of the passengers
25:41who once looked at them as a symbol of Edwardian might.
25:45Steward Sydney Daniels jumped into the water
25:49and swam towards an upturned lifeboat,
25:52photographed here a few days later.
25:54Already there were more than 20 people on board.
25:57As he got nearer, he could see that there was just enough gap
26:00for one person, maybe two at a pinch, to get on.
26:03So he clambered on and he managed to get onto that space.
26:09The Titanic pointed towards the sky,
26:12in the words of one passenger, like a sinister finger.
26:17Titanic was never designed to have an entire third of her length
26:22Titanic was never designed to have an entire third of her length
26:27out of the water. Of course, it becomes too much.
26:30Right at the very end, the lights snap out.
26:33Around about the same time, Titanic's back is dramatically broken.
26:38The submerged bow section started to slowly pull the rest of the Titanic down.
26:44Dad said there was an explosion, like a big noise,
26:48and then the stern came up, almost vertical,
26:51and he said it was quite an experience to watch.
26:55And she was gone.
27:00The pride of the White Star fleet slipped below the waves,
27:04two hours and 40 minutes after the iceberg hit.
27:12For those in the water, the ordeal wasn't over.
27:17First-class passenger Archibald Gracie
27:20was on the same upturned lifeboat as Sidney Daniels.
27:24The shrieks of the terror-stricken and the awful gaspings for breath
27:29of those in the last throes of drowning,
27:32none of us will ever forget to our dying day.
27:37The lifeboats drifted for four hours
27:40until the liner Carpathia came into view at dawn.
27:47The National Maritime Museum in London has a collection of photographs
27:52taken by a passenger on the Carpathia.
27:59They essentially just show the minute size of these boats
28:03against the vastness of the ocean,
28:06and it brings to light just how lucky these people are
28:09to have survived the disaster.
28:12One photograph shows lifeboat 14,
28:15skippered by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe.
28:18Despite there being almost no wind at all,
28:21he was the only man who decided to raise the sail in the boat.
28:25It's here just capturing a tiny gasp of wind as it's on the horizon.
28:31On board were Dorothy Kendall's grandmother and mother.
28:35My mother said,
28:37the cold seemed to get through to their bones, you know?
28:42The lifeboat was surrounded by bodies in the water.
28:46Officer Lowe turned them over to some of them
28:49to see if they were still alive,
28:51but my mother said they were frozen to death.
28:55They didn't drown, she said, they were frozen.
28:59The Titanic had been designed to keep each social class apart.
29:04In the lifeboats, that segregated world disappeared.
29:08Everyone was thrown together for the first time.
29:12So you've got interactions between people
29:15who would not normally have interacted on board the Titanic itself.
29:20Everyone is cold, everyone is frightened.
29:24But on board you get small-scale domestic dramas.
29:29Some women complain that men are drinking.
29:32Others complain that people are smoking.
29:35So these small-scale incidences get amplified
29:39in the extraordinary circumstances of the lifeboat.
29:46Rosemary Gilliam's great-grandmother, Helen Churchill Candy,
29:50was in lifeboat six.
29:52In the stern was Robert Hitchens,
29:54who had been steering the Titanic when she struck the iceberg.
29:58Helen described Hitchens as a brute of a man
30:01who was just out to take care of himself.
30:04He'd borrowed one of the steamer rugs which he'd wrapped himself up in.
30:09He refused to turn back to pick up any other passengers
30:13who were already in the water.
30:15He said that the nearest land was 1,200 miles away,
30:18that they didn't stand a chance anyway,
30:20so he didn't want to turn around.
30:23Simone Laroche was only three when she was rescued,
30:26but remembered it for the rest of her life.
30:29Simone talks about getting on board the Carpathia
30:32and being hoisted in sacks, and she remembers that,
30:36and perhaps not about the actual Titanic itself.
30:40So that bit must have been the most traumatic for her,
30:43and obviously being hoisted and being away from her mother
30:46and the trauma of that.
30:53Reports of the disaster reached Britain and the United States within hours.
31:00The news had the greatest impact in Southampton,
31:03home for three-quarters of Titanic's crew.
31:08A remarkable book in the city's archives
31:11shows the effect of the sinking on the lives of local children.
31:16Historian Julie Cook's great-grandfather was a stoker
31:20who went down with a ship.
31:22This is the logbook from Northam Girls' School,
31:25which was in Northam, the area of Southampton
31:27where many of the crew lived,
31:29and Annie Hopkins, the headmistress,
31:31wrote various journal entries throughout the year,
31:34and in this particular entry, on April 15th, 1912,
31:38she wrote,
31:39A great many girls are absent this afternoon
31:42owing to the sad news regarding the Titanic.
31:45Fathers and brothers are on the vessel
31:47and some of the little ones in school
31:49have been in tears all the afternoon.
31:53There was a lot of confusion at the time
31:55as to whether the Titanic had sunk, whether everybody was saved.
31:58There were lots of different newspaper reports
32:00coming in different editions of the local newspaper,
32:03and yet this headteacher knew from somewhere what had happened,
32:07or these children knew from somewhere,
32:09and there was a great deal of word of mouth
32:11in those communities back in Southampton.
32:13Two days later, Annie Hopkins wrote another entry in the logbook.
32:18I feel I must record the sad aspect in school today
32:22owing to the Titanic disaster.
32:24So many of the crew belong to Northam
32:26and it is pathetic to witness the children's grief.
32:29In some cases, faith and hope of better news.
32:32The attendance is suffering.
32:38Everyone was in mourning.
32:39Children would often play in the street with their hoops.
32:42There wasn't a sound in the street, everyone stayed inside.
32:45Many children were in grief, some are still hopeful,
32:48some don't know if their father's coming home,
32:50and yet they were still at school, they were still attending
32:53and hoping, clinging to hope perhaps that their father would come home.
32:57For most, their hope was short-lived.
33:00The Carpathia picked up only 212 crew members
33:05out of a total of almost 900.
33:09The Titanic story now became about helping the survivors
33:13and recovering the dead.
33:27After a three-day voyage, the Carpathia reached New York
33:31with over 700 survivors of the Titanic on board.
33:36The American press had charted a boat,
33:39competing amongst themselves to get a scoop.
33:42As the Carpathia steamed past,
33:44reporters with megaphones were making offers
33:47of $50 or $100 for eyewitness accounts.
33:52When the reporters were eventually allowed on board,
33:55they interviewed anyone with any form of connection with the disaster,
34:00including the Carpathia's young and very excited waiters and stewards.
34:05One of those filmed for cinema newsreels
34:08was 18-year-old English waiter Robbie Purvis.
34:11Pauline Weekes is Robbie's daughter.
34:16They've got their love jackets on, from the look of it.
34:19It looks like they're all having a good time
34:22showing off in front of the camera.
34:24I'm lucky to have film footage of my dad when he's young.
34:29Nobody will have film footage of their fathers like this.
34:35Robbie had a memorable tale to tell.
34:40A baby close to death had been rescued.
34:44His clothes were wet, it was icy cold,
34:47and he tried to save it and he took it to the hot plate,
34:51which was used for keeping food hot,
34:54and lowered the heat so that it was just warm
34:58and he got warm through and it survived.
35:02We're always proud of him for looking after the baby
35:05because somebody of his age would not necessarily have thought about it.
35:11Back out at sea, a steward on a German liner
35:15photographed an iceberg streaked with red paint.
35:19It's believed to be the one that sank the Titanic.
35:23A few miles away, hundreds of bodies were still in the water.
35:28The White Star Line chartered a ship, the Mackay Bennett, to recover them.
35:33She sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, two days after the sinking.
35:39On board were hastily built coffins,
35:42a priest, a team of undertakers and an embalmer.
35:46The Mackay Bennett retrieved 306 corpses.
35:50After almost a week in the water,
35:52116 were either too disfigured or decomposed to be identified,
35:57and so were buried at sea.
36:04Today, possessions from Titanic's passengers are highly sought after.
36:11At the auction in Wiltshire,
36:13a water-stained pocket watch is coming under the hammer.
36:17Is there any more?
36:19£75,000 on the sour room.
36:22Go in.
36:24And gone.
36:26It was found by the crew of the Mackay Bennett
36:29on the body of Jewish passenger Sinai Cantor
36:32and given back to his grieving family.
36:35He was headed from what was then Russia, we now know as Belarus,
36:40with his wife Miriam.
36:42They were in second class.
36:44They were headed to the United States to study medicine,
36:47to start these new lives,
36:49and unfortunately, he did not survive.
36:52She did.
36:54Her husband's life is stopped in that moment when the pocket watch stops,
36:58and it's a very powerful image.
37:01I think there's a real poignancy to thinking about people's hopes and dreams
37:04and the fact that you can't take very much with you
37:06when you make a journey like that,
37:08so everything that they carried must have had a value or a meaning,
37:11a reason for being packed.
37:13To me, it makes them more poignant than the first-class passengers
37:16in the sense that there was so much resting on this journey for them
37:20and so many hopes invested in what they were doing.
37:29710 people survived the sinking of the Titanic.
37:34Just over 1,500 died.
37:38Among those who perished was Joseph Laroche, heading home to Haiti.
37:47Henry Pugh's great-uncle, Titanic stoker Percy.
37:53Dorothy Kendall's grandfather, Thomas, hoping to start a new life in America.
38:01And Beverly Farmer's great-grandfather, Henry.
38:07Nine months after the loss of the Titanic,
38:10his partner Kate gave birth to baby Ellen.
38:18Gene Legg's father was one of the lucky ones.
38:22Sydney went on to have a long career as a steward for the White Star Line.
38:27His signing on book is testament to how highly the company thought of him.
38:33He went back to sea and he sailed the same route
38:37from Southampton to New York that Titanic would have taken.
38:41He sailed that on his favourite liner, the Olympic.
38:49The Mackay-Bennett retrieved wreckage as well as bodies.
38:53The Titanic was the most opulent and colourful ship of her age
38:58and yet all that the Mackay-Bennett collected on its gruesome voyage
39:02were chairs and fragments of wood.
39:07The loss of the Titanic prompted an outpouring of public sympathy.
39:12Concerts were held to raise money for bereaved families.
39:16There was even a charity record called Be British.
39:21Be British was the cry as the ship went down
39:26Every man was steady at his core
39:32In May 1912, in Northam School in Southampton,
39:36over 100 pupils were taken out of class to be photographed by a local paper
39:42to raise awareness of the appeal.
39:45There are two photographs here of the older girls and the older boys
39:49who have all lost a father or a loved one on the Titanic.
39:52And this photograph would have been taken right here
39:55against this wall, this part of the building.
39:57We're used to having our photographs taken as schoolchildren
40:00and lining up with our school friends, but this is something else.
40:03This is completely different.
40:05This is children who are united in grief.
40:07They've lost a father and they're all still...
40:09It's only a month later that these photographs are taken
40:12and they're all still reeling from the fact
40:14that their father won't be coming home.
40:19A special Titanic relief fund was set up to collect and distribute the money.
40:24Soon, over £418,000 was raised, around £30 million today.
40:33Julie Cook's grandfather was a stoker who died on the Titanic.
40:37She's looking at the fund's account books in the Southampton archives.
40:42It reveals the Titanic's class divide didn't end when the ship sank.
40:48The money raised was not evenly distributed.
40:52It was arranged in class A to class G,
40:55so if you were class A, you were the wife or dependent of an officer,
40:59and if you were class G, you were the wife or dependent of a stoker
41:03or a boiler room man, such as my great-grandmother was.
41:07Emily, in class G, received 12 shillings and sixpence a week.
41:12The widow of an officer would get as much as £2 a week.
41:17The money came with conditions.
41:19An official named Ethel Ward Newman cycled around Southampton
41:24checking on the recipients.
41:26She became known as the Lady Visitor.
41:31She would go around the houses of those who were the dependents on the fund
41:35to check how they were living, to check where they were spending the money,
41:38to check they still needed the money, to check they hadn't remarried,
41:41because some of the women, if they did remarry,
41:43they were then no longer eligible for the fund from their husband's debt.
41:47I can imagine these women hurriedly cleaning their home,
41:50cleaning their children's dirty faces, hiding the liquor bottle perhaps
41:54and making sure everything was up to Ethel Newman's standards.
41:58But Mrs Newman wasn't only checking to see whether a widow had remarried.
42:03There is an entry here of a lady called Mrs Biggs
42:06who, unfortunately, due to her loss, she turned to alcohol,
42:11and there's an entry here that says,
42:13it was reported that Mrs Biggs has again been before the magistrates
42:17on a charge of drunkenness.
42:19It was reluctantly decided to suspend her allowance for a period of three months.
42:24And, of course, this wasn't fair because Mrs Biggs,
42:26although she may have been buying alcohol to get over her grief or her trauma,
42:30she still needed money to pay her rent, to feed her children, to feed herself.
42:34And so it seems incredibly unkind by our standards
42:37that she would have been cut off in this way.
42:41Those who had survived the sinking faced a different kind of trauma.
42:45Many had to deal with survivor's guilt,
42:48and the men often faced public shaming.
42:52There was a lot written in the press,
42:54very common commentary about if a male survived,
42:57did they survive in the place of a woman, in the place of a child?
43:02Men were expected to explain why they survived.
43:05They were expected to defend their survival.
43:09Some felt compelled to tell their story.
43:12Charlotte Collier, who had lost her husband Harvey,
43:16was photographed with Marjorie, her daughter,
43:19and was interviewed by an American newspaper.
43:22I think her first interview was just a couple of days afterwards.
43:25She'd just lost her husband. She'd just seen all these people perish.
43:29It's my opinion that she was getting her counselling.
43:33She was getting her counselling before counselling was a thing.
43:36If that's how she wants to deal with it, then that's fine.
43:39But I think at the time, she was criticised for that.
43:42No-one could really understand.
43:45Many couldn't cope with the trauma.
43:49At least 11 Titanic survivors took their own life,
43:53including stewardess Annie Robinson, who jumped off a ship in Boston Harbour,
43:59and the lookout Fred Fleet, who hanged himself in 1965.
44:07For over a century, the sinking of the Titanic
44:11has gripped the public's imagination,
44:14thanks in part to films such as A Night To Remember and James Cameron's Titanic.
44:20The iceberg gave the Titanic its immortality and popular culture,
44:25but it is the silver screen that made that injuring.
44:30It also is a crucial ingredient to why the Titanic remains so popular,
44:36such a source of fascination,
44:38because it is something that continues to appeal to people
44:42beyond simply an interest in history.
44:44It appeals to an interest in humanity
44:46and keeps the focus on the human tragedy of the Titanic.
44:55The enduring fascination with the Titanic
44:58encouraged many searches for the wreck.
45:01That came to an end in 1985,
45:04when the painstaking work of a team of marine archaeologists,
45:08led by American Robert Ballard, paid off.
45:12It was the first time anyone had seen the Titanic in 73 years.
45:19Rusting and slowly being lost to the ocean,
45:22the Titanic was once again seen in colour.
45:26But that colour is fading.
45:29When Titanic sails out in April 1912,
45:32she's this gleaming, colourful ship that really catches the eye.
45:38But now she's on the bottom of the seabed,
45:41all that colour is just draining away.
45:44And soon there won't be a wreck at all,
45:47because soon there will not be a Titanic.
45:50Such is the power of the Titanic story,
45:53the legend will endure, even when the wreck is no more.
45:57The Titanic continues to be a source of fascination for us
46:01for so many reasons, because let's face it,
46:03there have been other sinkings, but I think with this one,
46:06it took them 2 1⁄2 hours to sink.
46:08So we have all those stories,
46:10whether it's the richest person in the world,
46:13whether it's the cabin crew,
46:15it will continue to thrill us and enthrall us for years to come.
46:20This drama, this soap opera played out as the ship sank,
46:25and we like to imagine ourselves on the deck
46:29and we wonder what would we have done.