Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff looks dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor at how Stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as wait for it,
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland, Ships at a distance have every
Speaker 1: man's wish on board. All right, today we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about a boat. You're are you doing that to goad
Speaker 1: me or the people writing in what that should be
Speaker 1: called a ship and boat? Okay, wait, before we get started,
Speaker 1: this is a personal pet peeve like Jonathan Strickland. In fact,
Speaker 1: I want there to be a special musical sting for
Speaker 1: personal pet peeve of Jonathan Strickland. Make a note of
Speaker 1: it in a way. So my personal pet peeve in
Speaker 1: this in today's episode always involves things that are very
Speaker 1: difficult to define and that there are not specific parameters
Speaker 1: where a thing is categorized as one thing versus another thing.
Speaker 1: Now here's an example, ship versus boat. So a ship
Speaker 1: technically is a vessel large enough to carry a boat
Speaker 1: and a boat is technically a vessel small enough to
Speaker 1: be carried upon a ship. I have a problem with this.
Speaker 1: There should be a specific size where a boat becomes
Speaker 1: a ship or a ship is degraded down to a boat. Also,
Speaker 1: mountain versus hill, what's up with that mountain? Hill? And
Speaker 1: the hill is smaller than a mountain? Says to my
Speaker 1: personal pet, Peeve. I'm pretty sure, yeah, that the Titanic
Speaker 1: is large enough to be considered a ship. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: So this boat even now was made back in alright,
Speaker 1: so lett's talk about let's talk about this all right.
Speaker 1: So is it's famous, right, obviously famous because of the
Speaker 1: the disaster, the sinking of the Titanic. I was expecting
Speaker 1: to say because of that documentary on Titanic. There are
Speaker 1: many documentaries on Titanic, and some of them are actually documentaries.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and and the reason that it came up
Speaker 1: was because there we just passed the anniversary. Also, Leonardo
Speaker 1: DiCaprio was in the office the other day, that's not true,
Speaker 1: thinking of the Titanic and was apologizing for her performance.
Speaker 1: And no, it's not true either. That's really sweet. So
Speaker 1: we we uh, we have just passed the you know,
Speaker 1: people talking about um the Titanic, and and it's sort
Speaker 1: of romanticized in a way, not because of the movie,
Speaker 1: but because, I guess because it was supposedly unsinkable, because
Speaker 1: it was so immensely Titanic. Yeah, and it was also
Speaker 1: there's also an era of romanticism again, one of those
Speaker 1: things where you look back on a time and you
Speaker 1: romanticize it because you know, it seems it seems this
Speaker 1: sort of uh, ethereal time that we can only imagine now.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can see the pictures in the film
Speaker 1: and everything, but still it feels like otherworldly because it's
Speaker 1: not our experience. Yes, the Titanic sank on April fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve. Now it had two thousand, two hundred eight
Speaker 1: passengers and eight officers and crew members aboard. Out of those,
Speaker 1: about one thousand, five hundred thirteen or so the records,
Speaker 1: very depending on who you ask, about a thousand, five thousand,
Speaker 1: hundred seventeen or somewhere thereabouts died. And in fact, there
Speaker 1: were only room for one thousand, one hundred seventy six
Speaker 1: passengers in the lifeboats. They didn't have enough lifeboats for
Speaker 1: the entire crew and passenger list. Uh and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly one of the most famous tragedies to
Speaker 1: happen in the travel industry. It's one of those things
Speaker 1: that is legendary, really, and the legend has just grown
Speaker 1: over the years since the sinking. A little bit other
Speaker 1: more information about the people who died, just something that
Speaker 1: I thought was kind of interesting and tragic. So h
Speaker 1: there were three hundred and twenty nine first class passengers
Speaker 1: on the Titanic. On three of them died. That's thirty
Speaker 1: seven percent of the actually all of them are dead now,
Speaker 1: but at the time, seven percent of the first class
Speaker 1: passengers died. Third class passengers there were uh seven and
Speaker 1: ten of them. Five hundred and twenty seven of them
Speaker 1: died in the sinking of the Titanic, which is about
Speaker 1: seventy four of them, So thirty seven percent first class passengers.
Speaker 1: Third class passengers wished in the sinking, which is led
Speaker 1: to quite a bit of discussion about how the third
Speaker 1: class passengers were treated and uh and how preferential treatment
Speaker 1: was given to first class passengers. Uh and there are
Speaker 1: plenty of conflicting reports about crew members actually restraining third
Speaker 1: class passengers from getting to the lifeboats until all the
Speaker 1: first class passengers were taken care of, or as many
Speaker 1: as possible. So lots of different reasons why this tragedy
Speaker 1: has lived on in our minds. But we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the technology aboard the Titanic,
Speaker 1: the development of the Titanic, and also some technology that
Speaker 1: was developed as a result of the or at least
Speaker 1: pushed forward as a result of the Titanic sinking. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would say that the Titanic is the story. The
Speaker 1: Titanic is intertwined with technology. Yes, I mean it was
Speaker 1: that the ship was supposedly cutting edge. It had been
Speaker 1: theoretically designed to prevent something like this from happening. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it had a lot of high
Speaker 1: tech equipment on board. Um it also uh you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's equipment had some success. I would say
Speaker 1: that some of the systems did exactly what they were
Speaker 1: supposed to. They performed very very well, and other systems
Speaker 1: failed terribly, leading to uh, ultimately to more passengers dying.
Speaker 1: And um, you know there are things like the number
Speaker 1: of lifeboats, which are not necessarily technological issues that were
Speaker 1: you know, that were problems, and of course they were
Speaker 1: problems but we wanted to focus specifically on the technologies
Speaker 1: because um, at the time the ship was designed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, top of the line, and in fact it
Speaker 1: was I believe the larger ship uh that had been
Speaker 1: built for pat you know, for cruises at that time.
Speaker 1: And its sister ships because there were two other the
Speaker 1: Gigantic and the Britannic. No, not the Britannic, which was
Speaker 1: originally called the Britannic. It was the Olympic Olympia maybe
Speaker 1: was the Olympia but not yeah, so the but but
Speaker 1: those three ships. What happened was back in nineteen o
Speaker 1: seven there was a dinner meeting between J. Bruce Ismay,
Speaker 1: who was the son of Thomas Isnay Ismay, who is
Speaker 1: the founder of the White Star Line ocean liner company.
Speaker 1: So these this was a company that was managing and
Speaker 1: maintaining these huge ocean liners, which was the way to
Speaker 1: travel back then if you're going to go overseas. But
Speaker 1: the problem was that or perhaps the opportunity, I should say,
Speaker 1: the opportunity was there to create luxury liners that would
Speaker 1: improve passenger comfort and the ideas by providing this these comforts,
Speaker 1: more people would want to travel and you would have
Speaker 1: a much more successful business because the liners previously we're
Speaker 1: pretty plain. You know, it just was it was just
Speaker 1: a you would get a very plain lodgings and you
Speaker 1: would be on board the ship for days and days
Speaker 1: trying to cross oceans, and it wasn't terribly luxurious or comfortable.
Speaker 1: So the idea was, let's let's change that. Let's make
Speaker 1: these luxury liners that can can cater to the comfort
Speaker 1: of passengers, and so uh he had a Ismael had
Speaker 1: a dinner with a fellow named Lord Peery, and Lord
Speaker 1: Peery was the chairman of Harland and Wolf shipbuilders, and
Speaker 1: the two of them started talking about a couple of
Speaker 1: liners that had recently launched, the Mauritania and the Lusitania,
Speaker 1: and both of these ships were larger, larger than any
Speaker 1: previous ones at that point, and were known for their
Speaker 1: their amenities, and so Ismael was thinking, we could do that.
Speaker 1: Why don't we design some ships that can even put
Speaker 1: these behind and and make these seem primitive in comparison.
Speaker 1: And the Titanic was one of the three ships designed
Speaker 1: to do such a thing, and it was at the
Speaker 1: time one of the yeah, one of the largest vessels
Speaker 1: on the ocean. It was two and a half feet
Speaker 1: long two or so almost two sixty ninety two point
Speaker 1: five ft wide, which is about twenty eight ms, and
Speaker 1: it weighed about forty five thousand tons, so big ship,
Speaker 1: which meant a couple of things. It meant one that
Speaker 1: maneuvering such a ship was challenging because it was so large.
Speaker 1: That was not the kind of ship that's going to
Speaker 1: stop on a dime or turn in a very tight
Speaker 1: radius in order to chin a quarter an order dollar
Speaker 1: in order to change the course of this ship and
Speaker 1: to change its its speed required quite a bit of leeway,
Speaker 1: which was one of the big problems that the Titanic
Speaker 1: encountered when it had its famous tragedy on a few
Speaker 1: days later after it launched. So that was one of
Speaker 1: the main things about it was just its sheer size.
Speaker 1: It had these enormous turbines that were operated off of
Speaker 1: the exhausting that the There was these reciprocating engines aboard
Speaker 1: the Titanic, two of them that would create steam there.
Speaker 1: The engines themselves were almost forty ft tall, and uh
Speaker 1: the steam would power these turbines that would turn these
Speaker 1: uh three blade propellers that were twenty three and a
Speaker 1: half feet in diameter. It's about seven meters or so.
Speaker 1: And uh, there was also a four blade propeller that
Speaker 1: was seventeen ft in diameter or about five meters, that
Speaker 1: was located near the ship's rudder, which helped the Titanic
Speaker 1: attain speeds close to twenty four knots. So you've got
Speaker 1: this massive ship and this huge engine and these big
Speaker 1: turbines and propellers to help move it through the water.
Speaker 1: And yes, it did not maneuver um nimbly, right new
Speaker 1: BLI nimbly. It was not a nimble type of vessel.
Speaker 1: Was It was very impressive, but not designed to, you know,
Speaker 1: do slalomn courses unless they were miles wide. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and this is when technology plays a part two. Um,
Speaker 1: should we talk about the probably the most famous uh
Speaker 1: technological system. Uh. I've got a couple of ideas of
Speaker 1: what you could be talking about. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: Marconi's invention? I was talking about Bill Marconi's invention. Bill, Yes,
Speaker 1: Phil Marconi? Alright, fine, So Billy, Uh, where'd you get
Speaker 1: Bill from? I'd go with Gil Marconi. Yeah. Anyway, Marconi
Speaker 1: of course famous for um not inventing the radio, because
Speaker 1: Tesla did that. But if you've heard he is famous
Speaker 1: for inventing the radios, he was for inventing the radio.
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of people who argued that Tesla
Speaker 1: did actually invented the radio. That was me poking fun
Speaker 1: at Marconi. Uh, but Mark, he certainly, he certainly made
Speaker 1: the radio a practical invention as opposed to just a curiosity. Well,
Speaker 1: Marconi's thing was radio. Tesla was, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: busy with all kinds of different things. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was a little less focused, but um, he did
Speaker 1: patent radio and then Marconi got the patent overturned. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's a different story we've talked about before in this podcast.
Speaker 1: So Marconi has this radio system that ships were starting
Speaker 1: to use at the time the Titanic launched. There were
Speaker 1: several ships that had radio systems, but they were still
Speaker 1: relatively new and uh they could only really transmit radio
Speaker 1: waves and short little bursts, so they were perfect for
Speaker 1: things like Morse code, but they were not designed for
Speaker 1: voice transmission, right, So uh, it was it was a
Speaker 1: spark transmitter, right. You had to have you had to
Speaker 1: have operators on board your ship who would be able
Speaker 1: to to take messages, convert them to Morse code and
Speaker 1: send them in as well as receive messages. And the
Speaker 1: Titanic had two operators, which was unusual for a lot
Speaker 1: of ships. Many ships only had the one, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it was fairly common practice aboard these ships for you know,
Speaker 1: at certain times a night, the operator would turn in,
Speaker 1: like they would be the end of the operator shift,
Speaker 1: and they'd go to bed and there'd be no one
Speaker 1: manning the radio at that time. That will prove to
Speaker 1: be important. So there were the two who were aboard
Speaker 1: the Titanic were Harold Bride who survived the ordeal, and
Speaker 1: Jack Phillips who went down with the ship UH and
Speaker 1: these two men were in charge of manning this radio
Speaker 1: and um monitoring messages that were coming in and sending
Speaker 1: messages that were going out. One of the problems that
Speaker 1: happened that that helped contribute to this tragedy. A lot
Speaker 1: of people talk about how the Titanic received several reports,
Speaker 1: at least four reports from four different ships about ice
Speaker 1: in the area directly ahead of where the Titanic was
Speaker 1: was going, and that if the Titanic had heated these reports,
Speaker 1: perhaps they could have either altered the course or changed
Speaker 1: the speed, and maybe tragedy could have been averted. But
Speaker 1: here's the issue, back here, back at this time where
Speaker 1: people are using these these you know, these transmitters. Uh,
Speaker 1: it all depended on how powerful your transmitter was, whether
Speaker 1: or not you would pick something up. You could overpower
Speaker 1: someone else's transmitter because everyone's just essentially broadcasting full blast.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no fine tuning at this point. It's
Speaker 1: either on or it's off. And there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people who wanted to send messages out from the
Speaker 1: Titanic because it was a very novel thing to do,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of people on the shores
Speaker 1: of the United States who wanted to send messages to
Speaker 1: the people aboard the Titanic. So the operators were constantly
Speaker 1: busy sending out messages. And in fact, at one point
Speaker 1: a message came in from from I think it was
Speaker 1: the California, Yes, the r MS Californian, Californian and it's
Speaker 1: just about eleven pm, and uh, I won't bother trying
Speaker 1: to affect a my poor version of the British accent,
Speaker 1: but it says, say, old man, we are stopped and
Speaker 1: surrounded by ice and uh sailed then about let's stopped
Speaker 1: it surrounded by ice. See now now you've got the
Speaker 1: both that and the early early twentieth century movie I'm
Speaker 1: talking way too fast. It's a dirigible competition. Um. And
Speaker 1: about ten minutes later, um, the telegraph operator on Titanic
Speaker 1: and this just gets me and it probably will YouTube
Speaker 1: when you hear it. The Titanic sends back, keep out,
Speaker 1: shut up, shut up, I am busy. I'm working Cape Race,
Speaker 1: which is on the coast of Canada. Yes, So what
Speaker 1: was going on was that the the operator aboard the
Speaker 1: Titanic was communicating with Cape Race and sending personal messages exactly.
Speaker 1: It was all these messages that were coming in and
Speaker 1: going out from past two and from passengers on the
Speaker 1: Titanic and folks on the shore. So the problem here
Speaker 1: is that for an operator to be able to hear
Speaker 1: these messages. Now these, depending on the power of the transmitter,
Speaker 1: these radio messages could go a really long distance, like
Speaker 1: the Titanic could broadcast five miles in the daytime and
Speaker 1: two thousand miles at night. And we've talked about this,
Speaker 1: how using shortwave radio you can bounce radio waves off
Speaker 1: the ionosphere and make it go further. We talked about
Speaker 1: that in our numbers station podcasts. Remember, well that works
Speaker 1: best at night. Um, the during the daytime, the ionosphere
Speaker 1: just it behaves differently than it does at night. So
Speaker 1: at night the Titanic could broadcast these messages much further.
Speaker 1: And uh. The problem is that in order to listen
Speaker 1: in for incoming messages, you had to listen very carefully. Well,
Speaker 1: if another ship nearby was broadcasting, then that broadcast would
Speaker 1: overpower any incoming messages from the shore. Because the shore
Speaker 1: is much further away, the signals weaker, so the signal
Speaker 1: from a nearby ship would be much louder. So the
Speaker 1: shut up, shut up part is really the operators saying,
Speaker 1: I have to turn my sense, the sensitivity of this
Speaker 1: all the way up so I could pick up messages.
Speaker 1: So when you talk, it's like someone shouting with a
Speaker 1: bullhorn right next to my ear. So please shut up,
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to listen to these messages. Now, if
Speaker 1: they had actually heated that warning, send that up to
Speaker 1: the bridge. Now that According to some reports, the bridge
Speaker 1: did receive a couple of different reports about ice, but
Speaker 1: not all of them. So, like I think most of
Speaker 1: the reports I read suggests that two of the reports
Speaker 1: that came in never to the bridge, and although based
Speaker 1: upon the way that everything turned out, maybe it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have mattered anyway, because it seemed like a lot of
Speaker 1: the crew were fairly confident that, you know, they could
Speaker 1: maneuver through the ice without any problem, which as we
Speaker 1: see it's not the case. Um. But yeah, at least
Speaker 1: half of the messages did not get to the bridge anyway. So, Uh.
Speaker 1: The radio was very much day of the art at
Speaker 1: the time. However, it was still so primitive. The fact
Speaker 1: that you couldn't just switch a channel and have a
Speaker 1: dedicated channel so that you didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: overwriting someone else's messages, that was a problem. And uh,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it was since it was such
Speaker 1: a novelty and everyone wanted to use it to communicate,
Speaker 1: was a problem because it meant that the operator couldn't
Speaker 1: actually concentrate on really important information coming in. Another problem
Speaker 1: with the radio being being so early is that they
Speaker 1: had different UM different designation for I AM in trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now officially UM, the one that we're probably most familiar
Speaker 1: with UM s OS had actually been adopted mostly had
Speaker 1: been adopted by the German Navy. Well, German navy did
Speaker 1: that first, they did, um, well, the Marconi company first,
Speaker 1: uh set up c q D as it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: as as it's distressed call, which is why I not
Speaker 1: say that any better, it's what And that's what the
Speaker 1: Titanic was using c q D. Yeah, and basically that
Speaker 1: that's actually a homophonic French um for c Q being
Speaker 1: st SAKU which is short for security A basically meaning um,
Speaker 1: you know, help and be being for distress. So basically
Speaker 1: saying hey, I need help, I'm in distress. Um. Now, Germany,
Speaker 1: that was in February one, now a little bit more
Speaker 1: than a year later, in April onet En five, Uh,
Speaker 1: Germany said no, we're going to go with s O
Speaker 1: S three dots, three dashes, three dots. It's easy to say,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to transmit, and it's very easy to
Speaker 1: inderstand um. And they had saved other ships. In June tenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, the Slavonia used s O S. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what s S stands for it save other ships. No,
Speaker 1: actually it doesn't stand for anything. A lot of people
Speaker 1: think it stands for save our ship. Now the and
Speaker 1: the reason is just as Chris said, it's because the
Speaker 1: Morse code for it is UH is very easy to
Speaker 1: transmit and detect. That's the only reason s OS is
Speaker 1: used as a as an alert is because once you
Speaker 1: hear it, you know, did it? It did? Did it?
Speaker 1: Once you hear that, you got it. Yeah, it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty simple, and I think uh a lot of
Speaker 1: people now know exactly what it means. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, somebody had it for their ringtone on their
Speaker 1: phone somewhere and I'm going to somebody actually, I mean,
Speaker 1: is someone in distress? Yeah? How many how many movies?
Speaker 1: Has somebody been captured and you know, locked in some
Speaker 1: cellar thing and they start like hammering on a pipe.
Speaker 1: Some pull out their keys and they just start tapping
Speaker 1: against the pipe. And then mcgiver realizes that he's got
Speaker 1: a bottle cap, some bubblegum and a knife and he
Speaker 1: can turn that into a nuclear reaction. If only had
Speaker 1: a duct tape, he could have made a tongue machine man.
Speaker 1: That would have been great anyway. Yeah, So the problem
Speaker 1: here is that with the different the different UH codes
Speaker 1: for distress, not all ships understood what the Titanic was
Speaker 1: sending out. Once the Titanic did start sending out the
Speaker 1: stress signals, some of the nearby ships didn't know to respond,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until later in the night when they
Speaker 1: started to the the operators decided to actually include s
Speaker 1: OS as well as CQD and um there, I actually
Speaker 1: have a list of some of the messages that were
Speaker 1: sent out. I I do as well. Um, yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's one at twelve fifteen am. Actually, before we do that,
Speaker 1: I should go through really quickly and just do a
Speaker 1: quick time of events, like what happened when, because then
Speaker 1: that will give some context to these messages. So it
Speaker 1: was an eleven thirty five pm on April that they
Speaker 1: spotted the iceberg, where it was about a quarter of
Speaker 1: a mile ahead. Unfortunately, they would have needed at least
Speaker 1: half It was the fourteen Oh, you're right, you're right right,
Speaker 1: the fifteenth this when it actually sunk. Fourteenth was when
Speaker 1: it struck. I'm sorry, April fourt uh, Chris is completely right.
Speaker 1: So April fourteen pm is when they spot the iceberg.
Speaker 1: It's a quarter mile ahead. No, Unfortunately, they would have
Speaker 1: needed a half mile to actually stop the ship or
Speaker 1: move around it. So the best they could do is
Speaker 1: kind of skirt the edge of the iceberg. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing about icebergs. The part you see up on
Speaker 1: top is just a tiny fraction of the iceberg. There's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of iceberg underneath the waters the waterline,
Speaker 1: and uh, the problem was that part of this underwater
Speaker 1: section of the iceberg jutted out and the and it's
Speaker 1: scraped the side of the Titanic. It actually made six
Speaker 1: gashes in the Titanics hall, which and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: why that happened to It wasn't a head on collision, no, no,
Speaker 1: it hit It hit just one side of the Titanic,
Speaker 1: but that was enough to to cause it the problem.
Speaker 1: So so they spot the iceberg eleven forties so just
Speaker 1: five minutes later, that's when the Titanic scrapes against the iceberg. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then by midnight, the watertight compartments, of which there
Speaker 1: were sixteen in the within the Titanic, they start to
Speaker 1: fill up. Now six of them, five or six, depending
Speaker 1: on who you asked. We're filling up with water. Originally,
Speaker 1: the shipbuilders said that the Titanic would be perfectly fine
Speaker 1: if three of those water tight compartments flooded, it would
Speaker 1: still be able to sail as if there were no problems,
Speaker 1: and it could continue with four of them flooded, but
Speaker 1: it would have some problems. But with five or six flooded,
Speaker 1: it was just a matter of time before the Titanic
Speaker 1: would sink. And I'll go into more about that and
Speaker 1: a little bit too. So at one twenty in the morning,
Speaker 1: the bow of the of the Titanic begins to pitch
Speaker 1: into the water. So the weight from the water coming
Speaker 1: into those water tight containment areas is making the ship tilt,
Speaker 1: and that's actually causing more problems with flooding. Then at
Speaker 1: two am, the bottle starts to submerge and the propellers
Speaker 1: actually lift out of the water because of the weight
Speaker 1: from the water in the in the bow end of
Speaker 1: the ship wouldn't be the screws just okay, technically yes.
Speaker 1: At to ten, the Titanic starts to tilt about forty
Speaker 1: five degrees and the steel structure that underlies the ship
Speaker 1: starts to give way because the weight of the the
Speaker 1: end lifted out of the water is too much for it.
Speaker 1: At to twelve, the stern raises up out of the
Speaker 1: water and the bow completely fills with the water and
Speaker 1: starts to grow heavier. At to eighteen, the bow rips loose,
Speaker 1: so the bow starts to sink into the ocean. The
Speaker 1: stern meanwhile rises up almost completely vertical because it has
Speaker 1: lots of air still within it. So the stern is
Speaker 1: is free of the bow. The bow is now sinking
Speaker 1: into the ocean. Um and then the stern starts to sink.
Speaker 1: At to twenty in the morning and to twenty nine, uh,
Speaker 1: the bow hits the ocean floor. At to fifty six,
Speaker 1: the stern hits the ocean floor, and the stern is
Speaker 1: in really bad shape because it had so much air
Speaker 1: inside of it while it was sinking. Uh, there were
Speaker 1: implosions within the ship itself because the pressure that was
Speaker 1: building up just ended up. The pressure from outside the
Speaker 1: ship and the air pressure inside the ship created this
Speaker 1: situation where because it wasn't truly flooded like the bow was, um,
Speaker 1: you had these implosions. And which is why if you
Speaker 1: ever see any of the documentaries where there are sub
Speaker 1: marines that are exploring the show, the stern looks destroyed.
Speaker 1: The bow looks almost preserved, and the stern does not.
Speaker 1: And that's why so with that in mind, looking at
Speaker 1: some of the messages that were sent out, so at
Speaker 1: forty you have the the collision. At twelve fifteen in
Speaker 1: the morning on April fift because we've just passed midnight,
Speaker 1: the Titanic sends out a message to any ship, says
Speaker 1: c q D Titanic and gives the coordinates. And then
Speaker 1: at twelve seventeen, just two minutes later, that's when they
Speaker 1: write c q D c q D s O S.
Speaker 1: Titanic gives the position, require media assistance. Come at once.
Speaker 1: We struck an iceberg sinking. Um. And at twelve twenty
Speaker 1: a m. They message, specifically to the Carpathia. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: A couple of ships responded, uh, pretty much right away, Um,
Speaker 1: the Frankfurt UH and the Olympic, the sister ship of
Speaker 1: the UH Titanic. Um. We we're quite a distance away, unfortunately. Um.
Speaker 1: The Frankfort was about a hundred seventy miles or so
Speaker 1: away and the Olympic was almost five hundred miles away.
Speaker 1: But here again, this high tech transmitter that the Marconi
Speaker 1: Company had on their they were able to there were
Speaker 1: a lot of ships that were aware of what was
Speaker 1: going on. Now, whether or not they could make it
Speaker 1: there in time to save people. Thankfully, the Carpathio was
Speaker 1: somewhat close, although the Californian was the closest. Here's the
Speaker 1: issue is that after the Californian operator received the message
Speaker 1: saying shut up, the Californian operator just started, it's time
Speaker 1: to go to bed. I'm not paid enough to put
Speaker 1: up with this, and they and closed down shop and
Speaker 1: went to bed. And that's like we said, that was
Speaker 1: that was regular practice on board ships that after you
Speaker 1: each the end of your shift, you you closed down,
Speaker 1: you turned off the radio, and you caught some sleep.
Speaker 1: So that's exactly what the operator of the Californian did.
Speaker 1: If the operator had stayed on in the Californian could
Speaker 1: have responded much more quickly potentially anyway than the Carpathia
Speaker 1: did and probably would have saved some of you know,
Speaker 1: some of the some of the people who died would
Speaker 1: have likely have been rescued had had the Californian been
Speaker 1: able to respond in time. However, you know, I think, well,
Speaker 1: never mind that that was one of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of got me, you know, sort of a gut
Speaker 1: wrenching feeling when the operator told them to shut up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the twelve help. Twelve twenty five in the morning, the
Speaker 1: Carpathias sends a message to the Titanic saying, shall I
Speaker 1: tell my captain do require assistance? And a minute later
Speaker 1: Titanic response with yes, come quick. And then at twelve
Speaker 1: thirty two, so six minutes after that, the Carpathia messages
Speaker 1: putting about and heading for you. So at that point
Speaker 1: the Carpathia does start to make its way towards the Titanic.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And the messages continued from the the
Speaker 1: Titanic and and they get pretty it's pretty rough s
Speaker 1: os Titanic sinking by the head we are about all
Speaker 1: down sinking. It was at twelve forty in the morning. Um.
Speaker 1: And then that uh. They kept sending messages is as
Speaker 1: fast as they could, yea, hoping that somebody else might
Speaker 1: be close enough and they might tune in and uh
Speaker 1: and come help, which is why they kept on switching
Speaker 1: between c q D and S O S and uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It it continued all the way up to the ship
Speaker 1: actually sinking. I mean the last see if I've got
Speaker 1: the very last message here, I think the very last
Speaker 1: one is right at around between between two fifteen am
Speaker 1: and two am, so this is right about when the
Speaker 1: ship itself was going under um and it said that
Speaker 1: the last message was s O S s O S
Speaker 1: c q D c q D Titanic. We are sinking fast.
Speaker 1: Passengers are being put into boats Titanic and that was
Speaker 1: the last message. And as I said, Bride Um escaped.
Speaker 1: He he survived, but Phillips went down with the ship.
Speaker 1: He was supposedly signaling all the way up until the
Speaker 1: very end. Uh. And in fact, I read one report
Speaker 1: that said that Brian had said when he came in
Speaker 1: to check on Phillips to try and tell him to leave,
Speaker 1: Phillips was still there sending out messages frantically and listening
Speaker 1: for messages while another passenger or a crew member was
Speaker 1: trying to remove phillips life vest, and that Phillips was
Speaker 1: just letting it happened because he was stuck, you know,
Speaker 1: staying at his post, which shows a level of dedication
Speaker 1: that that I think borders on the fanatic um. And
Speaker 1: it also is interesting in that I remember I read
Speaker 1: an interview with a guy who specifically said that in
Speaker 1: this day Phillips and Bride could be considered the computer nerds.
Speaker 1: Of of that era, Like, these were guys who were
Speaker 1: absolutely obsessed with radio and they loved it and they
Speaker 1: lived it, and that this was just something that they
Speaker 1: found engrossing and fascinating and that kind of I can
Speaker 1: kind of understand that. I've I've met some computer nerds,
Speaker 1: and I say that term with all affection, who I
Speaker 1: think you would have to use a crowbar to separate
Speaker 1: them from their computer. So it's a very similar situation.
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk a bit about some of the reasons
Speaker 1: why the Titanic did sink. The damage to the hull
Speaker 1: UM didn't look as severe as what you might imagine something,
Speaker 1: you know, like a hole being large enough to sink
Speaker 1: a ship like the Titanic. But part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that these gashes that hit along the side of
Speaker 1: the hull, some of them were quite long and and
Speaker 1: bridged more than one watertight compartment. Yeah, and there were
Speaker 1: there were a lot of things going on here. Um.
Speaker 1: Part of a good bit of it was apparently human error,
Speaker 1: I mean not just in in um making mistakes like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, mistakes not ignoring the messages, um, not you know,
Speaker 1: over confidence in the ship's ability to take on an iceberg.
Speaker 1: But but also you know the way they um from
Speaker 1: what I understand, they left some of the watertight compartments open,
Speaker 1: which allowed water to pass from one another. And you know,
Speaker 1: there were apparently some mistakes in constructing the ship to um.
Speaker 1: The steel apparently was particularly brittle. Yeah, there's um. And
Speaker 1: of course I'm sure that the cold water didn't help anything.
Speaker 1: That's actually yeah, that's actually a real problem with the
Speaker 1: So the steel was semi killed low carbon steel and
Speaker 1: the carbon the process, the process of of making the steel, uh,
Speaker 1: introduced some sulfur into the mix. And steel with a
Speaker 1: high sulfur content that is put to low temperatures and
Speaker 1: experiences a high velocity impact tends to be brittle. Now,
Speaker 1: normally the way steel would react if you had created,
Speaker 1: you know, a very strong steel mix, Uh, it would
Speaker 1: normally deform. So it bends, right. So, I mean, we've
Speaker 1: all seen steel that's been dented. So every time I
Speaker 1: go shopping and look at the cars in the parking lot,
Speaker 1: there you go, so there and that's just the ones
Speaker 1: that he he hits. Um. The uh, Yeah, the steel
Speaker 1: tends to bend. It deforms first before it breaks. Now,
Speaker 1: when it's brittle, it'll break rather than deform, and so
Speaker 1: the uh that's a bad thing. You know, if the
Speaker 1: deforms that can it can hold on to its integrity
Speaker 1: a little bit better than it could if it just
Speaker 1: shears away. So there are plenty of pictures online where
Speaker 1: you can see steel bars that were um to have
Speaker 1: high sulfur content versus ones that don't, that are subjected
Speaker 1: to uh to temperatures that the Titanic would have been
Speaker 1: subjected to at that time, and hit with a high
Speaker 1: velocity weight and regular steel bends and the steel that
Speaker 1: was the same sort of uh of composite as that
Speaker 1: that that was used in the Titanic breaks in half
Speaker 1: like there's no there's no bending, it just it just shatters.
Speaker 1: So that was part of the problem, was that the
Speaker 1: steel just shattered rather than bent in and so water
Speaker 1: was able to come in uh without problem. Another issue
Speaker 1: was that these watertight compartments they had watertight doors that
Speaker 1: could drop automatically or manually, and they did seal those.
Speaker 1: But the issue there is that the watertight compartments only
Speaker 1: went so far up. They went above where the waterline is.
Speaker 1: All right, so you've got the water line on the ship.
Speaker 1: Anything that's above that water line, the walls stopped, so
Speaker 1: there was a gap there in these quote unquote watertight compartments. Well,
Speaker 1: when these six compartments or five or six compartments started
Speaker 1: to take on water, it made the ship start to
Speaker 1: lift and started to to move to one side. As
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, the bowt was starting to go under.
Speaker 1: And once that happened, uh, the water started to make
Speaker 1: the ship tilt, and as it was tilting, the water
Speaker 1: could flow over parts of these these uh, these walls,
Speaker 1: because that the ship was no longer upright, So that
Speaker 1: meant that water could start spreading into other unaffected water
Speaker 1: tight compartments quote unquote watertight compartments. Uh, because the since
Speaker 1: the walls didn't go all the way up, so you
Speaker 1: had water rushing into otherwise safe compartments, and it just
Speaker 1: made the problem worse. In fact, I've seen some reports
Speaker 1: that suggest that perhaps if the Titanic didn't have all
Speaker 1: those watertight compartments uh, and instead the water was free
Speaker 1: to just flow across the entire underwater surface of the boat,
Speaker 1: the ship still would have sunk, but it would have
Speaker 1: sunk in a in a less a more controlled, more
Speaker 1: controlled manner would have taken more. It would have taken longer,
Speaker 1: so rescue ships would have had more time to get there,
Speaker 1: perhaps rescuing many more people. And it wouldn't have necessarily
Speaker 1: pitched over and broken in half like it actually did,
Speaker 1: so it would have just just started to lose buoyancy
Speaker 1: and continue to sink, which would have been much better
Speaker 1: news for everyone involved, obviously. Um So, so part of
Speaker 1: the issue we have here is a system that was
Speaker 1: designed to help prevent sinking actually contributing to sinking potentially. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is all based upon a lot of after the
Speaker 1: fact supposition, right um, and then you know there the
Speaker 1: other issues involved are the fact that they didn't have
Speaker 1: enough lifeboats aboard, and part of that was that the
Speaker 1: ship was so new that there wasn't a designation for
Speaker 1: how many lifeboats it should have. Uh, most reports I
Speaker 1: say say that I had sixteen lifeboats aboard, that there
Speaker 1: were actually more than that, but that the sixteen lifeboats
Speaker 1: were the ones that were ready to go because uh,
Speaker 1: they were supposed to have two rows of these lifeboats,
Speaker 1: but one row was removed for aesthetic reasons. So well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was hey, you know, it was unsinkable
Speaker 1: right there, wasn't any reason to have lifeboats. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and UH, the sixteen lifeboats were UM. That was that
Speaker 1: was the bare minimum for a ship of ten thousand
Speaker 1: tons and as dictated by by an authorization council. But
Speaker 1: the problem was that the Titanic was larger than that.
Speaker 1: But the the the regulations hadn't caught up to the innovation.
Speaker 1: The ten thousand tons was as big as it got
Speaker 1: in the regulations, so there was no uh, there was
Speaker 1: no correcting for the fact that Titanic was actually larger
Speaker 1: than what the top level was in these regulations, so
Speaker 1: it had the bare minimum UM. So that was also
Speaker 1: another issue. There were pretty much everything that could go wrong.
Speaker 1: I guess not everything that could go wrong did go
Speaker 1: wrong because people did survive, which is good. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that that radio system kept on going UM as long
Speaker 1: as the telegraph operators were able to power it UM.
Speaker 1: But that was the department one. The problem that once
Speaker 1: the water began flooding UM the areas of the ship
Speaker 1: that provided power the turbines UM, then the UH system
Speaker 1: started losing power. The signal was much less effective. And
Speaker 1: you UM, there are reports two of of communications between
Speaker 1: other ships where they're explaining you know, hey, this is
Speaker 1: what's going on. The Titanics going down. We need to
Speaker 1: get over there. Who needs help? You know, Messages back
Speaker 1: and forth to explain, and you start to get in
Speaker 1: the early hours of the fifteen, you start to see
Speaker 1: things like, well, we haven't heard from them since you
Speaker 1: know such and such time. We haven't heard from them
Speaker 1: since midnight. We haven't heard from them, even though they
Speaker 1: broadcast since then the power was going down. Their signal
Speaker 1: uh strength was waning. Um until that the power went out.
Speaker 1: So um. You know they that system worked very very well. UM.
Speaker 1: But of course after uh, you know, this tragedy, they
Speaker 1: started trying to find ways to prevent it from happening again. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, July five, UM, the International Radio Telegraph Convention,
Speaker 1: and they had they had confirmed s OS as the
Speaker 1: distress call, roughly about the time the Germans had. But again,
Speaker 1: you know, not everyone had adopted it. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know obviously that the Titanics operators knew about it, but
Speaker 1: they were sticking with the Marconi c QD. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: alternate back and forth, going for whatever would help. But
Speaker 1: they yeah, they signed uh the order in London on
Speaker 1: July UH again, formally adopting s OS as the International
Speaker 1: Maritime Distress Signal UM, which was supposed to take effect
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen UM. The United States had their own
Speaker 1: Radio Act that was pasted in August UM, and they
Speaker 1: basically started. Countries began working together to prevent another tragedy
Speaker 1: like this. They convened an International Convention for the Safety
Speaker 1: of Life at Sea UM designed to agree on standards
Speaker 1: to use. They started using may Day as the spoken
Speaker 1: distress call once radio communications were given by voice over radio,
Speaker 1: and on November and they started using filler Hurts as
Speaker 1: the new frequency, so its a dedicated frequency for distress signals,
Speaker 1: which again this helps out substantially because you can send
Speaker 1: person to person. You know, hey, having a lovely time.
Speaker 1: Hey look at the iceberg. Yeah exactly. You can have
Speaker 1: that is capital capital and then you know, hey, I
Speaker 1: need help may Day ont um. They began to change
Speaker 1: that as time went on, too, but they would you know,
Speaker 1: the Titanic really galvanized UM Maritime UM distress procedures much
Speaker 1: more than they had been before. It was all it
Speaker 1: was a new technology in these days, and so they said,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, we can use this to our advantage.
Speaker 1: Let's agree on something we can all you know, use together.
Speaker 1: And eventually by by night regulations were in place that
Speaker 1: required ships exceeding six hundred tons they must have a
Speaker 1: wireless apparatus on them. And part of that was so
Speaker 1: that they could respond to distress calls, not just be
Speaker 1: able to make them, but respond to them or relay them,
Speaker 1: because again, depending upon the ship's position and UM and
Speaker 1: it's and its own ability to transmit uh, those those
Speaker 1: signals might not go to the best now the potential rescuers.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and then you had ships also employing more
Speaker 1: operators so that they could have a continual a continual
Speaker 1: shift of operators so that you didn't have times when
Speaker 1: the station was unmanned. That and you didn't have the
Speaker 1: likelihood that your telegraph operators are worn out. Um. It
Speaker 1: was suggested in one of the passages I read that
Speaker 1: the Titanics radio to radio operators were so busy sending
Speaker 1: personal messages that um, by the time the accident happened
Speaker 1: and they hit the iceberg, that they were both pretty
Speaker 1: worn out. And and frankly that might have been part
Speaker 1: of the reason behind the shut up, because he was look,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to send messages. Here, get out of my way.
Speaker 1: I gotta do this so I can go to bed.
Speaker 1: Definitely that might have played a part. And we also
Speaker 1: saw developments and things like sonar. Actually sonar was in
Speaker 1: the experimental stages when the Titanic launch. It did exist,
Speaker 1: but the Titanic wasn't equipped but with it, nor did
Speaker 1: it have radar which probably could have I assume could
Speaker 1: have it, or at least these days can detect the
Speaker 1: top of an iceberg. So so those those innovations began,
Speaker 1: there was a lot more focus put towards them in
Speaker 1: order to employ them in things like cruise travel and
Speaker 1: just travel in general, so that ships could be much
Speaker 1: more safe. Um, it wouldn't be until the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies that we would develop a technology
Speaker 1: sufficient to let us actually explore. For the Titanic, we
Speaker 1: knew generally where it went down, but there it was
Speaker 1: in very deep water t feet if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty deep. Yeah, So it wasn't until the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies that that people began to develop the technology
Speaker 1: that would be capable of diving down to that depth
Speaker 1: and getting information. One of the first was a Texas
Speaker 1: oil magnate named Jack Grimm, and Grim really poured a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money into launching some expeditions to try
Speaker 1: and find the Titanic in nineteen nine eight three. Uh.
Speaker 1: But because of some bad weather, some equipment problems, and
Speaker 1: just you know, trying to find these two pieces of
Speaker 1: a giant ship and an enormous ocean, they were unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be until a few years later. It was
Speaker 1: on September one that the very first video image of
Speaker 1: the Titanic was captured um by and by a submarine.
Speaker 1: And uh. Since then, we have had several expeditions down
Speaker 1: to the Titanic, some of which have retrieved things from
Speaker 1: the Titanic and brought them back up. A lot of
Speaker 1: different pictures were taken um and uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: James Cameron, and of course the director of the documentary
Speaker 1: Titanic ended up. You should clarify that Jomes Cameron, the doctor,
Speaker 1: the director of a film called Titanic, which was not
Speaker 1: a documentary, also did a documentary about the Titanic. Um
Speaker 1: he captured a lot of Yeah, I know, that's why
Speaker 1: I didn't went ahead and I broke my joke for
Speaker 1: the purposes of this one podcast. Um. Yes, so he
Speaker 1: actually did do quite a bit of this research. He
Speaker 1: was involved in it pretty heavily. And um and of
Speaker 1: course Cameron has continued his fascination with the deep sea.
Speaker 1: He's since gone down deeper than any other person in
Speaker 1: the world. Uh. It's pretty darn fascinating down the trenches,
Speaker 1: down the trench. Yeah really so yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: was it's a story that still fascinates today a hundred
Speaker 1: years later. And if if you're ever in a city
Speaker 1: that has a Titanic museum exhibition, there was a traveling
Speaker 1: one a few years ago that was going from one
Speaker 1: museum to the next. I've actually seen it a couple
Speaker 1: of times. And uh, and it is really interesting to
Speaker 1: kind of get a look at what not just the
Speaker 1: problems that the Titanic face, but what life was actually
Speaker 1: like aboard the ship, what the first class passengers, what
Speaker 1: their experience was as opposed to the third class passengers
Speaker 1: down in steerage, the differences. Nine day, they had Turkish
Speaker 1: baths on board the Titanic. It was an amazing vessel.
Speaker 1: It was phenomenal and and uh and meanwhile they have
Speaker 1: Turkish baths for the first class passengers. They had two
Speaker 1: bathtubs for steerage. UM. Just to go into the technology
Speaker 1: developments to UH, A lot of what they developed in
Speaker 1: the early and mid twentieth century in the in the
Speaker 1: follow up to the Titanic disaster stayed in place for
Speaker 1: a long time. The mid seventies saw the beginning of
Speaker 1: a telecommunion communications network specifically designed for UH sea vessels
Speaker 1: sea going vessels UM satellite network called in Mar sat
Speaker 1: UM and UH. As a matter of fact, the first
Speaker 1: satellites started working in UM and they started changing the
Speaker 1: frequent season now point five to five mega hurts UM.
Speaker 1: And there is a satellite emergency position beacon that works
Speaker 1: at four hundred six mega hurts or one point six
Speaker 1: giga hurts. Now, of course UM that was in effect
Speaker 1: when the Costa Concordia hit a reef off off the
Speaker 1: coast of Italy. UM that probably you're aware of, that
Speaker 1: happened earlier the year. We're recording this on Janu UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it kind of it's it's ironic for
Speaker 1: two reasons. One, UM, it does sort of underscore the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, these measures are still very very necessary.
Speaker 1: And UH, you know the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: very large um ocean liner with past you know, passenger
Speaker 1: liner that uh ripped a big gash in the side
Speaker 1: of the hull um traveling in this case not an
Speaker 1: iceberg but rocks um and uh you know, they were
Speaker 1: moving with emergency power. Thankfully most of the people got
Speaker 1: off that ship. Okay, um, But apparently there were not
Speaker 1: any distress calls sent through the Global Maritime Distress and
Speaker 1: Safety System g m d S S to let to
Speaker 1: let the Italian Coast Guard. Now, um, so that would
Speaker 1: have probably helped. Yeah, yep, So I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 1: some we could put as many systems as we like
Speaker 1: in place. Unless people actually uh follow them and and
Speaker 1: and and uh activate them, it doesn't really help. From
Speaker 1: what I've read, it was passengers calling the coastguard on
Speaker 1: their cell phones that let them know that something was awry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's not good. Oh and um before this will
Speaker 1: be a nice little way to finish this, okay. So
Speaker 1: back in when the ship was was built, the cost
Speaker 1: was roughout seven and a half million dollars, So today
Speaker 1: that would cost undred and sixties seven million dollars. That
Speaker 1: is quite a princely some It is a princely. Some
Speaker 1: was also really expensive to uh to travel aboard it.
Speaker 1: I remember that the first class ticket would be the
Speaker 1: equivalent of around seventy grand and uh, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of money to go across the ocean. Yes, it is.
Speaker 1: And to think about, you know, I think to the
Speaker 1: other reasons, um, you know for the Titanic going down
Speaker 1: in history. Sorry, no pun intended. Um, I don't want
Speaker 1: to make light of that. Uh that were you know,
Speaker 1: the famous passengers who were on board, Uh, some of
Speaker 1: whom died, some of whom didn't, or the people who
Speaker 1: didn't go You hear about the famous people who didn't
Speaker 1: make it, you know, people who went on to do
Speaker 1: you know things that have gone down in history. Uh,
Speaker 1: like would that have happened? Um? You know that's its
Speaker 1: first voyage. The fact that it was supposed to be unsinkable.
Speaker 1: You know, all these things tied together. But it certainly
Speaker 1: sped at least two musicals, the Unsingable Molly Brown than Titanic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it's just catching a place in our imagination
Speaker 1: and in our technology. So it's uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: played an important part in our lives. Yep. So guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future topics, perhaps the
Speaker 1: things that happened in the past. Let us know, send
Speaker 1: us an email. Our email addresses tech stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com, or let us know on Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 1: are handled. There is tech stuff hs W and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again. Really send for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com? Brought to you by the
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you