[♪ dramatic music playing]
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[clock ticking]
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- I was working in the engine room.
We got the order,
"All hands on deck, put your life preservers on."
The deck was full of male third-class passengers.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
The last boat was getting lowered.
- About this time, I met all the engineers
as they came trooping up from below.
Until that time, they had loyally stuck to their guns.
- When the crew come up on deck,
these guys who have worked so heroically
to try to keep Titanic afloat,
they expect that there will be a place
for them in the lifeboats,
and, of course, that is not the case.
- It was a bleak and hopeless spectacle that
met their eyes.
Empty fools hanging from every davit head.
Not a hope for any of them.
[distant cries]
- Titanic has enough people on board that we're really
seeing the whole range of reactions to facing death,
from resignation to fight and flight,
to acting out of love and empathy to help other people.
- One fellow said, "Go to the first cabin bar room."
There was a steward filling up tumblers on a tray.
He said, "Go on, lads, drink up.
She's goin' down."
- Some people prefer to stay in their cabin
and let the waters rise up.
Others go to the bar and just start drinking
the place dry.
Everyone has to choose to die in their own way,
whatever that is.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[Jeanette] Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews,
the ship's designer, must have been in hell.
This was their unsinkable ship.
- Andrews was seen throwing steamer chairs into the water
with the idea of actually helping those who
got into the sea to have something to support them.
During the Falklands War, I was a Captain.
The ship that was bombed, which I had to abandon,
and so I know the pressures he was under.
And I personally think that he probably stayed
on the bridge and waited to meet his fate.
[Martha] There's something of the stiff
upper lip happening here, but inside,
there must be inner turmoil because survival instinct
is really powerful.
And the Captain is probably suppressing it
as much as he can.
The social codes of conduct, fighting against that very
ancient part of the brain, the primitive part that
just drives us forward biologically.
- I wanted to jump out and try to catch one of the,
the empty lifeboat falls.
I couldn't just jump.
We might hit wreckage or a steamer chair and
be knocked unconscious.
Milton dissuaded me.
Milton we gotta do something!
- Milton Long, 29-year-old American law clerk,
and Jack had struck up a conversation many hours
earlier in the dining saloon,
and now they find themselves facing this
life-or-death moment together.
[Jack] So many thoughts passed through my mind.
I thought of all the good times I'd had.
Sincerely pitied myself.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[clock ticking]
[Jeanette] Back in the wireless room,
Jack Phillips has stuck to his post right to the end,
even when Captain Smith said it's every man for himself,
because he believes he's doing something useful.
The sea has almost reached the wireless room,
and they have just minutes before
it's filled with freezing water.
[Harold] I was back in my room getting Phillips' money for him,
and as I looked out the door,
I saw a stoker or somebody from below decks slipping
the lifebelt off his back.
I remembered in a flash the way Phillips
had clung on, how I'd had to fix that lifebelt
in place because he was too busy to do it.
And I felt a passion not to let that man die
a decent sailor's death.
[grunting]
I hope I finished him, I don't know.
We left him on the floor of the wireless cabin.
He wasn't moving.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
I climbed on top of the officer's quarters,
and I saw the last of Phillips.
[Jeanette] He doesn't say goodbye.
He doesn't give any explanation.
There's no clap on the back to his junior.
He's done everything.
There is nothing more to do.
The man is ready to die.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[clock ticking]
- At this stage, all the lifeboats
on the boat deck have been launched, and,
of course, there's, there's a panic that there
are no lifeboats left, but there is actually two
more stashed away on the roof of the officer's quarters,
collapsible A and B.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- I saw the boat and the men trying to push it off.
They couldn't do it.
I went up to them, lending a hand.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- Now the crew are trying to launch them
in increasingly difficult and desperate conditions.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- Just then, the ship took a slight
but definite plunge.
The sea came rolling up in a wave.
[JJ] And a large wave washes collapsible A and B overboard.
You've just been given that hope,
but in amongst the chaos,
the lifeboats are stolen from you by the elements,
and that is just devastating.
- The big wave carried the boat off.
I had hold of an oar lock and went off with it.
- Water was washing right across the deck,
and we were in water right to our hips.
Another lurch threw myself off and away from
the ship into the water.
- No! No! No!
- I was underwater and knew I had to fight for it.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- The temperature in the water is minus two degrees,
so as soon as that cold water hits the body,
there's a shock reaction,
and the mind is reacting in a state of panic.
- Everything I touched seemed to be women's hair.
Children crying, women screaming.
Their hair in my face.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
If only I could forget those hands and faces
that I touched.
[clock ticking]
- The ship was sinking on its head very quickly.
The water was right up to the bridge.
The crowd moved with it, pushing towards the stern.
- A sight that doesn't bear dwelling on.
To stand there above the wheelhouse watching the
frantic struggles to climb up the sloping deck,
unable to even hold out a helping hand.
♪ ♪
I knew what the futility of following that instinct
for self-preservation.
It would only be postponing the plunge
and prolonging the agony.
Turning to the bridge, I took a header.
Striking water was like a thousand knives being
driven into one's body.
For a few moments,
I completely lost grip of myself.
- We were at the starboard rail to keep away from the crowd.
The ship began to shoot down fast,
the water rushing up towards us.
We had no time to think,
only to act.
- The people who choose to jump are ultimately the
people who take some form of control in a situation
where you are powerless.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[♪ somber music playing]
- We were about five minutes away from the ship,
but we could still see it as the lights stayed on.
The ship stood almost on its nose,
slowly sinking.
And the people on the Titanic were
yelling and crying.
I could see some of them as they jumped into the water.
[clock ticking]
[Charles] I found myself drawn against the grating
covering a ventilator.
The pressure of the water glued me there.
The shaft led to a stokehold,
a sheer drop of 100 feet right
to the bottom of the ship.
I struggled and kicked for all I was worth.
Every instinct expecting the wire to go,
to find myself shot down into the bowels of the ship.
[grunting]
- The shock of the water took the breath
from my lungs.
Down and down I went, spinning in all directions.
The cold was terrific.
- Most people think of drowning in a circumstance
like this, it is that ultimately your body runs
out of energy, but actually,
you can drown as soon as you first hit freezing water.
- Some may have cardiac arrest almost
immediately because of the shock.
[Charles] I was still fighting when a blast of
hot air came up the shaft and blew me right away
from the airshaft and up to the surface.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- Finally, I came up, my lungs bursting.
The ship was in front of me.
Suddenly, the second funnel seemed to be lifted off.
- The funnel started to fall right
amongst the struggling mass of humanity already
in the water.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[Jack] It missed me by only 20 to 30 feet.
The suction of it drew me down.
[Eugene] Those poor people were sucked down in those
funnels like flies.
[Jack] As I came to the surface,
my hand came against something,
one of the collapsible lifeboats.
It was floating in the water, bottom side up.
About four or five men clinging onto her,
so I asked them to give me a hand up, which they did.
Sitting on my haunches, holding on for dear life,
it seemed as though hours had passed since I left the ship.
[Jeanette] People like Jack and Officer Lightoller
are swarming onto collapsible B upside down,
using it like a raft in the freezing water just
as a way of trying to survive.
[clock ticking]
- The end was very close.
Something in the bowels of the Titanic exploded,
and sparks shot up to the sky.
Two other explosions followed,
dull and heavy as if below the surface.
[West] The huge weight of seawater in the bows and
in the stern meant that the two things were unable
to remain as one part.
- The whole superstructure of the ship seemed to split.
- The lights suddenly go out, and then darkness falls.
[indistinct screams]
[Charlotte] The Titanic broke in two before my eyes.
The fore part wallowed over and disappeared instantly.
- The ship seemed to right herself like a hurt animal
with a broken back.
- For a strange, hallucinatory moment,
it looks as though everything is going to be fine
because the weird, wonky, distorted angles
of the great ship start to settle.
[JJ] There's people that think that some sort of safety
feature has kicked in, you know, at least this
half of the ship is going to somehow survive,
and those on board are going to be spared,
but ultimately that is short-lived.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- I saw the Titanic go up in the air,
ever so big.
- Huge ship reared herself on end.
Rudder and propeller clear of the water until
at least she assumed a perpendicular position.
- We saw groups of the 1,500 people still aboard
clinging like swarming bees.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- The contents of the Titanic is now falling through it,
and tragically, people as well.
- I think it was only at that moment that many of
those poor souls onboard realized their fate.
- If we're gonna die, I said,
it would be best to die gripping something.
We gripped the rail.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- A sharp exclamation from my husband,
"My God, she is going now."
- The steamer, without a sound
except for the shrieks of the people still onboard,
stood right on end.
It stood there several moments and slipped
straight down into the water.
[distant screams]
- As easily as a pebble in a pond.
- Our proud ship.
Our beautiful Titanic .
[distant screams]
[clock ticking]
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[distant screams]
[Charles] Everyone round me on the upturned boat
breathed the two words, "She's gone."
[distant screams]
- I did not wish to see her go down.
I'm glad that I did not.
My back was turned to her.
We were pulling away.
[Suzannah] This is his ship.
This is his company, and there is intense
professional and personal shame here.
I think that was just too overwhelming for him
to be able to look.
- Probably a minute passed with almost
dead silence and quiet.
[clock ticking]
[Violet] Then an unforgettable cry went up
from 1,500 despairing throats.
- A bedlam of shrieks and cries.
[distant screams]
- A nightmare of both sight and sound.
[distant screams]
- Hearing desperate disembodied voices in
the darkness of the ocean...
[distant screaming]
A cacophony of tears and shouts and despair
is, is almost like a soundscape of hell.
Potentially, it's your husband, your brother,
your father, your loved ones' voices.
I don't know how you recover from that.
- I have never heard such screams
from the hundreds of people floating about us.
[♪ somber music playing]
- It was a horrible row.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
- Mother!
- One young man near me shouted...
- Mother! Mother!
- "Mother."
- Mother! Mother!
- A man alongside me crushed me round the neck.
I choked him off.
- Nobody knows how they'll react in that circumstance.
You're surrounded by others in a panic with you.
You begin to lose the function of your arms and
the function of your legs,
the thing that you need to keep afloat,
and that can happen extremely quickly because
that body's reaction to keep your vital
organs warm is so powerful.
[Suzannah] The people in the lifeboats are sitting
and listening to others die,
and everyone's response to that trauma situation
will be different.
- We chatted of little unimportant things,
as people do when they've been through
great mental strain.
Try to make feeble jokes.
I remember I teased Ms. Fragatelli,
"Just fancy,
you left your beautiful nightdress behind you."
[laughing]
And we all laughed.
But in our hearts, we felt very far from laughter.
[Suzannah] Lucy's comments sound tone deaf to us,
but I think they're a trauma response.
It is far easier to comprehend the loss of
a beautiful piece of clothing.
She's a fashion designer, of course, than it is to
wrap their heads around the extraordinary horror of
the loss of human life that they're seeing before them.
- For those in the water, a fatal countdown has begun.
Once severe hypothermia sets in,
you've got about 15 minutes until you'll become unconscious.
[Thomas] A large number of people gave up the
struggle and were content to die,
for the water was so cold.
[JJ] When the darkness starts to creep in on you,
that's when you have to have a real word with
yourself and remind yourself that you still
have some fight in you.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[Thomas] I swam as though I was in a race.
I got myself away from the crowd.
Behind me, there was the horrible volume
of groans which...
[distant groaning]
I can hear them now.
- It was a terrible sight all around.
Men swimming and sinking.
I saw a boat of some kind.
And I put all my strength into an effort to swim to it.
It was hard work.
I was all done when a hand reached from the
boat and pulled me aboard.
[grunting]
- Come on, that's it.
[Suzannah] Collapsible B that had been stored on the roof of
the officers' quarters, was washed off deck and
is now the last hope of the men who jump
from the Titanic .
Among the 30 men on Collapsible B,
we have Harold Bride, Jack Thayer, Eugene Daly,
and Charles Lightoller.
- Others came near, nobody gave them a hand.
The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would
hold and was sinking.
- We were very low in the water, standing, sitting,
kneeling, lying in all conceivable positions.
- People came up beside us and begged us to get
on this upturned boat.
Saving ourselves, we were obliged to push them off.
One man was alongside us
and asked if he could get up on top of it.
We told him that if he did, we would all go down.
His reply was, "God bless you, goodbye."
- To look another human being in the eye and say to them,
"You're going to have to perish,"
like that, is an impossible thing not just
to live through in the moment but then to have to live with.
[distant screams and yelling]
- There are 1,500 people in ice cold water
in the Atlantic, and there are some lifeboats
that are full to capacity,
and there's nothing they can do.
But there are many others that are even
less than half full.
- Because the 18 lifeboats are not at capacity,
there's still space for over 400 people.
It could save them from almost certain death.
- Within the lifeboats, there's an intense dilemma.
Do they go back and save people,
or do they stay at a safe distance so that they don't
get overcrowded and everyone in that lifeboat
end up in the water?
[Eleanor] Three times an officer ordered his men to turn about,
but each time they were prevented from
doing so by some of the passengers.
They grasped the oars so that the seamen were
forced to give up turning back to rescue
any of the unfortunates.
- In the Duff-Gordon boat, one of the crew members says,
"It's up to us to go back and see if we
can pick anyone up."
The Duff-Gordons object.
They say they'll be swamped,
and they persuade the crew not to go back.
- I find it chilling that the Duff-Gordons are just
openly hostile to letting anyone in their lifeboat.
All along, they have been given privileges that
other people haven't been given,
and to die slowly in ice-cold water within earshot
of people who might save your life,
I think there's a particular cruelty to that.
- Men and women were going to their death
beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic,
but I noticed in a hazy, detached sort of way.
I'd gone through too much in those hours to think clearly.
[Martha] She's so traumatized she's not
able to get out of her own experience enough
to engage with what those people in the water
are going through at that time.
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[Jack] Partially filled lifeboats standing by
only a few hundred yards away never came back.
Why on earth they did not come back is a mystery.
How could any human being fail to heed those cries?
[indistinct screams and yelling]
[West] I think it is extremely unfortunate the
lifeboats didn't go ahead and start to rescue people.
They were willing to sit with people screaming
and dying in the water,
and I find that quite surprising.
[Thomas] I became so numb I could hardly swim.
My head was so queer.
But when I was almost at my last gasp, I shouted,
"Boats ahoy" on the off chance that one might be near.
[Joseph] I had room for a dozen more people in my boat,
but it was dark.
We didn't pick up any swimmers.
- We all like to think that we'd be the noble one that
does the right thing,
but that's not how survival works.
Ultimately, as human beings,
we are animals who have survived.
That's how we've evolved to be what we are.
So survival instinct is absolutely within our DNA.
And so you have no idea what you are capable of
until you are pushed in an extreme.
- Disasters reveal an aspect of your personality
that you might not know is there,
and you might not like being there,
to, to save your own life,
to let hundreds of people die?
I think that's, that's something that would
weigh heavily on you for the rest of your life.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
- There's a cluster of lifeboats closer
to where the Titanic went down,
including Lifeboats 14 and 4,
and this is a kind of case of right place,
right time for some people in the water.
- Fortunately, my shout was heard.
[passenger] Over here!
[Thomas] I was hauled into Lifeboat No. 4.
- About seven people are rescued because of that boat,
including Thomas Dillon.
- I think I'd been 20 minutes in the water.
I would rather die 100 times than go through
such an experience again.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
- Mr. Lowe went in search of other lifeboats.
He found 4 or 5 and took command of the little fleet.
- The whole of you are under my orders.
[JJ] Lifeboat 14 is very full,
but Lowe realizes that actually,
if this group works together,
they have a chance of being able to launch a rescue mission.
They were able to redistribute those passengers,
and they actually free up an entire lifeboat,
which allows them to go in and search for survivors.
- Row.
- I went with just the boat's crew,
no passengers.
Of course, I had to wait for the yells and
shrieks to subside,
for the people to thin out.
- Officer Lowe is very aware of the potential risks.
You can be capsized when trying to pull
survivors into the vessel.
The vessel can be swamped,
but they choose to go back.
They're not just survivors in this moment;
they continue to be crewmen.
Your training just kicks in,
and you have a responsibility
to those around you, even before yourself.
[Harold] I searched the wreck thoroughly and
found four persons.
One was a Mr. Hoyt from New York.
He was bleeding from the mouth.
I loosened his shirt so as to give him every
chance to breathe, but unfortunately, he died.
I suppose he was too far gone when we picked him up.
[Fred] Most of those that jumped in the sea died within
a quarter of an hour.
The awful moaning ceased after that.
We saw nothing but ice and dead bodies.
[victim] My God!
My...
- I remember the very last cry,
this man's voice calling loudly,
"My God, my God."
[groaning]
[victim] My God.
- I think it would have been very haunting to slowly
hear fewer and fewer voices,
and that's one of the most traumatic memories
that people had is the sound of those screams.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[shivering]
- The air was leaking from under the boat,
lowering us further and further into the icy water.
- Soaking wet, freezing.
The pack of huddled men on Collapsible B
have survived so many odds.
But that's all for nothing if nobody comes to your rescue,
and they don't know if that's coming.
- Some lost consciousness and slipped overboard.
[Jeanette] The problem with trying to stay on
an upside-down boat, which they're now using as a raft,
is that it's not stable.
This is a balancing act, literally to save your life.
[Suzannah] Their class differences cease
to be important.
We've got men from first class,
men from third, crew members
united by this will to survive.
- Harold Bride helped keep our hopes up.
He said time and time again,
" The Carpathia is coming as fast as she can,
The Carpathia is coming as fast as she can."
Lightoller found his whistle.
[whistle blowing]
After desperate calling, we got the attention of
the other lifeboats.
Two of the boats realized the position
we were in and drew toward us.
[Harold] They had a right-side-up boat,
and it was full to its capacity.
Yet they came to us and loaded us all into it.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
- Officer Boxhall took some green flares
from the bridge, and now he's lighting them,
hoping that he will attract the attention of
the approaching rescue vessel.
[clock ticking]
- About this time, the edge of the sun
came above the horizon.
To feel that glowing warmth,
which we'd never expected to see again,
that's something never to be forgotten.
- We were all very tired when we saw
a big light.
- Look! Look! It's a ship!
- Suddenly, a flicker of hope,
a ship getting closer every minute.
[Jeanette] Coming towards the sight of the wreck
and the lifeboats bobbing about in this freezing,
empty sea, finally is The Carpathia.
She's come as fast as she could through the ice flows,
through the night responding to
Jack Phillips's distress calls.
- Nothing has ever looked so good to me as
the lights from The Carpathia.
- Even through my numbness, I began to realize I was saved.
[♪ hopeful music playing]
[Harold] At last, The Carpathia was alongside,
and people were being taken up by rope ladder.
One man was dead.
I passed him and went up the ladder.
The dead man was Phillips.
He had died on the raft of exposure and cold, I guess.
He stood his ground until the crisis had passed;
then he collapsed.
- No survivor knows better than I
the cruelty of disappointment.
I had a husband to search for.
A husband whom I believed would be found
in one of the boats.
He was not there.
- My friends were all among the missing when
the role was called.
The loss affected me badly.
[Jeanette] The big narrative is always going
to be about heroism and loss and sacrifice,
but the Titanic was a disaster.
These are real people's lives that are lost.
Real people who suffered.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
- Shut all dampers! - Dropping!
[Fred] The engineers were the heroes, I think.
They kept going in some minutes before the Titanic
went out of sight.
Not a man of them was saved.
- In 1912, it was taken for granted that the price
of a first-class ticket included a greater
likelihood of surviving.
[Nadifa] What the Titanic teaches us is what happens when
people's lives are given unequal value.
Every element from your breakfast to how you're
treated in an emergency,
all of that is impacted by class and hierarchy,
and status.
- This happened in an age where the British stiff
upper lip was stiffer than ever,
but the reality is,
it doesn't matter how resilient you think you are,
sometimes we're just not capable of processing
that level of horror.
- Personal trauma was not recognized.
You just suffered, and you carried on.
Those people who survive, they were just now going
to have to pick up their lives as best
they could and manage.
[Suzannah] These are searing memories that never leave them,
and the grief was huge,
but I like to imagine that there were
those who felt that this encounter with death
made them live the rest of their days more fully,
and that they owed it to those who died to live.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[Eugene] I lost my pipes, which I prided myself so much on.
I lost all my clothes and 98 pounds,
which had taken me many years to save.
Here I am stripped of all I had but thankful to
God that He left me my life.
[♪ dramatic music playing]
[♪ music playing through credits]