Titanic in Colour

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00:00:00For over a century, we've been gripped by the story of the Titanic.

00:00:07This drama, this soap opera played out as the ship sank.

00:00:12We all see ourselves there and we wonder what would we have done.

00:00:17In April 1912, the Titanic was the most spectacular vessel afloat.

00:00:23This ship must have been absolutely dazzling for some of the third class passengers.

00:00:28But it's a story often told in black and white.

00:00:32Now we reveal the ship in its true colours.

00:00:37Anyone who'd spent money on the first class tickets would have been very pleased coming

00:00:42in here.

00:00:44Photographs and film footage of the Titanic and her sister ships are colourised, some

00:00:49for the very first time.

00:00:52Bringing to life the people who built and sailed on the 20th century's most famous

00:00:57ship.

00:00:59Artifacts and clothing from the Titanic and her passengers give insights into their lives.

00:01:05The reason this has been saved isn't a relic of tragedy, it's a relic of pride.

00:01:12And relatives of those on board tell their dramatic stories.

00:01:17One of the men in the group turned to my dad and he said, there's nothing for it now lad,

00:01:22it's every man for himself, you better jump for it.

00:01:25These accounts take us inside the legend of the world's most famous ship.

00:01:33The Titanic is a never ending story, it will continue to thrill us and enthral us for years

00:01:38to come.

00:01:47In the summer of 1910, two giant vessels dominated the skyline of the city of Belfast.

00:01:55Commissioned by the prestigious White Star Line, they were designed to be the largest

00:02:00and most luxurious ships on the planet.

00:02:03They had to build special construction sites for them because nothing on that scale had

00:02:07been built before.

00:02:09The two ships were the Olympic and her sister ship, the Titanic, and were being built at

00:02:15the world leading Harland and Wolff shipyard.

00:02:18The vessels were to be almost identical inside and out.

00:02:23These are big, they're 882 feet long and they're 92 foot wide.

00:02:30So they're going to be the largest moving objects on the planet.

00:02:35And they're each going to be able to carry about two and a half thousand passengers.

00:02:40And so you have the public and the press watching their construction with fascination

00:02:45and also quite a lot of pride.

00:02:48The ships were the product of the Edwardian era, symbolizing modernity and optimism for

00:02:54the new century.

00:02:55The Edwardian period really expresses a time of calm between two storms.

00:03:02We have the death of Queen Victoria, the end of the Victorian age, and then we have in

00:03:071914, the outbreak of the First World War, which will change the fabric of Britain irrevocably.

00:03:17Everything is just bigger and faster.

00:03:20And so in 1909, you have Winston Churchill declaring really quite prophetically, we have

00:03:26arrived at a new time, a Titanic world has sprung around us.

00:03:36In this brave new world, international travel became accessible to millions.

00:03:42Shipping companies built the largest vessels the world had ever seen, nicknamed liners,

00:03:48as they sailed on fixed routes or lines.

00:03:51The ocean liner began to emerge as a status symbol between some of the world's greatest

00:03:54nations, as this symbol of national pride that is an advertising board for the mother

00:04:00country to show that no, we are the best, we are capable of achieving great things.

00:04:05The steamships are getting faster, they can accommodate more people.

00:04:09So what used to be a much lengthier and trickier journey is now sort of within the reach of

00:04:15ordinary people.

00:04:18In 1907, the British company Cunard led the field with its super liners, Lusitania and

00:04:25Mauritania.

00:04:26Carrying over 2,000 passengers each, these vast ships made the crossing from Southampton

00:04:32to New York in just under five days.

00:04:36There's very few restrictions on migration.

00:04:39There's no real world of passports as we understand it now.

00:04:41That comes in after the First World War.

00:04:43So people are free to move, they're free to travel.

00:04:47People are attracted to America because they've heard stories of great wealth to be made.

00:04:50There's the prospect of gold, of land, of bettering themselves.

00:04:57Cunard's direct competitor was the White Star Line.

00:05:03They decided to retaliate with three ships that were 50% larger, but their size would

00:05:10make them by default slower.

00:05:15White Star Line hits on an ingenious strategy, which is to turn this potential weakness into

00:05:20a selling point.

00:05:22They start to advertise ships that are larger than the Mauritania and the Lusitania, and

00:05:27the day slower, and how they present this to the traveling public is, we'll get you

00:05:32there in one extra night, but you won't be shaken across the Atlantic like a cocktail.

00:05:37You'll arrive more comfortably than you would on the Lusitania and Mauritania.

00:05:43The genius behind the design of the Olympic and the Titanic was Belfast man Thomas Andrews.

00:05:50Thomas starts his apprenticeship in the shipyard when he's just 16, and he works with the painters

00:05:56and the fitters, and his rise is pretty swift, and he ends up becoming manager of construction

00:06:02at the pretty young age of 28.

00:06:05He's really well-loved by all his workers, and he's really well-respected.

00:06:10Why?

00:06:11Because he's not afraid to take on bullies, and he's also very willing to break up sectarian

00:06:18fights.

00:06:20The Titanic was built against the backdrop of political unrest in the province of Ulster.

00:06:26Part of Belfast's Protestant population were opposing calls for a degree of independence

00:06:31for Ireland, known as Home Rule.

00:06:35This was a ship that was proof of the Ulster that they believed in, that they identified

00:06:39with.

00:06:40So the Titanic takes on a political significance to these people, but it also takes on an emotional

00:06:47significance.

00:06:48As a shipyard worker, you're usually assigned to one ship, so you will be working on this

00:06:54Leviathan for three years, day in, day out.

00:06:58You will become attached to it emotionally, and there is a huge, huge sense of pride in

00:07:03this ship as well.

00:07:04And when you were creating something that was being called one of the wonders of the

00:07:08world, that pride was particularly understandable.

00:07:13PR was a vital part of the White Star Line's strategy.

00:07:19Even before their launch, their new ships needed to be seen as exceptional.

00:07:24So in October 1910, the Olympic was painted light grey.

00:07:30It was actually an early shipbuilding photographer's trick.

00:07:33At the time, it was very difficult to get these ships to appear impressive and stand

00:07:37out in that early kind of grey, black and white photography, and to get them to stand

00:07:42out against the industrial backgrounds that were behind them.

00:07:44So painting them light grey or a white colour would make them appear large and impressive

00:07:49against the background.

00:07:51The only photographs we have of these giant vessels are in black and white.

00:07:56Colour film would not be readily available until the 1930s.

00:08:01But modern technology can transform these images.

00:08:14With her hull complete, the Titanic was launched eight months after the Olympic, on the 31st

00:08:32of May, 1911.

00:08:38Many employees from Harland & Wolff were there, many onlookers, bystanders, children all the

00:08:44way to old men who probably never imagined they would see such a sight in their city.

00:08:51There are no champagnes cracking on the bow.

00:08:56Instead, just after midday, a single firework is released up into a perfect turquoise sky.

00:09:05There is this moment where this behemoth they've been working on is slipped into the River

00:09:11Lagan with all of the grease and soap so that it would slide easily.

00:09:18Titanic was nicknamed the Olympic Perfected.

00:09:22Now you've got various modifications that make her 2% heavier and that gives her the

00:09:28title of the largest ship in the world.

00:09:39The Olympic was the first of the three superliners and was fated by the press.

00:09:44The Titanic was in her shadow, meaning there is only one piece of film footage of the legendary

00:09:50ship.

00:09:55It was taken nine months after her launch, on the morning of Saturday, the 3rd of February,

00:10:011912.

00:10:02The footage reveals a ship unfinished, dirty and not yet fully painted.

00:10:09It does have the feel of something very unofficial, very behind the scenes, very sort of making

00:10:15of, for lack of a better term.

00:10:17And the White Star Line was completely about appearances and so it does have that gritty

00:10:24sort of feel of something maybe we weren't quite supposed to see.

00:10:30After more than a century in the archives, the minute-long film is damaged and grainy.

00:10:36But after expert restoration, removing scratches, sharpening the images, repairing broken frames

00:10:43and then adding colour, the Titanic comes to life.

00:11:00I think you only really get a sense of scale with that footage when you look at the men

00:11:04on the bow of the Titanic and you just see various indistinct blobs of black moving around

00:11:10and that's the men on the river coast.

00:11:14The colour footage reveals that one vital part of the ship has already been painted.

00:11:20Towards the top of the ship, at the front end, there's the wheelhouse.

00:11:22This is where the vessel would be steered from, where a lot of the navigational equipment

00:11:26was installed for the bridge.

00:11:27But that part is painted white, as it would have been when she was finished.

00:11:31The things around it are unpainted steel.

00:11:34The reason for this is that the wheelhouse was different to the rest of the ship.

00:11:37It was made out of timber so that it wouldn't interfere with the ship's magnetic compasses

00:11:41used for navigation.

00:11:43So when it was installed, it was painted up and we can see that the rest of the ship remains

00:11:47to be unpainted around the wheelhouse.

00:11:54Inside, the interior of the Titanic was being transformed.

00:11:59The largest ship in the world was becoming a colourful, high-tech superliner.

00:12:18On the 2nd of April, the Titanic passed her sea trials in Belfast Loch.

00:12:23She was ready to sail for Southampton and pick up passengers.

00:12:28Jean Legge's father, Sidney Daniels, was a steward with the White Star Line.

00:12:35My dad had a bit of shorely and he was expecting he would be assigned to the Olympic for the

00:12:40next trip.

00:12:41But then he was told he had been selected to go on Titanic.

00:12:46He couldn't believe it.

00:12:47To be selected, he thought it was quite an honour.

00:12:51He'd been on the Olympic, the first of the trio of Olympic liners, and now he was going

00:12:55to go on the Titanic.

00:12:57So he had promotion.

00:12:59No longer would he be a plate washer.

00:13:01He now had what they called people in his care.

00:13:04So he was assigned to third-class cabins.

00:13:10Before the liner came to Southampton, he went to Belfast with other crew members to pick

00:13:16up the liner, to make her ready for the maiden voyage.

00:13:21He was on board, thrilled to bits, got promotion, extra money, and on a second liner's maiden

00:13:30voyage.

00:13:32The White Star Line advertised their new vessel with a promotional booklet, but nothing compared

00:13:38to the real thing.

00:13:39There was plenty for the new crew to discover on its ten massive decks, including four large

00:13:45dining rooms and over 800 cabins.

00:13:50You have the ship's second officer saying that it takes him two weeks from when he joins

00:13:55the Titanic to find his way around the ship.

00:14:01What's left of Titanic's lavish interiors now lie rotting at the bottom of the North

00:14:05Atlantic.

00:14:10But in a hotel in the small town of Annick in the north of England, it's possible to

00:14:15see and feel what it must have been like to be on board.

00:14:30This incredible space is the first-class lounge from the ship Olympic, the sister ship of

00:14:36Titanic.

00:14:37It was brought here by Algernon Smart, who was the hotelier in the 1930s.

00:14:42When Olympic was decommissioned, she was taken out of service and stripped of her parts,

00:14:47and those parts were auctioned.

00:14:49Smart managed to purchase several of them, and also this entire room.

00:14:54I think it gives you a real sense of what it would have felt like to be a first-class

00:14:59passenger aboard both the Olympic and the Titanic.

00:15:04Anyone who'd spent money on the first-class tickets would have been very pleased coming

00:15:09in here.

00:15:12The lounge was a place where passengers could relax and socialise during the voyage.

00:15:17They could have conversation, they could play cards, they could write to their loved ones.

00:15:22There were writing desks in the bay window here.

00:15:24You could also have afternoon tea.

00:15:26There were bells around the room that you could ring to order from one of the stewards.

00:15:34It was a space in which you could spot celebrities.

00:15:37You could see and be seen here.

00:15:39It was a performative space.

00:15:42Everything is a feast for the senses.

00:15:46The Titanic was not only sumptuous, it was technologically advanced.

00:15:53In an era when most streets and homes were lit by gas, the vast number of electric lights

00:15:59installed across the Titanic would have been a marvel.

00:16:04There were generators aboard the ship that powered everything from the deck cranes to

00:16:08the potato peelers in the kitchen.

00:16:11And there was actually 200 miles of cabling that was cleverly hidden in the design.

00:16:19Despite being state-of-the-art, the ship looked reassuringly old-fashioned.

00:16:25The first-class lounge copied interiors from the Palace of Versailles, but carved in English oak.

00:16:32For the abordians, it was very trendy to have rooms that were decorated in different styles.

00:16:38Some were from as far afield as the Tudor age, and other parts of the ship were in the

00:16:41Louis XVI style, and other parts were Georgian.

00:16:44And so they were borrowing from all these different time periods, because passengers

00:16:48of the Titanic in first class would be familiar with those spaces that inhabited them before.

00:16:53But it was also a bit of fun to be staying in these themed rooms that were all each different,

00:16:58and almost no two of them were the same.

00:17:01Harland and Wolff were proud of the craftsmanship employed on their ships,

00:17:06as this publicity photograph reveals.

00:17:09We see a sculptor who is finishing a plaster-sculpted head of Neptune, god of the ocean.

00:17:17These notes, there are numbers, there are serial numbers, all intended to really make

00:17:22sense of the puzzle that was this complex, huge ship.

00:17:25Because it's a staged image, I think what it's doing here, it's promoting not only the

00:17:30finished product that passengers can buy into by buying a ticket to come aboard the Olympic,

00:17:36but it also says something about the value that the White Star Line places in artisanal

00:17:41craftsmanship, and the quality and making process itself.

00:17:47Like the first class lounge, something else from the ship survived.

00:17:52At the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, is a genuine piece of undamaged Titanic carpet,

00:17:58taken by a Harland and Wolff employee as a treasured souvenir before the ship sailed.

00:18:05It gives us a glimpse into the colourful experience of life aboard the ship.

00:18:12This is the ship's first voyage, and it's the first time we've seen the ship in action.

00:18:17This square of carpet might seem small, but the story it tells is mighty.

00:18:22It tells us so much about what the Titanic would have looked and felt and even smelt like on board.

00:18:31We can only see such a small part of what we imagine to be a much bigger pattern.

00:18:36There's nothing necessarily decadent about this carpet.

00:18:39What we do see is something well made, well constructed, and probably built to last as well.

00:18:44The objects and the images that tell the story of the Titanic

00:18:48so often might feel far away from us in that they are now part of the wreck,

00:18:54or that they were brought onto the ship by passengers.

00:18:56They were never native to the ship.

00:18:59This carpet is different.

00:19:00This was part of the fixtures and the fittings.

00:19:03This carpet draws us back to the roots of the Titanic, to everything that went into them.

00:19:07Thousands of people who would have worked on the Titanic,

00:19:11thousands of people who would have worked to make this liner

00:19:15one of the most fabulous constructions in the world.

00:19:19And it's remarkable, really, that a worker decided to save a piece of that,

00:19:24to have a souvenir, without the foresight that it would become the most famous ship that ever sailed.

00:19:31So the reason this has been saved isn't a relic of tragedy.

00:19:37It's a relic of pride.

00:19:42The Titanic cost £1.5m to build, about £170m today.

00:19:50White Star Line was so confident in their new ship's construction,

00:19:54they could devote more time to its luxury than its safety.

00:20:02We know from the Managing Director of Harland & Wolff, Alexander Carlyle,

00:20:05that in the early conversations with the White Star Line about what the ships would look like,

00:20:10they actually spent two hours, he says,

00:20:12on the carpets for the first-class cabins and only 15 minutes on the lifeboats.

00:20:23On the morning of Tuesday 2nd April 1912, the Titanic left Belfast for Southampton.

00:20:31The massive liner dwarfed her escort tugs.

00:20:35She was newly painted, ready to impress her first passengers.

00:20:39There's almost like a formula for painting ocean liners at the time.

00:20:44These were all coal-fired ships.

00:20:46They used tonnes and tonnes of coal.

00:20:49The issue with this is that coal is extremely dirty.

00:20:53So the sides of the hull were painted mostly black.

00:20:56This was the area that the ship would be receiving coal through the chutes

00:21:00that she would be refuelled with, and so it hid the dust.

00:21:03The red underside got the colour actually from Venetian red.

00:21:08It's a pigment that was used in the...

00:21:09Well, it's called anti-foul.

00:21:11It's the coating that would be applied on the underside of the ship

00:21:14to prevent the build-up of things like mollusks and marine growth

00:21:18that would actually slow the ship down.

00:21:20But it was also mixed in with things like arsenic

00:21:23to prevent this kind of growth from building up.

00:21:27There was a tradition by that point

00:21:29to paint the superstructure of ocean liners white,

00:21:32but it also provided reflection from the sun

00:21:35and would keep some of these upper passenger spaces a little bit more cool.

00:21:41On the evening of the 2nd of April,

00:21:43the Titanic began its 570-mile journey to Southampton,

00:21:48where it would pick up its precious cargo of passengers,

00:21:51and her maiden voyage could begin.

00:22:06On the 4th of April, the Titanic sailed into Southampton Docks.

00:22:10The port was intended to be the starting-off point

00:22:13for her transatlantic voyages for many years to come.

00:22:18In six days' time, Titanic would start taking on passengers,

00:22:23but first supplies and coal had to be loaded,

00:22:26and the rest of the crew signed on.

00:22:30Titanic, like all white starships,

00:22:33didn't have a dedicated crew.

00:22:36Instead, men were recruited voyage by voyage.

00:22:42For her maiden trip,

00:22:43more than three-quarters of the crew came from Southampton.

00:22:49Henry Pugh's grandfather, Samuel,

00:22:51was one of over 700 local seamen taken on.

00:22:56He went on board, and so was the youngest brother, Alfred, up on deck,

00:23:02and he was a bit nonplussed at this.

00:23:03Because two brothers on a ship is unlucky,

00:23:07and Alfred told him that the middle brother, Percy,

00:23:10was down below as a leading fireman.

00:23:14My grandfather didn't think too much of that.

00:23:17Two brothers on a ship is unlucky.

00:23:19Three is really tempting fate.

00:23:20I think he might have been right there.

00:23:22So he put his kit bag on his shoulder and walked off.

00:23:28Samuel remained in Southampton while his brothers stayed on board.

00:23:32It would be almost two weeks

00:23:33before he would discover what happened to them.

00:23:40The Titanic's designer, Thomas Andrews,

00:23:43sailed with the ship from Belfast.

00:23:48What he's doing is supervising all those last-minute preparations,

00:23:52you know, even flowers,

00:23:53really fresh flowers to cover up the smell of new paint,

00:23:57and even organising the furniture for the Parisian cafe.

00:24:01Andrews is pretty confident because he writes to his wife

00:24:04that the Titanic is complete,

00:24:07and will do Harland and Wolff credit tomorrow when we sail.

00:24:14The first of Titanic's 2,240 passengers

00:24:18started to arrive on the morning of the 10th of April.

00:24:22Over 900 would come on board at Southampton,

00:24:25some more at Cherbourg in France,

00:24:27and the final few at Queenstown in Ireland.

00:24:32Often the glamorous and glitzy side of the Titanic

00:24:35has taken precedence,

00:24:37and we've forgotten that it had this other purpose,

00:24:39which was really just to move people across the Atlantic

00:24:42who weren't planning on coming back,

00:24:44who were seeing it as a one-way journey.

00:24:48Coming on board the ship,

00:24:49there must have been so many people.

00:24:52We know there were Scandinavians, Irish, Italians,

00:24:56Eastern Europeans, Lebanese, Chinese,

00:24:59people coming from all around the world

00:25:01who wouldn't have otherwise ever met each other.

00:25:05Among the first to arrive at the second-class gangway

00:25:08were Dorothy Kendall's mother, Edith, then 15,

00:25:12and Edith's parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Brown,

00:25:15who had travelled from South Africa.

00:25:18They were going to go and immigrate to America, to Seattle.

00:25:24My grandfather was going to open a hotel there.

00:25:27My grandmother had a sister there,

00:25:31and she wrote to them, and she said,

00:25:33why don't you come over to America?

00:25:36It's booming here.

00:25:39So that's what he did.

00:25:40He sold everything, and they took all his money with him.

00:25:46When they saw the size of the Titanic,

00:25:48it was so long, my mother said,

00:25:50you couldn't see the end of it.

00:25:52And she said all the lettering was all in gold,

00:25:57and as they went up the gangway, his face went white,

00:26:00and my grandmother turned around and said, are you ill?

00:26:04He said, no, but something's going to happen.

00:26:09Before the Titanic sailed, second-class passengers

00:26:12were allowed to get a taste of first-class life.

00:26:18As they walked along, my mother said

00:26:20they came across the grand staircase.

00:26:23She said that was magnificent.

00:26:26It was so beautiful.

00:26:30The dining area of the first class,

00:26:33that was already laid with Irish tablecloths,

00:26:38real silver cutlery.

00:26:43Very much at home in first class

00:26:45was a highly successful American fashion journalist

00:26:48named Edith Rosenbaum.

00:26:50Returning to the United States after an assignment in Paris,

00:26:54she lived and breathed fashion.

00:26:58Edith took her clothes so seriously

00:27:01that she booked two cabins on the Titanic,

00:27:04one for her to sleep in, and a completely separate one

00:27:07in which she would store that season's pieces

00:27:10that she had picked up in Paris.

00:27:13Some of Edith's collection still survives

00:27:15and are held in the Maritime Museum in Paris.

00:27:20Some of her pieces are kept in a museum in Greenwich,

00:27:24including the shoes she wore

00:27:25as she escaped the Titanic in a lifeboat.

00:27:32It's really remarkable to see these shoes,

00:27:35not just because of the vibrancy and the beauty

00:27:39of the design and the pattern and the colour.

00:27:41They're so opulent.

00:27:43Who wouldn't want to wear a pair of shoes like this today?

00:27:47The fact that we can still see these shoes

00:27:49this is really special.

00:27:56The colours have been preserved so beautifully

00:27:59and it gives us a sense of just how colourful

00:28:01the Edwardian world was.

00:28:03Quite often we look at history in black and white

00:28:06and these slippers show us that it was far from that.

00:28:13The slippers really represent everything

00:28:15about upper-class aristocratic life at the time,

00:28:19particularly upper-class life on board the Titanic.

00:28:22These slippers would have been worn by Edith

00:28:24to the evening meal, the dinner,

00:28:27the last dinner aboard the Titanic.

00:28:30We know from the label, the very faded label

00:28:33that we can see inside the shoes,

00:28:35these would have been made in Paris.

00:28:36They would have been made

00:28:37in the most fashionable quarters of Paris,

00:28:39probably made and designed for Edith herself,

00:28:42probably one of a kind.

00:28:43I can't see Edith sharing her designs with anybody else.

00:28:49They're silk and you can see the gentle sort of ruffle

00:28:51around the rim here.

00:28:53They've got these beautiful rosettes.

00:28:55These are not hard-working shoes.

00:28:58Edith didn't only pack clothes for the voyage.

00:29:01The museum has something else she took in the lifeboat.

00:29:07In 1911, a year before her Titanic voyage,

00:29:11Edith had been involved in a fatal car accident.

00:29:15This toy pig was to protect Edith from further harm.

00:29:22Her mother, Sophia, had sent over a pig

00:29:24in the aftermath of the car crash,

00:29:27hearing that it was a traditional good luck symbol in France.

00:29:34Edith had promised her mother, Sophia,

00:29:35that she would keep it with her no matter what.

00:29:41Few passengers on the Titanic

00:29:43took as many possessions as Edith.

00:29:48Second-class traveller Elizabeth Mellinger,

00:29:50photographed here in the 1930s,

00:29:53packed only essentials for a new life in America,

00:29:56fleeing an unhappy marriage.

00:29:59She wore this cape in a lifeboat

00:30:01as protection against the cold of the North Atlantic.

00:30:05She lived a fairly well-off, quite comfortable life.

00:30:09That all changed when she had to leave her husband.

00:30:12So now, as a single woman with a family,

00:30:15she was travelling over to Vermont

00:30:17to take up the position of a housekeeper.

00:30:21She would have had to be quite pragmatic

00:30:23about what she brought with her.

00:30:25Because she was entering into domestic work,

00:30:27there was a certain level of morality

00:30:30and uniformity in the way that she was treated.

00:30:34There was a certain level of integrity

00:30:36and standards that you had to upheld.

00:30:38And this coat, to me, really speaks to the sort of role

00:30:41that she was going over to America to take up.

00:30:47She clearly wore this coat quite a lot.

00:30:49We can tell that from the replacement buttons

00:30:52and the missing button here.

00:30:54It has those little features

00:30:55that we ourselves have of our own clothes

00:30:57when they're well-worn and well-loved.

00:30:59And if you were to give this a first glance,

00:31:01you'd probably think that's what you'd want to be wearing

00:31:05in the first place.

00:31:16The majority of the passengers on the Titanic were American

00:31:20or European like Elizabeth and Edith,

00:31:22from countries like Britain, Ireland and Sweden.

00:31:25But others came from China, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

00:31:29On board, in second class, was a 25-year-old engineer from Haiti named Joseph Laroche,

00:31:35travelling with his pregnant French wife Juliet and their two young girls.

00:31:40Joseph was part of a growing trend.

00:31:43Colonial elites, Indian independence leaders, leaders in Algeria, in Southeast Asia and Haiti,

00:31:51they are converging on Paris and London.

00:31:55They are often joined together in anti-colonial movements in the European cities

00:32:01and meeting each other there and discussing politics.

00:32:03So I think it wouldn't be too surprising to me if Joseph Laroche belonged to those circles.

00:32:10Often it's by coming to Europe and to places like the Titanic

00:32:14that people who are black and Asian at this time become really aware of race and racism.

00:32:20Joseph had had enough of the discrimination he faced in Paris

00:32:25and his uncle, the President of Haiti, had made an attractive proposition.

00:32:30He took his uncle's offer up to actually go to Haiti and work as a mathematician.

00:32:36He'd be well paid there and he'd probably have a home at the presidential palace.

00:32:41So this was a good deal for him and his family.

00:32:45For Joseph and Juliet, their daughters Louise and Simone were a priority.

00:32:50They opted for the Titanic because of the White Star's child-friendly policy.

00:32:57Joseph's mother sent them first-class tickets.

00:33:01The actual line that they were booked on did not permit children to dine with their parents.

00:33:07So the type of family they are, they wanted to be together.

00:33:11And also, Louise was quite sickly, so they didn't want to leave her in a nursery.

00:33:15So that prompted them to switch tickets to the RMS Titanic.

00:33:27Just after midday on the 10th of April, the Titanic pulled away from her berth in Southampton.

00:33:34Dad said there were people at the quayside, there were photographers, there were reporters, crowds of people.

00:33:40So she had a good send-off.

00:33:43Amongst those watching was one of White Star Line's bosses, Benjamin Steele.

00:33:49He looks confident at her going out into the world and of course he's seen this scene a thousand times.

00:33:57This is nothing new for him and there's absolute confidence that Titanic will do well.

00:34:02She's described as practically unsinkable.

00:34:04There is, from Steele's point of view, nothing to worry about.

00:34:08Then things start to go wrong.

00:34:11As the Titanic rounded the end of the jetty, she passed a smaller liner, the New York.

00:34:18Titanic's sheer size sucked in the smaller ship and the New York actually breaks free.

00:34:25And they were so close that one newspaper said,

00:34:27you could have thrown a hat from one ship to another.

00:34:32Now, disaster is only averted by the really swift intervention of two tugs.

00:34:40To be frank, it's not a great start to her maiden voyage.

00:34:45The close shave with the New York put the Titanic almost an hour behind schedule.

00:34:51Some of those on board believe the incident was an ill omen.

00:35:02MUSIC

00:35:10Having called at Cherbourg, by mid-morning on the 11th of April,

00:35:14the Titanic was well on her way to Queenstown to pick up the remaining passengers.

00:35:22There is no footage of the Titanic out at sea.

00:35:26But in 1921, you have the White Star Line making a promotional film

00:35:31to encourage first-class passengers to sail on the Olympic.

00:35:38There are only very few differences between the two ships,

00:35:41so this footage allows us to see what the Titanic would have looked like as she sailed.

00:35:48Below deck, the 280 men of the ship's engine department

00:35:52toiled to keep the Titanic sailing.

00:35:56The toughest men were the stokers,

00:35:58tasked with getting 850 tonnes of coal a day into the 29 boilers.

00:36:05Julie Cook's great-grandfather, William Besant, was a Titanic stoker.

00:36:10He lived in a house with his wife, Emily, and five children.

00:36:13They weren't well off. She wouldn't have worked in 1912.

00:36:16Many women obviously didn't.

00:36:18So she would have been preoccupied with caring for the children.

00:36:22They had to survive with just William's earnings.

00:36:25And, of course, if ships weren't sailing, they had none.

00:36:28So when an opportunity like the Titanic came along, he would have taken it with both hands.

00:36:32The 160 stokers worked in gruelling conditions.

00:36:38She would have been able to spot the stokers a mile away.

00:36:42They were often described as walking skeletons by the time they walked off the ship.

00:36:46They would be draggled. They'd lost weight.

00:36:49They would be literally staggering along the ship.

00:36:52They'd be on their knees.

00:36:54They'd be on their knees.

00:36:56They'd be on their knees.

00:36:58They'd be on their knees.

00:37:00They'd be literally staggering along the street.

00:37:03And they were known as the Black Gang because they were covered in soot and coal.

00:37:09As the stokers fed the furnaces, above them, second-class passengers,

00:37:13Thomas and Elizabeth Brown, and their 15-year-old daughter, Edith,

00:37:17were up early and on deck.

00:37:21They always took a swift walk before breakfast,

00:37:24and Captain Smith stopped and talked to them.

00:37:30I was telling them about the weather and everything that was going on.

00:37:34Then he turned round to my mother and he said,

00:37:37''How do you like my ship, young lady?''

00:37:39And my mother said, ''It's very nice, sir.''

00:37:45Also travelling in second class were the Laroche family,

00:37:4825-year-old Joseph, his French wife, Juliette, and their two young daughters.

00:37:54I think a mixed-race family would have been treated with some form of curiosity,

00:37:59because it wasn't the norm to see a black man and a white lady together in open society.

00:38:05They found another couple who spoke French,

00:38:08and I think they had children as well,

00:38:10so they were able to kind of take advantage of that.

00:38:13I think any parent who has two children under the age of five is quite grateful

00:38:17that they have other children to play with on the ship,

00:38:20so that would have been quite nice.

00:38:23Juliette Laroche wrote a letter to her father to be posted at Queenstown.

00:38:29I am writing to you from the reading room,

00:38:32and an orchestra is playing next to me, one violin, two cellos and one piano.

00:38:38If only you could see how big the ship is.

00:38:41One can hardly find his or her cabin in the succession of hallways.

00:38:45People are very nice on board.

00:38:48Yesterday, the girls were both running after a gentleman who had given them chocolates.

00:38:57During their first full day at sea, passengers explored the vast ship.

00:39:02One first-class traveller came armed with a camera.

00:39:07Jesuit theological student Frank Brown, photographed here in the 1940s.

00:39:14In 1897, Frank has been given a camera by his Uncle Robert,

00:39:19and Frank takes it everywhere he goes.

00:39:22And then in 1912, he gets another gift from dear old Uncle Robert,

00:39:26and that is a first-class ticket for a two-day voyage

00:39:30between Southampton and Queenstown on the brand-new Titanic.

00:39:36Now, Frank's photographs are going to become the best record we've got of life on board.

00:39:45He visited the gym and took pictures of the state-of-the-art equipment

00:39:50and the so-called physical educator Thomas Macaulay.

00:39:54The Edwardians that we see on the Titanic are a different generation

00:39:58from the Victorians that we'd seen barely two decades before.

00:40:02They are modern. They are a bit more forward-thinking.

00:40:05They have more of an outlook on life to be lived leisurely,

00:40:08and that is something about moving away from something slightly austere

00:40:12into something modern. And I don't want to say frivolous,

00:40:15but I think it's that thing of just wanting to enjoy life.

00:40:21Between one and three in the afternoon, children had the run of the equipment.

00:40:26The film footage from 1921 shows the very child-friendly policy

00:40:32of the White Star Line, which so appealed to Joseph and Juliet LaRoche.

00:40:39For the rest of the day, children played where they could.

00:40:45Frank Brown captured one of those moments.

00:40:49Six-year-old New Yorker Douglas Speddon playing in first class.

00:40:55In the photo, Douglas is spinning a top on the deck.

00:40:59His father is in the scene, and it is just this lovely moment

00:41:04of a first-class family settling into life on board.

00:41:09It's just a slice of life.

00:41:12In the background is a steamer chair, and contrary to the popular saying,

00:41:16the Titanic did not have deck chairs to rearrange.

00:41:20It had these wooden steamer chairs that you could hire

00:41:23for the whole voyage for four shillings.

00:41:26Frank Brown's brief time on the Titanic gives us a valuable insight

00:41:30into life on board.

00:41:32He even took photos of his first-class cabin, or stateroom.

00:41:39He thought it large and prettily furnished.

00:41:44What this film from 1921 shows is a typical first-class stateroom

00:41:49on the Olympic, which looks just like the ones that are on the Titanic.

00:41:54Now, they were designed to be a home from home.

00:41:57They're really big. You could entertain all your friends in them.

00:42:00And they're also equipped even with telephones,

00:42:03which you could use to book a shave or a Turkish bath. You name it.

00:42:08First-class accommodation was magnificent on the Titanic,

00:42:12but second- and third-class cabins were also much better

00:42:15than on other shipping lines.

00:42:19For decades, really, the steerage class, the immigrants in third class,

00:42:23had been expected to essentially be crammed in wherever they could

00:42:26in horrendous conditions,

00:42:28typically down towards where the ship was steered from,

00:42:31right down the very back,

00:42:32which is ostensibly where they got the name steerage.

00:42:35By the time of Titanic's day, though, standards had increased immensely.

00:42:39Companies began to realise that these people, too,

00:42:42deserved their own bumps in standards of quality and comfort.

00:42:47This ship must have been absolutely dazzling

00:42:49for some of the third-class passengers.

00:42:52You've got flushing toilets, food.

00:42:55The whole environment must have been absolutely overwhelming, I think,

00:42:59for people who'd come from some of the rural and poorer backgrounds.

00:43:07At 11.30 in the morning, the Titanic dropped anchor off Queenstown.

00:43:13High up on the bridge, Captain Smith watched the boat

00:43:17carrying the passengers come alongside.

00:43:22Seven passengers disembarked, including photographer Frank Brown,

00:43:27albeit reluctantly.

00:43:31Frank apparently befriended an American couple

00:43:34who offered to pay his fare to New York.

00:43:37Yeah, he's really tempted,

00:43:39and so he sent a wireless message to his Jesuit boss asking permission.

00:43:45But, thankfully for Frank, the reply he gets back

00:43:48ordered him right off the ship.

00:43:51At the quayside, a doctor examines third-class passengers

00:43:55for signs of disease or disability.

00:43:59The ship could be right there in the bay.

00:44:01They might have saved up or borrowed money at high interest rates.

00:44:05They finally got this ticket,

00:44:06but there's still the very serious risk that they'll be turned away.

00:44:11One of the last photographs of the Titanic

00:44:13shows third-class passengers at the stern looking back towards Ireland.

00:44:19The ship was full of people who needed to make a change,

00:44:23wanted to make a change,

00:44:25were at these precipice moments in their life.

00:44:28For first-class passengers, not really the case,

00:44:31but for third-class, that's the story.

00:44:36So there will have been all of the emotions that we associate

00:44:39with the emigration experience in the Edwardian period.

00:44:42There is hopefulness, there is, I assume, excitement

00:44:45for the life ahead of them,

00:44:47but there also was a great deal of sadness.

00:44:52One of those third-class passengers went back up on deck

00:44:56and played on his pipes a song called Erin's Lament,

00:45:00a farewell to Ireland,

00:45:02as Ireland faded into the horizon in front of him.

00:45:05And the Titanic started the 3,000-mile journey towards New York.

00:45:20Below deck, the chefs prepared a meal of oysters, duck

00:45:24and French ice cream for the first-class passengers.

00:45:31The weather forecast for the next few days was excellent.

00:45:36But it was a geological event years earlier

00:45:39that would change the lives of Titanic's passengers and crew forever.

00:45:46In about 1909, a massive iceberg,

00:45:50probably two miles across,

00:45:52broke off a glacier in Greenland

00:45:54and started to drift slowly south.

00:45:59By April of 1912,

00:46:01although it would have been a fraction of its original size,

00:46:04it was still about 400 feet across and 100 feet high

00:46:09and in the path of Titanic.

00:46:14The largest, most luxurious and colourful ship in the world

00:46:18would prove to be no match for this vast ice monster.

00:46:27And the next episode of Titanic in Colour is available to stream now,

00:46:32with just months until the US election.

00:46:34Matt Fry examines whether the new nominee can turn the tide for the Democrats.

00:46:39Trump v Harris. The battle for America is Wednesday at nine.

00:46:43Next tonight here on Channel 4, it's Britain behind bars.

00:46:46A secret history.

00:46:54On the evening of the 14th of April, 1912,

00:46:58on its maiden voyage,

00:47:00the RMS Titanic is steaming into drifting ice.

00:47:05It looks for a second as if the Titanic is successfully going to dodge

00:47:09this enormous iceberg ahead of it.

00:47:13And then a tremor is felt running through the ship.

00:47:18Less than three hours later,

00:47:20the world's largest and most glamorous ocean liner is on the seabed.

00:47:25Many of the passengers and crew going down with the ship.

00:47:30All the men in the group turned to my dad and he said,

00:47:33there's nothing for it now, lad. It's every man for himself.

00:47:37You have reports of gunfire, you have reports of fighting,

00:47:40you have just sheer chaos.

00:47:43This series reveals the Titanic and those on board in their true colours.

00:47:49Photographs and film footage of the Titanic and her sister ships

00:47:53are colourised, some for the very first time.

00:47:58It makes you realise that these people didn't exist

00:48:01in a black and white world.

00:48:03They existed in a world as colourful as ours.

00:48:06Possessions and artefacts help tell the stories of passengers and crew,

00:48:11victims and traumatised survivors.

00:48:14I don't think it's possible to experience a disaster on that level

00:48:19and not be affected in some way.

00:48:21And bringing to life the horror and the aftermath

00:48:25of one of the 20th century's most notorious disasters.

00:48:31It's only a month later that these photographs are taken

00:48:34and they're all still reeling from the fact

00:48:36that their father won't be coming home.

00:48:47Over a century after the sinking of the Titanic,

00:48:50fascination with the ship shows no sign of waning.

00:48:55In Wiltshire, in the south of England,

00:48:57an auction of ocean liner and Titanic memorabilia is underway.

00:49:02The bids will be from as far afield as Australia, New Zealand,

00:49:08heavy presence in the United States, UK, Middle East.

00:49:14So it literally is a global phenomenon.

00:49:19The artefacts on sale include a rare Titanic deck blanket,

00:49:24a first-class dinner menu, a promotional calendar

00:49:29and a Jewish passenger's water-stained pocket watch.

00:49:34What these objects do is, if you look at the calendar, for instance,

00:49:38it's a vivid, bright red promotional item

00:49:41and it brings 1912 to life, it makes it real.

00:49:45For the collector, each artefact is a direct link to those on board.

00:49:51The Hebrew watch instantly transports you back.

00:49:54That came from someone, that was someone's story,

00:49:56that was someone's history, and you're straight in the room

00:49:59with that person, and that gives you the chills.

00:50:03For me, it's one of the most powerful objects that we have in this house.

00:50:07There's an old auction cliché on what things will sell for,

00:50:11and something is worth what two people are prepared to pay for it.

00:50:15In this case, in my professional opinion,

00:50:17for what it's worth, between £50,000 and £70,000.

00:50:28Sunday 14th April, 1912.

00:50:318am, Titanic's last day.

00:50:34First-class passengers were woken by a bugle call.

00:50:38Film shot nine years later by the white starline of the Titanic's twin,

00:50:43the Olympic, shows both ships' identical routines.

00:50:48There are only very few differences between the two ships,

00:50:51so this footage allows us to see what the Titanic would have looked like

00:50:56as she sailed.

00:50:58But only in black and white.

00:51:01Now, after expert restoration, removing scratches,

00:51:05sharpening the images and then adding colour,

00:51:09the ships come to life.

00:51:14Five days previously, the Titanic set sail from Southampton

00:51:18on its maiden voyage.

00:51:20Her destination, New York, is about 1,500 miles away.

00:51:26Everyone settled into their routines.

00:51:29It's a bright, clear day.

00:51:31There's a well-oiled machine going on at this point.

00:51:34Passengers took the air on deck.

00:51:38Alone at the bow was 54-year-old American Helen Churchill Candie.

00:51:43Helen broke conventions.

00:51:45She was a divorcee travelling alone and a pioneer of women's rights.

00:51:51She literally wrote the guidebook for young women

00:51:55at the turn of the 20th century on how to make it on your own.

00:52:00Rosemary Gillum is Helen's great-granddaughter.

00:52:04She describes standing at the bow of the ship,

00:52:07looking out in this crystal-clear, bright blue sky

00:52:12at the waters parting from the bow of the ship

00:52:16and the sort of majesty and the glory of this boat

00:52:20cutting through the waves.

00:52:22The monarch of the seas, she described it.

00:52:25On a deck, first-class cabin A36

00:52:29was full of plans and blueprints of the ship.

00:52:32Staying there was the Titanic's designer, Thomas Andrews.

00:52:36Andrews is bought breakfast, as usual, by his steward.

00:52:40He's a guy called Henry Etches.

00:52:42Etches sometimes makes suggestions to his boss

00:52:45about how the Titanic and the Olympic could actually be improved.

00:52:49Now, some bosses might say to their steward,

00:52:52go away, but actually Andrews, to his credit, always takes note of them.

00:52:57Elsewhere on the Titanic,

00:52:59passengers were taking advantage of the world's most luxurious ship.

00:53:05Gymnasiums were the latest craze, and Titanic's was state-of-the-art.

00:53:13It was open to first-class passengers, men, women and children,

00:53:17all strictly segregated.

00:53:20There are a lot of people who are travelling on board the Titanic

00:53:23who are very aware that they are being served

00:53:26thousands of calories every day, particularly at dinner.

00:53:30In the first-class dining salon, quite a few of the passengers

00:53:33make jokes about the fact that they need the gymnasium

00:53:36after a week at sea.

00:53:38In the heart of the ship,

00:53:40the squash racquet court was already in use.

00:53:43This is the court in the Olympic, filmed in 1921.

00:53:46Squash is a very popular game

00:53:49with upper-class Edwardian men at the time,

00:53:52and so it shows a shrewd awareness to the white star line

00:53:55of who they're trying to market this to.

00:54:00But many first-class passengers were preferring to take it easy

00:54:04and relax in the comfort of the dining hall.

00:54:07The dining hall was designed to accommodate

00:54:10were preferring to take it easy and relax

00:54:13in the comfort of the first-class lounge on the promenade deck.

00:54:18A hotel in Annick in the north of England

00:54:21has the interior of the first-class lounge

00:54:24from Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic.

00:54:27It's really easy being in this space

00:54:29to imagine the last day aboard the Titanic.

00:54:32People would have been socialising, chatting,

00:54:35drinking tea, drinking alcoholic drinks, playing cards.

00:54:41Below deck was a hive of activity,

00:54:44as the 430-strong whittling department,

00:54:47who looked after the food and drink on board,

00:54:50catered for over 1,300 passengers.

00:54:54You have to have bakers producing enough bread

00:54:57for all three classes and the crew.

00:55:03The bedrooms have to be cleaned,

00:55:05there's a mail room to sort the letters,

00:55:07the artist room is constantly sending telegrams to America.

00:55:11The Titanic never really stops.

00:55:16Jean Legge's father, 18-year-old Sidney Daniels,

00:55:19worked as a steward.

00:55:22On the Sunday, he said it was such a lovely atmosphere on board,

00:55:26it was bitterly cold,

00:55:28so people tended to stay down below to keep warm and to stay inside.

00:55:33So it was a very busy day.

00:55:35He said, that was fine, everyone was happy, just thrilled to be there.

00:55:44Breakfast was being served in the second-class dining saloon on D deck.

00:55:51Eating there was a couple, Henry Morley and Kate Phillips,

00:55:55travelling under the names Mr and Mrs Marshall.

00:55:59Henry was a 38-year-old confectioner

00:56:02with a business and family back home in Worcester.

00:56:05Kate was 19 and one of his shop assistants.

00:56:09They planned to start a new life together in San Francisco.

00:56:13Beverly Roberts is their great-granddaughter.

00:56:18They ran away together because they fell in love.

00:56:21A man doesn't up sticks and leave his wife and child for no reason at all.

00:56:26Kate was pregnant.

00:56:28Whether she'd conceived just beforehand and they knew

00:56:31and wanted to escape the scandal, or she'd conceived on the Titanic.

00:56:36But running away together, OK, it was a scandal, but they loved each other

00:56:41and their whole focus would have just been on each other and enjoying themselves.

00:56:46For many passengers like Kate and Henry,

00:56:49the voyage was the start of a new life in a new country.

00:56:54From the moment they step ashore,

00:56:56they don't have to tell people about their past.

00:56:58It's an opportunity for people to reinvent themselves

00:57:01and they can forget things that they don't want to remember about their own past.

00:57:08Many of those in third class,

00:57:10sitting down to eat a breakfast of porridge and vegetable stew,

00:57:14were fleeing persecution or poverty in Italy and the Middle East

00:57:18in the hope of making their fortune in America.

00:57:23Most travelled as a family,

00:57:25but one group of around 20 came from the Lebanese village of Kafar Mishki.

00:57:30They carried the hopes of the entire community.

00:57:36There would have been collective pooling of resources

00:57:39to enable to buy the tickets.

00:57:41The gamble was taken collectively by the whole village

00:57:43on the understanding that then remittances would flow back,

00:57:47that people would earn higher wages somewhere else.

00:57:50They were also aiming to support all the people who were back in Lebanon.

00:57:58At 12 minutes past nine,

00:58:00the Titanic's wireless room received a message from the liner Koronia,

00:58:04warning of icebergs ahead.

00:58:09The Titanic's captain, E.J. Smith, thanked them for their message.

00:58:14He was used to the perils of the North Atlantic.

00:58:18Smith has captained 17 White Star ships in a career that's lasted 30 years,

00:58:24so when he's asked by a newspaper to describe his time at sea,

00:58:28he simply describes them as uneventful.

00:58:31Smith had no intention of slowing his ship for the ice.

00:58:35To do so would have significant repercussions for White Star's reputation.

00:58:42Having that regular, reliable service is everything,

00:58:46because much like today where we would miss a flight

00:58:49and then miss connecting flights,

00:58:51passengers aren't ending their trip in New York.

00:58:54A lot of these people are going to other places in the US.

00:58:57They've booked carriages, they've booked taxis.

00:59:00It's all been prearranged.

00:59:02Being delayed into New York is terrible PR for the White Star Line,

00:59:05for the ship's maiden voyage,

00:59:07and also extremely inconvenient for the ship's passengers.

00:59:11Captain Smith was trusted by those on board

00:59:14and his vast, speedy ship seemed unstoppable.

00:59:19Not all passengers were happy being on the Titanic, though.

00:59:22A few days earlier, fashion journalist Edith Rosenbaum wrote to a friend.

00:59:29It is a monster, and I can't say that I like it,

00:59:32as I feel as if I were in a big hotel instead of on a cosy ship.

00:59:36I'm going to take a much-needed rest on this trip,

00:59:39but I cannot get over my feeling of depression and premonition of trouble,

00:59:44how I wish it were over.

01:00:02As Sunday drew to a close,

01:00:04the Titanic was sailing through the icy water

01:00:07faster than at any point in her voyage.

01:00:11It was a perfect evening in the North Atlantic.

01:00:14A lot of passengers had gone to bed early.

01:00:18There is a sense of stillness throughout the Titanic.

01:00:22However, there was potential danger ahead.

01:00:28Six other ships had sent the Titanic warnings about icebergs,

01:00:32but Captain Smith was unmoved.

01:00:35Because it's so unusually calm,

01:00:37he figures that anything ahead will be spotted in time

01:00:41and orders Titanic's bridge to maintain speed and heading

01:00:47and takes the ship through the ice field.

01:00:51The Titanic is going at 22 knots as they approach the ice field.

01:00:55That's quick.

01:00:56I mean, that means it's travelling at about, what, 38 foot a second?

01:01:01At 11.40pm,

01:01:03Frederick Fleet, one of the ship's two lookouts,

01:01:06spotted an object high above the water.

01:01:11Dorothy Kendall met Fleet in the 1950s.

01:01:15What he saw, he said, was something black in front of him

01:01:19and he realised it was an iceberg

01:01:22and he called down to Officer Emerger

01:01:25and told him, iceberg ahead, iceberg ahead.

01:01:2946,000 tonnes of steel and wood

01:01:33collide with half a million tonnes of ice.

01:01:40The iceberg punctured the Titanic below the waterline multiple times.

01:01:47Now, those holes aren't big.

01:01:49I mean, they're only like an inch high,

01:01:51but they are along 250 foot of the hull.

01:01:55Five watertight compartments were breached.

01:01:58Titanic could survive damage only to the first four.

01:02:03Dorothy Kendall's mother was asleep in second class.

01:02:07It wasn't a bang, she said, it was like a shiver,

01:02:11a violent shiver that woke her up.

01:02:14In her first class cabin,

01:02:16Helen Churchill Candie almost fell over with the force of the collision.

01:02:21She opened the door and called for the steward to say,

01:02:24what's happened, and he was saying,

01:02:26there's nothing wrong, go back to bed,

01:02:29don't frighten other people, there's nothing wrong.

01:02:32As a precaution, the Titanic's engine stopped.

01:02:36Her giant propellers were still.

01:02:40The ship fell silent.

01:02:42Many passengers realised for the first time, something was wrong.

01:02:47They've been on this liner, this big, sturdy ship,

01:02:51with heaters and music and food and restaurants,

01:02:55and the constant hum of that ship running underneath them

01:02:59has always been there.

01:03:04At midnight, Captain Smith received some chilling news.

01:03:08Fourth officer Joseph Boxall reports

01:03:11that the mail room on F deck is flooded.

01:03:14There are letters floating around.

01:03:17So by now, the ship has taken on about 7,000 tonnes of water.

01:03:23Smith gave the order to swing out the lifeboats

01:03:27and to get the passengers on deck.

01:03:29Jean Legge's father, Sidney Daniels,

01:03:32was one of the stewards given the task

01:03:34of getting first-class passengers to the lifeboats.

01:03:37The reactions were varied.

01:03:39One reaction was, what does this young man know?

01:03:42He's 18, he's not much more than a boy.

01:03:45This is an unsinkable liner. Can this be right?

01:03:48He'd go to another cabin and they'd say,

01:03:51but our children are asleep in bed.

01:03:53They're warm in their bunks.

01:03:55If we take them up on deck, they could get a chill.

01:03:58And yet another reaction would be, we sort of understand what you say,

01:04:02but we'll just pack a few things and we'll come up,

01:04:05you know, we'll follow you up later.

01:04:07Many of those who do go up on deck

01:04:09took refuge in the first-class lounge,

01:04:12encouraged by the chief purser.

01:04:16To prevent the passengers having to go out on deck

01:04:19in below freezing temperatures,

01:04:21he turns on the electric fireplace,

01:04:23cocoa, brandies and coffee are being served.

01:04:26The band arrives to play an impromptu concert.

01:04:29So all of a sudden, the evacuation has taken on the air

01:04:33of what one first-class passenger calls a very stupid picnic.

01:04:40At 12.30am, word reached the passengers on deck

01:04:44that the squash court close to the bow was now 10 feet underwater.

01:04:51The fact that the squash court is flooded

01:04:53is a portent of Titanic's doom.

01:04:56It means water is now flooding through spaces that shouldn't be flooding.

01:05:00These aren't machinery spaces, these are now passenger spaces.

01:05:03The Titanic's designer, Thomas Andrews, knew his ship was doomed.

01:05:08He saw stewardess Annie Robinson not wearing a life preserver.

01:05:13Andrews absolutely insists he pleads with Annie to put her life belt on

01:05:18because he really wants her to set an example to all those many passengers

01:05:23who simply do not realise the danger they're in.

01:05:27Now, Annie's really reluctant, but Andrews just says,

01:05:30if you value your life, put your belt on.

01:05:36Helen Churchill Candie and a friend headed up to the lifeboat deck.

01:05:41They were about to step on a stairway that was a ladder,

01:05:44but they had to stand back because the stokers were coming up

01:05:47from the engine room in a line, faces blackened with soot,

01:05:52grim faces, anguished faces,

01:05:56as if they knew what nobody else knew

01:06:00and that the boat had been badly damaged.

01:06:03And then she heard the captain shout,

01:06:07and made them turn around and go back down into the engine room

01:06:12where they knew that they would not survive.

01:06:28At the auction of Titanic artefacts in Wiltshire,

01:06:31lot 275 is about to go under the hammer.

01:06:35A rare Titanic deck blanket taken into a lifeboat by a passenger

01:06:40fleeing the sinking ship.

01:06:43So, away we go, and we start off at £60,000.

01:06:49It's an iconic Titanic moment, I think,

01:06:52to imagine particularly the first-class passengers on a chair on deck.

01:06:56They've got their cup of warm tea and their blanket on,

01:06:59but of course the night of the sinking,

01:07:01the blankets took on a completely different use and meaning.

01:07:07A lot of passengers have left their rooms, grabbed their lifebelts,

01:07:11they are not dressed appropriately,

01:07:13people are in pyjamas, people are in nightdresses,

01:07:16and so blankets become this weird symbol.

01:07:19They represent survival, they represent warmth.

01:07:2375, 76, 76.

01:07:28He says 77.

01:07:30At £76,000 for the last call...

01:07:39An hour after the iceberg hit,

01:07:42the first lifeboat was lowered into the cold Atlantic.

01:07:46The Titanic had 20 lifeboats.

01:07:49Together, they could hold just 1,178 people.

01:07:53That was barely half the number on board.

01:07:56But for 1912, the ship was considered well-equipped.

01:08:00It had four more lifeboats than regulations required.

01:08:04Other liners had even fewer lifeboats.

01:08:07If the German ship America, for example, had sunk,

01:08:10you would have had 2,000 passengers in crew

01:08:13who would have very quickly discovered there were no lifeboats for them.

01:08:17The first lifeboats were launched half-empty.

01:08:20Many passengers refused point-blank to leave the security of the ship.

01:08:26Lucy Duff Gordon, a passenger in lifeboat one, wrote...

01:08:30I shall never forget how black and deep the water looked below us,

01:08:35and how I hated leaving the big homely ship for this frail little boat.

01:08:42Beverly Roberts knows very little about what happened that night

01:08:46to her great-grandparents, Henry and Kate,

01:08:49but their daughter, Beverly's grandmother, gave her one clue.

01:08:53When she was being chastised as a child, Kate would say,

01:08:56don't give me that look, don't look at me with those eyes,

01:08:59because that's how your father looked at me

01:09:01when I was going down into the lifeboat.

01:09:08It was almost two hours since the Titanic hit the iceberg.

01:09:12Lifeboat 14 was being lowered down the side of the ship.

01:09:16Passengers were wrapped in overcoats and blankets against the cold.

01:09:22Dorothy Kendall's mother and grandmother were on board.

01:09:26As they were going down in the lifeboat,

01:09:29they were looking through the portholes,

01:09:32and they could see passengers just grabbing what they could

01:09:36and then making their way to the boat deck.

01:09:39And then the next one down, they were doing the same.

01:09:42And then when they got right to the bottom,

01:09:45there was water already in the cabins.

01:09:49Meanwhile, in the wireless room,

01:09:51the two operators were sending out desperate pleas for help.

01:09:55One liner, the Carpathia, had responded and was heading for them,

01:09:59but it was 60 miles away.

01:10:02On the Titanic, panic was setting in.

01:10:05You have reports of gunfire, you have reports of fighting,

01:10:09you have reports of just sheer chaos.

01:10:12This picture, drawn within weeks of the disaster,

01:10:15for the newspaper The Sphere,

01:10:17is one of the most realistic depictions of the drama on the boat deck.

01:10:21To make it as accurate as possible,

01:10:24the artist, an Italian called Fortunino Mattania,

01:10:27spoke to a steward from the Titanic

01:10:30at great length to get the details just right.

01:10:33The steward remembered the single shoe on the deck

01:10:36and the man in the dinner jacket not wearing his life belt.

01:10:41Second-class passengers Joseph and Juliette Laroche

01:10:45and their two young girls were caught up in the confusion.

01:10:49Juliette got separated and then she's thrust onto this lifeboat

01:10:53with one of her children.

01:10:55But apparently Joseph is seen holding his other daughter

01:10:59above all the chaos.

01:11:01Everyone's panicking, but he wants to get her safe.

01:11:04So he finds his wife and his other child,

01:11:07puts her in, assures his wife that there'll be other lifeboats.

01:11:11I wonder if he knew at that point if there would be another lifeboat,

01:11:15but it's about getting his wife and children to safety.

01:11:21As second-class passengers,

01:11:23the Laroche family could join first class on the lifeboat deck.

01:11:27But those in third class were hindered by American regulations

01:11:31concerning the spread of disease on liners.

01:11:36You have a crew that have been told they need to keep third class

01:11:40separate from first and second class unless in an emergency,

01:11:43and that even when they do realise it's an emergency,

01:11:46they're struggling to communicate with them.

01:11:48And many passengers in third class,

01:11:50indeed many passengers on the Titanic,

01:11:52belong to an inherently conservative and respectful generation.

01:11:56And in this particular set of circumstances,

01:11:58that is to their disadvantage

01:12:00in that they are waiting to be told what to do.

01:12:03And as no firm instructions are coming,

01:12:06many of them simply sit and wait until it's too late.

01:12:14By 217, all the lifeboats had gone.

01:12:19Hundreds fought their way up the sloping deck to the stern.

01:12:23The massive funnels started to fall towards the people in the water.

01:12:28These incredible pieces of machinery,

01:12:30each standing about as high as a four- or five-storey building,

01:12:33were coming down onto the very heads of the passengers

01:12:36who once looked at them as a symbol of Edwardian might.

01:12:41Steward Sidney Daniels jumped into the water

01:12:44and swam towards an upturned lifeboat,

01:12:47photographed here a few days later.

01:12:49Already there were more than 20 people on.

01:12:52As he got nearer, he could see the people in the water.

01:12:56And as he got nearer, he could see that there was just enough gap

01:12:59for one person, maybe two at a pinch, to get on.

01:13:02So he clambered on, and he managed to get onto that space.

01:13:08The Titanic pointed towards the sky,

01:13:10in the words of one passenger,

01:13:12like a sinister finger.

01:13:15Titanic was never designed

01:13:17to have an entire third of her length out of the water.

01:13:21Of course, it becomes too much.

01:13:23Right at the very end, the lights snap out.

01:13:25Around about the same time,

01:13:27Titanic's back is dramatically broken.

01:13:31The submerged bow section

01:13:33started to slowly pull the rest of the Titanic down.

01:13:37Dad said there was an explosion, like a big noise,

01:13:41and then the stern came up, almost vertical,

01:13:44and he said it was quite an experience to watch.

01:13:48And she was gone.

01:13:54The pride of the White Star fleet slipped below the waves,

01:13:58two hours and 40 minutes after the iceberg hit.

01:14:06For those in the water, the ordeal wasn't over.

01:14:11First-class passenger Archibald Gracie

01:14:14was on the same upturned lifeboat as Sidney Daniels.

01:14:18The shrieks of the terror-stricken

01:14:20and the awful gaspings for breath

01:14:22of those in the last throes of drowning,

01:14:25none of us will ever forget to our dying day.

01:14:30The lifeboats drifted for four hours

01:14:33until the liner Carpathia came into view at dawn.

01:14:40The National Maritime Museum in London

01:14:42has a collection of photographs

01:14:44taken by a passenger on the Carpathia.

01:14:52They essentially just show the minute size of these boats

01:14:56against the vastness of the ocean,

01:14:59and it brings to light just how lucky these people are

01:15:02to have survived the disaster.

01:15:05One photograph shows lifeboat 14,

01:15:08skippered by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe.

01:15:11Despite there being almost no wind at all,

01:15:14he was the only man who decided to raise the sail in the boat.

01:15:18It's here just capturing a tiny gasp of wind

01:15:21as it's on the horizon.

01:15:23On board were Dorothy Kendall's grandmother and mother.

01:15:28My mother said,

01:15:29the bitter cold seemed to get through to their bones, you know?

01:15:35The lifeboat was surrounded by bodies in the water.

01:15:39Officer Lowe turned them over to some of them

01:15:42to see if they were still alive,

01:15:44but my mother said they were frozen to death.

01:15:47They didn't drown, she said, they were frozen.

01:15:52The Titanic had been designed to keep each social class apart.

01:15:57In the lifeboats, that segregated world disappeared.

01:16:01Everyone was thrown together for the first time.

01:16:05So you've got interactions between people

01:16:08who would not normally have interacted on board the Titanic itself.

01:16:13Everyone is cold, everyone is frightened.

01:16:17But on board you get small-scale domestic dramas.

01:16:21Some women complain that men are drinking.

01:16:24Others complain that people are smoking.

01:16:27So these small-scale incidences get amplified

01:16:31in the extraordinary circumstances of the lifeboat.

01:16:38Rosemary Gilliam's great-grandmother, Helen Churchill Candy,

01:16:42was in lifeboat six.

01:16:44In the stern was Robert Hitchens,

01:16:46who had been steering the Titanic when she struck the iceberg.

01:16:51Helen described Hitchens as a brute of a man

01:16:54who was just out to take care of himself.

01:16:57He'd borrowed one of the steamer rugs which he'd wrapped himself up in.

01:17:02He refused to turn back to pick up any other passengers.

01:17:06They were already in the water.

01:17:08He said that the nearest land was 1,200 miles away,

01:17:11that they didn't stand a chance anyway,

01:17:13so he didn't want to turn around.

01:17:17Simone Laroche was only three when she was rescued,

01:17:21but remembered it for the rest of her life.

01:17:24Simone talks about getting on board the Carpathia

01:17:27and being hoisted in sacks, and she remembers that,

01:17:30and perhaps not about the actual Titanic itself.

01:17:34So that bit must have been the most traumatic for her,

01:17:37and obviously being hoisted and being away from her mother

01:17:40and the trauma of that.

01:17:43Reports of the disaster

01:17:45reach Britain and the United States within hours.

01:17:51The news had the greatest impact in Southampton,

01:17:54home for three-quarters of Titanic's crew.

01:17:59A remarkable book in the city's archives

01:18:02shows the effect of the sinking on the lives of local children.

01:18:07Historian Julie Cook's great-grandfather

01:18:10was a stoker who went down with a ship.

01:18:13This is the logbook from Northam Girls' School,

01:18:16which was in Northam, the area of Southampton

01:18:18where many of the crew lived,

01:18:20and Annie Hopkins, the headmistress,

01:18:22wrote various journal entries throughout the year,

01:18:25and in this particular entry, on April 15th, 1912,

01:18:29she wrote,

01:18:30A great many girls are absent this afternoon

01:18:33owing to the sad news regarding the Titanic.

01:18:36Fathers and brothers are on the vessel,

01:18:38and some of the little ones in school

01:18:40have been in tears all the afternoon.

01:18:44There was a lot of confusion at the time

01:18:46as to whether the Titanic had sunk,

01:18:48whether everybody was saved.

01:18:49There were lots of different newspaper reports

01:18:51coming in different editions of the local newspaper,

01:18:53and yet this headteacher knew from somewhere what had happened,

01:18:58or these children knew from somewhere,

01:19:00and there was a great deal of word of mouth

01:19:02in those communities back in Southampton.

01:19:04Two days later, Annie Hopkins wrote another entry in the logbook.

01:19:09I feel I must record the sad aspect in school today

01:19:13owing to the Titanic disaster.

01:19:15So many of the crew belong to Northam,

01:19:17and it is pathetic to witness the children's grief.

01:19:20In some cases, faith and hope of better news.

01:19:23The attendance is suffering.

01:19:29Everyone was in mourning.

01:19:30Children would often play in the streets,

01:19:32with their hoops.

01:19:33They didn't.

01:19:34There wasn't a sound in the street.

01:19:36Everyone stayed inside.

01:19:37Many children were in grief.

01:19:39Some are still hopeful.

01:19:40Some don't know if their father's coming home,

01:19:42and yet they were still at school.

01:19:44They were still attending and hoping,

01:19:46clinging to hope perhaps that their father would come home.

01:19:49For most, their hope was short-lived.

01:19:52The Carpathia picked up only 212 crew members

01:19:57out of a total of almost 900.

01:20:01The Titanic story now became about helping the survivors

01:20:06and recovering the dead.

01:20:19After a three-day voyage, the Carpathia reached New York

01:20:23with over 700 survivors of the Titanic on board.

01:20:28The American press had chartered a boat,

01:20:31competing amongst themselves to get a scoop.

01:20:34As the Carpathia steamed past,

01:20:36reporters with megaphones were making offers

01:20:39of $50 or $100 for eyewitness accounts.

01:20:45When the reporters were eventually allowed on board,

01:20:48they interviewed anyone with any form of connection

01:20:51with the disaster, even the Carpathia's young

01:20:54and very excited waiters and stewards.

01:20:57One of those filmed for cinema newsreels

01:21:00was 18-year-old English waiter Robbie Purvis.

01:21:04Pauline Weekes is Robbie's daughter.

01:21:08They've got their love jackets on, from the look of it.

01:21:11It looks like they're all having a good time

01:21:14showing off in front of the camera.

01:21:17I'm lucky to have film footage of my dad when he's young.

01:21:21Not many people have film footage of their fathers like this.

01:21:27Robbie had a memorable tale to tell.

01:21:32A baby close to death had been rescued.

01:21:36His clothes were wet, it was icy cold,

01:21:39and he tried to save it and he took it to the hot plate,

01:21:43which was used for keeping food hot,

01:21:46and lowered the heat so that it was just warm

01:21:50and the baby got warm through and it survived.

01:21:55We're always proud of him for looking after the baby

01:21:58because somebody of his age would not necessarily have thought about it.

01:22:04Back out at sea, a steward on a German liner

01:22:08photographed an iceberg streaked with red paint.

01:22:12It's believed to be the one that sank the Titanic.

01:22:16A few miles away, hundreds of bodies were still in the water.

01:22:20The White Star Line charted a ship, the Mackay-Bennett, to recover them.

01:22:25She sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, two days after the sinking.

01:22:31On board were hastily built coffins,

01:22:34a priest, a team of undertakers and an embalmer.

01:22:38The Mackay-Bennett retrieved 306 corpses.

01:22:42After almost a week in the water,

01:22:44116 were either too disfigured or decomposed to be identified,

01:22:49and so were buried at sea.

01:22:56Today, possessions from Titanic's passengers are highly sought after.

01:23:03At the auction in Wiltshire,

01:23:05a water-stained pocket watch is coming under the hammer.

01:23:09Is there any more?

01:23:11£75,000 on the sour rum.

01:23:14Go in.

01:23:16And gone.

01:23:18It was found by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett

01:23:21on the body of Jewish passenger Sinai Cantor

01:23:24and given back to his grieving family.

01:23:27He was headed from what was then Russia,

01:23:31we now know as Belarus, with his wife, Miriam.

01:23:34They were in second class.

01:23:36They were headed to the United States to study medicine,

01:23:39to start these new lives,

01:23:41and unfortunately, he did not survive.

01:23:44She did.

01:23:46Her husband's life is stopped in that moment

01:23:48when the pocket watch stops,

01:23:50and it's a very powerful image.

01:23:53I think there's a real poignancy to thinking about people's hopes and dreams

01:23:56and the fact that you can't take very much with you

01:23:59when you make a journey like that,

01:24:01so everything that they carried must have had a value or a meaning,

01:24:04a reason for being packed,

01:24:06to me makes them more poignant than the first-class passengers

01:24:10in the sense that there was so much resting on this journey for them

01:24:13and so many hopes invested in what they were doing.

01:24:23710 people survived the sinking of the Titanic.

01:24:27Just over 1,500 died.

01:24:31Among those who perished was Joseph Laroche,

01:24:35heading home to Haiti.

01:24:40Henry Pugh's great-uncle, Titanic stoker Percy.

01:24:46Dorothy Kendall's grandfather, Thomas,

01:24:49hoping to start a new life in America.

01:24:54And Beverly Falmer's great-grandfather, Henry.

01:25:00Nine months after the loss of the Titanic,

01:25:03his partner Kate gave birth to baby Ellen.

01:25:11Gene Legg's father was one of the lucky ones.

01:25:15Sydney went on to have a long career as a steward for the White Star Line.

01:25:20His signing-on book is testament to how highly the company thought of him.

01:25:25He went back to sea and he sailed the same route

01:25:29from Southampton to New York that Titanic would have taken.

01:25:33He sailed that on his favourite liner, the Olympic.

01:25:41The Mackay-Bennett retrieved wreckage as well as bodies.

01:25:46The Titanic was the most opulent and colourful ship of her age

01:25:51and yet all that the Mackay-Bennett collected on its gruesome voyage

01:25:55were chairs and fragments of wood.

01:26:00The loss of the Titanic prompted an outpouring of public sympathy.

01:26:05Concerts were held to raise money for bereaved families.

01:26:09There was even a charity record called Be British.

01:26:14Be British was the cry as the ship went down

01:26:19Every man was steady at his core

01:26:25In May 1912, in Northam School in Southampton,

01:26:29over 100 pupils were taken out of class to be photographed by a local paper

01:26:34to raise awareness of the appeal.

01:26:38There are two photographs here of the older girls and the older boys

01:26:42who have all lost a father or a loved one on the Titanic.

01:26:45This photograph would have been taken right here against this wall,

01:26:48this part of the building.

01:26:50We're used to having our photographs taken as schoolchildren

01:26:53and lining up with our school friends, but this is something else.

01:26:56This is completely different.

01:26:58This is children who are united in grief.

01:27:00They've lost a father and they're all still...

01:27:02It's only a month later that these photographs are taken

01:27:05and they're all still reeling from the fact that their father won't be coming home.

01:27:10An official Titanic relief fund was set up to collect and distribute the money.

01:27:16Soon, over £418,000 was raised, around £30 million today.

01:27:25Julie Cook's grandfather was a stoker who died on the Titanic.

01:27:29She's looking at the fund's account books in the Southampton archives.

01:27:35It reveals the Titanic's class divide didn't end when the ship sank.

01:27:41The money raised was not evenly distributed.

01:27:45It was arranged in Class A to Class G,

01:27:48so if you were Class A, you were the wife or dependent of an officer,

01:27:52and if you were Class G, you were the wife or dependent of a stoker

01:27:56or a boiler room man, such as my great-grandmother was.

01:27:59Emily, in Class G, received £0.126 a week.

01:28:04The widow of an officer would get as much as £2 a week.

01:28:09The money came with conditions.

01:28:11An official named Ethel Ward Newman cycled around Southampton,

01:28:16checking on the recipients.

01:28:18She became known as the Lady Visitor.

01:28:23She would go around the houses of those who were the dependents on the fund

01:28:27to check how they were living, to check where they were spending the money,

01:28:30to check they still needed the money, to check they hadn't remarried,

01:28:33because some of the women, if they did remarry,

01:28:36they were then no longer eligible for the fund from their husband's debt.

01:28:40I can imagine these women hurriedly cleaning their home,

01:28:43cleaning their children's dirty faces,

01:28:45hiding the liquor bottle, perhaps,

01:28:47and making sure everything was up to Ethel Newman's standards.

01:28:51But Mrs Newman wasn't only checking to see whether a widow had remarried.

01:28:56There is an entry here of a lady called Mrs Biggs

01:28:59who, unfortunately, due to her loss, she turned to alcohol.

01:29:03And there's an entry here that says,

01:29:05it was reported that Mrs Biggs has again been before the magistrates

01:29:09on a charge of drunkenness.

01:29:11It was reluctantly decided to suspend her allowance for a period of three months.

01:29:16And, of course, this wasn't fair,

01:29:18because Mrs Biggs, although she may have been buying alcohol

01:29:21to get over her grief or her trauma,

01:29:23she still needed money to pay her rent,

01:29:25to feed her children, to feed herself.

01:29:27And so it seems incredibly unkind by our standards

01:29:30that she would have been cut off in this way.

01:29:34Those who had survived the sinking faced a different kind of trauma.

01:29:38Many had to deal with survivor's guilt,

01:29:41and the men often faced public shaming.

01:29:44There was a lot written in the press,

01:29:46very common commentary about if a male survived,

01:29:50did they survive in the place of a woman, in the place of a child.

01:29:54Men were expected to explain why they survived.

01:29:58They were expected to defend their survival.

01:30:03Some felt compelled to tell their story.

01:30:06Charlotte Collier, who had lost her husband Harvey,

01:30:09was photographed with Marjorie, her daughter,

01:30:12and was interviewed by an American newspaper.

01:30:15I think her first interview was just a couple of days afterwards.

01:30:19She'd just lost her husband.

01:30:21She'd just seen all these people perish.

01:30:23It's my opinion that she was getting her counselling.

01:30:27She was getting her counselling before counselling was a thing.

01:30:30If that's how she wants to deal with it, then that's fine,

01:30:33but I think at the time she was criticised for that.

01:30:35No-one could really understand.

01:30:39Many couldn't cope with the trauma.

01:30:42At least 11 Titanic survivors took their own life,

01:30:46including stewardess Annie Robinson,

01:30:49who jumped off a ship in Boston Harbour,

01:30:52and the lookout Fred Fleet, who hanged himself in 1965.

01:31:01For over a century,

01:31:03the sinking of the Titanic has gripped the public's imagination,

01:31:07thanks in part to films such as A Night To Remember

01:31:11and James Cameron's Titanic.

01:31:13The iceberg gave the Titanic its immortality and popular culture,

01:31:18but it is the silver screen that made that enduring.

01:31:22It also is a crucial ingredient to why the Titanic remains so popular,

01:31:29such a source of fascination,

01:31:31because it is something that continues to appeal to people

01:31:35beyond simply an interest in history.

01:31:37It appeals to an interest in humanity

01:31:39and keeps the focus on the human tragedy of the Titanic.

01:31:48The enduring fascination with the Titanic

01:31:51encouraged many searches for the wreck.

01:31:54That came to an end in 1985,

01:31:57when the painstaking work of a team of marine archaeologists,

01:32:01led by American Robert Ballard, paid off.

01:32:06It was the first time anyone had seen the Titanic in 73 years.

01:32:13Rusting and slowly being lost to the ocean,

01:32:16the Titanic was once again seen in colour.

01:32:20But that colour is fading.

01:32:23When Titanic sails out in April 1912,

01:32:26she's this gleaming, colourful ship that really catches the eye.

01:32:32But now she's on the bottom of the seabed,

01:32:34all that colour is just draining away.

01:32:37And soon there won't be a wreck at all,

01:32:40because soon there will not be a Titanic.

01:32:43Such is the power of the Titanic story,

01:32:46the legend will endure, even when the wreck is no more.

01:32:51The Titanic continues to be a source of fascination for us

01:32:54for so many reasons, because let's face it,

01:32:56there have been other sinkings,

01:32:58but I think with this one, it took them two and a half hours to sink.

01:33:02So we have all those stories,

01:33:04whether it's the richest person in the world,

01:33:06whether it's the cabin crew,

01:33:08it will continue to thrill us and enthrall us for years to come.

01:33:13This drama, this soap opera played out as the ship sank,

01:33:17and we like to imagine ourselves on the deck,

01:33:22and we wonder what would we have done.

01:33:32Minute by minute decisions from London's life-saving trauma network.

01:33:36Starting tomorrow night at nine, it's Emergency on Channel 4,

01:33:39and a star of the silver screen and Britain's favourite furniture fixer,

01:33:43and together they're the best of friends.

01:33:45It's Dame Judy and Jay, The Odd Couple, next Sunday at nine.

01:33:48Tom Cruise in his way in next tonight is Jack Reacher, Never Go Back.

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