October 19, 2018 • 42 mins
For some reason our hearts keep going on and on for the Titanic. But what was life actually like on the ship? Why were there so many electric horses on board? How bad did the third class passengers have it? And did Hollywood really produce a silent movie about the disaster just 2 weeks after it occurred? Will and Mango investigate.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I guess what, mango, what's that? Well, you remember a
couple of weeks ago when the artist banks He pulled
that incredible prank on the entire auction world. Yeah, that
was when his painting just self destructed in front of everyone.
Wasn't it worth over a million dollars? It's actually one
point four million dollars. And the crazy part is they
say it's probably worth even more now and the person
who had bid on it, you know, has agreed to
(00:23):
pay that price. That's crazy. I mean, I guess it
does make it more unique, but it's still really weird
how much people will pay for things. No, it definitely is.
And actually I find this kind of thing fascinating. I mean,
it's it's always interesting to see what people will pay
big money for an auction. So I was recently looking
at this list of the things people have been on
over the years that are related to the Titanic disaster,
(00:46):
and one thing that went for even more than that
banks He painting is the violin played by William Hartley
as the Titanic sank that many of us have heard
this legend before, and it's of course impossible to verify,
you know, every piece of it, but the ideas that Hartley,
who was the band leader, that he asked his seven
musicians to keep playing as this ship was going down,
(01:08):
And so some tell the story that he led his
crew in playing Near My God to the and you know,
that may not be completely true. It does appear that
the musicians did maintain their composure and they continued playing
something what we don't know exactly what it was, but
that violin that hardly played sold back in two thousand
thirteen for one point seven million dollars. And I guess
(01:31):
it's really no surprise because, you know, more than a
hundred years after the tragic event, we're still fascinated by it.
So today we'll try to better understand why that is,
you know, and ask some of the questions like what
did people know about the Titanic before it set sail,
what was life like on board, and what were some
of the strange ways people chose to remember the ship
(01:52):
after the disaster. So let's get started, Hey, their podcast listeners,
(02:17):
welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer
and on the other side of the soundproof glass, wearing
a button that just says proud member of the Just
Mystic Club. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now
a lot of people don't know this, but Tristan very
nearly booked himself on a trip on the Titanic back
in nineteen twelve. Thankfully, the plan fell apart at the
(02:41):
very last minute, you know, on account of his not
having been born yet, so ultimately he missed the boat,
which is just such a lucky break. But you know,
Tristan isn't alone in telling tall tales about how he
narrowly escaped death on the Titanic. In fact, just five
days after the sinking, there are already press reports about
the so called just missed a Club and how it
(03:01):
already had six thousand, nine four members, And so this
was obviously tongue in cheek, but it was also kind
of true. Like a suspiciously large number of people had
come forward claiming they'd missed the boat because they've been
running late that morning, or they've gotten sick or whatever,
but everyone knew most of the stories were completely made up.
Like in one of the press reports I mentioned, they
had a sarcastic quote from a guy who said quote,
(03:23):
I count it lucky that I didn't have the money
to go abroad this year. If all of us who
just missed it had got aboard the Titanic, she would
have sunk at the Liverpool Dock from the overload. I'm
glad the public didn't fall for all these stories. I mean,
it's such a strange compulsion in the first place, you know,
to lie like that because I don't know, because you
want to attach yourself to a tragedy. But I guess
(03:46):
that goes to show how captivated people were by the
story of the Titanic. And the really amazing thing is
that more than a hundred years later, many of us
are still just as captivated. So at this point the
disaster it feels like it's taken on kind of a
mythical status and world culture, and it's become one of
those stories that everybody seems to know. In fact, I
(04:06):
read in Smithsonian that Titanic is actually the third most
recognized word in the world, just below God and Coca cola.
And you know, while it's true that interest in the
story has ebbed and flowed over time, it's still something
that we always seem to come back to. So today
we'll take a look at why that is and why
Titanic still fascinates us all these years later, and help
(04:29):
answer that. We'll talk about the impact the tragedy has
had on the world, both in the short term and
the long term, and we'll also dig a little deeper
into life aboard the ship, which you know, includes the
surprising stories of a few standout passengers. It's definitely a
lot to cover, so let's get to it. But but
where do you want to start, Mango, Well, I thought
we could start with one of the biggest reasons that
(04:50):
people have stayed invested in the Titanic, and that's just
the ship itself. So most of us know that at
the time it was the largest ocean liner ever constructed,
and more broadly, the large just men made moving object
in the world. It was about eight feet long and
a hundred seventy five ft tall, which means the ship
was as long as three football fields and as tall
(05:10):
as a seventeen story building. Isn't that insane? Yeah? I mean,
it was definitely a massive ship for its time, no
question about that, But it wouldn't really be that impressive
today though, right, I mean, we have cruise ships that
are more than four times that size now, So it
does make me wonder, like why the size of the
Titanic still captures people's interest. So I think it's partly
(05:30):
the perception that the Titanic was kind of tempting fate
in a way, like the fact that the ship held
that title as the world's largest and and then it
ended up sinking on his maiden voyage. It feels like
this cautionary tale about man's hubris in some people's minds,
Like it's almost like a Tower of Babble situation or
something where man kind of overreached and then was made
to suffer for it. And I think that still resonates
(05:52):
for people, especially since we've heard so many stories now
about how luxurious and decadent the ship was, especially compared
to others at the time. All right, well, before we
get to that fateful night with the iceberg, I do
want to spend a little more time on board and
and talk about a few of those decadit details that
you alluded to. So, for example, the Titanic was one
of the first ships to have electric lights in all
(06:14):
of its rooms. It also had way more amenities than
most other ships, and so just looking at the list,
here among those were four elevators, heated swimming pool, two
libraries to barbershops, a squash court, a Turkish bath, and
even it's on onboard newspaper called the Atlantic Daily Bulletin.
So I hadn't heard about the paper. I'm guessing that
(06:35):
means that they had a printing press on board. Yeah,
I mean there was a small print shop on the
D deck and and of course this was close to
the butcher's shop in case you're wondering, now I know
where I get my pastrom that's right. But I mean,
it really does feel like they thought about everything. My
favorite Titanic community, though it is probably the onboard gymnasium,
Like it had all the best equipment naturally, including old
(06:58):
standards like rowing machines, weights, punching bags, but it also
had this cutting edge gear, like they had two static
bicycles with two foot dials attached to show the distance
that had been traveled. And there were also a few
electric horses, which were these big mechanical saddles meant to
mimic riding a horse. I mean, does that even count
as exercise? It kind of feels like it would be
(07:20):
less of a workout for the rider than for the horse,
or I guess the saddle in this case. I mean,
I think it was supposed to strengthen your core or
maybe some leg muscles, but either way, I doubt any
of the passengers worked up that much of a sweat. Like,
if you look at pictures from floating gyms on the
Titanic and other ships of the era, most of the
passengers are exercising while they're wearing their full get up,
(07:42):
So it's like a bunch of releasedate and calm looking
people in these three piece suits or or like big
Edwardian dresses and hats, and they're just kind of halfheartedly
peddling on the bikes or whatever. It's it's pretty lazy looking. Yeah,
I've actually seen some of these pictures, and honestly, my
guess is that it's the first time in a gym
for most of them, because nobody looks like they know
(08:03):
what they're doing at all. I mean, it's a good
thing that they had a personal trainer on board the Titanic.
This is real. His name was Thomas McCauley, and it
was this guy's job to show passengers how to use
the equipment and even to provide one on one training sessions.
And it seems like McCauley took his job super seriously
because the night the ship sank, he actually chose to
(08:24):
stay at his post in the gym and go down
with the ship. Wait, seriously, I mean, I don't want
to speak ill of the dead, but that sort of
seems a little bit unnecessary. I mean, we did talk
about how the band chose to continue playing as the
ship sank, and to me though, that makes sense because
it was a way to sacrifice and to calm the passengers,
or to give them at least some sense of peace.
(08:47):
But I mean, why keep the gym open. I can't
imagine anybody was thinking, like, I think, I'll just get
in a few more reps before whatever happens here happens. Yeah.
Probably not. If anyone was trying to burn like a
few calories for the road, I really wouldn't blame them.
I mean, the meals on board the Titanic were pretty epic,
at least for the first class passengers, and so the
(09:07):
dinners were gourmet affairs with up to thirteen courses, each
of which came with its own paired wine. There was
also a pre dinner cocktail service that was added as
a concession to American passengers. Apparently European passengers weren't fans
of this idea because they thought mixed drinks ruined your
palette before eating. But from start to finish, these elaborate
meals could last as long as four or five hours,
(09:28):
and because the first class menu was actually later recovered,
we actually know exactly what the wealthiest Titanic passengers had
for dinner the night the ship went down, and it
was an incredible spread. The feast started with raw oysters
and a selection of order ivs, followed by a choice
of two soups. Then came a lightly pushed Atlantic salmon
topped with a rich moose. For the fourth and fifth courses,
(09:50):
passengers chose from such rich entrees as a filet mignon
or a lamb with mint sauce. And then at the
halfway point the meal this is on you get a
palate cleanser. It's it's a punch romain, which I guess
is a boozy mix and wine, rum and champagne. And
then once you've regained your appetite, the feasting resumes. There's
(10:13):
a roast squab course, cold asparagus, vinaigrette fois gras, and
then there's dessert, which includes peaches and shark trees, jelly chocolate,
Vanilla Claire's French ice cream, and then to close off
the meal, there's a variety of fruits, nuts, and cheeses
with coffee, poor cigars and cordials. It's pretty It feels
(10:34):
like they just accidentally went ahead and cooked everything for
the week for one meal. I don't even know how
these people would get up and walk after eating all
of this stuff. I don't feel like I could make
it through a single meal, I know, but if you
did want to try. They're actually places all over the
world that now offer dinners that recreate that last meal
that the first class passengers eight on the ship. And
(10:54):
it's kind of a cop but some people claim it's
a great way to humanize the tragedy or to understand
the history of it. The ethics acide like. The biggest
drawback is probably the price of these dinners. So, for instance,
there's one restaurant in Houston it offers a ten course
menu for a thousand dollars per person. There's also a
version of this on a luxury hotel in Hong Kong,
(11:15):
where um, the prices doubled because it reportedly serves this
vintage seven bottle of wine that's actually salvage from the
wreck of the Titanic. I like this idea that it's
somehow humanizes the tragedy by just sitting there and stuffing
yourself with all of this and drinking fancy old wine.
Don't forget. Yeah, well, I guess so. I guess they
know exactly what it was like to be on the
(11:36):
Titanic then, But it feels a little too rich for
my blood. I feel like maybe i'd spring for a
recreation of maybe like the third class dinner. I mean,
that's got to be a lot cheaper, right, Like I
imagined there were a bit more down to earth at
the second and third class tables, right, So I think
that's a really funny idea, But not as much as
you think, right. Like, so, the first and second class
(11:58):
dining rooms actually shared a galley, so there was probably
a good bit of crossover when it comes to what
was served, kind of like business of first class on
a plane or something. But the main difference would have
been that second class diners wouldn't have had all the
crazy wine pairings, a few of the other frills that
the first class people enjoyed, and honestly, even third class
passengers didn't have it too bad when it came to food.
(12:18):
So there was a lot less lamb with mint sauce
and a lot more roast beef and boiled potatoes. But
you actually wouldn't hear that many people complaining about it.
At the time, most ocean liners required third class passengers
to bring their own food to last the entire voyage,
which would have made the Titanics prepared meals seemed really
decadent to most people. I mean, the same can't be
(12:39):
said for the accommodations, though there were actually only two
bathtubs for all seven third class passengers to share. Oh gosh, well,
let's let maybe let's not dwell on that. But getting
back to the food, it's hard for me to even
wrap my head around the amount of work that must
have gone into feating this many people and multiple times
a day, Like there were need two hundred people aboard
(13:01):
the Titanic. You've got passengers nine crew members, so they're
just doing the math, like three meals a day, that
sixty meals that the kitchens had to crank out every
twenty four hours, and it must have been a pretty
colossal effort. It definitely was. So I read this interview
with Dana McCauley. She co wrote a book called Last
Dinner on the Titanic, and she says the Titanics kitchen
(13:23):
crew included a hundred thirteen cooks, fifteen first cooks who
supervised things, twelve pastry chefs, six bakers, five butchers, and
five sous chefs. And you know, you think about that,
that's not even mentioning the dozens of waiters or bus
boys that each meal required. Yeah, I mean, that's a
pretty huge staff, but I'm actually a bit surprised it's
not even bigger when you consider how many people they
(13:45):
were feeding and just the level of sheer variety on
those menus that you talked about. But you know, since
you mentioned the Titanics bakers, I want to take a
second and talk about the ship's chief baker. He was
a guy named Charles Joffin, and he was a sort
of either of the wreck and live for decades afterward,
but he was also examined as part of a British
inquiry after the accident, and the picture he paints during
(14:09):
his testimony is really pretty amazing. So after the Titanic
hits the iceberg, sorry for the spoiler there, but Charles
immediately gets to work and he starts rounding up all
the bread he can find to help bolster their provisions
and all the lifeboats. Now he ends up sending something
like forty pounds of bread loaves to the upper decks,
and then he heads back to his cabin where he
(14:30):
proceeds to steal himself with what he called, quote a
drop of liqueur, and I have a feeling was a
little more than a drop, And honestly, in that situation,
who can blame him. But then Charles heads to the
a deck and he starts helping to load the lifeboats.
Now this is something I hadn't heard before, but apparently
many of the passengers were reluctant to leave the ship,
(14:51):
Like in the first hour or so after the collision,
when only the lower decks were flooding. At that point,
a lot of the people tried to wave off the
danger and actually refused to get on these lifeboats. So
Charles knew better in this situation, and so when he
found women and children just squatting on the deck. Refusing
to budge, he and other crew members began picking up
(15:12):
these stubborn passengers and actually throwing them into the lifeboats.
And then when these last lifeboats were filled and lowered,
Charles went back down to his cabin, had himself another
drop of liqueur, and went right back on the deck. Now,
at this point, the ship was sinking in earnest and
it was clear that the majority of the passengers were
still on board. So he was helpful to the very
(15:34):
last minute, and he tossed some fifty odd deck chairs
into the water so that people would have something to
cling onto when the ship inevitably went under. That that
really is inspiring. Also, can I just say how perfect
an activity he chose given his circumstances, Like checking deck
chairs into the ocean is exactly the thing you should
do if you're trapped on a sinking chip and you've
had a few drinks. No, it does seem pretty fitting
(15:57):
in that scenario. But here's where really achieves legend status
in my eyes, Like he was actually still aboard the
Titanic when it's split in half. In fact, he reportedly
climbed over the railing rode the ship down as it sank,
and when asked during his enquiry if he had been
dragged under with the ship, Charles just replied, I do
(16:17):
not believe my head went underwater at all. It may
have been wetted, but no more. Okay, so this guy's
my new hero. Well, and that's really saying something because
there are a ton of stories about passengers behaving bravely
while the ship went down. And of course these days
a lot of people say chivalry is dead, but that
definitely wasn't the case aboard the Titanic. Yeah, that's true.
(16:39):
I think most people know the famous policy about evacuating
women and children first, and that really was an explicit
order that Captain Smith gave the night the Titanic sank.
But what I never knew before this week is that
Titanic actually approved the exception in that regard rather than
the rule, because it turns out that in most maritime disasters,
men have had a significantly higher survival rate than women
(17:00):
and children. Really, I don't think I would have guessed that.
But all right, we'll have a ton of questions to ask,
and at some point we do need to talk about
the crash itself. But before we get to any of that.
Let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time
(17:28):
Genius and we're talking about the enduring legacy of the
RMS Titanic, all right, Mago. So before the break, you
were saying that when disaster strikes at sea that men
generally fair better than women and children. So can you
explain what you mean by that? Sure? So this comes
from the sweetest study where researchers looked at eighteen maritime
disasters that happened between eighteen fifty two and two thousand eleven,
(17:50):
and what they found was that women and children survived
in greater numbers than men in only two of the
eighteen cases. It was for the HMS Broken Stock in
eight fifty two and the Titanic in In all other cases,
men came out ahead with an average survival rate of
compared to scent for women and just fifteen percent for children.
(18:12):
And that was the only surprise to come out of
the study either, because it turns out the crew members
actually have the highest survival rate. They come out with
a whopping sixty. And you know this romantic idea of
captains choosing to go down with the ships, right, that
apparently doesn't happen as often as we assume, because even
captains tend to have a higher survival rate than passengers.
(18:32):
But you're saying that wasn't the case the night the
Titanic sank exactly So with Titanic, women actually had a
seventy survival rate compared to just seventeen percent for men.
And it's the same with children. Half the kids aboard
the Titanic survived the ordeal, all right, So do we
know why that is? Like, what made the Titanic so different?
Was its crew just like that much better at following
(18:54):
the correct procedure or what happened there? That's the thing.
The whole women and children first was an explicit and
it wasn't this like written rule at the time. And
in fact, as we see with those other sixteen cases,
the real policy is closer to first come, first serve,
or even every man for himself. But that's one way
in which Birkenstock and Titanic stick out from the others,
(19:15):
because in both those cases, the captains gave this direct
order that women and children should be evacuated first. So
if that's the case, then the higher survival rates for
women and children it's really things more to the captains
and crew like, not necessarily the passengers of the Titanic
being chivalrous was really more than captain, So that is
one way to look at it. But on the other hand,
(19:35):
we do have plenty of reports of crew members and
even passengers who chose to remain on board and help
others rather than take up space and lifeboats. I mean,
supposedly there were just people on deck just standing and
smoking cigars, drinking brandy while others fled for their lives.
And while that might sound kind of silly or naive
to us, I think those guys absolutely knew what they
were doing. They were willing to die in order to
(19:57):
give other people a shot at living, all right, So
then what do we make of this? Like, are we
saying the pastors of Titanic And I guess Birkin Stock
just happened to be more selfless than you know, people
in these other ship breaks, And I feel like there's
got to be more to it than that. I read
the study from an Australian economist. His name's David Savage,
and he actually suggested that Titanics passengers behaved more altruistically
(20:20):
simply because they had the time to do so. Like,
if you think about the wreck of the Lusitania, which
was this other luxury liner from the era, which I'm
sure you've heard of it. It had a similar number
of passengers and survive us to the Titanic. But whereas
the Lusitania sank in less than twenty minutes, Titanic took
nearly three hours. And that's why Savage suggests that the
(20:41):
longer timeline allowed social norms to assert themselves aboard the Titanic.
So instead of giving into the panic self interest as
passengers aboard the Lusitania and most of the other ships did,
the people aboard the Titanic had enough time to tamp
down their self preservation instincts and really act in favor
of the group instead. And you know, I have to
wonder if that, in itself is one of the reasons
(21:02):
that people are still so affected by the Titanic story today. Like,
if you think about it, this was one of those
rare tragedies where the people involved actually had the time
to think about their circumstances and how they wanted to
spend their final moments. And that's not really a luxury
that many have had, and major disasters in the last
century well, and think about how much worse things could
have gone if the passengers didn't have that extra bit
(21:25):
of time. I mean, as it stands, there were only
about seven hundred survivors from Titanic, which means roughly people
lost their lives that night, and if there had been
mass panic, it's likely that even more people would have
died in the process. Yeah, though I do question how
much better things really could have been. Like at the
end of the day, the ship just didn't have anywhere
(21:46):
near the number of lifeboats it would have technically taken
to save everyone on board. And that's what the ship
at half capacity like the Titanic technically could have fit
another people on board, which undoubtedly would have made an
even bigger tragedy. Yeah, that's true, And you know, people
often point to those lack of lifeboats aboard the Titanic
(22:06):
is another example of the hubrists of the ship's owners
and creators. And you know, to a certain extent that
makes sense. Like one of the stories I hear a
lot is how the ship could have easily carried twice
the amount of lifeboats that it had, only the designers
didn't want to ruin the aesthetics by cluttering the deck
with more boats. I mean, it's just absurd. And well,
(22:27):
that may be true, it's worth noting that Titanic was
completely up to code when it came to lifeboats. In fact,
it was actually more compliant than it even had to be,
because instead of having sixteen lifeboats as the Board of
Trade required, the ship actually had twenty. I mean that
sounds ridiculous, like like a ship as big as the
Titanic was only required to have sixteen lifeboats. How is
(22:50):
that even possible? Like didn't they know how many people
were going to be on board? Well they did, but
the thing is like the number of passengers wasn't actually
a factor and the hermiting this. So prior to Titanic,
the number of lifeboats needed was based solely on a
ship's weight. So whether the ship the size of the
Titanic was sailing half full or completely empty, it would
(23:12):
have still been required to carry just sixteen lifeboats. Now,
the good news is that Titanic shine to light on
how little since this made and practice, and so thanks
to that public scrutiny and sending inquiries that took place
in the days after the disaster, regulations definitely changed and
the number of lifeboats started to be determined by the
number of people on board, not by how much a
(23:34):
ship weight, which just seems weird that we even have
to say that, because who else would be getting on
these lifeboats other than the people on the ship. Definitely
a smart change, and you know, there were actually a
couple of other positive things to come out of the
Titanic tragedy. For example, maritime agencies began using round the
clock wireless maryring to keep track of ships and to
(23:56):
make sure that few distress calls were missed, and that's
a thing that made a huge difference during World War One,
when large ships were frequent targets for enemy torpedoes. In fact,
the ship that rescued the Titanic, I think it was
called the Carpathia, It was sunk six years later by
a torpedo fired from a German U boat. But thanks
to the lessons from Titanic, the Carpathia had plenty of
(24:17):
lifeboats in a direct line to call for help. And
as a result of this preparedness, not a single crew
member or passenger drowned that day. That's pretty amazing, And
you know, actually we neglected to mention what's probably my
favorite advancement to come out of Titanic, and that's the
creation of what's called the International Ice Patrol. Now, this
was established the very next year after the Titanic sank,
(24:39):
and the organization has spent the last hundred plus years
just patrolling the North Atlantic and tracking the movement of icebergs.
And so, you know, the way that it worked in
the early days is that a patrol ship would just
head out into the open ocean, find the southernmost iceberg
and then just kind of keep an eye on it
for the rest of the season. And so it would
follow the iceberg wherever it went and then just report
(25:02):
those movements so that the other boats would know how
to steer clear, which is awesome. And you said, this
is something that still goes on today. Yeah, the Patrol
is actually part of the U. S. Coast Guard now
and so these days they mostly do their scouting by plane,
but satellites are also a factor now, and of course
sometimes the team will still take a ship out and
(25:22):
babysit the icebergs, really kind of the old fashioned way. Well,
I know, we also wanted to talk about some of
the impact that Titanics had on culture, both in the
US and abroad. But before we do that, let's take
one more quick break. Okay, well, so let's talk about
(25:50):
the first time Titanic fever gripped society, which of course
was back when news of the ships sinking first broke.
And the guy who actually got the scoop was this
journalist named Carlos Heard who happened to be in just
the right place at just the right time. But you
don't tell me he was actually a passenger on the Titanic,
was he? No? But super close? He He was actually
one of the original passengers on board the Carpathia before
(26:11):
it was rerouted to aid in the rescue operation. So
during the four day trip to New York, Carlos was
able to interview many of the Titanic survivors and then
turned those accounts into a five thousand words story. So
is it true like the public didn't know anything about
the disaster until his story came out? Well, where did
the collision reach the mainland? Thanks to wireless messages sent
from both the Titanic and the Carpathia, But these communications
(26:35):
were short on details, and they came nowhere close to
capturing the full scope of the tragedy, and while there
was plenty of time to fill people in during the
voyage to New York, like, the captain of Carpathia actually
banned everyone on board from sharing any information with the
media aside from a list of which passengers had survived
and which had perished. And so did people honor his wishes?
(26:56):
Definitely not, because when the Carpathia finally arrived at port,
it was immediately surrounded by small boats that have been
chartered by overeager news companies. According to the Smithsonian quote,
reporters shouted through megaphones on their tug boats offered terrific
sums of money for information exclusives, but Captain Rosstron said
he would shoot any pressman who dared ventured aboard his ship. Alright, Well,
(27:19):
so then how did Carlos Herd get his story out?
Because I'm gonna have to imagine he and others were
stuck on the boat for a while once they got
to New York, and especially if they were so besieged
by the press. That is true, which is why Carlos
had to get creative if he was going to crack
one of the biggest stories of the decade. And this
is incredible. So you know, he sent the secret wireless
message to a friend at a New York newspaper telling
(27:40):
him to charter a tug boat, and then the guys
sailed to the Carpatia that evening. Then behind the captain's back,
Carlos stuffed his story into a waterproof bag and discreetly
tossed it onto this waiting vote. And later that very night,
the New York Evening World published his story. It was
the first include accurate details about what had happened. And
it's wild to look back and see just how fast
(28:02):
the story spread and kind of took root in people's
minds after that, and all in the days before television
or really even the radio craze for that matter. And
for instance, I was reading how manufacturers rushed to produce
Titanic merchandise and the days following the crash, so in
a matter of weeks the market was flooded with all
sorts of commemorative products, from postcards and dinner plates to
(28:25):
music boxes, whiskey jiggers. I was even reading about this
German toy company called Steve that released a limited edition
Titanic teddy bears shortly after the ships sank, and it's
really weird, like it was actually called the Morning Bear
because it was made to look like it was grieving
the victims, like it had all black fur and these
(28:45):
red rimmed eyes to make it look like the bear
had been crying, and it's just gross, to be honest
with you. And apparently the idea had come from a
report about the Titanic senior engineer William Moves, who went
down with the ship and supposedly he had a Steve
Teddy bear on board with him, so the company decided
to release a memorial bear in his honor. And the
(29:06):
craziest part is that today the Steve Morning Bears typically
go for upwards of twenty grand apiece at auction. That
is insane. So one of the biggest surprises in preparing
for today's episode was really that, like seeing just how
quickly people began to capitalize on Titanic. And I think
one of the best examples of that is the fact
that exactly one month after the ship went down, the
(29:29):
very first movie about Titanic premiered in theaters. Wait did
you say one month after? Like I obviously knew the
movie wasn't the first to tackle this subject. But I mean,
I can't see any way that something could have come
out that quickly one month after such a real life tragedy. Yeah,
and you haven't even heard the wildest part yet, because
(29:49):
this movie, which was called Saved from the Titanic, actually
started a young silent film actress named Dorothy Gibson, and
Dorothy and her mother were both survivors of the real Titanic.
I mean, can you even imagine like living through a
nightmare like that and then re enacting the whole thing
just two weeks later? I mean, I can't imagine that,
nor would I want to. But what on earth made
(30:10):
her want to do this? So Dorothy apparently did not
want to do the movie at all, but she got
talked into it by her producer slash boyfriend, who is
I guess this unscrupulous Hollywood mogul type like. His name
was Jules Brulator. He had put together this news reel
on the Titanic that proved to be this huge hit.
So he figured that a dramatization of the event starring
(30:31):
an actual survivor would make a great next act, and so,
with the help of a thousand dollar engagement ring, he
made his pitch to Dorothy, and she ultimately agreed to
make this one reel film about her experience, but as
you can imagine, it was not easy. For the sake
of realism, she chose to wear the same evening dress,
coat and shoes that she'd worn the night Titanic sank,
(30:53):
and Dorothy reportedly burst into tears multiple times during the shooting,
and once the film had wrapped, she walked away from
the movie business for good. She stated simply that she
felt quote dissatisfied. I mean, I can't blame her for
wanting to get away from an industry that would push
her into reliving a trauma like that. But honestly, though,
I mean, I have to men, I would be curious
(31:15):
to see the movie, and the truth is, you're not
the only one. So Save from the Titanic is actually
one of the holy grails for silent movie buffs. And
that's because two years after it was made, this massive
fire broke out at the studio and all the known
prints were destroyed. So nobody's seen the movie since its
original run in theaters over a hundred years ago. And
(31:35):
as much as I wish the film could have been
preserved for posterity, it's kind of poetic that no one
can make her re enact that experience every again. Yeah,
I mean, I guess there's a certain kind of justice
in that, But I mean what I find ironic is
that there are plenty of people today who will go
to great links and great expense to sort of relive
the experience of the Titanic. I mean, you mentioned earlier
(31:57):
how people pay big money to recreate the ships lavish meals,
and they're also companies that offer one hundred thousand dollar
submarine voyages to see the actual Titanic wreckage and all
its glory. And I actually I read about an American
couple that even got married and a tiny subduct on
the bow of the tiny shipwreck. So I'm sure that
(32:19):
made for some pretty amazing wedding fishers. But it does
seem a little disrespectful to me, right, like it's effectively
this mass grave. Well, I mean, you're not the only
one to point that out, And in fact, listen to
what the company that put on the undersea wedding said
in its defense. It said, Um, what's got to be
remembered is that every time a couple gets married in church,
(32:39):
they have to walk through a graveyard to get to
the altar. Yeah. I mean, plenty of people get married
in churches that have on site cemeteries, but in those
cases the graveyard isn't the selling point like it is
with the Titanic. Well, I think the Titanic tourism stuff
probably comes from that same place, as as those just
missed it stories we talked about at the top of
(32:59):
the show, and that kind of weird desire that people
feel to tie themselves to someone else's tragedy. But I mean,
in this case, I feel like it goes a little
too far, which sounds right, but I pretty much signed
with Robert Ballard, who is the oceanographer who first discovered
the Titanic wreckage back in eighty five, and he refused
to divulige to the ship's exact location for fear that
(33:21):
treasure hunters and corporations would swoop into exploit it. And
it's an act that Ballard actually saw his tantamount to
grave robbing. Of course, the coordinates eventually leaked anyway, and
not more than a hundred forty people have visited the
shipwreck off the coast of Newfoundland altogether, though these visitors
have extracted some five thousand artifacts and done untold damaged
(33:41):
the ship itself in the process. It's always a little
unsettling to see the final resting place of so many
people picked apart like that. But actually I read somewhere
that the Titanics under UNESCO protection now, though, isn't it? Yeah,
ever since the hundredth anniversary of the wreck. I believe so.
Then it's considered like this underwater cultural heritage site or
(34:02):
something like that, and so any kind of excavation would
actually be off limits at this point. Yeah, that's true,
and legal protections, even ones that are a few decades
too late, are a nice deterrent to these would be
pirates and scavengers. But the reality is that Titanic won't
be around much longer, no matter what we do. And
that's because about a decade ago, scientists discovered a new
(34:22):
species of bacteria that's been slowly devouring the ship's iron hull.
Not only that, but as the microbes munch away, they
formed these icicle like communities called rusticles. And this happens
all over the ship, inside it out. And as the
rusticles get heavier and heavier, they start to pull the
ship apart piece by piece. Meanwhile, the mollusks have made
(34:42):
short work of the wood from Titanic, and of course
any human remains were consumed by marine life long ago.
So at this point most researchers think it's just another
decade or two until the ship is gone forever. Yeah,
I mean, that will really be the end of an era.
But of course, with all the biographies and movies and
Teddy Bears and themed dinners, I mean, I think we'll
always have plenty to remember the Titanic and its passengers
(35:05):
by absolutely, And speaking of remembrances, Robert Ballard gave a
really touching one shortly after he found the shipwreck, and
it kind of works as a eulogy for the ship
and for the event as a whole. So I thought
it might be a nice way to close out the show.
Do you mind if I read it and then we
can go straight to the fact off. Yeah, go for it, Okay.
So this is what Ballard said. Quote. The Titanic lies
(35:28):
now in thirteen thousand feet of water on a gently
sloping alpine looking countryside, overlooking a small canyon below. Its
bow faces north. The ship sits upright on its bottom,
with its mighty stacks pointed upward. There is no light
at this great depth, and little life can be found.
It is a quiet and peaceful place, and a fitting
(35:48):
place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies
to rest forever. May it remain that way, and may
God bless these now found souls. So one of the
weirder things to read about is all the ways people
plan to try to bring the Titanic back up to
(36:11):
the surface. And some of the weird ones that I
just jotted down here are One was filling polyester bags
with vasoline, and the idea here is that vasoline would
harden then become buoyant, and that that would somehow lift
the Titanic. Another was filling the whole of the ship
with thousands of ping pong balls. Uh. And then another
(36:32):
one is in case the ship in ice, which would
basically be the equivalent of creating a big ice cube
and a drink, and that we all know what happens
with ice cubes and a drink. They they float. So
these were all brilliant ideas, but somehow none of these
ideas came to life. So back in six the writer
William t Stead wrote a fictional piece about a male
(36:53):
steamer wrecking and then most of his passengers dying because
there weren't enough lifeboats. And in the story he pointed
out the fact that there really lax regulations didn't require
ships to have enough lifeboats for every person on the ship.
Just a few years later, Steve came back to his
theme and wrote about a ship crashing into ice. And
then we fast forward a couple of decades and one
of the passengers who died in the Titanic tragedy was
(37:15):
none other than Steed, and he did so because there
were enough lifeboats on board. Wow. Well, we talked about
this before, about how anytime there's a disaster like this,
lots of people claim that they were almost a part
of it. But there's actually one famous person that has
pretty good proof of this. It turns out that Milton
Snavely Hershey, you know, the man behind the legendary chocolate
(37:38):
brand things like her She's Kisses her She chocolate bars.
Do you need me to give more examples? Mango or
with her Sheah? Well, anyway, he was scheduled to be
on the ship. So if you head to Hershey, Pennsylvania
and visit the community archives there, you can see a
three hundred dollar check that hers She had written to
the White Star Line, and it's believed to be a
(37:59):
deposit tour a stateroom, but it turns out that he
had more urgent business back in the States, and so
Hershey and his wife took an earlier ship, the America,
which strangely was one of the mini ships that sent
back warnings to the Titanic. You know the iconic scene
in the movie Titanic where Roses lying on the driftwood
and staring up at the sky. Right, So Neil deGrasse
(38:21):
Tyson apparently saw the scene and decided to send a
note to James Cameron to point out that the star
Rose was looking up at wouldn't have actually been the
one she would have seen at that real place in time.
The only issue is that Tyson didn't see this movie
until about a decade after its initial release. But Cameron
is such a perfectionist that he decided to reshoot the
scene in preparation for the release of the three D edition,
(38:44):
so more than a decade later. That's pretty wild and
also pretty impressive that we made it near the end
of the fact off before we really did a fact
about the movie. Yeah, alright, Well, we all know that
the Titanic sunk after fighting with an iceberg, but some
believe that there was a massive coal fire in the
bunker of the ship that actually caused significant structural weakening
(39:08):
of the outside of the ship. Now, journalists sin and
Maloney has been researching this subject for decades now, and
he points to these photographs of the Titanic right before
its final trip, and the photos show this huge black
mark on the whole of the ship, which is of
course where the ship would later hit the iceberg. Now,
Maloney also believes that the owners of the Titanic were
(39:30):
well aware of this damage, but not wanting to delay
a trip, which would of course cost them a bunch
of money, they decided to just ignore it. Now. I
should note that many engineers looking at the situation have
said it's difficult to tell how much that prior damage
really contributed to the disaster. It may have all happened anyway,
but it's still pretty interesting to look at this theory.
(39:51):
I mean, it is crazy that their conspiracy theories about
the Titanic. It's pretty fascinating. So there's a restaurant near
Halifax Harbor. It's the seafood plants called Five Fishermen Restaurant,
and it's supposedly a fantastic restaurant, but it's got a
strange claim to fame. It was actually an old mortuary,
the city's oldest. In fact, it was called Snow and
Company undertakers, and it received the bodies of not just one,
(40:14):
but two major tragedies in the early nine hundreds. It
turns out that Halifax was the base of many of
the rescue operations, and many of the bodies from the
Titanic disaster were brought to Snow's funeral home. And then
five years later, when the Halifax explosion took place, it
was the largest human made explosion in history at the time,
many of the bodies were once again brought to Snow
and Company. Wow, such a weird coincidence. And you said
(40:36):
it's a seafood place. Now it is, And well, well,
I do like that fact. I think you're ping pong
ball ice cube fact lifting the Titanic is is probably
the happiest one of the slots. I think you deserve
the prize this week. Thanks so much, And hopefully one
day they will try all of those at one time.
These just great rising of the ship. But you know,
(40:57):
it's been interesting to dive into this one. I know
there are facts out there that we certainly left out.
We always love hearing those from you. You can email
us those anytime part Time Genius at how stuff Works
dot com or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
But from Gabe, Tristan, Mango and me, thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(41:27):
a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing.
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Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and
(41:47):
Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us. Do we do?
We forget Jason Jason, who did the tatt the property
bas
I guess what, mango, what's that? Well, you remember a
couple of weeks ago when the artist banks He pulled
that incredible prank on the entire auction world. Yeah, that
was when his painting just self destructed in front of everyone.
Wasn't it worth over a million dollars? It's actually one
point four million dollars. And the crazy part is they
say it's probably worth even more now and the person
who had bid on it, you know, has agreed to
(00:23):
pay that price. That's crazy. I mean, I guess it
does make it more unique, but it's still really weird
how much people will pay for things. No, it definitely is.
And actually I find this kind of thing fascinating. I mean,
it's it's always interesting to see what people will pay
big money for an auction. So I was recently looking
at this list of the things people have been on
over the years that are related to the Titanic disaster,
(00:46):
and one thing that went for even more than that
banks He painting is the violin played by William Hartley
as the Titanic sank that many of us have heard
this legend before, and it's of course impossible to verify,
you know, every piece of it, but the ideas that Hartley,
who was the band leader, that he asked his seven
musicians to keep playing as this ship was going down,
(01:08):
And so some tell the story that he led his
crew in playing Near My God to the and you know,
that may not be completely true. It does appear that
the musicians did maintain their composure and they continued playing
something what we don't know exactly what it was, but
that violin that hardly played sold back in two thousand
thirteen for one point seven million dollars. And I guess
(01:31):
it's really no surprise because, you know, more than a
hundred years after the tragic event, we're still fascinated by it.
So today we'll try to better understand why that is,
you know, and ask some of the questions like what
did people know about the Titanic before it set sail,
what was life like on board, and what were some
of the strange ways people chose to remember the ship
(01:52):
after the disaster. So let's get started, Hey, their podcast listeners,
(02:17):
welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend Man Guesh Ticketer
and on the other side of the soundproof glass, wearing
a button that just says proud member of the Just
Mystic Club. That's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. Now
a lot of people don't know this, but Tristan very
nearly booked himself on a trip on the Titanic back
in nineteen twelve. Thankfully, the plan fell apart at the
(02:41):
very last minute, you know, on account of his not
having been born yet, so ultimately he missed the boat,
which is just such a lucky break. But you know,
Tristan isn't alone in telling tall tales about how he
narrowly escaped death on the Titanic. In fact, just five
days after the sinking, there are already press reports about
the so called just missed a Club and how it
(03:01):
already had six thousand, nine four members, And so this
was obviously tongue in cheek, but it was also kind
of true. Like a suspiciously large number of people had
come forward claiming they'd missed the boat because they've been
running late that morning, or they've gotten sick or whatever,
but everyone knew most of the stories were completely made up.
Like in one of the press reports I mentioned, they
had a sarcastic quote from a guy who said quote,
(03:23):
I count it lucky that I didn't have the money
to go abroad this year. If all of us who
just missed it had got aboard the Titanic, she would
have sunk at the Liverpool Dock from the overload. I'm
glad the public didn't fall for all these stories. I mean,
it's such a strange compulsion in the first place, you know,
to lie like that because I don't know, because you
want to attach yourself to a tragedy. But I guess
(03:46):
that goes to show how captivated people were by the
story of the Titanic. And the really amazing thing is
that more than a hundred years later, many of us
are still just as captivated. So at this point the
disaster it feels like it's taken on kind of a
mythical status and world culture, and it's become one of
those stories that everybody seems to know. In fact, I
(04:06):
read in Smithsonian that Titanic is actually the third most
recognized word in the world, just below God and Coca cola.
And you know, while it's true that interest in the
story has ebbed and flowed over time, it's still something
that we always seem to come back to. So today
we'll take a look at why that is and why
Titanic still fascinates us all these years later, and help
(04:29):
answer that. We'll talk about the impact the tragedy has
had on the world, both in the short term and
the long term, and we'll also dig a little deeper
into life aboard the ship, which you know, includes the
surprising stories of a few standout passengers. It's definitely a
lot to cover, so let's get to it. But but
where do you want to start, Mango, Well, I thought
we could start with one of the biggest reasons that
(04:50):
people have stayed invested in the Titanic, and that's just
the ship itself. So most of us know that at
the time it was the largest ocean liner ever constructed,
and more broadly, the large just men made moving object
in the world. It was about eight feet long and
a hundred seventy five ft tall, which means the ship
was as long as three football fields and as tall
(05:10):
as a seventeen story building. Isn't that insane? Yeah? I mean,
it was definitely a massive ship for its time, no
question about that, But it wouldn't really be that impressive
today though, right, I mean, we have cruise ships that
are more than four times that size now, So it
does make me wonder, like why the size of the
Titanic still captures people's interest. So I think it's partly
(05:30):
the perception that the Titanic was kind of tempting fate
in a way, like the fact that the ship held
that title as the world's largest and and then it
ended up sinking on his maiden voyage. It feels like
this cautionary tale about man's hubris in some people's minds,
Like it's almost like a Tower of Babble situation or
something where man kind of overreached and then was made
to suffer for it. And I think that still resonates
(05:52):
for people, especially since we've heard so many stories now
about how luxurious and decadent the ship was, especially compared
to others at the time. All right, well, before we
get to that fateful night with the iceberg, I do
want to spend a little more time on board and
and talk about a few of those decadit details that
you alluded to. So, for example, the Titanic was one
of the first ships to have electric lights in all
(06:14):
of its rooms. It also had way more amenities than
most other ships, and so just looking at the list,
here among those were four elevators, heated swimming pool, two
libraries to barbershops, a squash court, a Turkish bath, and
even it's on onboard newspaper called the Atlantic Daily Bulletin.
So I hadn't heard about the paper. I'm guessing that
(06:35):
means that they had a printing press on board. Yeah,
I mean there was a small print shop on the
D deck and and of course this was close to
the butcher's shop in case you're wondering, now I know
where I get my pastrom that's right. But I mean,
it really does feel like they thought about everything. My
favorite Titanic community, though it is probably the onboard gymnasium,
Like it had all the best equipment naturally, including old
(06:58):
standards like rowing machines, weights, punching bags, but it also
had this cutting edge gear, like they had two static
bicycles with two foot dials attached to show the distance
that had been traveled. And there were also a few
electric horses, which were these big mechanical saddles meant to
mimic riding a horse. I mean, does that even count
as exercise? It kind of feels like it would be
(07:20):
less of a workout for the rider than for the horse,
or I guess the saddle in this case. I mean,
I think it was supposed to strengthen your core or
maybe some leg muscles, but either way, I doubt any
of the passengers worked up that much of a sweat. Like,
if you look at pictures from floating gyms on the
Titanic and other ships of the era, most of the
passengers are exercising while they're wearing their full get up,
(07:42):
So it's like a bunch of releasedate and calm looking
people in these three piece suits or or like big
Edwardian dresses and hats, and they're just kind of halfheartedly
peddling on the bikes or whatever. It's it's pretty lazy looking. Yeah,
I've actually seen some of these pictures, and honestly, my
guess is that it's the first time in a gym
for most of them, because nobody looks like they know
(08:03):
what they're doing at all. I mean, it's a good
thing that they had a personal trainer on board the Titanic.
This is real. His name was Thomas McCauley, and it
was this guy's job to show passengers how to use
the equipment and even to provide one on one training sessions.
And it seems like McCauley took his job super seriously
because the night the ship sank, he actually chose to
(08:24):
stay at his post in the gym and go down
with the ship. Wait, seriously, I mean, I don't want
to speak ill of the dead, but that sort of
seems a little bit unnecessary. I mean, we did talk
about how the band chose to continue playing as the
ship sank, and to me though, that makes sense because
it was a way to sacrifice and to calm the passengers,
or to give them at least some sense of peace.
(08:47):
But I mean, why keep the gym open. I can't
imagine anybody was thinking, like, I think, I'll just get
in a few more reps before whatever happens here happens. Yeah.
Probably not. If anyone was trying to burn like a
few calories for the road, I really wouldn't blame them.
I mean, the meals on board the Titanic were pretty epic,
at least for the first class passengers, and so the
(09:07):
dinners were gourmet affairs with up to thirteen courses, each
of which came with its own paired wine. There was
also a pre dinner cocktail service that was added as
a concession to American passengers. Apparently European passengers weren't fans
of this idea because they thought mixed drinks ruined your
palette before eating. But from start to finish, these elaborate
meals could last as long as four or five hours,
(09:28):
and because the first class menu was actually later recovered,
we actually know exactly what the wealthiest Titanic passengers had
for dinner the night the ship went down, and it
was an incredible spread. The feast started with raw oysters
and a selection of order ivs, followed by a choice
of two soups. Then came a lightly pushed Atlantic salmon
topped with a rich moose. For the fourth and fifth courses,
(09:50):
passengers chose from such rich entrees as a filet mignon
or a lamb with mint sauce. And then at the
halfway point the meal this is on you get a
palate cleanser. It's it's a punch romain, which I guess
is a boozy mix and wine, rum and champagne. And
then once you've regained your appetite, the feasting resumes. There's
(10:13):
a roast squab course, cold asparagus, vinaigrette fois gras, and
then there's dessert, which includes peaches and shark trees, jelly chocolate,
Vanilla Claire's French ice cream, and then to close off
the meal, there's a variety of fruits, nuts, and cheeses
with coffee, poor cigars and cordials. It's pretty It feels
(10:34):
like they just accidentally went ahead and cooked everything for
the week for one meal. I don't even know how
these people would get up and walk after eating all
of this stuff. I don't feel like I could make
it through a single meal, I know, but if you
did want to try. They're actually places all over the
world that now offer dinners that recreate that last meal
that the first class passengers eight on the ship. And
(10:54):
it's kind of a cop but some people claim it's
a great way to humanize the tragedy or to understand
the history of it. The ethics acide like. The biggest
drawback is probably the price of these dinners. So, for instance,
there's one restaurant in Houston it offers a ten course
menu for a thousand dollars per person. There's also a
version of this on a luxury hotel in Hong Kong,
(11:15):
where um, the prices doubled because it reportedly serves this
vintage seven bottle of wine that's actually salvage from the
wreck of the Titanic. I like this idea that it's
somehow humanizes the tragedy by just sitting there and stuffing
yourself with all of this and drinking fancy old wine.
Don't forget. Yeah, well, I guess so. I guess they
know exactly what it was like to be on the
(11:36):
Titanic then, But it feels a little too rich for
my blood. I feel like maybe i'd spring for a
recreation of maybe like the third class dinner. I mean,
that's got to be a lot cheaper, right, Like I
imagined there were a bit more down to earth at
the second and third class tables, right, So I think
that's a really funny idea, But not as much as
you think, right. Like, so, the first and second class
(11:58):
dining rooms actually shared a galley, so there was probably
a good bit of crossover when it comes to what
was served, kind of like business of first class on
a plane or something. But the main difference would have
been that second class diners wouldn't have had all the
crazy wine pairings, a few of the other frills that
the first class people enjoyed, and honestly, even third class
passengers didn't have it too bad when it came to food.
(12:18):
So there was a lot less lamb with mint sauce
and a lot more roast beef and boiled potatoes. But
you actually wouldn't hear that many people complaining about it.
At the time, most ocean liners required third class passengers
to bring their own food to last the entire voyage,
which would have made the Titanics prepared meals seemed really
decadent to most people. I mean, the same can't be
(12:39):
said for the accommodations, though there were actually only two
bathtubs for all seven third class passengers to share. Oh gosh, well,
let's let maybe let's not dwell on that. But getting
back to the food, it's hard for me to even
wrap my head around the amount of work that must
have gone into feating this many people and multiple times
a day, Like there were need two hundred people aboard
(13:01):
the Titanic. You've got passengers nine crew members, so they're
just doing the math, like three meals a day, that
sixty meals that the kitchens had to crank out every
twenty four hours, and it must have been a pretty
colossal effort. It definitely was. So I read this interview
with Dana McCauley. She co wrote a book called Last
Dinner on the Titanic, and she says the Titanics kitchen
(13:23):
crew included a hundred thirteen cooks, fifteen first cooks who
supervised things, twelve pastry chefs, six bakers, five butchers, and
five sous chefs. And you know, you think about that,
that's not even mentioning the dozens of waiters or bus
boys that each meal required. Yeah, I mean, that's a
pretty huge staff, but I'm actually a bit surprised it's
not even bigger when you consider how many people they
(13:45):
were feeding and just the level of sheer variety on
those menus that you talked about. But you know, since
you mentioned the Titanics bakers, I want to take a
second and talk about the ship's chief baker. He was
a guy named Charles Joffin, and he was a sort
of either of the wreck and live for decades afterward,
but he was also examined as part of a British
inquiry after the accident, and the picture he paints during
(14:09):
his testimony is really pretty amazing. So after the Titanic
hits the iceberg, sorry for the spoiler there, but Charles
immediately gets to work and he starts rounding up all
the bread he can find to help bolster their provisions
and all the lifeboats. Now he ends up sending something
like forty pounds of bread loaves to the upper decks,
and then he heads back to his cabin where he
(14:30):
proceeds to steal himself with what he called, quote a
drop of liqueur, and I have a feeling was a
little more than a drop, And honestly, in that situation,
who can blame him. But then Charles heads to the
a deck and he starts helping to load the lifeboats.
Now this is something I hadn't heard before, but apparently
many of the passengers were reluctant to leave the ship,
(14:51):
Like in the first hour or so after the collision,
when only the lower decks were flooding. At that point,
a lot of the people tried to wave off the
danger and actually refused to get on these lifeboats. So
Charles knew better in this situation, and so when he
found women and children just squatting on the deck. Refusing
to budge, he and other crew members began picking up
(15:12):
these stubborn passengers and actually throwing them into the lifeboats.
And then when these last lifeboats were filled and lowered,
Charles went back down to his cabin, had himself another
drop of liqueur, and went right back on the deck. Now,
at this point, the ship was sinking in earnest and
it was clear that the majority of the passengers were
still on board. So he was helpful to the very
(15:34):
last minute, and he tossed some fifty odd deck chairs
into the water so that people would have something to
cling onto when the ship inevitably went under. That that
really is inspiring. Also, can I just say how perfect
an activity he chose given his circumstances, Like checking deck
chairs into the ocean is exactly the thing you should
do if you're trapped on a sinking chip and you've
had a few drinks. No, it does seem pretty fitting
(15:57):
in that scenario. But here's where really achieves legend status
in my eyes, Like he was actually still aboard the
Titanic when it's split in half. In fact, he reportedly
climbed over the railing rode the ship down as it sank,
and when asked during his enquiry if he had been
dragged under with the ship, Charles just replied, I do
(16:17):
not believe my head went underwater at all. It may
have been wetted, but no more. Okay, so this guy's
my new hero. Well, and that's really saying something because
there are a ton of stories about passengers behaving bravely
while the ship went down. And of course these days
a lot of people say chivalry is dead, but that
definitely wasn't the case aboard the Titanic. Yeah, that's true.
(16:39):
I think most people know the famous policy about evacuating
women and children first, and that really was an explicit
order that Captain Smith gave the night the Titanic sank.
But what I never knew before this week is that
Titanic actually approved the exception in that regard rather than
the rule, because it turns out that in most maritime disasters,
men have had a significantly higher survival rate than women
(17:00):
and children. Really, I don't think I would have guessed that.
But all right, we'll have a ton of questions to ask,
and at some point we do need to talk about
the crash itself. But before we get to any of that.
Let's take a quick break. You're listening to Part Time
(17:28):
Genius and we're talking about the enduring legacy of the
RMS Titanic, all right, Mago. So before the break, you
were saying that when disaster strikes at sea that men
generally fair better than women and children. So can you
explain what you mean by that? Sure? So this comes
from the sweetest study where researchers looked at eighteen maritime
disasters that happened between eighteen fifty two and two thousand eleven,
(17:50):
and what they found was that women and children survived
in greater numbers than men in only two of the
eighteen cases. It was for the HMS Broken Stock in
eight fifty two and the Titanic in In all other cases,
men came out ahead with an average survival rate of
compared to scent for women and just fifteen percent for children.
(18:12):
And that was the only surprise to come out of
the study either, because it turns out the crew members
actually have the highest survival rate. They come out with
a whopping sixty. And you know this romantic idea of
captains choosing to go down with the ships, right, that
apparently doesn't happen as often as we assume, because even
captains tend to have a higher survival rate than passengers.
(18:32):
But you're saying that wasn't the case the night the
Titanic sank exactly So with Titanic, women actually had a
seventy survival rate compared to just seventeen percent for men.
And it's the same with children. Half the kids aboard
the Titanic survived the ordeal, all right, So do we
know why that is? Like, what made the Titanic so different?
Was its crew just like that much better at following
(18:54):
the correct procedure or what happened there? That's the thing.
The whole women and children first was an explicit and
it wasn't this like written rule at the time. And
in fact, as we see with those other sixteen cases,
the real policy is closer to first come, first serve,
or even every man for himself. But that's one way
in which Birkenstock and Titanic stick out from the others,
(19:15):
because in both those cases, the captains gave this direct
order that women and children should be evacuated first. So
if that's the case, then the higher survival rates for
women and children it's really things more to the captains
and crew like, not necessarily the passengers of the Titanic
being chivalrous was really more than captain, So that is
one way to look at it. But on the other hand,
(19:35):
we do have plenty of reports of crew members and
even passengers who chose to remain on board and help
others rather than take up space and lifeboats. I mean,
supposedly there were just people on deck just standing and
smoking cigars, drinking brandy while others fled for their lives.
And while that might sound kind of silly or naive
to us, I think those guys absolutely knew what they
were doing. They were willing to die in order to
(19:57):
give other people a shot at living, all right, So
then what do we make of this? Like, are we
saying the pastors of Titanic And I guess Birkin Stock
just happened to be more selfless than you know, people
in these other ship breaks, And I feel like there's
got to be more to it than that. I read
the study from an Australian economist. His name's David Savage,
and he actually suggested that Titanics passengers behaved more altruistically
(20:20):
simply because they had the time to do so. Like,
if you think about the wreck of the Lusitania, which
was this other luxury liner from the era, which I'm
sure you've heard of it. It had a similar number
of passengers and survive us to the Titanic. But whereas
the Lusitania sank in less than twenty minutes, Titanic took
nearly three hours. And that's why Savage suggests that the
(20:41):
longer timeline allowed social norms to assert themselves aboard the Titanic.
So instead of giving into the panic self interest as
passengers aboard the Lusitania and most of the other ships did,
the people aboard the Titanic had enough time to tamp
down their self preservation instincts and really act in favor
of the group instead. And you know, I have to
wonder if that, in itself is one of the reasons
(21:02):
that people are still so affected by the Titanic story today. Like,
if you think about it, this was one of those
rare tragedies where the people involved actually had the time
to think about their circumstances and how they wanted to
spend their final moments. And that's not really a luxury
that many have had, and major disasters in the last
century well, and think about how much worse things could
have gone if the passengers didn't have that extra bit
(21:25):
of time. I mean, as it stands, there were only
about seven hundred survivors from Titanic, which means roughly people
lost their lives that night, and if there had been
mass panic, it's likely that even more people would have
died in the process. Yeah, though I do question how
much better things really could have been. Like at the
end of the day, the ship just didn't have anywhere
(21:46):
near the number of lifeboats it would have technically taken
to save everyone on board. And that's what the ship
at half capacity like the Titanic technically could have fit
another people on board, which undoubtedly would have made an
even bigger tragedy. Yeah, that's true, And you know, people
often point to those lack of lifeboats aboard the Titanic
(22:06):
is another example of the hubrists of the ship's owners
and creators. And you know, to a certain extent that
makes sense. Like one of the stories I hear a
lot is how the ship could have easily carried twice
the amount of lifeboats that it had, only the designers
didn't want to ruin the aesthetics by cluttering the deck
with more boats. I mean, it's just absurd. And well,
(22:27):
that may be true, it's worth noting that Titanic was
completely up to code when it came to lifeboats. In fact,
it was actually more compliant than it even had to be,
because instead of having sixteen lifeboats as the Board of
Trade required, the ship actually had twenty. I mean that
sounds ridiculous, like like a ship as big as the
Titanic was only required to have sixteen lifeboats. How is
(22:50):
that even possible? Like didn't they know how many people
were going to be on board? Well they did, but
the thing is like the number of passengers wasn't actually
a factor and the hermiting this. So prior to Titanic,
the number of lifeboats needed was based solely on a
ship's weight. So whether the ship the size of the
Titanic was sailing half full or completely empty, it would
(23:12):
have still been required to carry just sixteen lifeboats. Now,
the good news is that Titanic shine to light on
how little since this made and practice, and so thanks
to that public scrutiny and sending inquiries that took place
in the days after the disaster, regulations definitely changed and
the number of lifeboats started to be determined by the
number of people on board, not by how much a
(23:34):
ship weight, which just seems weird that we even have
to say that, because who else would be getting on
these lifeboats other than the people on the ship. Definitely
a smart change, and you know, there were actually a
couple of other positive things to come out of the
Titanic tragedy. For example, maritime agencies began using round the
clock wireless maryring to keep track of ships and to
(23:56):
make sure that few distress calls were missed, and that's
a thing that made a huge difference during World War One,
when large ships were frequent targets for enemy torpedoes. In fact,
the ship that rescued the Titanic, I think it was
called the Carpathia, It was sunk six years later by
a torpedo fired from a German U boat. But thanks
to the lessons from Titanic, the Carpathia had plenty of
(24:17):
lifeboats in a direct line to call for help. And
as a result of this preparedness, not a single crew
member or passenger drowned that day. That's pretty amazing, And
you know, actually we neglected to mention what's probably my
favorite advancement to come out of Titanic, and that's the
creation of what's called the International Ice Patrol. Now, this
was established the very next year after the Titanic sank,
(24:39):
and the organization has spent the last hundred plus years
just patrolling the North Atlantic and tracking the movement of icebergs.
And so, you know, the way that it worked in
the early days is that a patrol ship would just
head out into the open ocean, find the southernmost iceberg
and then just kind of keep an eye on it
for the rest of the season. And so it would
follow the iceberg wherever it went and then just report
(25:02):
those movements so that the other boats would know how
to steer clear, which is awesome. And you said, this
is something that still goes on today. Yeah, the Patrol
is actually part of the U. S. Coast Guard now
and so these days they mostly do their scouting by plane,
but satellites are also a factor now, and of course
sometimes the team will still take a ship out and
(25:22):
babysit the icebergs, really kind of the old fashioned way. Well,
I know, we also wanted to talk about some of
the impact that Titanics had on culture, both in the
US and abroad. But before we do that, let's take
one more quick break. Okay, well, so let's talk about
(25:50):
the first time Titanic fever gripped society, which of course
was back when news of the ships sinking first broke.
And the guy who actually got the scoop was this
journalist named Carlos Heard who happened to be in just
the right place at just the right time. But you
don't tell me he was actually a passenger on the Titanic,
was he? No? But super close? He He was actually
one of the original passengers on board the Carpathia before
(26:11):
it was rerouted to aid in the rescue operation. So
during the four day trip to New York, Carlos was
able to interview many of the Titanic survivors and then
turned those accounts into a five thousand words story. So
is it true like the public didn't know anything about
the disaster until his story came out? Well, where did
the collision reach the mainland? Thanks to wireless messages sent
from both the Titanic and the Carpathia, But these communications
(26:35):
were short on details, and they came nowhere close to
capturing the full scope of the tragedy, and while there
was plenty of time to fill people in during the
voyage to New York, like, the captain of Carpathia actually
banned everyone on board from sharing any information with the
media aside from a list of which passengers had survived
and which had perished. And so did people honor his wishes?
(26:56):
Definitely not, because when the Carpathia finally arrived at port,
it was immediately surrounded by small boats that have been
chartered by overeager news companies. According to the Smithsonian quote,
reporters shouted through megaphones on their tug boats offered terrific
sums of money for information exclusives, but Captain Rosstron said
he would shoot any pressman who dared ventured aboard his ship. Alright, Well,
(27:19):
so then how did Carlos Herd get his story out?
Because I'm gonna have to imagine he and others were
stuck on the boat for a while once they got
to New York, and especially if they were so besieged
by the press. That is true, which is why Carlos
had to get creative if he was going to crack
one of the biggest stories of the decade. And this
is incredible. So you know, he sent the secret wireless
message to a friend at a New York newspaper telling
(27:40):
him to charter a tug boat, and then the guys
sailed to the Carpatia that evening. Then behind the captain's back,
Carlos stuffed his story into a waterproof bag and discreetly
tossed it onto this waiting vote. And later that very night,
the New York Evening World published his story. It was
the first include accurate details about what had happened. And
it's wild to look back and see just how fast
(28:02):
the story spread and kind of took root in people's
minds after that, and all in the days before television
or really even the radio craze for that matter. And
for instance, I was reading how manufacturers rushed to produce
Titanic merchandise and the days following the crash, so in
a matter of weeks the market was flooded with all
sorts of commemorative products, from postcards and dinner plates to
(28:25):
music boxes, whiskey jiggers. I was even reading about this
German toy company called Steve that released a limited edition
Titanic teddy bears shortly after the ships sank, and it's
really weird, like it was actually called the Morning Bear
because it was made to look like it was grieving
the victims, like it had all black fur and these
(28:45):
red rimmed eyes to make it look like the bear
had been crying, and it's just gross, to be honest
with you. And apparently the idea had come from a
report about the Titanic senior engineer William Moves, who went
down with the ship and supposedly he had a Steve
Teddy bear on board with him, so the company decided
to release a memorial bear in his honor. And the
(29:06):
craziest part is that today the Steve Morning Bears typically
go for upwards of twenty grand apiece at auction. That
is insane. So one of the biggest surprises in preparing
for today's episode was really that, like seeing just how
quickly people began to capitalize on Titanic. And I think
one of the best examples of that is the fact
that exactly one month after the ship went down, the
(29:29):
very first movie about Titanic premiered in theaters. Wait did
you say one month after? Like I obviously knew the
movie wasn't the first to tackle this subject. But I mean,
I can't see any way that something could have come
out that quickly one month after such a real life tragedy. Yeah,
and you haven't even heard the wildest part yet, because
(29:49):
this movie, which was called Saved from the Titanic, actually
started a young silent film actress named Dorothy Gibson, and
Dorothy and her mother were both survivors of the real Titanic.
I mean, can you even imagine like living through a
nightmare like that and then re enacting the whole thing
just two weeks later? I mean, I can't imagine that,
nor would I want to. But what on earth made
(30:10):
her want to do this? So Dorothy apparently did not
want to do the movie at all, but she got
talked into it by her producer slash boyfriend, who is
I guess this unscrupulous Hollywood mogul type like. His name
was Jules Brulator. He had put together this news reel
on the Titanic that proved to be this huge hit.
So he figured that a dramatization of the event starring
(30:31):
an actual survivor would make a great next act, and so,
with the help of a thousand dollar engagement ring, he
made his pitch to Dorothy, and she ultimately agreed to
make this one reel film about her experience, but as
you can imagine, it was not easy. For the sake
of realism, she chose to wear the same evening dress,
coat and shoes that she'd worn the night Titanic sank,
(30:53):
and Dorothy reportedly burst into tears multiple times during the shooting,
and once the film had wrapped, she walked away from
the movie business for good. She stated simply that she
felt quote dissatisfied. I mean, I can't blame her for
wanting to get away from an industry that would push
her into reliving a trauma like that. But honestly, though,
I mean, I have to men, I would be curious
(31:15):
to see the movie, and the truth is, you're not
the only one. So Save from the Titanic is actually
one of the holy grails for silent movie buffs. And
that's because two years after it was made, this massive
fire broke out at the studio and all the known
prints were destroyed. So nobody's seen the movie since its
original run in theaters over a hundred years ago. And
(31:35):
as much as I wish the film could have been
preserved for posterity, it's kind of poetic that no one
can make her re enact that experience every again. Yeah,
I mean, I guess there's a certain kind of justice
in that, But I mean what I find ironic is
that there are plenty of people today who will go
to great links and great expense to sort of relive
the experience of the Titanic. I mean, you mentioned earlier
(31:57):
how people pay big money to recreate the ships lavish meals,
and they're also companies that offer one hundred thousand dollar
submarine voyages to see the actual Titanic wreckage and all
its glory. And I actually I read about an American
couple that even got married and a tiny subduct on
the bow of the tiny shipwreck. So I'm sure that
(32:19):
made for some pretty amazing wedding fishers. But it does
seem a little disrespectful to me, right, like it's effectively
this mass grave. Well, I mean, you're not the only
one to point that out, And in fact, listen to
what the company that put on the undersea wedding said
in its defense. It said, Um, what's got to be
remembered is that every time a couple gets married in church,
(32:39):
they have to walk through a graveyard to get to
the altar. Yeah. I mean, plenty of people get married
in churches that have on site cemeteries, but in those
cases the graveyard isn't the selling point like it is
with the Titanic. Well, I think the Titanic tourism stuff
probably comes from that same place, as as those just
missed it stories we talked about at the top of
(32:59):
the show, and that kind of weird desire that people
feel to tie themselves to someone else's tragedy. But I mean,
in this case, I feel like it goes a little
too far, which sounds right, but I pretty much signed
with Robert Ballard, who is the oceanographer who first discovered
the Titanic wreckage back in eighty five, and he refused
to divulige to the ship's exact location for fear that
(33:21):
treasure hunters and corporations would swoop into exploit it. And
it's an act that Ballard actually saw his tantamount to
grave robbing. Of course, the coordinates eventually leaked anyway, and
not more than a hundred forty people have visited the
shipwreck off the coast of Newfoundland altogether, though these visitors
have extracted some five thousand artifacts and done untold damaged
(33:41):
the ship itself in the process. It's always a little
unsettling to see the final resting place of so many
people picked apart like that. But actually I read somewhere
that the Titanics under UNESCO protection now, though, isn't it? Yeah,
ever since the hundredth anniversary of the wreck. I believe so.
Then it's considered like this underwater cultural heritage site or
(34:02):
something like that, and so any kind of excavation would
actually be off limits at this point. Yeah, that's true,
and legal protections, even ones that are a few decades
too late, are a nice deterrent to these would be
pirates and scavengers. But the reality is that Titanic won't
be around much longer, no matter what we do. And
that's because about a decade ago, scientists discovered a new
(34:22):
species of bacteria that's been slowly devouring the ship's iron hull.
Not only that, but as the microbes munch away, they
formed these icicle like communities called rusticles. And this happens
all over the ship, inside it out. And as the
rusticles get heavier and heavier, they start to pull the
ship apart piece by piece. Meanwhile, the mollusks have made
(34:42):
short work of the wood from Titanic, and of course
any human remains were consumed by marine life long ago.
So at this point most researchers think it's just another
decade or two until the ship is gone forever. Yeah,
I mean, that will really be the end of an era.
But of course, with all the biographies and movies and
Teddy Bears and themed dinners, I mean, I think we'll
always have plenty to remember the Titanic and its passengers
(35:05):
by absolutely, And speaking of remembrances, Robert Ballard gave a
really touching one shortly after he found the shipwreck, and
it kind of works as a eulogy for the ship
and for the event as a whole. So I thought
it might be a nice way to close out the show.
Do you mind if I read it and then we
can go straight to the fact off. Yeah, go for it, Okay.
So this is what Ballard said. Quote. The Titanic lies
(35:28):
now in thirteen thousand feet of water on a gently
sloping alpine looking countryside, overlooking a small canyon below. Its
bow faces north. The ship sits upright on its bottom,
with its mighty stacks pointed upward. There is no light
at this great depth, and little life can be found.
It is a quiet and peaceful place, and a fitting
(35:48):
place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies
to rest forever. May it remain that way, and may
God bless these now found souls. So one of the
weirder things to read about is all the ways people
plan to try to bring the Titanic back up to
(36:11):
the surface. And some of the weird ones that I
just jotted down here are One was filling polyester bags
with vasoline, and the idea here is that vasoline would
harden then become buoyant, and that that would somehow lift
the Titanic. Another was filling the whole of the ship
with thousands of ping pong balls. Uh. And then another
(36:32):
one is in case the ship in ice, which would
basically be the equivalent of creating a big ice cube
and a drink, and that we all know what happens
with ice cubes and a drink. They they float. So
these were all brilliant ideas, but somehow none of these
ideas came to life. So back in six the writer
William t Stead wrote a fictional piece about a male
(36:53):
steamer wrecking and then most of his passengers dying because
there weren't enough lifeboats. And in the story he pointed
out the fact that there really lax regulations didn't require
ships to have enough lifeboats for every person on the ship.
Just a few years later, Steve came back to his
theme and wrote about a ship crashing into ice. And
then we fast forward a couple of decades and one
of the passengers who died in the Titanic tragedy was
(37:15):
none other than Steed, and he did so because there
were enough lifeboats on board. Wow. Well, we talked about
this before, about how anytime there's a disaster like this,
lots of people claim that they were almost a part
of it. But there's actually one famous person that has
pretty good proof of this. It turns out that Milton
Snavely Hershey, you know, the man behind the legendary chocolate
(37:38):
brand things like her She's Kisses her She chocolate bars.
Do you need me to give more examples? Mango or
with her Sheah? Well, anyway, he was scheduled to be
on the ship. So if you head to Hershey, Pennsylvania
and visit the community archives there, you can see a
three hundred dollar check that hers She had written to
the White Star Line, and it's believed to be a
(37:59):
deposit tour a stateroom, but it turns out that he
had more urgent business back in the States, and so
Hershey and his wife took an earlier ship, the America,
which strangely was one of the mini ships that sent
back warnings to the Titanic. You know the iconic scene
in the movie Titanic where Roses lying on the driftwood
and staring up at the sky. Right, So Neil deGrasse
(38:21):
Tyson apparently saw the scene and decided to send a
note to James Cameron to point out that the star
Rose was looking up at wouldn't have actually been the
one she would have seen at that real place in time.
The only issue is that Tyson didn't see this movie
until about a decade after its initial release. But Cameron
is such a perfectionist that he decided to reshoot the
scene in preparation for the release of the three D edition,
(38:44):
so more than a decade later. That's pretty wild and
also pretty impressive that we made it near the end
of the fact off before we really did a fact
about the movie. Yeah, alright, Well, we all know that
the Titanic sunk after fighting with an iceberg, but some
believe that there was a massive coal fire in the
bunker of the ship that actually caused significant structural weakening
(39:08):
of the outside of the ship. Now, journalists sin and
Maloney has been researching this subject for decades now, and
he points to these photographs of the Titanic right before
its final trip, and the photos show this huge black
mark on the whole of the ship, which is of
course where the ship would later hit the iceberg. Now,
Maloney also believes that the owners of the Titanic were
(39:30):
well aware of this damage, but not wanting to delay
a trip, which would of course cost them a bunch
of money, they decided to just ignore it. Now. I
should note that many engineers looking at the situation have
said it's difficult to tell how much that prior damage
really contributed to the disaster. It may have all happened anyway,
but it's still pretty interesting to look at this theory.
(39:51):
I mean, it is crazy that their conspiracy theories about
the Titanic. It's pretty fascinating. So there's a restaurant near
Halifax Harbor. It's the seafood plants called Five Fishermen Restaurant,
and it's supposedly a fantastic restaurant, but it's got a
strange claim to fame. It was actually an old mortuary,
the city's oldest. In fact, it was called Snow and
Company undertakers, and it received the bodies of not just one,
(40:14):
but two major tragedies in the early nine hundreds. It
turns out that Halifax was the base of many of
the rescue operations, and many of the bodies from the
Titanic disaster were brought to Snow's funeral home. And then
five years later, when the Halifax explosion took place, it
was the largest human made explosion in history at the time,
many of the bodies were once again brought to Snow
and Company. Wow, such a weird coincidence. And you said
(40:36):
it's a seafood place. Now it is, And well, well,
I do like that fact. I think you're ping pong
ball ice cube fact lifting the Titanic is is probably
the happiest one of the slots. I think you deserve
the prize this week. Thanks so much, And hopefully one
day they will try all of those at one time.
These just great rising of the ship. But you know,
(40:57):
it's been interesting to dive into this one. I know
there are facts out there that we certainly left out.
We always love hearing those from you. You can email
us those anytime part Time Genius at how stuff Works
dot com or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
But from Gabe, Tristan, Mango and me, thanks so much
for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is
(41:27):
a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't be possible
without several brilliant people who do the important things we
couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does the editing thing.
Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI
mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact producer thing.
Gabeluesier is our lead researcher, with support from the research
Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and
(41:47):
Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears. Good job, Eves.
If you like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe,
And if you really really like what you've heard, maybe
you could leave a good review for us. Do we do?
We forget Jason Jason, who did the tatt the property
bas
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