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- [00:00]
Sally Helm
Did you know that your health insurance could cover appointments with a registered dietitian? Nourish will match you with a dietitian for personalized nutrition advice. And since Nourish accepts hundreds of insurance plans like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, aetna and United, 94% of patients pay $0 out of pocket. Meet with your dietitian online from home, plus message them anytime on the Nourish app for support on the go. With hundreds of 5 star reviews, you.
- [00:22]
Gareth Russell
Can count on Nourish to guide you.
- [00:23]
Sally Helm
On your health journey. Find your dietitian@usenourish.com that's usenourish.com if you're.
- [00:31]
Gareth Russell
A parent or share a fridge with someone. Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier because with family carts you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want, since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need. And this way you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again. So minimize the stress of the weekly shop with family carts, download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees apply for three orders in 14 days and excludes restaurants the History Channel Original Podcast.
- [01:03]
Sally Helm
History this week, April 10, 1912 I'm Sally Helm. It's hard to tell the story of the Titanic from the beginning because it has such a dramatic end. On this day in 1912, the ship sits in her berth on the south coast of England, ready to set sail and picturing it, the passengers unpacking their fur coats and their hat boxes. Crowds of people waving their handkerchiefs from the pier as the Titanic pulls away on her maiden voyage. It's like you can already see the distress flares. You picture those fur coats and those hat boxes on the ocean floor. You almost can't help but imagine the iceberg floating out there beyond all those waving handkerchiefs waiting to bring this ship down. Everything looks like a sign as the RMS Titanic pulls away from the crowded Southampton port, it almost crashes. The ship is huge enough that it displaces a ton of water when it moves, so much so that a nearby boat breaks free of its mooring cables. A passenger reports that they still snapped like a thread. That ship drifts towards the Titanic, sucked in by its powerful propellers. The crowds watching from the pier climb aboard railway trucks to get a better view. The ships get within four feet of each other, but at the last minute, the Titanic stops its engines. Tugboats are able to nudge the smaller ship out of the way. A serious disaster was narrowly avoided, the newspaper reports cheerfully the next day. Four days later. Of course, a serious disaster will not be avoided. The Titanic's first voyage will be her last. But during her brief life, the vessel is a microcosm of the gilded world around her, a world that has important parallels to our own.
- [03:10]
Gareth Russell
We're probably living through through something fairly similar. For the first time since the early 1900s, it is a warning against the cost of human hubris today.
- [03:21]
Sally Helm
The Titanic, a technological marvel that ran into the harsh laws of nature. How did this opulent luxury liner come to exist? And how did it foretell the dangers of wealth, technology and arrogance that shaped the world around it and the world we live in now?
- [03:47]
Paige Desorbo
When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like aloe Allbirds or Skims. Sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for shoppers, buying. Simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell whenever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout experience as business powerhouses like Aloe, Allbirds and Skims. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com OdysseyPodcast all lowercase go to shopify.com OdysseyPodcast to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com OdysseyPodcast Sometimes historic events suck.
- [04:59]
Sally Helm
But.
- [04:59]
Paige Desorbo
What shouldn't suck is learning about history.
- [05:02]
Sally Helm
I do that through storytelling. History that Doesn't Suck is a chart topping history telling podcast created by me, Professor Greg Jackson. I've been chronicling the epic story of America episode by episode, decade by decade. Original music and immersive sound design accompany us on our storytelling journey. And every episode is painstakingly researched and rooted in fact. The promise is in the title History that Doesn't Suck. I've been counted out, dismissed, passed over.
- [05:29]
Gareth Russell
Told I'd never be a golfer with just one arm, but the only thing.
- [05:32]
Sally Helm
That feels better than proving people wrong.
- [05:34]
Gareth Russell
Is out driving them. I'm 14 year old golfer Tommy Morrissey.
- [05:38]
Sally Helm
And I want to be remembered for.
- [05:40]
Gareth Russell
My ability as A champion partner of the Masters, bank of America supports everyone determined to find out what's possible in golf and in life.
- [05:47]
Sally Helm
What would you like the power to do? Bank of America bank of America NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025 bank of America Corporation.
- [05:54]
Gareth Russell
All rights reserved.
- [05:56]
Sally Helm
The writer Gareth Russell grew up on Northern Ireland's east coast near the city of Belfast, which is the same city where the Titanic first came to be.
- [06:05]
Gareth Russell
We sort of grew up with the shadow of the Titanic on our doorsteps. It was just omnipresent growing up.
- [06:12]
Sally Helm
Russell's great grandpa worked in the shipyards as a kid delivering coal. He was alive when Russell was born and he told stories of the Titanic, stories that helped inform Russell's recent book on the subject, the Ship of Dreams. When his great grandfather was carting coal around Belfast, he was performing an important function. The whole city smelled of coal. It was an industrial center.
- [06:35]
Gareth Russell
There were behemoth like rope factories, tobacco factories and linen factories. But the city's main industry was shipbuilding.
- [06:44]
Sally Helm
Which was powered by lots of young Belfast men who get hired to build for a prestigious English shipping company called White Star Lines, trying to one up their corporate rivals. In 1907, White Star starts building three huge new ships, each one and a half times larger than its nearest competitor. The length of about six modern day commercial airplanes, as tall as an 11 story building. They are the Olympic, the Britannic and the Titanic. Tens of thousands of men are hired to help put these ships together. It's tough work, 12 hour days, cold, damp conditions, danger from climbing up the high scaffolding.
- [07:30]
Gareth Russell
There are stories of quite a lot of men going deaf because of how loud it was.
- [07:35]
Sally Helm
Wow. From just like the sounds of clinking metal.
- [07:37]
Gareth Russell
Or that if you were assigned to hammering the rivets in, and particularly if you were underneath the ship, you were essentially in an echo chamber and you were hammering in metal on metal, day after day.
- [07:49]
Sally Helm
To keep time as they hammered and pass the time as they worked, they'd sing songs.
- [07:54]
Gareth Russell
I was lucky enough to hear. My great grandfather could remember some of the songs. In the same way, if you go into an office today, people are often playing music or whatever because it lifts the mood. Back in 1910, 1911, you had to make your own.
- [08:08]
Sally Helm
The men spend years putting these chips.
- [08:10]
Gareth Russell
Together, watching them grow from a skeleton on a gantry up into being, these enormous completed luxury liners.
- [08:18]
Sally Helm
Overseeing that transformation is a man named Thomas Andrews. At the shipyard, he's in charge.
- [08:24]
Gareth Russell
He was a meticulous genius. You know, he could remember if a colleague beneath him Sort of in the chain of command. Hadn't taken the requisite number of days off, you know. And he would write to them and say, by the way, you're still owed three days. You should really be taking this.
- [08:42]
Sally Helm
Andrews himself came from the upper class. He was one of the first people in town to own his own car. But he lived in a red brick mansion with four servants, you know, maids.
- [08:51]
Susie Miller
To light the fires and parlor maids and a valet and gardener.
- [08:55]
Sally Helm
Susie Miller leads Titanic tours around modern Belfast. She stops at Thomas Andrews home.
- [09:01]
Susie Miller
It would have an orchard and a tennis court and a beautiful staircase with a lovely stained glass window at the top of it.
- [09:08]
Sally Helm
Miller's great grandfather worked at the shipyard too. He started as a carpenter and worked his way up to engineer. As the Titanic got closer and closer to launch, he saw an opportunity. He moved over to the White Star Company so that he could work aboard the Titanic as it sailed and use its maiden voyage to immigrate to America. According to family lore, when he needed a letter of reference to get the job, he asked Thomas Andrews.
- [09:34]
Susie Miller
I used to joke with the Andrews family that it's their fault, you know, that if Mr. Andrews had written him a bad reference he, he never would have got himself onto Titanic.
- [09:45]
Sally Helm
There are a lot of dark jokes in Belfast about this time when the ship is getting ready to launch on its fateful voyage. Workers who have spent years on this project are putting the finishing touches on the Titanic. The smell of coal has given way to new smells.
- [10:00]
Gareth Russell
Varnish and wood shavings and freshly laid linoleum. There's quite an interesting dark Belfast humorous story about the grand staircase, which is that one. But one of the carpenters accidentally chipped and broke one of the panels.
- [10:17]
Sally Helm
He and a friend manage well enough to put it back together but they're worried someone will notice. Like the meticulous genius Thomas Andrews who's going around making last minute notes.
- [10:27]
Gareth Russell
He's not pleased with the efficiency of plumbing in the second class lavatories.
- [10:32]
Sally Helm
The furniture in the Parisian Cafe is the wrong shade of green.
- [10:36]
Gareth Russell
The hat hooks in the first class cabins are unsightly.
- [10:40]
Sally Helm
No notes about the grand staircase though. The construction worker gets away with it.
- [10:44]
Gareth Russell
On the day when it sank. The friend who helped him cover it up said, well don't worry, they'll never find out.
- [10:52]
Sally Helm
Most of the workers stay behind in Belfast when the ship heads out. But Susie Miller's great grandfather is on board. Her family continues to pass down the coins he gave to his sons right before he left.
- [11:05]
Susie Miller
He gave them each two 1912 pennies and said, don't spend those until we're all together again. And then my grandfather talks about how that evening when Titanic was pulling out of Belfast Loch, he was standing on the beach and he watched as the ship sailed away out of sight. He said he couldn't understand why everybody was cheering, because for him it was a very sad day. And he said that he had his two pennies clutched so tightly in his hand that the date of 1912 was nearly burnt into his palm.
- [11:39]
Sally Helm
The Titanic leaves Belfast on April 2nd of that year. Also on board is Thomas Andrews. He's gonna ride along for the ship's first trip just to make sure everything goes smoothly. He has a lot to do, what with the plumbing, the hat hooks, the Parisian cafe. It's all in preparation for the passengers who board the ship, mostly in England, and set out just after noon on April 10 on their journey across the Atlantic. The passengers are the type who might actually notice such things as unsightly hat hooks.
- [12:12]
Gareth Russell
It's sort of who's who off the East Coast, American upper class. You have railway tycoons like John Thayer, Colonel John Jacob Astor iv, who belongs to the famous Astor family that owns so much of Manhattan that they're nicknamed the landlords of New York.
- [12:30]
Sally Helm
There's a Guggenheim on board, a countess heading to meet her husband to celebrate their anniversary. There's a confidant to President Taft, some.
- [12:38]
Gareth Russell
Famous writers, one of the early pioneers of sci fi.
- [12:41]
Sally Helm
You can't forget Dorothy Gibson, one of.
- [12:44]
Gareth Russell
If not the highest paid movie star in the United States, or a famous.
- [12:48]
Sally Helm
British fashion designer, Lady Duff Gordon.
- [12:51]
Gareth Russell
If you talk to a historian of fashion, they will always say that Lady Duff Gordon was one of the major influences responsible, responsible for ending the popularity of the corset.
- [13:00]
Sally Helm
There was a lot of wealth on board the Titanic and off it. This is the Gilded Age in the United States, the Edwardian era in England, both marked by massive income inequality.
- [13:14]
Gareth Russell
By the time the Titanic sets sail, there is growing. Discomfort's probably too mild a word. There is growing fear and resentment over the amount of capital that can be disposed of and utilized by the super wealthy.
- [13:28]
Sally Helm
White Star Line itself was owned by JP Morgan, a wealthy American banker. Just a few years before the Titanic's launch, he'd been able to help prevent economic collapse with his own private wealth.
- [13:42]
Gareth Russell
It's very difficult to fully appreciate just how wealthy they were. I mean, their wealth would easily have drowned that of the wealthiest courtier at Versailles before the French Revolution. I mean, they were just stratospherically wealthy.
- [13:56]
Sally Helm
And as reflected on board the Titanic, it's not just countesses who have that kind of money. It's also railway tycoons. With the onset of industrialization, there has been a huge boom in new technologies and new ways to make money.
- [14:11]
Gareth Russell
The nature of privilege is fracturing, church changing and evolving. They are not asking for your family tree before they give you a ticket. They're asking for your check.
- [14:24]
Sally Helm
A first class suite aboard the Titanic could cost as much as over $100,000 in today's money. Even the second class passengers were still dropping the modern equivalent of nearly $2,000.
- [14:37]
Gareth Russell
People do take it to represent haves and have nots, when in fact, you know what? The Titanic's third class could cost the equivalent of second on, on other ships.
- [14:46]
Sally Helm
Right? It's like the haves and the haves a little less.
- [14:48]
Gareth Russell
Right, Exactly. That's the perfect way to describe it.
- [14:53]
Sally Helm
Riding in second class, there's a Haitian.
- [14:55]
Gareth Russell
Gentleman called Joseph Laroche. His uncle had just been elected president of Haiti.
- [15:00]
Sally Helm
There's a Cambridge University graduate named Lawrence Beasley.
- [15:03]
Gareth Russell
He loved American history and he wanted to go and see some of those places that he'd only been able to read off before.
- [15:10]
Sally Helm
Third class riders on the Titanic were people like Swedish journalist August Vennerstrom, who'd made some enemies criticizing the monarchy and needed to emigrate, or a young Irish farmer, Daniel Buckley, who was moving to America to make some money. They stayed in cabins, sure, on bunk beds, but not in communal dormitories the way they would have on other ships.
- [15:31]
Gareth Russell
Still, there were very strict laws in place by US Immigration at the time that there was to be no licksign between, between third class and any of the other classes.
- [15:39]
Sally Helm
The rationale for this was that third class passengers would be processed at Ellis island when they disembarked and they'd be subject to a medical screening. If first or second class passengers associated with them, they'd be subject to that screening too.
- [15:53]
Gareth Russell
And this was partly in response to a cholera epidemic that had happened in 1892. But it did mean that the layout of the ship was strongly designed to discourage any possibility of interaction between the classes.
- [16:06]
Sally Helm
That meant that if third class passengers wanted music, they had to sing because the band couldn't come to them. Meanwhile, first and second class passengers each receive a songbook listing all the pieces of music the ship's band knew, each with a number attached.
- [16:23]
Gareth Russell
So if the band stops and says, any requests? You say number 34. And we still today this little number goes out to, you know, we still call songs Numbers. Because of that tradition at sea, first.
- [16:39]
Sally Helm
Class passengers got that list of songs and also a list of their fellow.
- [16:44]
Gareth Russell
Passengers so you could see who else was on board. Maybe you're on a social climbing mission and you want to accidentally bump into.
- [16:53]
Sally Helm
An aster at afternoon tea or coffee in the lounge or dinner.
- [16:58]
Gareth Russell
The meals took up a large chunk of the day after changing your clothes, because you really weren't supposed to be in the same clothes throughout the whole day.
- [17:08]
Sally Helm
When they weren't eating or picking out new frocks and coats, the first class passengers played cards or wrote letters, visited the squash courts or the Turkish baths, took bets on how many miles the ship had traveled in the past day. Thomas Andrews is watching the ship's progress, too, and schmoozing with this crowd, though he's not all that forthcoming. A New York socialite later described Andrews joining them at dinner.
- [17:31]
Gareth Russell
He mustn't have talked about his work very much because she says, you know, he had something to do with the Titanic.
- [17:39]
Sally Helm
He confides more in members of the crew. He befriends a stewardess from Belfast and tells her how homesick he is.
- [17:46]
Gareth Russell
He worried about his mother's health, his father's health, his wife and child back home.
- [17:51]
Sally Helm
One particular night, Sunday, April 14, Andrews goes to dinner in the dining room as usual.
- [17:58]
Gareth Russell
He was planning perhaps to join some of his dining companions for coffee or tea after, but the companions lingered so long over the pudding course that he decides to go back to his cabin three decks up and, you know, get back to work, you know, going over the blueprints, going over his journals and his notebooks to see what he wants to tackle tomorrow.
- [18:21]
Sally Helm
Up on the deck, it's gotten quite cold. Some of the passengers later describe a new chill in the air. The ship is navigating off the coast of Newfoundland, and around 11:40pm that looming iceberg finally appears.
- [18:40]
Gareth Russell
One of the most interesting things about the moment of impact is it's so slight that a lot of first class passengers sleep through. The Countess of Rothes says that she felt like her bed lift slightly. She woke up slightly groggily and then rolled over and went back to sleep.
- [18:56]
Sally Helm
One passenger later notes that the vibration of the engines got duller. Another describes a lurch and a creaking. Andrews is in his cabin at the time, maybe wrapping up some work, maybe already asleep for the night.
- [19:15]
Gareth Russell
The captain sends for him and says, I would like you to perform a diagnosis of the ship to see how bad the damage is.
- [19:23]
Sally Helm
He leaves his cabin and goes down from a deck to G Deck. That's where the luggage and mail rooms were.
- [19:30]
Gareth Russell
I imagined the first when he begins to have a real internal shudder is when he sees water beginning to come into the first class luggage room.
- [19:41]
Sally Helm
In the mail room, he finds clerks hurriedly moving sacks of letters out of the freezing cold seawater that's streaming in. He goes down even further to the boiler rooms. They're flooding rapidly, so he rushes back upstairs to report. Report to the captain.
- [19:59]
Gareth Russell
We do know from one eyewitness, the movie star Dorothy Gibson, who saw him as he came up the stairs and she said he looked green, his face looked green.
- [20:08]
Sally Helm
Andrews does some quick math based on the amount of water flooding in and what he knows about the ship that he himself designed.
- [20:18]
Gareth Russell
He tells Captain Smith that based on his calculations, the Titanic had about an hour and 30 minutes to live.
- [20:34]
Paige Desorbo
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- [21:05]
Gareth Russell
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- [21:08]
Sally Helm
That's why the new Milo's Pro Rewards program lets you unlock exclusive member deals on the things you need every day on the journey job. Plus, Milo's Pro Rewards members can get.
- [21:18]
Gareth Russell
Volume discounts on eligible orders through a quote of $2,000 or more. Join for free today Lowe's we help you save Exclusions More terms and restrictions apply. Programs subject to terms, conditions details@lowe's.com terms subject to change McDonald's meets the Minecraft universe with one of six collectibles and.
- [21:38]
Sally Helm
Your choice of a Big Mac or.
- [21:40]
Gareth Russell
10 piece McNuggets with spicy nice Nether Flame sauce. Now available with a Minecraft movie meal. I participate in McDonald's for a limited time. A Minecraft movie only in theaters the.
- [21:51]
Sally Helm
Night the Titanic hits an iceberg. Captain Smith had been speeding even though there had been repeated warnings about ice. Gareth Russell says in his research, he came across telling comments Smith made years before the Titanic was built.
- [22:07]
Gareth Russell
Knowing what happens, it does strike a chill. There are at least two occasions where he more or less says it's impossible for there to be a terrible shipwreck given modern technology.
- [22:17]
Sally Helm
The Titanic itself had been touted in shipbuilder Magazine as practically unsinkable. Both Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews are said to have assured passengers that if the ship was cut into three pieces, each piece would still float. Back in Belfast, though, among the workers who had poured years of their lives into building this ship, this sort of.
- [22:39]
Gareth Russell
Idea of it being unsinkable was something that never really caught on. I mean, I think if there's a container and you fill it with enough water, it'll sink. Right?
- [22:48]
Sally Helm
These are shipbuilders, they would know that, Right?
- [22:50]
Gareth Russell
You know, I think they were sort of slightly jaded to the hyperbola of the trade journals and the press that, you know, were obviously trying to sell things to people who didn't know a lot about ships.
- [23:02]
Sally Helm
But many of the passengers and members of the crew had bought into that idea. And that's part of what's going to make it so hard to get them off the sinking ship. It's just before midnight when Thomas Andrews tells the captain the Titanic is going down.
- [23:19]
Gareth Russell
At this stage, he has done his job to inform the captain of the danger the ship is in. But Thomas Andrews was always someone who wanted to do things, who needed to be useful. And so he starts going along the corridors checking empty rooms, encouraging stewards and stewardesses to take out blankets, to put in lifeboats to keep people warm.
- [23:39]
Sally Helm
But Captain Smith still hasn't told the crew how serious the collision was. So the crew thinks, no reason to alarm the passengers. They do begin to rouse people from their cabins, telling them to dress warmly and come up to the deck.
- [23:54]
Gareth Russell
They knew they'd hit an iceberg, but it was more or less implied that this was a precaution. In fact, if you were to design a series of signals that communicated that there was nothing to worry about, that pretty much was what was done with first class.
- [24:11]
Sally Helm
The purser decides, let's open up the first class lounge. Get inside off this freezing cold deck.
- [24:17]
Gareth Russell
Someone said later it was like a fancy dress ball in Dante's Inferno. The electric heaters are put back on. The band arrives, the little bars opened up, so people are ordering like cocoa and brandies.
- [24:30]
Sally Helm
Crew members are directing women and children to the lifeboats, but without much urgency. So many aren't all that keen to put down their cocos. And really, Russell says, who can blame them?
- [24:43]
Gareth Russell
I mean, if I was somewhere and it was below freezing outside and the authority figures had opened up, you know, a room based in Versailles and started an impromptu concert, I don't know if I would necessarily feel a sense of urgency. I think everything that was done in that early stage suffocated a sense of panic and momentum in the first class passengers.
- [25:10]
Sally Helm
People are dawdling. Some try to retrieve their jewels from the purser's safe. John Jacob Astor decides it's better for his pregnant wife to remain comfortable in the lounge rather than be lowered 70ft in a small wooden lifeboat into the freezing Atlantic.
- [25:25]
Gareth Russell
He took her into the first class gymnasium and tried to calm her down and distract her by taking out his pen knife and opening up a life jacket to shore the cork inside that made it buoyant.
- [25:38]
Sally Helm
The first lifeboat, number seven, is lowered at 12:45am about an hour after the iceberg strike. The boat had space for 65, but held only the 28.
- [25:51]
Gareth Russell
If you look at the lifeboats that left sometimes well under half full, they were the ones that went in the early stages of the evacuation when officers were asking people to get in and they wouldn't.
- [26:03]
Sally Helm
One of those who does go in that first boat is a Manhattan socialite who brought along her Pomeranian dog, Bebe. Another is the actress Dorothy Gibson. She'd seen that green look on Thomas Andrews face and heard the rumor circulating that the first class squash courts had flooded. And she thinks this is serious. She's early to that thought. Her lifeboat is lowered at 12:45am that's over an hour before the last boat is lowered at 2:05am just before the Titanic finally sinks. In between, there's no one moment where everyone realizes how dire the situation is. For some passengers, it's seeing the distress rockets fired or seeing crew members coming up from below deck drenched.
- [26:52]
Gareth Russell
For one, it's seeing pajama legs poking beneath the trousers of the managing director's suit because he's usually so fastidiously well dressed.
- [27:01]
Sally Helm
The last people to realize how bad things have gotten are the third class passengers. They're sequestered in their separate accommodations below deck while others are being evacuated. There's a set of stairs with a waist high gate at the top connecting the third class to the first and.
- [27:20]
Gareth Russell
Second class decks, which is where the lifeboats are. So you have a ship that is not designed to make it easy for them to get up there, being run by people who have not been told there's any reason for them to get up there.
- [27:34]
Sally Helm
The young Irish farmer Daniel Buckley watches as another third class passenger goes up that set of stairs connecting their deck to the rest of the ship. But a crew member who doesn't realize how bad things are sees this as a violation of those US immigration laws, the ones that require third class to be kept separate from the others. So the crew member locks the gate at the top of those stairs. People have to climb over it to get out until someone finally breaks it down. This ship is not designed to help third class passengers escape. On top of that, there's a language barrier between the crew and many of the third class passengers. And in the rush to launch the ship, the emergency information notices had been left behind. In their place, empty frames hang on the back door of each cabin. In the end, 75% of the third class passengers don't make it into a lifeboat. Neither does Thomas Andrews. Someone spots him late at night when it's becoming clear that the casualties are going to be massive.
- [28:44]
Gareth Russell
Andrews is standing alone and bereft in the smoking room as he realized there wasn't a rescue ship near enough by. But that is not the last sight of him. He actually then gathered himself, went up on deck and started throwing deck chairs overboard so that people would have something to cling onto after the ship disappeared. So this is someone who, from the moment he is called on to inspect the damage until, you know, he loses his life not long afterwards, is trying his best to do his last service to the Titanic and its people.
- [29:20]
Sally Helm
Lifeboats are being lowered, one every five minutes or so. They're still not all full. At 1:45am, John Jacob Astor does bring his pregnant wife to a lifeboat. He asks if he can join her, but he's told no women and children. Only before the night is up, John Jacob Astor will be dead. The Titanic stays lit up until a few minutes before it finally sinks.
- [29:48]
Gareth Russell
There are very few points of firm agreement from the eyewitness testimonies, except on the noise. There is near unanimous agreement that none of them can shake the sound of the screaming.
- [30:02]
Sally Helm
There's a series of roars and explosions as the ship splits apart.
- [30:08]
Gareth Russell
They're in a lifeboat, watching a skyscraper sink in front of them. And after the ship disappears and there's about these few minutes of people screaming in the water, and then the silence that settles. As hypothermia claims, most of the people who had been on the Titanic at the moment disappeared. It is the point of similarity in the eyewitness testimonies from survivors, the screaming and then the silence.
- [30:43]
Sally Helm
The survivors, most from first class, some from second or third, are left to drift and wait. The Countess of Rothes, who had a few days earlier demanded a more suitable first class cabin, now finds herself rowing a lifeboat for six hours in the dark.
- [31:01]
Gareth Russell
She talks about this horrible moment when the sun rises after the sinking. And it shines light over these cathedrals of ice around them. And she realizes how all encompassing the ice field is.
- [31:16]
Sally Helm
It fills her with despair.
- [31:19]
Gareth Russell
But she didn't want to let anyone know that she was in despair because she thought it would break people's spirits in the lifeboats. So she leads them in, sing alongs of hymns until the Carpathia of the rescue ship arrives. And then the minute her feet touch the deck and sort of her task is over, she faints.
- [31:40]
Sally Helm
The rescue ship pull into New York on April 18, but the story of the Titanic has beat it there.
- [31:49]
Gareth Russell
It has become one of the first great mass media covered events in history. Journalists hired tugboats in New York harbor to take them out in the hope that they can try to jump on board the rescue ship and get the first interviews with the survivors. It was really, you know, a game of whispering that was going on.
- [32:06]
Sally Helm
Who had survived what happened that night? For male survivors, judgment was harsh. How had they gotten out? Despite the policy of women and children first, a rumor emerges about the fashion designer Lady Duff Gordon and her husband.
- [32:22]
Gareth Russell
The story is that they bribed the crew either to take them or, according to some accounts, to not go back to pick up the survivors.
- [32:29]
Sally Helm
Russell says the rumor is unlikely to be true, but stories like it take on an almost mythical quality in the days and weeks after the Titanic's sinking.
- [32:39]
Gareth Russell
It's like a sort of Aesop's fable at sea. You can attach so many different morality lessons to the sinking of the Titanic.
- [32:48]
Sally Helm
About the dangers of arrogance, calling your ship unsinkable, about how you shouldn't ignore obvious warnings and pridefully think they won't apply to you. And about wealth and power.
- [33:01]
Gareth Russell
People are using it as a sort of a symbol of what they see as the egregious injustices of the period.
- [33:08]
Sally Helm
The first class passengers get off and the third class passengers are left to drown. All that new technology, high speed ships and railroads and bridges and factories, which had brought about previously unfathomable wealth and innovation, it hadn't been enough to prevent disaster.
- [33:28]
Gareth Russell
The sinking of the Titanic was a sort of jolt out of that confidence that technology was always going to get better, that it was always going to make people's lives better because of that, and that as a result, people had less and less to fear from nature, from the world around them because of the strength and superiority of progress.
- [33:53]
Sally Helm
Russell said as he was researching the story, he kept being struck by a sense of recognition.
- [33:59]
Gareth Russell
We are again grappling with concerns over nature and also concerns over technology. So it's an eternal story, and it's one that taps into a lot of concerns in 1912 and in 2022.
- [34:13]
Sally Helm
For some, the Titanic grows to epitomize the end of an era. The following year would bring about the income tax in America, rolling back some of that boundless wealth that new technology could bring. The year after that comes World War I. Just one battle would leave many more dead than the sinking of the Titanic. Jack Thayer, who survived the sinking, would write that it not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start. The Titanic was a tragedy around the world, but it was a special tragedy back in Belfast. Russell's great grandfather remembered that when the news arrived, people broke down in the streets and wept. The workers mourned the loss of the ship they had poured their labor into, and they mourned the people, including Thomas Andrews.
- [35:10]
Gareth Russell
One of the things I found out was that they memorialized Thomas Andrews and other members of the shipyard staff who ended up losing their life on the Titanic.
- [35:20]
Sally Helm
They do it in song.
- [35:22]
Gareth Russell
We don't have the music for it, but I found the lyrics. So they call him a Queen's Island Trojan who worked to the last. Very proud we are all of him here in Belfast.
- [35:33]
Sally Helm
Our working men knew him as one of the best. He stuck to his duty and God gave him rest. Thanks for listening to History this week. For more moments throughout history that are also worth watching, check your local TV listings to find out what's on the History Channel today. If you want to get in touch, please shoot us an email email at our email address historythisweekhistory.com or you can leave us a voicemail 212-351-0410. Special thanks to our guests Gareth Russell, author of the Ship of Dreams, the Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era, and to Susie Miller. Thanks also to Hugh Brewster, author of Gilded Fateful Voyage, the Titanic's First Class Passengers and Their World. This episode was produced by Julia Press. It was story edited by Ricksandra Guidi and sound designed by Brian Flood. History this week is also Produced by Julie McGruder, Ben Dickstein and me, Sally Helm. Our associate producer is Emma Fredericks, our supervising producer is McCamey Lynn and our executive producer is Jesse Katz. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts and we'll see you next week.