Titanic's Final Mystery (2012) - full transcript

The Titanic... built to be unsinkable.

Captain and crew... the finest of their day.

The night... perfectly calm.

The sea was so very still,

and the sky, so many stars.

Ice ahead!

The mighty ship is destroyed
by a single iceberg...

Some 300 feet of hull plating
ripped apart at the seams.

But even in the moment
of disaster, there is hope...

A ship on the horizon.

We both came to the conclusion



that she was close enough
to be signaled.

The captain said, "tell them to
come at once, we are sinking."

Yet that ship never arrives.

For 100 years
we've wondered, why?

And how did the tragedy happen
in the first place?

Who... or what... was to blame?

An investigator is determined
to reexamine all the evidence...

So she's at Titanic's wreck site...
that's incredible.

He travels the world,

collects data,

and pores through thousands of
hours of eyewitness testimony.

The more I read about
the truth of what happened,

the more I realize how strange
it really was.

For 100 years,
we've sought culprits



among those on board
and even elsewhere.

Now, at last, one man
has found the answers...

That finally close the case of Titanic.

Las Vegas...

The entertainment capital
of the world...

Hardly where one would
expect to come face to face

with the world's most famous ship.

Controversy has swirled
around these objects

recovered from
the Titanic wreck site

since they first went on display
to the public in 1994.

Many question whether it's right
to disturb a grave site...

While marine archaeologists
complain

that an important site
has been crudely salvaged.

But for historian and author
Tim Maltin,

these hull pieces serve
a vital purpose.

This is what was built
in Belfast 100 years ago.

And this is a testament to
how beautifully built she was.

She's like a work of art,

every rivet
literally handcrafted.

It's extraordinary to be
standing this close to it.

It's almost as though Titanic
has come back from the dead

and sort of hit me in the face
almost, because she's here.

In the hundred years
since the sinking,

an elaborate web of myths
has grown up around Titanic.

Some even believe
the builders cut corners

when they began
her construction.

What you can see here from
this 15-ton piece of the Titanic

is the strength of it,
just the sheer...

We don't build things like this
today anymore.

The way its heaviness,
its strength,

the way the rivets were
heat sealed into it

and shrunk onto this very thick
shell plating here.

And even over here
you can see the glass,

the thickness of the glass
is absolutely amazing.

I mean, that is nearly
two inches thick.

One of the most
common myths today

is that Titanic was
somehow badly built,

or the rivets were weak,
or the metal was brittle.

And I can assure you
that's a complete myth.

The builders were actually
encouraged, if anything,

to spend more money on the ship,
not less.

This ship is built
like a battleship.

Tim Maltin
has debunked a lot of myths

about Titanic...

But he still has questions.

He believes this 100-year-old
case is far from closed.

I've spent my whole life
studying the Titanic,

and now I'm standing
in front of it.

And this is the beginning
of a really exciting journey,

because now I'm going to put
all my theories to the test

of why Titanic sank.

Tim's theories are
the result of hundreds of hours

spent poring through
eyewitness testimony.

Titanic is, in fact,

one of the best documented
disasters in history,

the subject of massive
public inquiries

in both New York and London.

150 witnesses were grilled
with 50,000 questions.

Much of that historic
and scientific evidence

is gathered in this library
in London...

The base for
Tim's investigation.

As soon as the survivors
came off the Titanic,

they gave their interviews
to newspapers

who slightly embellished
the stories.

And what I've been interested
in doing is getting back

to what people who were there
actually experienced.

From the survivors,
Tim has sifted out a handful

whose testimony seems vital.

One of them is science teacher
Lawrence Beesley.

He was paying very close
attention to everything.

He even, on the deck, timed
the swell of the North Atlantic.

So he gives US
an incredible amount

of what would seem to be
quite mundane detail,

but it provides
very important clues

of what really happened
that night.

Captain Edward Smith
didn't survive.

But the two lookouts

Frederick Fleet and
Reginald Lee did.

For Tim, their testimony
somehow holds the key

to the biggest mystery of all.

Obviously, we know that
Titanic hit an iceberg.

But what I was interested in is
why did she hit an iceberg?

You know, why is it that
the best navigators of their day

in the finest ship,
being as careful as they could,

why did they crash that night?

And the key to
a second enduring mystery

lies with Stanley Lord,
captain of the californian,

a nearby ship that
inexplicably failed

to come to Titanic's rescue
that night.

The more I got to learn
about this ship

and its effect on
the Titanic disaster,

the more I realized that

they hadn't got to
the bottom of it yet.

The careers and
reputations of all these men

would be forever tarnished
by the sinking of Titanic.

But did they deserve the blame?

That is what Tim is determined
to find out.

Over the years,
Titanic has become a myth,

and as we go on, we get further
and further away from the truth.

And what I wanted to do is
wind the clock back to 1912,

to almost put myself
in that position there,

and to really learn about
the environment as well,

and to find out exactly
what happened that night.

To get to the bottom
of Titanic's final mysteries,

Tim first needs the ship.

When I was about 11 years old,

I got some glue and plans
and cut them up,

and just actually gluing them
onto cardboard,

and actually starting to see
the profile of Titanic

come to life off the page...

It really makes the Titanic
become a real ship,

that you understand
the geography of.

In the years since then,

Tim has meticulously recreated
Titanic's original plans,

bringing them to life as
an animated 3D model.

At the time, Titanic is the
largest moving object ever made.

She's a sixth of a mile long,
175 feet high

and divided into 10 decks.

Built like a battleship,

Titanic's keel is laid at
harland and wolff's shipyard

in Belfast, northern Ireland,
in 1909.

Over 20,000 tons of steel go
into her frame and hull plating.

The top deck houses the bridge.

The next seven decks included

exquisite first class
state rooms,

and luxurious public areas,

such as the spectacular
grand staircase.

At the bottom,
the remaining three decks

are reserved for crew,
cargo and machinery.

This extraordinary vessel
was moved through the water

by three giant propellers

generating nearly
60,000 horsepower,

the power of 100
modern 18-wheelers.

The construction takes
longer than expected.

Titanic's maiden voyage is
delayed by almost three weeks.

Even then, as her owners...
The white star line...

Rush to get her ready,
there are signs of trouble.

Even before
Titanic left Belfast,

there was a fire that had begun
to burn in the coal

in this bunker here,

between boiler rooms
numbers five and six.

They began to rake the coal out
on Wednesday,

and it took them
until Saturday night

before the fire was put out.

So it took them
nearly the whole voyage

to get the fire under control.

Bunker fires weren't uncommon,

and even though this one wasn't
put out for several days,

it's unlikely that
it seriously weakened

the structure of Titanic.

On Wednesday, April 10, 1912,

Titanic finally weighs anchor

and sets sail from Southampton
for New York.

Her passengers come from
every class of society...

The wealthy elite

and emigrants hoping for
a new start in America.

Titanic was a floating city

capable of carrying
3,500 people,

and she had fabulous facilities.

For those traveling first class,

life couldn't have been better,

as colonel Archibald Gracie,

a graduate of west point
military academy,

would later testify.

I enjoyed myself

as if I were in a summer palace
on the seashore,

surrounded with every comfort.

There was nothing
to suggest that

we were on
the stormy Atlantic ocean.

The motion of the ship and
the noise of its machinery

were scarcely discernible
on deck or in the saloons,

day or night.

This is the genius of Titanic.

It manages to combine huge size
with immaculate style.

On the lower deck,

freezer stores mean that
the restaurants and cafes

are stocked with
the finest fresh produce.

Cafe parisien, out on b deck,

is accompanied by a view
of the North Atlantic

passing by the French windows...

A first on any ship.

The first-class a la carte menu
inside the ship has 11 courses,

including oysters,
sirloin of beef,

peaches in chartreuse jelly, and
chocolate and vanilla desserts.

Other luxuries are equally
suited to the fitness fanatic,

colonel Gracie.

But when sunday morning came,

I considered it high time to
begin my customary exercises.

I was up early before breakfast
preparatory to a swim

in the six-foot-deep
tank of salt water,

heated to a refreshing
temperature.

In no swimming bath had I ever
enjoyed such pleasure before.

How curtailed that enjoyment
would have been

had the presentiment come to me

telling how before
dawn of another day

I would be swimming for my life
in mid-ocean.

So what you have to understand

is that the builders
and the crew

really believed
she was unsinkable.

And, of course,
the passengers, therefore,

really believed
she was unsinkable, as well.

2,000 miles away,
an armada of deadly ice

breaks loose every year from
the glaciers of Greenland.

One of these giant shards has
been drifting for a year

and is now on a collision course
with Titanic.

The world's largest ship has
barely four days to live.

Thursday, April 11, 1912.

Day two of Titanic's
maiden voyage.

First-class passengers are
enjoying the smooth ride

in the dining saloon on deck d,

the most stable
part of the ship.

For them and the rest
of the passengers,

the ship's luxurious fittings
are a pleasant distraction

on their transatlantic journey.

For some people,

they were making the biggest
journey of their lives,

and they would never return.

But for a lot of people
in first class, for example,

businesspeople, they might do
this journey once a month,

for example,
they were always doing it,

and they didn't expect it to be
a trip into the unknown.

They expected to arrive
on Wednesday morning,

and that was it.

Whether they're
traveling first class or third,

everyone expects Titanic will
deliver them safely to New York

in seven days.

By 1912, the steamship
companies had got together

and established effectively

railway lines
across the Atlantic.

And this is because the intense
competition of passengers

wanting to get to New York
faster and faster

were causing liners
to take risks.

To avoid collisions,
steamer traffic is separated

into eastbound and
westbound routes

known as steamer tracks.

As Titanic steams west,

other ships are already radioing
warnings of ice ahead.

Captain Smith and his officers
are counting on lookouts

in the crow's nest to give them
up to 30 minutes' warning.

In clear weather

from their position
90 feet above the waves,

these two crewmen can
typically spot an iceberg

as far away as the horizon.

For now, they can see
nothing ahead of them.

Today, the movement of ice
in the North Atlantic

is monitored in
new London, Connecticut.

Tim Maltin is here
to find out how.

Run by the u.S. Coast guard,

the international ice patrol
was set up

as a direct consequence
of the Titanic disaster

by the leading maritime powers
of the day.

During ice season,
generally February till July,

it uses satellite
and radar technology

to track the progress of
icebergs heading south.

Don Murphy is
chief oceanographer.

So, Don,

are icebergs still dangerous
to ships nowadays?

Icebergs are dangerous to ships

even in the modern world.

The icebergs in
the western North Atlantic,

the ones that enter
the shipping lanes,

come primarily from
the west coast of Greenland...

And then down the coast,

and eventually along
the coast of Labrador,

and then towards
the shipping lanes,

and into the area where
they become a very severe danger

to the North Atlantic mariner.

The freezing current
that carries the icebergs

is called the Labrador.

Although no one could know it
at the time,

1912 is shaping up to be
an unusually bad ice year

as Titanic prepares to cross

from the warm waters
of the Gulf Stream

into the freezing
Labrador current.

Over 1,000 icebergs entered

the North Atlantic
shipping lanes during 1912.

The average is a lot less
than that...

Around 500 a year
is the average.

So it was a very severe
iceberg year.

Today, we have
the technology to warn a ship

of the exact locations of
icebergs in its path.

But in 1912, ships coulrely only

on the power of human eyesight.

April 14th, 6:00 P.M.

Four days since Titanic
left Southampton,

and three days since she
received the first ice warnings.

Although no one suspects it,

Titanic and most of those
on board

have just hours to live.

Back in London, Tim searches
the eyewitness accounts

to build an accurate picture
of the conditions that night.

For me, the facts
are absolutely key.

There are hundreds and hundreds
of books on the Titanic,

but the only ones
I'm interested in

are ones that were written
by people who were there,

or ones which are
the transcribed testimony

of eyewitnesses.

16-year-old
Jean Hippach is struck

by how unusual the night is.

Jean the sea was so very still,

and the sky, so many stars.

I never saw so many
in my whole life.

Scientist Lawrence Beesley

also notices
the remarkable clarity.

Each star seemed in the keen atmosphere

to have increased
its brilliance tenfold,

and to twinkle and sparkle
with a staccato flash

that made the sky seem
nothing but a setting

made for them in which
to display their wonder.

The crew is more concerned

about the plunging temperature.

Charles lightoller is
the second officer of Titanic.

Lightoller talks about it
dropping four degrees

in the half an hour that
he was having his tea,

and the carpenter then goes

to stop the fresh water
freezing up,

and yet they'd been sunbathing
on the deck just before.

All of the survivors mention

how sudden the drop
in temperature was,

and how extreme the drop
in temperature was.

It was just a keen, bitter,
icy, motionless cold

that came from nowhere,
and yet was there all the time.

The stillness of it...

If one can imagine "cold"
being motionless and still...

Was what seemed new and strange.

Beesley describes
the night as "strange."

And it is, even to the most
experienced crew.

Yet, there is no cause
for alarm.

The clarity of the night,
the bright stars...

All are perfect conditions
for spotting icebergs.

What caught them out that night?

What single element was
the real fundamental reason

why those experienced sailors

rammed this beautiful,
largest ship in the world,

perfectly built
over several years,

straight into an iceberg
on her maiden voyage?

In less than six hours,

this is the fate
that awaits Titanic.

Sunday, April 14, 1912.

7:00 P.M.

Captain Edward Smith
has crossed the Atlantic

many times during ice season.

He sees no reason yet
to be alarmed.

Titanic author and investigator
Tim Maltin

travels to newfoundland

to get as close to the scene
of the crime as he can.

Even today, these waters are
teeming with dangerous icebergs.

The local captains here
are experts.

They have to be.

Their livelihood depends on
successfully navigating

among icy monsters
sometimes 300 feet tall.

With a trained eye, you can see
the whitecaps forming.

Here you see some areas
of calm, as well.

This is the Labrador current

that is running
right along here.

Is that why the ice is
so near the shore here?

Exactly.

It's the driving force

that brings these icebergs
here, really.

Seven-eighths of the ice
is under water,

so the main sail is
under water, really.

So when that current strikes
that ice under water,

it's going to have
a dramatic effect

on the movement of
these icebergs.

Today,
even with modern technology

at their disposal,

sailors are still very wary
of the danger

that crossing into the icy
Labrador current can bring...

Especially once night falls.

I can see
in the nighttime, you know,

how a captain could be
confused or mesmerized,

is the probably the best way
I would describe it, really,

because your eye can only focus
on so much at a time.

What would you feel like
if we were on this boat,

and instead of coming into port,
like we are now,

we were just in the middle
of the Atlantic,

and there was hundreds
of icebergs

that we didn't know about
in the dark.

What would you think about that?

I'd be pretty nervous, I mean,

as we're standing here now,
I'm looking at the water,

looking for bergy bits.

And I know what the damage
that these icebergs can do.

So I would be quite fearful,
really,

to be quite honest with you.

I'd make sure I'd have a lot
of eyes on the water...

Trying to avoid it,
that's for sure.

April 14, 8:30 P.M.

Visibility is good and
the horizon is clear.

No icebergs in sight.

Titanic is now steaming
at over 22 knots,

roughly 25 miles an hour.

She is almost at top speed.

One of the most common
explanations that people give

for the cause of
the Titanic disaster

is that she was going too fast.

And yet, when you look
at the evidence,

what you see is that
captain after captain testifies

to having experienced it
to be totally safe

to keep to full speed
in ice in clear weather.

Another legend has it

that captain Smith
is drunk on duty.

But he never drank at sea.

He's in command of Titanic
because he's considered

one of the white star's
finest captains.

Titanic is the fourth
large ocean liner

he's taken on its maiden voyage.

That night, the weather
was completely clear.

So captain Smith was doing only

what all the other captains
would have been doing,

which is keeping
a sharp lookout.

The entire safety of Titanic

now depends on the sharp eyes
of the lookouts aloft,

Frederick Fleet
and Reginald Lee.

Another thing that's been
blamed for the Titanic disaster

is that the lookouts
didn't have binoculars.

And it is true that binoculars

were scheduled to be
in the crow's nest,

but they weren't in it
for that journey.

However, having read
all of the inquiries

and listening to testimony

from the captains of all
the major transatlantic liners,

what I know is that the best way
of spotting ice at night

is with the naked eye.

Binoculars are, in fact,
for inspection of an object

and not for detection
of an object.

And the last thing the officer
on the Titanic wanted

was the lookouts messing around
with binoculars

trying to verify
what they were seeing.

On Titanic, a lookout's sole job

is searching for potentially
hazardous objects

in the ship's path.

In good visibility,

the naked eye should be able
to spot an iceberg

up to 12 miles away and give
the bridge a 30-minute warning

when traveling at full speed.

What they wanted was

a quick three sharp rings
of the bell,

which means
an object dead ahead.

It's now 9:00 P.M.

For some of
Titanic's passengers,

the night is still young.

For others, like school teacher
Lawrence Beesley,

it's time to turn in.

He's in his cabin on d deck,

returned from the second-class
reading room.

The quietness of
the night was broken

only by the muffled sounds

that came to me
through the ventilators

of stewards talking and
moving along the corridors.

Nearly all of the passengers
were in their cabins,

some asleep in bed,
others undressing,

and others only just down
from the smoking room

and still discussing
many things.

Up on the bridge,

the night watch is about to
step up their vigilance a notch.

The californian,
a smaller, 450-foot steamer,

has passed three large icebergs

and radioed a warning
to all ships.

Titanic acknowledges
the message.

At about 10:30 P.M.,

the californian finds herself
blocked by a huge ice barrier,

almost 30 miles long
and three miles wide.

The californian is captained
by Stanley Lord.

He's one of the youngest
and best captains

on the North Atlantic,

and he's about to begin
the worst night of his life.

As soon as he stops
at the ice barrier,

he notices what looks like
a ship approaching.

When I came off the bridge
at half past 10:00,

I pointed out to the officer

that I thought I saw
a light coming along.

He said he thought
it was a star,

and I said "there is
a steamer passing.

Let US go to the wireless
and see what the news is."

But I met the operator coming,

and I said, "do you know
of anything around?"

He said, "only the Titanic."

And I said, "to me, it doesn't
look like the Titanic,

there's no doubt about it."

Lord is convinced
he's looking at an older steamer

which has no radio.

He tells his radio operator to
put in another call to Titanic,

which must be elsewhere.

But on the Titanic,
the operator is under pressure.

The ship has just moved
within range

to send telegrams to
the United States,

and there's a huge backlog
of messages.

In order to hear
the distant signal,

Jack Phillips has turned his
headphones up to full volume.

At 10:55, the californian's
radio operator, Cyril Evans,

types out captain Lord's
new ice warning.

But for some reason,
he begins the message

as if it's an informal chat
between radio operators.

And he has no idea
how close Titanic is.

His ears ringing, Titanic's
Phillips has no Patience

for what sounds like chitchat.

Evans doesn't try to
repeat the warning.

He's the only radio operator
on the californian,

and soon his 16-hour shift
is up.

Titanic is now cut off
from the nearest ship,

perhaps just 10 miles away.

With his hasty brush-off,

radio operator Jack Phillips
has just placed his ship

in dire jeopardy.

In his mind, author Tim Maltin
has replayed this moment

countless times.

But still, the logic of it
escapes him.

Sunday, April 14th, 11:30 P.M.

Day five of Titanic's
maiden voyage.

The world's largest ship
is steaming through

a massive ice field
in the darkness,

confident her lookouts
can provide

at least 30 minutes' warning
of any danger.

10 minutes later,
that confidence proves fatal.

Ice ahead!

Ice ahead, ice ahead.

The iceberg
isn't 30 minutes away...

More like 30 seconds.

On the bridge,
the crew reacts immediately.

They throw the engines into
reverse and turn the wheel.

Despite its size, the Titanic
is highly maneuverable.

Hard over starboard.

Instead of slamming
straight into the iceberg,

she manages to begin
turning away...

But not fast enough.

Below the water line,
the ice rips into her hull,

opening up a 300-foot seam
in the one-inch steel plates.

One source of the myth that
Titanic was poorly built

stems from the massive damage
she sustains

in a matter of seconds.

The damage that was caused
by the iceberg to Titanic

was equal to a million
foot-tons a second,

and that's like an explosion.

And basically, even a modern
battleship would have been sunk

by that sort of impact.

But the ship is so large,

many passengers have little idea
of what is happening.

Lawrence Beesley is on deck d
near the center of the ship.

There came to me
what seemed nothing more

than an extra
heave of the engines.

Nothing else...
No sense of shock,

no jar that felt like
one heavy body meeting another.

The thought came to me that

they must still have
further increased the speed.

And all this time,
the Titanic was being cut open

by the iceberg
and water pouring in her side.

And yet no evidence that would
indicate such a disaster

had been presented to US.

Near the stern,

quartermaster Thomas rowe is
unaware that anything is wrong.

He's mesmerized by
the new electric lights,

an improvement on the flickering
oil lamps of old.

They're surrounded
by bizarre haloes

caused by ice crystals
in the air.

Rowe calls them
"whiskers round the lights."

I glanced forward.

A windjammer, sails set,

seemed to be passing
on the starboard side.

Then I realized
it was an iceberg,

towering perhaps
100 feet above the water.

The next instant it was gone,
drifting astern into the dark.

30 seconds after impact,

the watertight doors separating
Titanic's main compartments

are closed.

But they can only delay
the inevitable.

The ship touted to be
"unsinkable"

is now fatally wounded.

I think many people believe

that it was purely
p.R. And advertising

on behalf of the white star line

that they claimed that
Titanic was unsinkable.

But, actually, what we get
from reading all the evidence

is that her builder,
Thomas Andrews,

actually believed
she was unsinkable,

and even captain Smith
on the sunday night

was explaining to
his dinner guests on Titanic

how she could be cut crosswise
into three pieces,

and each separate piece
would float.

With 16 watertight compartments,

Titanic is built to stay afloat

under virtually
every accident scenario.

The worst the designers
could imagine

was a collision flooding
two compartments.

Even if her first four
had been flooded,

she would have stayed afloat.

But what happened that night

was a freak sideswipe disaster

which took out six
watertight compartments.

And that kind of
sideswipe disaster

has never happened before
or since

in recorded maritime history.

Ironically, if Titanic
had hit the iceberg head-on,

it would have survived.

But the damage
caused by the iceberg

was literally unimaginable.

Six minutes after the impact,

the ever-observant
Lawrence Beesley realizes

that something is wrong.

And so with no thought
of anything serious

having happened to the ship,

I continued my reading.

And still the murmur
from the stewards

and from adjoining cabins,
and no other noise.

No cry in the night,
no alarm given,

no one afraid.

But in a few moments,

I felt the dancing motion and
vibration cease suddenly.

The engines,

that part of the ship that
drove US through the sea,

had stopped dead.

Beesley makes his way
to the upper decks

to find out more.

Down below, the ship's designer
is working feverishly

to assess the damage.

He delivers his terrible
calculation...

Titanic has less than
two hours to live.

30 minutes after impact,

captain Smith gives orders to
send out a radio distress signal

and begin loading the lifeboats
with women and children.

Meanwhile, colonel Gracie
has made his way

up to the boat deck,

where something on the horizon
catches his eye.

To reassure the ladies

of whom I had assumed
special charge,

I showed them
a bright, white light

that I took to be a ship
about five miles off,

and which I felt sure
was coming to our rescue.

Captain Smith orders an attempt

to signal the same
distant light.

What a lot of people
don't realize is that,

within sight of
the sinking Titanic,

was a light of another vessel
which could clearly be seen

by hundreds of her passengers
on the decks.

But, instead of
growing brighter,

the light grew dim and
less and less and distinct,

and passed away altogether.

It will become known
as the mystery ship.

Titanic is left all alone.

A common belief is that
she simply doesn't have

enough lifeboats for all her
passengers and crew.

The truth is more complicated.

In 1912, the board of trade

was trying to make ships
become watertight

and become lifeboats
in themselves.

And the board of trade
actually rewarded you

with having to carry
less lifeboats

if your ship was
properly subdivided.

They believed that the best way
to save life at sea

was preventing ships from
sinking in the first place,

not having dangerous ships
with lots of lifeboats on them.

Over the next
one and a half hours,

18 lifeboats and rafts
are lowered

down the side of Titanic.

Only 700 passengers and crew
eventually board them,

although there's room
for at least 400 more.

Because everyone on the Titanic,

including the passengers,

really believed that
she was unsinkable,

there was a huge reluctance
to get into the lifeboats,

because the Titanic seemed
to be a much safer bet

on a dark night
in the North Atlantic

than a tiny, little rowing boat.

And in fact, the first two
lifeboats to be launched

were filled equally
with men and women,

and this is because no women

would go into
the first two lifeboats

without men being with them.

And it was actually an act of
heroism for men to take the lead

and go in with their wives
into the lifeboats.

With no more women
and children to fill boat 13,

Lawrence Beesley is
ordered to jump in.

Looking up, he is appalled
by what he sees.

As the oarsmen
pulled slowly away,

we all turned and took
a long look at the mighty vessel

towering high above
our midget boat.

I know it must have been
the most extraordinary sight

that I shall ever be
called upon to witness.

On the giant Titanic,

more than 1,500 people
are left stranded.

Colonel Gracie manages to make
his way to the rear deck.

Ahead of US
was a mass of humanity,

trapped against a railing
unable to move.

As the ship keeled over forward,

I believe their bodies
were caught

in the angles of the deck,
or entangled in the ropes,

and sank with the ship.

As Titanic plunges
beneath the surface,

over 1,000 desperate souls are
still clinging to her stern,

many of them crew and
third-class passengers.

Colonel Gracie is one of them.

Down, down, I went.

It seemed a great distance.

I held my breath for what seemed
an interminable time

until I could scarcely
stand it any longer.

And it was then

the thought that
this was my last moment

came upon me.

Just when I thought

that for lack of breath
I would have to give in,

I was given a second wind.

Finally I noticed by
the increase of light

that I was drawing
near the surface.

Now, though it was not daylight,
the clear, starlit night

made a noticeable difference
in the degree of light

just below the surface
of the water.

Miraculously, Gracie
finds his way into a lifeboat.

Hundreds of others
are not as lucky.

The sea temperature
is 28 degrees.

If it were fresh water,
it'd be ice.

As their core body temperature
drops, hypothermia sets in.

First the extremities go,
then the vital organs shut down.

Even the fittest
can only survive

15 or 20 minutes at best.

Second officer lightoller,

who, like Gracie, survived a
plunge into the subzero waters,

described it as like

"1,000 knives being driven
into one's body."

16-year-old Jean Hippach
witnesses the horror

from lifeboat four.

You can't think
what it felt out there alone

by ourselves in the Atlantic.

You know what they say,
when you see a shooting star,

someone is dying.

And we thought of that,

for there were so many dying
not far from US.

The survivors can only
think of the mystery ship

whose light they briefly saw,

but which failed to come
to their rescue.

The pity of it!

So near, and so many people
waiting for the shelter

its decks could have given
so easily.

It seems impossible to believe
that the captain and officers

knew of our distress
and deliberately ignored it.

Captain Lord of the californian

would spend the rest of his days
fending off accusations

that he abandoned
Titanic that night.

In the end, 1,496 people die...
Men, women and children.

The impact of the disaster
reverberates around the world.

The Titanic... the great symbol
of technological prowess

for a generation... has failed.

From here,
just straight down there,

is actually cape race,
which was the first place

which received the distress
signal from the Titanic.

In Nova Scotia,
which is not far from here,

in the town of halifax,

all of the bodies recovered
from the Titanic were brought,

and sadly, they only recovered
about 350 bodies.

Among them was
the American millionaire

John Jacob Astor,

the richest passenger
on board Titanic.

Also, probably
one of the poorest,

an unknown two-year-old boy,

buried along with 122 others
in halifax's Fairview cemetery.

Early morning, April 15th.

The survivors are picked up
by the steamer carpathia.

Of the over 2,000 passengers and
crew who were aboard Titanic,

just 712 are rescued
and taken to New York.

As soon as the survivors
come ashore,

they begin telling
their grim tale.

Straight after they came
off the rescue ship,

lots and lots of survivors
were interviewed

by senator Smith in America.

And this is
the exact transcripts

of precisely what they said.

And, not satisfied with that,

the British then had
their own inquiry

into the Titanic disaster

where, in total,
50,000 questions were asked

to more than 150
important eyewitnesses.

Both inquiries made
important recommendations...

In the future, there were to be
enough lifeboats for all,

better designed
watertight compartments,

better radio communications
between ships,

and better lookout procedures,

including an end to the practice
of traveling at full speed

through waters with ice.

But, in the end,

they could find no clear cause
for the disaster...

Leaving room only
for the theories

Tim has spent decades
digging into.

Was Titanic traveling too fast?

Was the captain drunk?

Should the lookouts
have had binoculars?

Or was the ship's hull too weak?

Having looked at
all of these theories

of what may have caused
the Titanic disaster,

you can actually
see that each one

falls apart on close scrutiny.

So we're still left
with a question...

What really was
the underlying cause

of the sinking of the Titanic?

Having worked through
Titanic's timeline,

Tim believes he can now see
an intriguing pattern emerging

in the eyewitness testimony

which no one else has
picked up on before.

It was a most peculiar night.

And the sky, so many stars.

And to twinkle and
sparkle with a staccato flash.

The clear, starlit night
made a noticeable difference.

There was a slight haze coming.

Could not distinguish
where the sky ended

and the water commenced.

There was what you call
a soft horizon.

For one person, it was clear...

For another,
there was a soft horizon.

So that led me to ask, why?

Why were witnesses at
the same crime scene

describing things
so differently?

And that led me to
look at the science

and look to see if anything
about the physical environment

in which Titanic sank
would give US a clue

to unlock the apparent
inconsistencies

in the testimony.

That physical
environment begins with

the Labrador current
in which Titanic sank.

Tim has come to examine
the conditions

the Titanic victims endured
that night for himself.

Okay. Right.

So we're just going to take
the temperature of the water,

because in 1912,
every four hours

they used to take
the temperature of the water.

Okay.

One of the key facts
from the eyewitness testimony

is the sudden drop
in temperature

as they approached
the Labrador current.

It was just a keen,
bitter, icy, motionless cold

that came from nowhere,
and yet was there all the time.

Aha, it's pretty full.

Yeah.

Given that the temperature and
the stillness of the air

was so unusual,

I was determined to build
a complete picture

of the thermal geography
at Titanic's wreck site.

It's dropping.

It's taking a bit of time for
the thermometer to respond.

That is really,
really cold water.

No wonder they didn't
have a chance.

They only survived
for about 15 to 20 minutes

before they went unconscious
with the cold that night.

And I can really see why,

because my hand is going
unconscious already.

Agh! That is really cold.

Yeah, that water is only
two degrees centigrade here.

And that's...

It's still warmer than it was
the night Titanic sank,

but that's very cold water.

And it'd be interesting
to go a bit further

outside the Labrador current,

and see how warm it is
over there.

Less than a mile away,

he gets a very different
reading.

Here it is 60 fahrenheit,
so it's much warmer here

than it was when
we were over there

in the Labrador current.

Could a dramatic
variation in water temperature

shed light on the other
strange visual phenomena

reported by eyewitnesses?

The magical auras surrounding
the electric lights,

the failure of signaling lamps.

I called her up,
and got no answer.

Or this...

A thin, light gray smoky
vapor that hung like a pall

just a few feet
above the surface

of the broad expanse of sea.

This strange
phenomenon was observed

by survivors
as the ship was sinking.

Unfortunately,
none of Titanic's logs

recording air and water
temperature have survived.

But Tim is undeterred.

Understanding the science
behind Titanic's wreck site

is absolutely key to
unlocking the testimonies,

because you cannot weigh
the evidence correctly

until you understand
the environment

in which the evidence was given.

At least one
important fact is known.

Although it had remained
a mystery for over 70 years,

in 1985, Titanic's resting place
was finally discovered.

Her bow and stern
lie in separate pieces

two and a half miles
down on the ocean floor.

The coordinates
of the wreck site

provide Tim with the center
of his crime scene.

Now he needs to reconstruct
the exact conditions

on the night of the tragedy,
a century ago.

But with no surviving
ships' logs,

the question is...

How?

So I started looking
everywhere on the Internet

for where could I get evidence?

I looked at, could I get it
from barrage balloons?

Could I get it from
ships' reports?

Were these ships' reports
still existing?

And what I discovered was that
there is still a place

where they keep
the records from 1912

of the air and sea temperatures.

Tim Maltin's search

leads him to
asheville, north Carolina,

home to a branch of noaa,

the national oceanic and
atmospheric administration,

which stores the weather data
sent by thousands of ships.

What I've come here to get
is data from 1912,

from the position
where Titanic sank,

to actually build a map
of Titanic's crash site,

a bit like a sort of
Titanic CSI, if you like.

Scott woodruff is
the principal investigator

at the research laboratory.

I'm convinced that
the weather holds the key

to actually what caused
the disaster that night.

So what would be great is if we
could go back in time 100 years

and actually look at what
the sea and air temperatures

were doing
at Titanic's wreck site.

Well, let's take a look, Tim.

Yeah, here's some data
we've pulled up for you.

Wow.

So these are all ships
that were in the area?

Those ships in the area. Right.

Wow.

But the data
on these early computer cards

is not as detailed
as Tim would like.

The limited width of these

means that they could only
squeeze a certain amount of data

onto the computer card,

and thus, latitude and longitude

are only recorded to
a limited precision.

Is there any way
that you can think of

that we can actually get higher
resolution data than this?

Well, I think we're going to have to look

for the original
meteorological forms

and original logbooks of
the ships that were out there.

That means contacting
maritime archives

in a dozen countries.

Titanic was on
a busy shipping Lane

routinely frequented by vessels
from all over Europe...

Some of them likely carrying
useful witnesses.

Two weeks later, Tim gets a call

from the German meteorological
office in Hamburg.

The director is
Wolfgang gloeden.

So here we are, going down to our archive,

where we store all our journals
from sailing ships,

and from steamers,
and it begins in 1829.

Yes. And how many records
do you have down here?

We store about 37,000 journals
in these archives.

Well, I have to say that

I'm a bit like a kid
in a sweetshop down here,

because these are the holy grail
of what we've been looking for.

We've been tracking down
this data all over the world,

and it's only because

the Germans have kept
such good records,

and because they've kept them
down here in this bunker,

that they've actually survived
two world wars,

and they're actually available
for US to access them.

What we are looking for is
ships from 41 to 43 north,

and from 49 to 51 west,
all in April 1912.

Some of these logs,
a century old,

haven't been opened since their
captains wrote their reports.

The first one is
from the ss bremen.

It set off for America just four
days after the Titanic disaster.

On 4/30 they are passing
drifting wreck pieces...

Wow, wreckage, yeah.

And "viele leichen."

And that is the reason because

these crosses are
written down here.

What does "viele leichen" mean?

"Viele leichen" is a lot of dead bodies.

Wow!

So they're actually passing
Titanic's wreck site.

Must be.

A passenger,
Mrs. Johanna Stunke,

later described the scene
from the bremen.

Looking down over the rail,

we distinctly saw a number
of bodies so clearly

that we could make out
what they were wearing,

and whether they were
men or women.

We saw one woman
in her nightdress

with a baby clasped
to her breast.

The bodies of three men
in a group,

all clinging to one
steamship chair, floated nearby,

clinging together,

as though in a last desperate
struggle for life.

Surrounded by
this wealth of new evidence

about the disaster,
Tim searches deeper.

And I'm wondering if you've
got things like the Paula,

and the trautenfels
and the deutschland.

Here we are.

It's a little bit difficult,

because it's in
old German handwriting,

and I'm not so easily
used to it,

but I can try to.

Say big icebergs
on this position.

Okay, and which position
is this one?

The noon position is on
41, 58 north and 49, 36 west.

That's Titanic's latitude.
That's Titanic's longitude.

So she's at Titanic's
wreck site... that's incredible.

I believe that the Paula
is the last ship

that we have records from

that went through
where Titanic sank.

What do these remarks here in
the water temperature show US?

Temperature is going down

from 12.8 to 2.2, 1.1.

1.1? Wow.

And what's amazing here is that

it's going from 12 degrees
in the evening the day before

right the way down to minus 1.4.

So it's actually gone
to below freezing,

and then it jumps straight
back up again to 13 degrees.

Interestingly, these
large temperature fluctuations

at the very spot
where Titanic sank

are similar to the ones Tim
recorded in his own sampling.

It's beginning to give him
a clear picture

of the thermal geography of
the wreck site a century ago.

Could you give me
these temperature readings,

and I'll put them
into the computer?

Like a forensic detective,

Tim is uncovering
a clear picture

of how the killer
Labrador current is moving south

toward the path of the shipping
lanes in Titanic's final hours.

The more that I looked
into the detail

of the temperatures
at Titanic wreck site,

and the better resolution I got
by the clearer and clearer data,

what I could see was that
not only did Titanic sink

really, really close
to the barrier

between the warm water
and the cold water,

but that that boundary
was very clearly defined.

The question now is,

as Titanic is encountering
the Labrador current,

what effect is the wall of
frigid air above it causing?

We know that
the passengers felt it.

Did it cause the lookouts to
temporarily leave their posts

in search of warmer clothes?

The record says no.

Could it have even pushed the
iceberg faster toward Titanic?

Again, unlikely.

But Tim is growing
increasingly convinced

that the real culprit
in the crime

was not the iceberg itself,
but this sudden wall of cold air

accompanying the killer current.

It was a most peculiar night.

The clear, starlit night...

Could not distinguish
where the sky ended.

This weather phenomenon
must have had something to do

with all the conflicting
visual impressions

reported that night.

And the sky, so many stars.

There was a slight haze coming.

As Tim continues
his journey to gather evidence,

he recalls that one of
the survivors shared his belief

that forensic science could
ultimately provide an answer

to why Titanic sank...

Second-class passenger
and science teacher

Lawrence Beesley.

And Beesley leaves US
with this tantalizing line.

He says, "I know there must be
some missing evidence,

but I don't know what it is,

and we'll have to wait
until it arrives."

Tim hopes he'll find
that missing piece of evidence

at his next stop...

The British
meteorological office

in exeter, southwest england.

He's heard it contains
one more unique set of logs.

Perhaps this one will
crack open the mystery.

The amazing thing is that
there are very, very few ships

that were in the right place
at the right time.

And, in fact,
this is the only log

in the whole of the met office

that is in the right place
at the right time.

This is the log of the marengo.

She left New York on
the 11th of April, 1912.

40, 56...

This is very, very near
Titanic's wreck site

the day Titanic collided.

The sea temperature is
dropping dramatically.

And let's see what it says
in the remarks section.

Gosh, this is amazing.

Here, at 8:00 o'clock,
it says, "much refraction,"

and then at noon,
"much refraction on horizon."

And then, "great refraction,"
at 4:00 P.M.

And at midnight she says,

"much refraction,
stars very clear and bright."

And that's what
the survivors noticed,

is how clear and bright
the stars were.

The sea was so very still,

and the sky, so many stars.

And to twinkle and
sparkle with a staccato flash

that made the sky seem
nothing but a setting

made for them in which
to display their wonder.

Until now,
Tim has been finding data

confirming a massive
drop in temperature

as Titanic entered
the killing zone.

But this log indicates something
far more significant.

The passengers and crew weren't
just suddenly getting colder.

The very atmosphere was
beginning to play tricks

on their eyes.

When mariners record
"refraction" in their logs,

they're describing
strange optical effects

and distortions in the air.

What difference could such
visual phenomena have made

in the minutes before
Titanic hit the iceberg?

Tim is the first person
to have uncovered

these strange optical effects
at the crime scene

and at the exact time
it occurred.

Now he scours the other archives
to confirm his breakthrough.

Yes, this is the word
"luftspeigelung."

And what does that mean?
What does "luftspiegelung" mean?

"Luft" is air, and "spiegel" is mirror,

and altogether it's air mirror.

Like a mirage!

Yes.

That's absolutely incredible.

I think this is what they meant.

A mirage...

At last, something
that might explain

what happened that night.

Clear horizon with mirage.

In the afternoon.

Clear horizon with mirage.

When people think of mirages,

they think of seeing
something that isn't there.

But in Titanic's case,

the lookouts failed
to see something

that clearly was there.

So how could a mirage explain
a mistake like that?

To find out more about
these visual phenomena,

Tim travels to a place
that is the very opposite

of Titanic's crime scene...

The desert.

Well, I'm out here
in the desert,

because when you think of
mirage, you think of the desert.

You think of thirsty people

trekking thousands of miles
across the desert,

trying to fill up
their water bottles.

And they can see a shimmering...

What looks like a shimmering
lake of water in the distance.

And they walk and walk and walk,
but they never get there.

And that's the classic mirage.

In California's Mojave Desert,

Tim has come to meet a man
who specializes

in capturing extraordinary
visual phenomena.

Author and photographer
ed darack

chases mirages across the world.

The way it'll start,
like it did today,

is I'll be driving down a road,

I'll notice that the conditions
are right for a mirage,

'cause I'll see them
on the road.

You'll see the typical
sort of water mirage,

where it looks like
there's water,

but once you get up to it,
it's not.

And what causes, you know,
that sort of shimmering effect?

What causes that?

Most people when
they look through the sky,

through clear air,
they just think,

oh, it's clear air,
it's nothing there.

It's not the case. It's a lens.

And how much
it will distort or effect

what the viewer sees
of an object

can vary depending on
atmospheric conditions.

To demonstrate how
that lens bends light waves

to create a mirage,
ed brings in a helicopter.

Okay, come toward US
at maybe 10 knots,

at five feet atl,
if you can, over.

Just now,
the ground is much warmer

than the air above it.

This creates a gradient
of hot to cold air,

and since cold air is denser
or heavier than warm air,

the two air masses
create distinct layers.

Those layers act like a lens

bending and distorting
our familiar reality.

The result is a classic mirage

where objects appear below
their actual position.

This is one of my favorite
sequences with mirages.

You can see it in the distance,
you don't know what that is,

it looks like a spaceship
coming at you.

It's a black blob.

And this is on a highway
in New Mexico.

You have no idea what it is
and slowly it emerges...

It still looks like a spaceship
right there.

Yeah, it's floating in the air.

It's floating in the air.

It seems to be floating
in the air.

But then when you get up here,
you see it,

it's a car with
two trucks behind it.

Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it?

That just shows that your eyes
can deceive you so much

with this sort of stuff.

Well, it's not your eyes
that are deceiving you.

Your eyes aren't
deceiving anything.

What it is,
is the lens of the air

between the object
and what you're seeing.

That's the deception.

How is it similar,
this hot desert,

to the cold environment
of the Titanic?

The similarities are that
there are layers of air

that are very different
in air density

because of
the temperature differences.

That makes a lot of sense.

Because, for example,

when they were collecting
the bodies from the Titanic,

they actually noted that

the air changed from 56 to 32
in half a mile.

That's a tremendous difference
in air temperature.

So you had very different
masses of air,

right next to one another,
one on top of the other,

and so that would
really dramatically

bend the light rays.

Now everything
is clicking into place.

Ed's mirage observations confirm
the importance of the data

Tim has gathered from
eyewitness testimony

and ships' logs.

The crucial difference is
that here in the desert,

Tim has observed the effect
of cold air on top of warm.

For Titanic sailing
100 years ago,

those conditions were reversed
but equally deceiving.

Ahead of her was the warm water
of the Gulf Stream,

warming the air above.

The Labrador current
brought freezing water

underneath the warm air.

Soon, the warm air close to
the sea was replaced by cold.

Cold air under warm...

Perfect conditions for
a cold water mirage.

At the speed
they were traveling,

in the clear conditions
of that night,

lookouts Lee and Fleet should've
been able to spot an iceberg

30 minutes away...

Plenty of time to warn the ship.

But on that night,
they had just 37 seconds.

Ice ahead!

Ice ahead, ice ahead.

Was it possible
that a cold water mirage

had rendered the iceberg
effectively invisible

for almost 30 minutes?

Tim returns to newfoundland
to find out.

Have you ever seen
any weird effects of light?

When the sea conditions
are quite cold,

we'll get a mirage eect,

you get a shifting in
the overall look of the ice.

Sometimes comparatively
very small,

sometimes it can be
a monstrous-looking

type of iceberg.

You know, a lot of
our guests on board,

they think it's a 300-foot-high
iceberg coming this way,

and, of course,
we explain to them

that it's probably
a mirage effect.

And within the hour in the tour,

sure enough, you'll see it's
almost like a flat piece of ice,

because it had
shifted that much,

and they can't believe
how it had changed.

A 300-foot iceberg transformed
into a flat piece of ice

just by the power of a mirage.

What's interesting,
too, I think,

what we find, too,
when the sea is calm,

it's hard to know where the sea
ends and the sky ends, really,

it all seems to blend in, so
you can imagine a calm night...

Do you know
what you've just said there,

that's exactly what
captain Lord said.

He said that that night
it was impossible to tell

where the sky ended
and where the sea began.

This from captain Lord,

observing the same phenomenon

from the deck of
the californian.

It was a very strange night.

It was hard to define
where the sky ended

and the sea commenced.

There was what you call
a soft horizon.

And not only Lord.

Titanic lookout Frederick Fleet

also described
an indistinct horizon.

When the haze came,

it did not stretch
across the horizon.

It was right in front.

Two points on each bow.

I told my mate Lee
there was a slight haze coming.

When I noticed the haze,
there was nothing in sight.

And naturally,
a lot of people blamed him

for being asleep or whatever.

Nothing could be further
from the truth.

He was straining his eyes
to see ahead.

And when the commissioner
was grilling him

at the British Titanic inquiry,

he said, "there was a slight
haze on the horizon."

So the commissioner said, "well,
you should have slowed down then

if there was a haze,
you should have reported it."

And he said, "well, it didn't
really affect our view ahead."

And the commissioner goes,
"well, how can it be a haze

if it didn't affect
your view ahead?"

The "haze" Fleet was
describing was in fact evidence

that Titanic was heading
directly towards

a cold water mirage.

And as the ships' logs
of the time prove,

captains knew about refraction.

So here was another argument
for the need to slow down.

Have a look at these.

These were taken in Finland.

And what they show is a horizon
that has just been elevated

way above where
it should normally be.

And you can imagine how
confusing that would be at night

to a sailor who didn't know that
that was what was going on.

It's the reverse of
what Tim saw in the desert.

Instead of the sky being
bent down to appear as water,

here, a flat horizon is
lifted up like a cliff.

In the daytime,
it's easy to see.

The island and trees are
raised, smeared and distorted.

On a moonlit night, it can be
harder to make things out.

On this horizon, the mirage
lifts up a band of water.

That's the mysterious haze
lookout Fleet saw.

And within it
lies a possible answer

to the greatest
mystery of Titanic.

There was no moon that night.

The only way the lookouts
could spot the iceberg

was against the backdrop
of the blanket of stars.

But when the lens of hot and
cold air causes a mirage,

it distorts the sea,

and raises up the horizon
behind the iceberg.

It's now cloaked.

The background of stars
disappears.

The iceberg becomes invisible.

The best crew of its day,
in the best ship.

Ice ahead!

But against nature,
acting in this way,

it had no chance.

It's a compelling theory.

But is there any more evidence
to back it up?

A couple of survivors give
very interesting testimony

about smoke that night seeming
to hang in a flat, level plane.

The first person who does this
is colonel Archibald Gracie,

and he notices it
just above the wreck site.

What impressed me

at the time my eyes beheld
the horrible scene

was a thin, light gray smoky
vapor that hung like a pall

just a few feet
above the surface

of the broad expanse of sea

that was covered with a mass
of tangled wreckage.

That it was a tangible vapor,

not a product of imagination,
I feel assured.

But then,
from much further away,

first-class passenger
Philip Mock, in his lifeboat,

he describes that
as Titanic sank,

a column of black smoke
Rose high into the air

and then flattened out
at the top like a mushroom.

What Philip Mock
describes from his lifeboat

is how the smoke
from the doomed ship

is clearly hitting a juncture of
the layers of cold and hot air.

Final proof that
the conditions for a mirage

existed above Titanic.

Tim's mirage theory has solved
the first mystery...

Why the lookouts failed
to see the invisible iceberg.

But can it do more?

Can it explain the second
mystery that night?

Why the nearby ship,
the californian,

didn't come to Titanic's rescue,

as colonel Gracie and many other
passengers prayed it would.

I showed them
a bright, white light

that I took to be a ship
about five miles off,

and which I felt sure was
coming to our rescue.

But when
the californian's captain,

Stanley Lord, was brought
before the court of inquiry,

he continued to insist that
the ship within sight

wasn't the Titanic.

You had seen this ship
for quite a long time?

That's right, yes.

And in your opinion,
what sort of ship was she?

She was something
like ourselves...

A moderately large
passenger steamer,

but nothing like the Titanic

or any large white star
or cunard liner.

She might have had some
passengers aboard,

but she wasn't steaming
like a big ship.

And you couldn't,
or could you, have been mistaken

about the largest ship
in the world?

I'm positive that

it wasn't the largest ship
in the world,

or any large
passenger steamer at all.

I said, "to me, it doesn't
look like the Titanic.

There's no doubt about it."

It was a most deceiving night.

That's all I can say about that.

Lord eventually
handed over the watch,

confident in his judgment.

For the next six hours,
he slept.

In the morning he was told the
awful news... Titanic had sunk.

And the chance
for the californian

to rescue most, if not all
the survivors, was gone.

The tragedy with captain Lord is

that he was one of
the youngest captains

on the North Atlantic, because
he was one of the ablest.

However, that night,

he was very much in the
wrong place at the wrong time.

But because of
the atmospheric conditions,

he wasn't aware of
what he was watching.

Lord always
maintained his innocence.

But what exactly
was he looking at?

It is, of course,
impossible to ask him.

But today there are people who
Tim can go to as witnesses...

The sailors of newfoundland
who daily see ships

navigating the freezing waters
of the Labrador current.

The most pronounced I've seen

is a cruise ship leaving
this port at one time.

And this cruise ship,

which I found out later
was leaving this port,

which I normally wouldn't see,

showed up huge
from where I was seeing.

And then,
within 10 to 15 seconds,

it just sank and sank and
almost disappeared completely,

and all I could see was
the top of the superstructure.

And it so alarmed the two of US
on board the boat,

on board my boat,
that I called the cruise ship

and asked if they were fine,

they were okay,
the ship was sinking.

They said,
"no, no, no, no, we're fine."

So that was a little bit
embarrassing

to call the cruise ship

then find out that it was just
an optical illusion

that I was looking at.

No one has ever before
made the connection

between cold water mirages,

commonly seen in
the right conditions,

and the evidence from
the Titanic tragedy.

But now, Tim is using this
new research to help explain

the predicament faced by
Stanley Lord that night.

It's really hard
for US to understand

how captain Lord could mistake
the biggest ship in the world

for a cargo ship.

But look at this. Look at this.

This looks exactly
like a cargo ship.

And yet this looks
like an oil tanker.

But, in fact, what we realize
in this photograph is

it's a mirage,

which is causing an oil tanker

to look exactly like
a cargo ship.

It's a rare phenomenon,

but it has been captured
in this video.

Amazingly, this is
one and the same ship.

A single ship is distorted
by a cold weather mirage.

Superimposing a virtual image
above it.

These shots were taken
off the coast of Finland

in broad daylight.

At night a century ago,
it now seems perfectly clear

captain Lord could easily
have mistaken Titanic

for another,
very different vessel.

It does actually make me
feel sorry for captain Lord,

knowing now what I know
about the science of that night.

When he is apparently
making excuses,

saying the ship
he was looking at

didn't look anything
like the Titanic,

what I now understand is that
he was telling the exact truth.

And, in fact,
what he was looking at

didn't look anything
like the Titanic at all.

In 1962, aged 84,

captain Stanley Lord died still
having failed to clear his name.

He went to his grave carrying
the entire burden of blame

for why californian didn't go
to Titanic's aid.

But Lord wasn't the only one
deceived that night

on the californian.

There were others,
and on the Titanic, too,

who made fatal errors
of judgment

because of optical illusions.

Rewinding the clock...

It's a little after midnight,
April 15, 1912.

Titanic is sinking and
calling out for help.

Only 10 miles away
on the californian,

the radio operator Cyril Evans
is asleep.

But Titanic wasn't being
completely ignored.

Apprentice James Gibson
was on duty.

Not yet qualified
to operate the radio,

he does, however,
know morse code.

It being my watch on deck at 12:00,

I went onto the bridge
about 15 minutes after 12:00

and saw that
the ship had stopped

and that she was surrounded
by light field ice.

While the second officer and I
were having a coffee,

after a few minutes,

I asked him if there was
any ships around US.

He said there was one
on the starboard beam.

So, looking over,

I could see, like,
this white light flickering,

which I took to be
morse calling US up.

I went over and gave one long
flash of light back in answer,

but the light
continued to flicker.

So then I... well, I gave her
the calling up sign.

But why didn't
Titanic take advantage

of the californian's signal?

How did they miss this
last chance for rescue?

On board Titanic, many of
the passengers catch sight

of something that stirs
their hopes of escape.

I showed them
a bright, white light

that I took to be a ship
about five miles off,

and which I felt sure
was coming to our rescue.

Fourth officer Joseph Boxhall

is at the morse lamp.

His target is the mysterious
flickering light

of a distant ship.

Captain Smith was standing by my side,

and we both came to
the conclusion

that she was close enough to be
signaled by the morse lamp.

So I signaled to her.

I called her up,
and got no answer.

The captain said,
"tell them to come at once,

we are sinking."

So I sent a signal out,
"come at once, we are sinking."

At the very moment that
Boxhall had his binoculars up

trying to read the morse signals
from californian,

so Gibson on californian

also was looking through
his binoculars

trying to read
the flashing light

that he could see on Titanic.

And there's a sense
that both of them knew

it could have been code,

but both of them,
on inspecting it,

decided it was just
random flashes.

The light on the other ship, however,

remained the same.

So then I looked
through the binoculars

and found that it was
the masthead light flickering.

Gibson thinks the
random flashing light he sees

is coming from
a flickering oil lamp

on the mast of a small steamer.

It isn't the strict dots
and dashes of morse...

Just random noise.

Boxhall on the Titanic
is equally confused.

Eventually the strange,
flickering light

spotted by the californian
disappears.

It is Titanic,
sinking to the ocean floor.

Tim began his investigation
in Las Vegas,

examining the piece
of Titanic's hull

dredged up from the bottom
of the ocean.

And it's here in Las Vegas

that he finds the final
piece of the puzzle.

I have spent years
wondering why these two ships,

which were trying to morse
each other all night,

couldn't communicate.

Right here, right now,
is the answer.

It's simply that these lights
which we can see here,

we know they're constant,

because there's no problems with
the power supply in Vegas,

but we can clearly see them
flickering on and off

with a staccato flash.

And that reminds me of what
Beesley was talking about

when he said, "the stars
really seemed to be alive,

and to talk that night."

And here we are,
these lights seem to be alive,

and they almost
seem to be talking.

And the tragic thing about
this beautiful sight

is it's exactly that phenomenon,
known as scintillation,

which scrambled Titanic's
morse lamp signals.

And it meant that
the nearby ship,

instead of realizing
it was Titanic

and coming straight to her aid,
never, ever came to her aid.

Like a mirage,

scintillation is caused
by light waves

traveling through layers
of warm and cold air.

But here they're moving in front
of distant points of light

which respond by growing rapidly
brighter or dimmer...

Exactly as they did in the
freezing North Atlantic ocean

a century ago.

But on that night,

the same phenomenon rendered
the morse lamp signals

between the two ships
utterly meaningless.

Ultimately,
the tragedy of the Titanic

was the result of a simple
trick of the light,

beautiful, and at
the same time, lethal.

So many stars.

Never saw so many
in my whole life.

The clear, starlit night
made a noticeable difference

in the degree of light just
below the surface of the water.

For 100 years,

people have wondered and argued
over Titanic...

A great symbol of
human ingenuity,

yet still somehow a victim
of human fallibility.

With the unusual conditions
that night,

the lookouts and captain
should have sensed

the need to slow down.

And the radio operators on both
the Titanic and the californian

showed fatal lapses, too.

The real culprits, though, were
forces beyond human control.

It's almost as though
Titanic sank

in a killing zone of nature,

where all these very dangerous
elements combined

to make it fatal.

A series of freak phenomena

converging at a time and a place
to make disaster inevitable.

The words of survivors

combined with a modern
scientific investigation

have at last solved
the great mysteries of Titanic.