Eternal Echoes_ Titanic Story That Sends Shivers Down Your Spine

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Transcript

00:00 On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic set sail from England.

00:05 But this wasn't the launch of a regular ship.

00:08 The Titanic was the largest liner ever built at the time.

00:11 It was 882 feet long.

00:14 That's nearly the size of three soccer fields.

00:16 And measured from the hull to the top of the smokestacks,

00:19 the ship was an impressive 175 feet tall.

00:22 That's the size of a 17-story building.

00:25 Deemed unsinkable, it took 3,000 workers almost three years to build.

00:30 But a mere four days into its very first voyage, at 11.40 p.m.,

00:37 the ship collided with an iceberg and was lost beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

00:43 It took the liner only two hours and 40 minutes to sink.

00:46 And of more than 2,200 passengers and crew members on board, only 706 survived.

00:54 The wreck would remain lost for another 73 years,

00:59 hiding its many secrets within the frigid Atlantic waters.

01:02 And if it wasn't for a man whose whole life had been devoted to exploring the sea,

01:07 the giant ship might have remained lost for a lot longer.

01:11 That man was Robert Ballard.

01:15 As a child, Ballard was obsessed with the ocean.

01:19 This fascination started when he was just 12 years old.

01:22 That's when he watched a film adaptation of Jules Verne's science fiction novel,

01:27 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

01:29 It had everything to spark a young person's imagination,

01:35 from adventure and strange creatures to a powerful underwater vehicle called the Nautilus.

01:40 It could travel anywhere in the world you wanted to go.

01:43 From that moment, life on dry land was no longer in Ballard's future.

01:51 When he was 23, he was assigned to the Deep Submergence Group.

01:55 There, he helped develop techniques to search the ocean floor.

01:59 His biggest accomplishment was the creation of Alvin.

02:03 It was a small, easy-to-maneuver submarine that could carry three people.

02:10 It also featured an external mechanical arm,

02:13 designed to gather underwater samples while the crew remained safe and dry inside.

02:20 Alvin the submarine quickly proved useful for a variety of tasks.

02:24 For example, once it was used to track down an aircraft that had crashed into the sea.

02:29 But the vessel experienced a series of setbacks.

02:35 In one case, it was attacked by a swordfish,

02:38 which caused the submarine to resurface quickly.

02:40 The swordfish, still stuck in the outer skin of the submarine, became that night's dinner.

02:48 And in October 1968, the submarine was being lowered into the water

02:53 when the cables holding it snapped,

02:55 sending it careening into the ocean along with three crew members on board.

03:00 And because the small vessel was still open,

03:02 it immediately filled with water and quickly began to sink.

03:06 Luckily, the crew managed to escape, but Alvin was gone.

03:12 Bad weather hampered multiple attempts to recover the vessel.

03:16 It wasn't until the following year that it was finally returned to the surface.

03:20 In time, Alvin would be improved.

03:25 Its hull would be strengthened by titanium, giving it a higher depth rating,

03:29 thus making it even better suited for ocean exploration.

03:33 The specialized submarine would come in handy in many of Ballard's 100+ expeditions.

03:39 The man was one of the first to explore an underwater mountain chain

03:42 called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Atlantic Ocean.

03:46 And when he found thermal vents in the Galapagos Rift in the late 70s,

03:52 he also helped discover and document the process of chemosynthesis.

03:56 That's a complicated chemical synthesis of food energy by bacteria.

04:00 But his biggest discovery was still to come.

04:06 Ballard claimed he'd never been a "Titanic fanatic,"

04:09 but he eventually became obsessed with finding the ship

04:13 after watching other explorers try and fail.

04:16 As he said, "Titanic was clearly the big Mount Everest at the time.

04:22 Many others had tried, many that I thought would have succeeded,

04:25 or should have succeeded but didn't."

04:27 Ballard began thinking about finding the ship as early as 1973.

04:34 And four years later, he actually made an attempt.

04:37 He used the deep-sea salvage vessel Sea Probe,

04:41 which was a drill ship equipped with cameras and sonar.

04:44 But he was forced to give up when the drilling pipe broke.

04:47 It just wasn't his time.

04:49 In the early 80s, a Texas oil man named Jack Grimm

04:55 tried to find the wreck on three different occasions.

04:58 Once, Grimm was actually right over the Titanic,

05:02 but his equipment failed to detect it.

05:04 That's what we call extreme bad luck.

05:06 Ballard was just biding his time.

05:10 He needed a plan, and some help.

05:13 The first issue was getting down to the bottom of the Atlantic.

05:17 The furthest down he had ever traveled before was 20,000 feet.

05:21 And this trip took him three hours.

05:23 And that didn't include the way back up.

05:25 Ballard knew he could use Alvin,

05:30 already enhanced with a titanium hull,

05:32 to withstand the pressure of the ocean.

05:34 But he also needed something that didn't require him to actually go down with it.

05:39 An unpiloted, remote-controlled submarine would be ideal.

05:43 But first, he would have to create one.

05:46 He reached out to the authorities,

05:50 hoping they would provide funding for his project.

05:52 And though officials had no interest in the Titanic,

05:55 they were willing to help.

05:57 Ah, but there was a catch.

06:01 Ballard had to first focus on tracking down two submarines,

06:04 the Thresher and the Scorpion,

06:06 which had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the 1960s.

06:10 The authorities were hoping to study them

06:12 to find out why they had sunk in the first place.

06:15 They also wanted to know if they could be recovered,

06:18 or if it was safe to leave them on the ocean floor.

06:21 Only when he had successfully completed this task

06:26 would he be free to use any remaining time on his contract to find the Titanic.

06:31 With no other options for funding, Ballard took the offer.

06:36 He got to work.

06:39 First, he created two new devices.

06:41 Argo was an unpiloted, deep-towed undersea video camera sled.

06:46 It was designed to take photos and record videos

06:49 from a series of cameras mounted on it.

06:51 It could work at depths of up to 20,000 feet,

06:54 and it could also explore nearly 98% of the ocean floor.

06:59 Argo was supposed to be tethered to a boat.

07:03 As the boat moved, Argo would be pulled behind,

07:06 floating just above the ocean floor.

07:09 The camera would then transmit images to the surface.

07:12 The second device was a small robotic vehicle called Jason Jr.

07:19 It was also controlled remotely,

07:21 which allowed the crew inside a submarine, like Alvin,

07:24 to get closer to and photograph underwater objects.

07:28 Ballard was now ready.

07:31 He knew he had to find those submarines quickly,

07:34 and it didn't take him long.

07:36 Much to his relief, the search was relatively simple,

07:39 and he was able to fulfill his obligations with 12 days to spare.

07:44 With almost two weeks to devote to finding the Titanic,

07:49 he set out to explore the ocean.

07:51 He focused the search close to Newfoundland, Canada,

07:54 pulling Argo along the ocean floor and reviewing the images it collected.

08:00 And after a few days of nothing,

08:02 they eventually found riveted hull plates and a boiler.

08:06 Could this be it?

08:07 The next day, a ship's large bow was revealed.

08:11 On September 1, 1985, Ballard and his fellow crew members realized

08:16 they had finally found the infamous ship.

08:19 The discovery resulted in a mix of emotions.

08:23 Ballard was excited to be the first to find the Titanic's final resting place,

08:28 but he was also overwhelmed by the sense of grief

08:31 for those who had suffered when the ship had gone down.

08:34 Over the next four days, the crew explored the wreck.

08:39 They found the crow's nest, from where the iceberg had first been spotted.

08:43 Plus, there was finally evidence of how the massive ship had split in two

08:48 before sinking, with both halves of the ship found.

08:51 There was furniture and dinnerware,

08:55 and sadly, several leather shoes of those who hadn't made it to safety

08:59 were scattered about the ocean floor.

09:01 Ballard succeeded where others had failed

09:05 and became an instant celebrity around the world.

09:08 You'd think that locating the Titanic would be enough for one man,

09:12 but not for Ballard.

09:13 In 2019, he took on the challenge of solving another mystery,

09:20 the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

09:23 Earhart had attempted to be the first woman to fly around the world.

09:27 Unfortunately, she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

09:32 She and her plane were never found.

09:36 Ballard hoped that his luck with the Titanic

09:39 would help with finding where Earhart had gone down,

09:42 but his expedition failed to find anything.

09:44 And though Robert Ballard has found more shipwrecks than anybody else,

09:50 it's only the tip of the iceberg.

09:52 It's estimated that there are over 3 million shipwrecks in the ocean,

09:56 and Ballard has only located 100 of them.

09:59 Now, in his late 70s,

10:03 the man is hoping to encourage young people to continue his work

10:06 of exploring the ocean and its many mysteries.

10:09 In 1989, he started the Jason Learning Project

10:13 to inspire grade school students to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math.

10:20 He has his own research vessel called the E.V. Nautilus,

10:24 after the name of the submarine in Jules Verne's novel,

10:27 a fitting tribute to the story that inspired his career.

10:31 Once a famous giant, the largest ship of that time,

10:36 now two grand pieces lying on the ocean bottom about 2,000 feet apart,

10:41 torn by the catastrophic collision of time itself.

10:45 The stern of the Titanic got completely ruined after hitting the ocean floor,

10:50 but you can still recognize the bow since many interiors were left preserved.

10:55 There's a type of bacteria found on the ship's rusticles.

10:59 A rusticle is this brownish formation of rust.

11:02 It occurs deep underwater when the wrought iron the ship is made of oxidizes.

11:07 It means the bacteria eat the iron of the Titanic's hull, piece by piece,

11:12 and it seems they might finish their snack by 2030,

11:16 way sooner than when anyone would expect the wreck to be gone forever.

11:20 You may think it would probably be easier to take the wreck out of the water so that we got to keep it,

11:26 but it would fall apart if anyone tried to do that.

11:29 It's been in the water for more than 110 years now,

11:33 and is now so rusty that no one would be able to reconstruct some parts

11:38 even if we managed to get the ship out of the ocean depths.

11:42 What do you think?

11:44 Could any of about 700 people that had survived the sinking of the Titanic hear it hit the ocean bottom?

11:50 The largest ship that had ever been made till then disappeared literally before their eyes after all.

11:55 But sound most likely wouldn't have traveled from water to air.

11:59 We can't hear that well in water because our bodies are not designed to hear in such environments.

12:05 And although passengers were close to the sinking site,

12:08 the Titanic still hit the bottom a long distance away, 12,500 feet.

12:14 There are so many underwater landslides and earthquakes we cannot hear,

12:20 and they make way more noise than a single ship slamming into the ocean floor.

12:24 Most vibrations and sounds must have dispersed over a large area.

12:29 Also, the down blast of water which many believe hit the Titanic after it had touched the bottom of the ocean

12:35 would have pushed back the majority of the potential acoustic vibrations.

12:39 Plus, the bottom of the ocean is not hard enough to produce such loud noises.

12:44 Many survivors said they had heard terrifying noises as the Titanic was breaking apart,

12:51 but none mentioned hearing anything after the ship disappeared below the surface of the water.

12:56 Some survivors shared how chaotic it was when passengers, mainly women and children, were getting into lifeboats.

13:04 There weren't enough boats, and still, some of them weren't even filled to their full capacity.

13:09 No one knew how to react properly in such a situation.

13:13 The lifeboat drill had been scheduled for the morning before the Titanic hit the iceberg,

13:18 but for some reason, it got cancelled.

13:21 A giant ocean liner everyone believes is unsinkable takes a trip across the ocean.

13:28 On its way, it strikes an iceberg and sinks.

13:31 Yeah, we all know how the story goes, but what's scary is that it's also the plot of The Wreck of the Titan,

13:37 a novel published in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic went to the ocean bottom or was even constructed.

13:45 In the novel, the Titan, what a scarily accurate name too,

13:50 didn't have enough life jackets, vests and lifeboats for all the passengers on board.

13:55 It was also the largest ship of that time, almost identical in size to the Titanic.

14:01 And both the Titan and Titanic sank in April.

14:05 Dorothy Gibson was an American silent film actress.

14:10 She was also one of the Titanic passengers.

14:13 She survived the catastrophe right after she came to New York.

14:16 She started filming Saved from the Titanic.

14:19 The film was released only one month after the ship sank.

14:22 Dorothy was even wearing the same shoes and clothes she had worn when she had actually been on the ship.

14:28 The movie was successful, but it got destroyed in a fire, so it only exists in memories, like Jack Dawson.

14:36 Titanic wasn't all alone in the restless waves of the cold ocean near the iceberg it struck.

14:43 The SS Californian was relatively close.

14:46 Their radio was shut off for that night though.

14:49 At one moment, the crew members noticed mysterious lights in the sky.

14:53 They immediately went to wake their captain up to tell him, but he issued no orders.

14:58 Some believed it was just fireworks.

15:01 They never realized it was actually a call for help.

15:04 The flares, crew members of the Titanic sent off to the sky, hoping someone would notice.

15:10 By the time the SS Californian got the SOS message, it was already too late.

15:16 Some say a full moon may have been the reason the iceberg crossed paths with the gigantic ship.

15:22 A full moon may have caused incredibly strong tides that eventually sent multiple icebergs southward,

15:28 right when the Titanic was crossing that area.

15:32 Would you dare to taste cheese from the Titanic?

15:36 The wreck has been under the ocean surface for more than 100 years now.

15:40 It took more than 70 years to find it.

15:43 By that time, most of the food that had gone down together with the ship had, of course, spoiled.

15:49 But it's possible there's still some of it left.

15:52 Some foods are protected from decay, for example, cheese.

15:56 The microbes that turn milk into cheese create special conditions to protect the product from spoiling.

16:03 Multiple things have survived the Titanic.

16:06 A handwritten letter where a mother and a daughter wrote to the girl's grandma about the amazing journey they were on together.

16:13 The letter has been around for more than 100 years and got sold at an auction.

16:18 A battered pair of white cotton gloves was found in the wreck.

16:23 Musicians on the Titanic played till the very last moment.

16:27 Sheet music and one violin were found among the wreckage.

16:31 The bell one of the crew members rang three times to warn there was a very close iceberg on their way.

16:37 A pocket watch that stopped at 1.45 a.m., the time when the ship went under the water.

16:43 Perhaps one person could have changed what happened on the Titanic.

16:48 David Blair was a pretty lucky man.

16:51 He was supposed to take the spot of the second officer of the Titanic.

16:55 He was pulled out at the last moment, which eventually saved his life.

16:59 It was a great thing for him, but something clouded his joy.

17:02 What if he was the only person who could have done something to save the ship and the passengers?

17:08 Back in the day, ships didn't have smart advanced technology like they do today.

17:14 They couldn't see a threat on the horizon.

17:17 Binoculars were pretty helpful, but the crew members on the Titanic didn't have access to the room where they were kept.

17:24 David Blair was the man responsible for the keys.

17:27 He left the ship in a hurry and forgot to hand over the keys that were in his pocket.

17:31 Maybe if the crew members had had access to the binoculars,

17:35 they would have seen the iceberg on time and had enough time to change course.

17:39 It's possible that the giant iceberg that sent the Titanic to the ocean bottom

17:45 was made of snow that had fallen in southwest Greenland.

17:48 Scientists even used a computer model to calculate the paths the iceberg took in any given year,

17:55 taking into consideration ocean currents and weather readings for that year.

18:00 It's possible that the iceberg was 1,700 feet long with a weight of around 75 tons.

18:07 By the time it collided with the Titanic, it had dwindled down to only 1.5 tons.

18:13 Violet Constance Jessop was, as many called her, Miss Unsinkable.

18:19 She was only 24 years old when she joined the Titanic crew as a stewardess.

18:24 On the tragic night when the ship struck the iceberg, she was lying in bed.

18:29 As soon as she heard that something was going on, she got dressed and quickly went to the deck.

18:34 Violet helped passengers get into lifeboats.

18:37 Four years later, she was on the Britannic, the Titanic's sister ship.

18:42 Once again, the ship started sinking.

18:44 Not only did the woman survive another accident,

18:47 but she was also once again the one helping other people to escape the vessel

18:51 before it disappeared below the surface.

18:55 That's it for today.

18:57 So, hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

19:02 Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

19:06 Meet Arthur John Priest.

19:08 No, he isn't famous for being a painter or for discovering some long-lost treasure.

19:13 He didn't invent some cool gadget or break any world records.

19:17 No, Arthur John Priest is famous simply for being unsinkable.

19:22 Proving one can be both lucky and unlucky at the same time,

19:26 Priest was involved in, and survived, several mishaps at sea,

19:30 including the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic.

19:33 Priest was not a rich man interested in sailing for pleasure.

19:37 He was part of the working class, employed as a stoker or fireman,

19:41 stuck for hours within the hot bowels of large steam-powered vessels.

19:46 His job was dirty and difficult.

19:48 He was responsible for keeping the furnaces lit,

19:51 feeding them coal to ensure enough steam was produced for the engines to work.

19:55 He had to be careful about not overheating the system or setting fire to the whole ship.

20:00 The furnaces had to be carefully watched and constantly fed.

20:04 He breathed it all in a while, working and fighting with the sweat and the dirt.

20:09 He would often work shirtless because of the heat, and was always covered in black coal dust.

20:14 And when he finally had a break, his shared living quarters were nearby in the same part of the ship.

20:20 He must have been good at his job, though, because he had no trouble finding work.

20:25 But wherever he went, bad luck seemed to follow.

20:28 The first incident was a mild one.

20:31 As a young man, Priest worked on the RMS Asturias.

20:35 The passenger liner first set sail in 1907,

20:38 traveling between Southampton in the UK to Buenos Aires in Argentina.

20:44 At some point during its maiden voyage, the ship suffered a small collision.

20:48 The damage was bad enough that the ship returned for repairs.

20:52 Thankfully, there were no reports of any serious injuries.

20:55 Priest, unfazed, simply went to work on another ship.

20:59 But his bad luck lingered on the Asturias.

21:02 In 1914, the Asturias became a hospital ship,

21:06 helping care for sick men and women around Europe while bringing them home to England.

21:11 But in March 1917, at just around midnight, the ship was struck by a foreign object.

21:17 Its hull was breached, and the engine room flooded.

21:20 The captain ordered everyone to abandon the ship,

21:23 sending crew, patients, and health staff scrambling for the lifeboats.

21:27 The vessel was still moving, powering through the water,

21:30 because the main controls, located within the flooded engine room, could not be turned off.

21:35 The captain refused to leave the ship while people were still trying to escape.

21:39 He was able to aim the Asturias towards Bolthead, where it finally hit land and couldn't sink.

21:45 The remaining lifeboats were lowered, and the final survivors made it to safety.

21:50 When they studied the damage on the ship later, the Asturias was declared a total write-off.

21:56 It might be hard to pin this particular disaster on Priest.

22:00 After all, he wasn't even on the ship at the time.

22:03 But it seemed that many of the ships on which he served were destined for trouble.

22:08 His bad luck followed him to his next job on the RMS Olympic, a massive ocean liner.

22:14 The Olympic was big.

22:16 In fact, it had been designed and built as part of the fleet that included the Titanic.

22:21 But with size came sacrifice.

22:23 The Olympic was great at moving in one direction, but very difficult to handle when it needed to turn.

22:29 It was September 1911.

22:31 The Olympic was trying to alter its course.

22:34 The Hawk, a smaller ship sailing nearby, didn't give the larger vessel enough room to maneuver,

22:39 and the two slammed into each other.

22:42 Because the Hawk was engineered to deal with potential confrontations when out at sea,

22:46 its reinforced bow tore through the Olympic.

22:50 Two large gashes appeared on the ocean liner's side.

22:53 The propeller shaft was badly twisted, and worse, the ship began to take on water.

22:59 Somehow, the Olympic made it to shore without sinking, and nobody was seriously hurt.

23:05 Priest had no idea that this was just a small taste of what his future held for him.

23:11 He next found employment on a brand new ship, a better ship,

23:14 an unsinkable marvel that was said to be the biggest vessel to have ever been built.

23:19 Yes, he was going to work on the Titanic.

23:22 And what a job!

23:24 It took 29 boilers, requiring 850 tons of coal a day, to produce enough steam to power the Titanic.

23:31 Priest was just one of 150 stokers toiling away in the ship's underbelly,

23:36 keeping those fires burning day and night.

23:39 He made around $30 a month.

23:41 But on April 14, 1912, he would find himself flung from a world of extreme heat

23:47 to one of blistering cold.

23:50 At approximately 11.35 pm, the crew spotted an iceberg.

23:54 The Titanic tried to avoid it, but the alarm had been sounded too late.

23:59 Five minutes later, the two collided.

24:02 The iceberg tore through the hull, and the once watertight compartments inside were badly ruptured.

24:07 As the cold Atlantic water flooded in, the ship began to sink.

24:12 Distress signals were sent, but the closest ship, the Carpathia, was over three hours away.

24:17 In the dark of night, and stuck in the middle of nowhere, the crew and passengers panicked.

24:23 Those who could scrambled for the lifeboats.

24:26 Others jumped into the icy waters.

24:28 In total, only 706 survived that terrible night.

24:33 Priest, at the time of the collision, was down in the ship's lower quarters.

24:37 He was on break, relaxing from a hard day of work.

24:40 And as the ship went down, so did his chances of survival.

24:44 He and his fellow workers were in the most dangerous position on the ship.

24:48 They had to make their way through a maze of corridors and gangways,

24:52 some of which were flooded, in a mad dash to the deck.

24:55 And then, they faced the frigid water, jumping in and desperately swimming to safety.

25:01 The ocean was so cold that Priest even suffered frostbite before finding his way onto a lifeboat.

25:07 He was one of only 44 stokers to survive that night.

25:11 After an experience like that, most of us would never set foot on a boat again.

25:16 But, Priest had to work.

25:18 His next job also ended in disaster.

25:21 He was offered employment on the HMS Alcantara.

25:25 It went down in 1916, and Priest was again one of the few to make it to safety.

25:30 He was badly wounded in the process.

25:33 But he kept pressing his luck, and his next job as a stoker may have felt eerily familiar.

25:39 He would be working on a ship built by the same people behind both the Olympic and the Titanic.

25:45 And this ship, named the Britannic, was the biggest of the three.

25:49 It was also believed to be a superior vessel, fitted with new safety features after the Titanic sank.

25:55 For example, it had 48 open lifeboats, 46 of which were the largest ever used on a ship before.

26:02 Two of these were even motorized and equipped with special communication devices.

26:07 The good news? The Britannic survived its first trip without incident.

26:11 It was already doing better than the Titanic ever did.

26:14 However, on November 21, 1916, the Britannic was shaken by a loud explosion while traveling through the key channel in the Aegean Sea.

26:23 The hull was damaged, and some of the compartments began to fill with water.

26:28 But, unlike the Titanic, the Britannic had been designed for just such an emergency.

26:33 It had been fitted with five watertight bulkheads.

26:36 Intact, these would help keep the ship safe and floating for a much longer period of time.

26:41 But there was one issue.

26:43 Port holes along the lower decks had foolishly been left open.

26:47 As the ship tilted, the port holes let in water, which flooded the Britannic and hastened its descent into the sea.

26:54 This effectively made those watertight bulkheads useless.

26:57 The ship was going down fast, much faster, in fact, than the Titanic had sunk.

27:04 35 of the lifeboats were successfully launched, saving most on board.

27:09 Of the 1,066 passengers and crew, 1,036 survived.

27:14 Priest, his luck intact, was one of them.

27:17 And yet, he still wasn't done with a life at sea.

27:21 He accepted a position as a stoker on the Donegal.

27:24 It was a smaller passenger ferry that had been converted for use as a hospital boat.

27:29 In April 1917, it was struck by a foreign object while fleeing an unsafe situation.

27:35 And though he suffered from a head injury, Priest was again one of the survivors.

27:40 It took experiencing two collisions and four sinkings before Priest was finally ready to retire.

27:46 In fact, he reportedly said he only gave it up because no one wanted to sail with him.

27:51 Can you blame them?

27:53 He would live out the rest of his life on dry land in Southampton, England,

27:57 with his wife Annie and their three sons.

28:00 But Arthur John Priest would always be remembered as the unsinkable stoker.

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