BBC_Ships That Changed the World_1of3_Titanic and the Race for the Atlantic
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00:00When the Roland-Roloff Ferry named the Anvil Point was launched from Belfast's Holland
00:09and Wolfe shipyard on the 22nd of March 2003, it was hardly an earth-shattering event.
00:17This snub-nosed car ferry was one of six near-identical vessels built for the UK's Ministry of Defence.
00:25Despite the champagne send-off, the ceremony was as unremarkable as the ship itself.
00:32Nevertheless, the Anvil Point was assured a place in history, but for one simple reason.
00:37It was the last complete vessel to be built in what was once the greatest shipyard in
00:42the world.
00:43At that time, it seemed 150 years of shipbuilding would end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
00:50The once-mighty shipbuilders had reached an all-time low, but they survived, just as
00:56they'd done many times before.
00:59In fact, their entire history is a tale of triumph over adversity, on a global scale.
01:07When the Europe of old was disintegrating, the ships they built brought young blood to
01:16the new world.
01:18They played a part in the shaping of the fortunes of whole empires, and the outcome of two world
01:24wars.
01:25They also gave the world its single most celebrated ship, even if that fame came at a terrible
01:32price.
01:38Although she is by far the most famous, the Titanic was just one of nearly 2,000 ships
01:42built by Holland & Wolff during the company's history.
01:45In fact, remarkable as it may seem, the shipyards of Belfast once produced no less than one-eighth
01:51of the world's total shipping output.
01:55The story of how that came to be is a saga on a scale as grand as the Titanic itself.
02:15Before the advent of the airplane, it was command of the oceans that determined the
02:25shapes of empires.
02:28The true measure of a nation's greatness was in the strength of its ships, and Victorian
02:33Britain was no exception.
02:36In the mid-1800s, steam and iron were about to revolutionise shipbuilding.
02:42As for the centre of excellence that would power this revolution, Belfast must have seen
02:47an unlikely candidate.
02:53Only the most fervent optimist would have predicted the success that lay ahead.
03:01Ireland was a latecomer to the so-called Second Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century.
03:08The country was still reeling from the devastation of the famine, less than two decades earlier.
03:13With a million dead from starvation and disease, and a further million lost through emigration.
03:22A load escaped the worst of the ravages of the Great Hunger itself.
03:25There was a large influx of famine victims from rural areas, desperate for work.
03:31Already one of Ireland's busiest ports, Belfast was one of the fastest growing population
03:36centres in the United Kingdom in the 19th century.
03:39Like some burgeoning boomtown on the American frontier, the deal in Belfast was simple.
03:44If you didn't work, you starved.
03:48Cotton and linen were the main industries, while the production of factory machinery
03:52produced only light engineering work.
03:57Tobacco had been an important employer, even before the arrival of Gallagher's factory
04:01in 1863.
04:05But the demand for work generally outstripped the supply, and with no welfare state, the
04:10capital was a pitiless place to be unemployed.
04:16Grounding poverty was evident throughout the city.
04:18Its slums were amongst the worst in Europe, and Belfast claimed the highest mortality
04:23rate of any city in the British Isles.
04:27Here, as in many cities throughout Britain, this impoverished underclass became an essential
04:33raw material, fuelling the surge in technology and industry that became the hallmark of the
04:39Victorian era.
04:43Whilst the British Empire undoubtedly led the Second Industrial Revolution, others,
04:47including France, the Low Countries and Germany, were catching up fast.
04:57The new technologies of steam railways, electricity and the telegraph were driving an economic
05:02boom for the elite who controlled them.
05:06But for the labour class, drawn from their life in the fields to the choking urban factories,
05:11disease, hardship and squalor simply came with the job.
05:19Back in Northern Ireland, the Industrial Age was kick-started when the Belfast Harbour
05:23Commissioners cut a channel across one of the River Lagons curves.
05:28This created a new piece of land called Queen's Island, offering more room and greater potential
05:34to shipbuilders.
05:37When a promising young Yorkshire engineer called Edward James Harland arrived to take
05:41up the position of shipyard manager, the 23-year-old was already a hard taskmaster.
05:49Harland's tender years hardly endeared him to the workforce, nor did the higher standards,
05:53lower wages and a smoking ban, which he implemented shortly after arriving there.
05:58He'd walk through the yard chalk in hand, marking off inferior workmanship.
06:02This drive for perfection fuelled his unpopularity, almost to the point of a walkout.
06:09But Harland's firebrand leadership ultimately won him the respect of his workforce and soon
06:14he was offered the chance to buy the company for £5,000.
06:24To raise the necessary finances, Harland turned to a wealthy shipping financier he had met
06:29during his apprenticeship.
06:33Gustavus Christian Schwab isn't exactly a household name, yet he played an instrumental
06:38role in the early success of the world's greatest shipyard.
06:44It was his backing that allowed Harland to accept the offer and make the shipyard his
06:48own.
06:50It was Schwab that provided this new company with its first three orders.
06:55And it was Schwab's nephew, Gustav Wilhelm Wulf, who had been Harland's loyal assistant
07:00throughout the recent near-mutiny at the yard.
07:04When the young assistant was made partner in 1861, an historical alliance between German
07:10efficiency and British technology was forged.
07:15Harland and Wulf was born.
07:22Almost immediately, they began developing radical new ship designs.
07:29Squarer hulls accommodated larger loads.
07:33Steel decks rather than wood made for a much stronger structure.
07:37And a greater length-to-width ratio increased their ship's speed and efficiency and gave
07:42them a sleeker look.
07:45All this brought business success and greater employment.
07:49But it would be wrong to suggest it was all plain sailing.
07:53As early as 1868, just a year after the firm had officially become Harland and Wulf, the
07:58partners already had racked up losses of £16,000.
08:02And to make matters worse, they had to complete at their own expense the as yet unnamed ship
08:07number 44.
08:08Again, Schwab came to the rescue.
08:11By finding a buyer for the ship, he set in motion a historic partnership that would have
08:16repercussions well into the next century.
08:22The new buyer was Thomas Henry Ismay, a young Liverpool shipowner who had recently purchased,
08:28yet again with Schwab's help, a small bankrupt shipping company for the grand sum of £1,000.
08:36Ismay desperately needed more passenger ships for his fledgling business, while Harland
08:41and Wulf ship number 44 was up for grabs.
08:45So the ever-generous Schwab coughed up a quarter of the finance to help Ismay acquire the vessel
08:51for his new shipping company.
08:53And the name of the company was the White Star Line.
08:58Together, these two companies were set to become the greatest suppliers of shipping
09:03in the world.
09:05And the demand to meet that supply was already well-established.
09:18With the American Civil War behind it, the United States was booming.
09:24The shipping giant Cunard had introduced the first transatlantic passenger service in 1840,
09:30and in the half-century since, the population of the US had quadrupled.
09:37Immigrants poured in, mainly from Europe, including the hundreds of thousands of Irish
09:42who had fled the famine.
09:46There was even a sustained demand for the return journey, since many who arrived soon
09:51found the former colony fell short of their expectations.
09:57During these same five decades, an estimated 100,000 immigrants returned to their European
10:03homes, despite the poverty and disease that had driven them away in the first place.
10:12As a direct result of this burgeoning migration, ships were growing larger and faster.
10:18Cunard was the biggest name in shipping at the time, but they provided a mainly first-class
10:23service for the wealthy.
10:25The bulk of the new demand came from the huge numbers of working-class or steerage passengers.
10:35So the new partnership of Holland & Wolff and the White Star Line began gearing itself
10:40up to break into this highly lucrative market.
10:47It was over an after-dinner game of billiards at Schwab's Liverpool home that Wolff, the
10:51shipbuilder, and Ismay, the shipowner, forged their historical alliance.
11:00The business arrangement was straightforward enough.
11:05Ismay would agree to have all his ships built by Holland & Wolff on a cost-plus-percentage
11:10basis, and in return, the yard would not build for any of White Star's rivals.
11:18Schwab would mobilize the finances, and no complex legal contracts would be required.
11:24Just a simple letter of agreement for each ship, signed by both parties.
11:31There was effectively a declaration of war on Cunard and the other transatlantic rivals,
11:36including those of Germany and America.
11:40The stakes were enormous, and to the victor would go the spoils.
11:49So began the rivalry between the two companies that would last well into the next century,
11:54producing ever bigger and more luxurious liners.
12:08As Holland & Wolff's workforce swelled to meet the new demand, political tension began
12:12to set in.
12:15This was a time when the Home Rule movement was gathering momentum, with nationalists
12:19seeking to break the union with Great Britain and restore internal government to Ireland.
12:26At the shipyard, there was widespread discrimination and even violence against Catholics.
12:32It was the Protestant workers who traditionally had the required skills and education, and
12:38since apprentices were usually spoken for by personal recommendation, the workforce
12:43stayed overwhelmingly Protestant.
12:47As future unionist MPs, neither Holland nor Wolff did much to discourage the sectarianism
12:54that naturally followed.
12:59But none of this affected the quality of their work.
13:10The pioneer vessel and pride of the White Star Line was the 420-foot Oceanic, which
13:16caused a sensation on the 16th of March, 1871, when she first arrived in New York, greeted
13:23by 50,000 well-wishers.
13:25In a taste of much greater things to come, a large part of her celebrity was due to the
13:32sheer level of luxury she offered her most valued passengers.
13:52For the very first time, the ocean-going aristocracy had their own individual dining room chairs
13:56as opposed to the long benches of the Oceanic's predecessors, and they sat in opulent dining
14:02saloons and cabins, centrally located on the ship, to keep engine noise and vibration to
14:07a minimum.
14:08Within a decade, the opulence of first-class quarters was on par with the top hotels of
14:14Europe.
14:24Demand for the transatlantic market was cutthroat, and the resulting ships evolved at breakneck
14:29speed.
14:33In less than 20 years, passenger ships more than quadrupled in size, gaining speed and
14:38par with each new launch.
14:42Before the century was out, the world had seen the launch of the White Star's Oceanic
14:47II, at a record-breaking 17 and a quarter thousand tons.
14:54Quite simply, it was an arms race, one that would eventually lead to disaster.
15:03While this ferocious commercial war raged between White Star, Cunard, and several smaller
15:08companies, a similar rivalry was emerging among the many powers in Europe.
15:17Britain was undisputedly the richest and most powerful amongst a handful of empires across
15:22the world.
15:24Its naval fleet was at least twice the size of its nearest rivals, France and Germany,
15:30combined.
15:31Its rule extended over one quarter of the Earth's surface, and governed a third of the
15:36people living at the time.
15:41But a newly established German empire had seen some 30 or so disparate independent states
15:46united under the Prussian Prime Minister, Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of
15:53Germany.
15:55He engineered wars against Denmark, Austria, and France in pursuit of his life's dream
16:00of a unified Germany, and then set about building alliances throughout Europe to protect it
16:06from the threat of retribution.
16:11Germany held close ties with the still-powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire.
16:16Britain, despite its splendid isolation, would forge a military agreement with Japan, and
16:23was loosely allied to France, which was bound by treaty to Russia.
16:28Russia was sympathetic to Serbia, who in turn was at odds with Austro-Hungary, while Italy
16:36was caught somewhere in the middle.
16:40The sheer complexity of this tangled political web made its eventual collapse almost inevitable.
16:56This tangle of treaties and alliances left Europe, and increasingly parts of Africa and
17:00Asia, unstable, with a powerful yet isolated Germany at the heart.
17:05It certainly contributed to the attraction of a new life in America, and added to Europe's
17:10flow of poor across the Atlantic.
17:16Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, implored the Statue of Liberty as
17:21she stared back towards the old world, and wave after wave of immigrants answered her
17:27call.
17:29The shipping companies fought desperately to accommodate this huge market, drastically
17:35cutting their fares in the process, and one American in particular began to smell an opportunity.
17:43John Pierpont Morgan was a man of physically intimidating stature, with piercing, no-nonsense
17:50eyes, but a hatred of being photographed due to his bulbous, purple nose.
17:57This aversion to publicity, however, didn't prevent him from becoming one of the most
18:01powerful financiers in U.S. history.
18:05Here is a man so ludicrously wealthy that when the U.S. Federal Treasury almost ran
18:10out of gold in the so-called Panic of 1893, the President asked him for a loan of $65
18:17million.
18:18To say that he had an eye for a business opportunity would be a bit of an understatement.
18:24When Morgan turned his attention to transatlantic shipping, he entered the race with a typically
18:29ferocious business approach.
18:32He had no intention of bothering with anything so trifling as fare cutting.
18:36Instead, he would simply buy up all the transatlantic shipping companies.
18:42Then he could charge what he liked.
18:49Morgan established a shipping superpower called International Mercantile Marine, or IMM.
18:56He snapped up every available passenger line he could buy, both in Europe and America.
19:02But what he really needed was one of the two big British companies.
19:08When he attempted to buy Cunard, Morgan was thwarted by the financial intervention of
19:11the British government, keen to avoid losing such a lucrative enterprise to an American.
19:16White Star were equally opposed to the advances of the encroaching mogul, with the aging Thomas
19:22Henry Ismay leading the opposition.
19:30It seemed Morgan could go no further in his plans to conquer British shipping.
19:37But when Ismay died in 1899, he left the White Star line in the hands of his relatively inexperienced
19:44son, Joseph Bruce Ismay.
19:48This was good news for J.P. Morgan.
19:52Ismay Jr. put up much less of a fight than his father, and as it turned out, he wasn't
19:57the only one who was open to doing business with the American tycoon.
20:01Morgan already had a firm ally at Holland and Wolfe, one of the most colourful characters
20:06to emerge from the whole saga, and who would become probably the most powerful Ulsterman
20:11in history.
20:16William James Perry was born in Quebec in 1847, of Ulster Scots heritage.
20:25When his family returned to Northern Ireland, he joined Holland and Wolfe as a gentleman
20:30apprentice at just 15 years old.
20:33Such was his ambition and drive that within 12 years, he was made a partner of the company.
20:41When the shipyard's founder, Sir Edward Holland, died in 1885, Perry became chief executive
20:47and later, when Wolfe retired, chairman, a role he would hold for the rest of his life.
20:55But he was also a visionary designer who for almost half a century pioneered just about
21:00every significant development in maritime engineering, but most importantly, he was
21:05also an extremely shrewd businessman.
21:09As head of a shipbuilding company, it was really none of Perry's business who controlled
21:13the passenger routes to America, but he knew that having a billionaire tycoon on board
21:18could only be good for business.
21:22If Cunard and the British government didn't want to get into bed with J.P. Morgan, that
21:26was their loss.
21:29Perry acted as matchmaker between Morgan on the one hand and the young J. Bruce Ismay
21:35on the other.
21:38The relationship flourished into a marriage of convenience between American finances and
21:43British engineering.
21:46With a dowry of $10 million, Morgan's IMM bought the White Star Line, keeping Ismay
21:51on as chief executive.
21:55But there were three people in this marriage, since Perry also joined the board of IMM,
22:00giving him a unique position of power as both shipbuilder and shipowner.
22:06As the 20th century began, these three men had become the most powerful and influential
22:12in the history of shipping, and already at least one of them was planning to build the
22:17biggest ocean liners the world had ever seen.
22:20But he wasn't alone, because bigger and better ships were about to become the very
22:25essence of contemporary military thinking.
22:36Following the dismissal of Bismarck, Germany's military and naval affairs were now being
22:44overseen by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who made no secret of his ambitions to make Germany a
22:49world power.
22:52Wilhelm had always been hugely impressed by British shipping.
22:55When he had seen the White Star's Teutonic during a visit with his uncle, the Prince
22:59of Wales, he openly declared, we must have some of these.
23:04Carrying conflict on two fronts, with France and Russia, he began stepping up Germany's
23:09military strength, including his pet project of building a navy powerful enough to rival
23:14Britain's.
23:15The Royal Navy's response was typically arms race.
23:21They would simply go one better.
23:22In 1906, they unveiled their secret weapon, an entirely new class of warship, so advanced
23:29that the moment it hit the water, it made every other battleship in the world obsolete.
23:46Built in record time to preserve her secrecy, HMS Dreadnought was the sixth in the Royal
23:51Navy to carry that name, but in almost every other way, she was an original.
23:58The first of many to be built to the specification of the eccentric and flamboyant admiral of
24:03the fleet, Lord Fisher.
24:07She heralded a new class of British warship, typical of his vision of what a battleship
24:11should be, big, fast, and heavily armed.
24:20This was the first warship to be powered by steam turbines.
24:23At her launch, a top speed of over 20 knots made her the fastest large battleship in the
24:28world.
24:30She was also the first to carry a uniform battery of large guns, five twin turrets of
24:35two 12-inch guns each, thus greatly simplifying the firing process in battle.
24:43As a result, she could outrun any vessel with comparable guns and outgun any smaller ships
24:48that might be faster.
24:52As long as she stayed beyond the range of an enemy's secondary guns, she would have
24:57the military advantage.
24:59The whole point of this innovation was to send a clear message to Germany and to other
25:05nations not to mess with the Royal Navy.
25:09But this was an arms race, and the results were painfully predictable.
25:12Soon, Dreadnought-style ships appeared in all the major navies of the world, and before
25:19long, Belfast was to have her first taste of the oversized guns and turbine engines
25:25that powered these Dreadnoughts in the form of HMS Glorious, destined to become Holland
25:29and Wolff's first ever battlecruiser.
25:35But for now, the shipbuilders were still preoccupied with the more benign, though no less ferocious
25:40peacetime battle for the Atlantic.
25:54Holland and Wolff's partnership with the White Star Line now had the financial power of J.P.
25:59Morgan behind it.
26:01But their rivals, Cunard, had just won a major victory in this ongoing commercial war.
26:08In their attempts to keep Morgan out of the picture, the British government had bolstered
26:12Cunard's position with cheap loans and subsidies.
26:17This led to the creation of two giant ocean liners, the Lusitania and the Mauritania,
26:23the fastest and most luxurious Cunard would ever build.
26:30Where White Star's main concern was passenger comfort, their rivals now placed more emphasis
26:35on speed.
26:38The 25 knot Mauritania had captured the much coveted, though unofficial, Blue Ribboned
26:43Award for the fastest Atlantic crossing, an honour it would keep for more than 20 years.
26:52To White Star, this would have been a total PR disaster, except even before the maiden
26:58voyage of either of their rivals' flagships, Perry had conceived something much grander
27:04still.
27:08One summer evening in 1907, the increasingly ambitious shipbuilder and his wife, Margaret,
27:14invited J. Bruce Ismay and his wife, Florence, to their Mayfair residence in London.
27:23After dinner, Perry revealed his great plan.
27:26They would build three giant transatlantic super liners, more massive and opulent by
27:30far than anything yet seen.
27:35They began sketching Perry's dream, floating palaces, each larger than the last, each one
27:42holding in turn the title, the world's finest ship and the largest, designed to be nothing
27:49less than the greatest achievement of the era that would be called the Gilded Age.
27:55And their names would reflect their immense stature, the Olympic, the Titanic and the
28:01Gigantic.
28:09So much has been written and spoken about the Titanic that it's easy to overlook the
28:12skill, ambition and sheer audacity of the three sister ships taken as a whole.
28:22The technical drawings alone took over a year to complete.
28:27Then before any actual shipbuilding could begin, they first had to call in the same
28:31construction company that had built the fourth bridge in Scotland to construct the 6,000
28:36tonne Aral gantry, also the largest in the world and tall enough to accommodate St Paul's
28:42Cathedral.
28:43The shipyard already had the world's largest dry dock but ultimately even that had to be
28:49extended to accommodate the Olympic class liners.
28:52It was the same story in New York, a bit like today's airports, struggling to accommodate
28:58the world's largest passenger airliners.
29:01The New York City piers simply weren't big enough to accept the Olympic super liners.
29:07White Star's request to have the piers extended was flatly refused.
29:12The New York Port Authority said it would be a hazard to navigation on the Hudson.
29:17Only when the mighty J.P. Morgan, and he virtually owned the New York docks and could
29:21have brought the import-export business to a grinding halt, only when he stepped in was
29:26the decision reversed and the pier capacity enlarged.
29:32Morgan himself visited Belfast to keep an eye on his investment, inspecting the plans
29:37and checking details even down to the furniture that would be used.
29:42Of course, he held a personal interest in the Titanic in particular, since he would
29:48have the finest suite of all on B deck, complete with its own promenade and many more subtle
29:53luxuries such as cigar holders in the bathroom.
29:58In a time before arc welding, the three ships combined would require a total of nearly a
30:03billion iron rivets, more than three and a half thousand tonnes of them.
30:09To pull a wagon carrying just one of the fifteen-tonne anchors for the shipyard required
30:14twenty strong horses.
30:23Thousands of workers laboured for three years just to get the first two empty hulls afloat.
30:29To ease the twenty-six thousand tonne shells down these very slipways required twenty-three
30:36tonnes of tallow, soap and grease, much of which was then gathered up by the workers
30:41and taken home as a source of cheap toiletry.
30:44Once afloat, the fitting out process almost doubled their weight and took nearly a year
30:49for each ship.
30:53This would have included the installation of the swimming pool and Turkish baths, crystal
30:57chandeliers and candelabras, the fifty-line telephone exchange, two hundred miles of electric
31:05wiring which fed, amongst other things, the four elevators, ten thousand light bulbs and
31:12even the electric camel in the gymnasium.
31:15In contrast to the popular image, even steerage passengers were to enjoy greater comfort than
31:22ever before.
31:26Most would sleep in two berth cabins rather than a shared dormitory, while some in third
31:31class, the food they ate aboard the Titanic would be the best they ever tasted.
31:38Even if for many, it would also be the last.
31:45Overseeing all of this, of course, was the brilliant young Belfast engineer and designer,
31:50Thomas Andrews.
31:52As Perry's nephew, nepotism probably did play a part in his appointment, but his swift rise
31:58through Holland and Wolfe was entirely his own achievement.
32:04Like any other young apprentice, his parents would have paid the one hundred pound fee
32:08for him to join, and he soon distinguished himself in just about every department.
32:14It was sheer hard work, technical genius and downright likability which earned him the
32:21respect of both his men and his peers.
32:25The 35-year-old proudly took up office as Holland and Wolfe's managing director in 1907,
32:32just in time to start work on the world's biggest ships.
32:42As the Olympic neared completion, she was soon joined on the slipways by the Titanic,
32:47an extraordinary testament to this young man's meteoric success.
32:55On a clear night in 1910, just weeks ahead of the birth of his daughter Elizabeth, Thomas
33:03Andrews brought his pregnant wife Helen here to the shipyard to see the ship under construction.
33:09They came at night so that she could see Halley's Comet, which was clearly visible in the night
33:13sky.
33:15Little did he know the terrible irony that the next time Halley's Comet would appear
33:20in 1986 would be one year after the wreck of the Titanic had been discovered two and
33:26a half miles down on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and where Thomas Andrews' remains still
33:32lie.
33:50As news of the Titanic's horrific collision with the iceberg trickled back to Belfast,
33:57it was met with disbelief by the men who had toiled for years to build her.
34:07Grown men, hardened by years of back-breaking labour, wept openly as their realisation set
34:13in. Their ship of dreams was gone.
34:19Among the dead was the ship's designer, their friend, Thomas Andrews, last witness sitting
34:24silently, head and hands, as the final moments of his magnificent creation approached.
34:37Also lost was the ship's captain, Edward Smith, who, as tradition would have it, went down
34:43with his ship.
34:47Harry and Morgan never made it aboard due to ill health, and so were spared, while Ismay
34:53escaped in one of the lifeboats, only to be branded a card and forced to resign in disgrace.
35:00Most on board, however, shared no such good fortune.
35:05Fifteen hundred and thirteen men, women and children were lost, more than two-thirds of
35:11those on board.
35:15The optimism that fuelled a revolution in ship design sank along with the Titanic, and
35:21on the eve of the bloodiest conflict in history, the age of the Victorian giants was over.
35:35The SS Pneumatic is now the last White Star Line vessel left in the world.
35:43Originally built to ferry passengers between the shallow port at Cherbourg and the three
35:47Olympic class ships, she only ever pulled up alongside the Titanic once.
35:56It's almost a century since the Titanic was lost, and much of her story has been obscured
36:01in a fog of rumours, myths and conspiracy theories.
36:07Included amongst these is the swapping of the Olympic and Titanic's identities as part
36:12of an elaborate insurance scam, though there is little evidence to support it.
36:17We do know the Titanic's crew received a total of twenty-one telegraphed ice warnings
36:24in the four days before she struck the iceberg, but that would have been entirely expected
36:29in the waters off Newfoundland at that time of year, so of course the warnings were ignored.
36:36The popular notion that Ismay and Captain Smith colluded in a frantic race to set a
36:40new speed record is certainly not true. As was well established at the subsequent enquiries,
36:47the ship wasn't sailing at full speed, and not all her boilers were lit.
36:54Titanic was built for comfort and fuel economy, not for speed, and arriving early in New York
37:00would only have inconvenienced her passengers. Of course it's well documented that there
37:08simply weren't enough lifeboats to go round, even though the ship fell well within the
37:13Board of Trade regulations, which called for a mere sixteen. In fact the Titanic's original
37:21design had specified in excess of sixty lifeboats, more than enough for everyone on board, but
37:27the number was whittled down to just twenty, purely for aesthetic reasons.
37:34But hindsight is a wonderful thing. It's now widely believed that had the Titanic been
37:41making only slightly less speed, or even had she not tried to turn away and steer out of
37:47the situation and struck buoy on, she would have survived. Perhaps the greatest tragedy
37:51then is it all so easily could have been avoided.
37:59And perhaps that's why the story of the Titanic still resonates so profoundly today.
38:07This was no ordinary maiden voyage. For many, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to
38:18escape the oppression and injustice of the old class system in Europe. Who can say what
38:26a difference those fifteen hundred lost people, full of aspirations and dreams of a new life
38:33in America, would have made to the world had their journey continued without incident.
38:41As for the Titanic, had she survived, it's almost certain she would have suffered her
38:45sister's fate, stripped of her foundry and conscripted into the conflict that would soon
38:50follow. The first in history to be called a world war.