Similar situation happened with Buzz Aldrin when some weirdo went up to him and claimed that he never landed on the moon. Then Buzz flat out punched him in the face.
“Were you there?” “No” “I was there” “Correct” “I could of seen the ship break” “Yes” “And it did” “No it didn’t you’re just confused from the cold temperature that night”
Plenty of survivors saw the break up happen.. unfortunately they were ignored like Eva Hart.. but now after Bob Ballard found the Titanic weackage in 1985 everyone knows they were telling the truth.. White Star just did not want people to know the biggest ship in world 🌍 at the time broke clean in two..in my opinion.
Oceanliner Designs made a video with a realistic animation of what the sinking looked like. First, you watch it with decent lighting where you can see the lights go out, the breakup, and the sinking. But then you watch the realistic one where it's pitch black as it was that night, with only the stars to illuminate everything. And honestly, seeing it like that I can 100% see why people wouldn't be sure it broke. I think even I would have said it sank intact and that's me watching super closely and knowing what happened. Only those who were concentrating really hard would have been able to make it out. Honestly, after watching that video, I'm really unsurprised why there was so much confusion over it.
The problems with that video and the reason why I think it only tells half of the truth are the following: 1) For that asumption to work it will require the break to occur so slowly that the dim emergency light wouldn't give away the change off the stern's alignment. 2) It doesn't touch the fact that the noise alone would have give away that a massive structure failure has occurred within the ship, for instance there is a video here on youtube of a cargo ship suddenly breaking in half on some rogue waves and the early break sounds like a high explosion. Using the lack of light as validation for either the final desition of the official investigation or why some survivors thought the ship sank in one piece is dangerously as wrong as the "V-Break" hypothesis.
@@PointReflex 2) Many were talking about boiler explosions. Ofc, Lightholler was busy balancing on top of a lifeboat and wouldn't have seen it, but he did hear it.
In 1982, at a Titanic Historical Society meeting, survivor Ruth Becker Blanchard testified that she saw Titanic break in two. The treasurer, Lou Gorman, took her microphone away and told the audience that Ruth was mistaken and what she really saw was a falling funnel. She felt very chastised because of this. When the wreck was discovered in 1985, I feel Gorman was like "Oh... that lady was right." I have not found anything mentioning Lou Gorman after 1985. In the Roblox game, Titanic Final Hours, when you're on Boat A or B, it's very difficult to see the breakup.
Some of the T.H.S. officers have been ousted over time because their views became too "radical"; I remember when Charles Haas was President and John Eaton was historian. Despite both being reelected by a comfortable margin year after year, somehow, one year, their vote total went down to about 3,000 to 15 members or something. I thought at the time that was very, very strange, and then Ed Kamuda became T.H.S. President (also bringing in his wife Karen as an officer), and the names Haas and Eaton suddenly disappeared as if they had denounced Stalin or something. The 2 later formed a new group, called "Titanic International", which I joined for a year or 2 alongside my T.H.S. membership. At the first TITANIC International 'convention' (or meeting), I met Charlie Haas and asked him about another former T.H.S. President named Robert Gibbons - I had only just discovered he even existed, as no mention of the man was ever made anywhere in the T.H.S journal, or in any way in the organization. He was clearly uncomfortable with my asking, and really didn't want to talk about it, but he DID tell me, "Yeah, he's (Gibbons) another one of the 'UnPeople'."
Ms Becker can be seen on UA-cam saying “That’s when I thought the ship broke in half,” bringing up the subject but implying that she must be wrong. It’s tragic to see her doubting what she saw for herself as a 12-year-old. Probably raised to defer to men, like women in my family from that era. At least she lived to be vindicated.
@@steelpaine9932 what’s the third strike? That she had been a second class passenger? The Beckers must have been pretty affluent to travel as a family all the way from India to Michigan, and in second class on the Titanic. Imagine all the ocean passages, train fares and hotels. It must have cost a fortune. Perhaps their church community raised money for them, as they were missionaries and had to travel for medical treatment, but I’m speculating.
I believe the reason for an intact Titanic at the bottom of the ocean like a time capsule is that the prevailing belief among oceanographers just prior to the wreck being discovered was that the bottom of the ocean would not be able to contain or harbor life so anything that were to sink there would be preserved in the state that it was in 1912.
Elgen Long, a famous Amelia Earhart investigator was interviewed on "In Search Of" in the 1970s and said that he believed her plane was lying on the Ocean Floor since 1937 in perfect condition, for similar reasons... Robert Ballard prove them all wrong in 1986.
I could honestly believe the theory of White Star Lines wanting to play down the possibility of the ship breaking in half to save the company's reputation at the expense of the survivors emotional well-being, seems like something a big corporation would want to do in order to preserve its reputation in the face of such a disaster.
@@christopherpardell4418 which wouldn’t have happened due to the mass weight of water and heaviness in the bow. Once that bow section was fully under. That was it. It was never coming back up again. And you can see by the bow wreak how she landed that she nosed dived straight down. She definitely broke up how you see it in this vid. The bending and both bow and Stern ends due to the different weights and expansion joints. Broke her like a stick.
@@MrPerthglory Sorry, but you are wrong. The bow was Not full of water. It still had air in it. I don’t think you comprehend how buoyancy keeps a ship afloat. Water flooding the ship ADDS WEIGHT to her displacement. If she had 20,000 cubic feet of displacement under normal conditions, as she flooded, she needed to displace 40,000 cubic feet to stay at the surface. That is TWICE the air filled volume BELOW sea level than normal. The water in most of the forward half of the ship never got higher than the tops of the watertight compartments, because it then would spill over into the bottom of the next compartment. She was down by the bow but her stern was not out of the water while she was in one piece because the entire ship was settling deeper to displace more water. But her center of buoyancy kept shifting aft until it was fully aft of the expansion joint. As the last of the boiler rooms started to fill, MOST of her shipped weight in water was just forwards of the last boiler room. And the weight in her center was too much and she folded Down at the expansion joint. That is why everything ABOVE her bottom was crushed, but the bottom is still its full length minus only the 20 foot section of her bottom from beneath the last boiler room that shows no evidence of bending. The weight of her stern was inconsequential compared to the upward force holding the entire ship at the surface. Let say just before she broke she weighed 3 times her normal amount because of the water she shipped. HOW is she still at the surface of the Atlantic? She’s still at the surface because the hull is still able to displace 3 times as much water as normal. That means 3 times as much air filled hull below sea level as before she started flooding, because the portion filled with water is not displacing water anymore. As she filled, the dry portions of the ship were holding up 3 times her entire weight. And as the center of buoyancy shifted past the expansion joint, the forces LIFTING the stern and holding the whole ship at the surface were what snapped the stern up. Because she was still attached along her sides below the end of the expansion joint, her stern lifting up levered the bow back up out of the water ( at this point the bow was only 10 -20 feet bellow the water’s surface, and the bow was still several dry decks below the waters surface, offsetting its weight ) the break was NOT sudden and violent, it was relatively slow because to fold it had to crush all the superstructure above ship’s bottom and THIS process was what lifted the stern out of the water the first time. THEN when the last of the metal tying the upper structure together failed, the bow, now deprived of the buoyancy of the dry stern, and with massive additional flooding from the break roaring in, dropped down and snapped the remaining steel decking and it planes away bow first because the metal decking gave way only when the bow folded back down the other way, and the bow PLANED away bow first and landed a half mile away from the where her boilers spilled when the bottom parted. That is when the stern dropped back down and started filling from the exposed engine room end. Now That is how Thayer described the sinking and HIS description absolutely predicted the condition and orientation of the wreck. SO he is the most reliable eye witness whose testimony is most likely accurate. She folded down in the middle, up at either end. There are a lot os silly assumptions people make without regard to the physics of water. For example, most recreation show the bridge being torn off by the forces of the bow plunging thru the water as it sank. That is not how the bridge tore loose. As the bridge sank, it was DRY INSIDE the bridge. The bridge house was made of wood and was held to the deck with bolts. Like the walls of any house. As the water rose around the bridge, the bridge became buoyant, and it was this buoyancy that tore the bridge loose. You can see this happen in footage from tsunami flooding. The force of the water does not cave in houses… before the water even reaches the windows, the House FLOATS free of its foundation and without the rigidity of the foundation the house break apart. Similarly, Titanic’s funnels did not collapse because of snapping guy wires or the weight of them being at an angle, they tore lose as the water surrounded their bases and created an air space displacing water…i.e. buoyancy. When the force of buoyancy exceeded the strength of the bolts holding the funnels on, The bolts snapped and without that rigid foundation holding their shape, they flexed, buckled and fell. Those bolts were designed to resist the weight of the funnel and lateral wind loading on the funnel, but NOT designed to hold the funnel down against an upwards force that exceeded any other force by a factor of 9. Another example, as her forward hold filled, her forward hatch, which was capable of supporting tons of water coming over the bow, Blew Off because of compressed air in the hold as water filled it up. The hatch was designed to take enormous pressure from outside, but not the pressure building from inside. Once more, the force of buoyancy acting on the stern was vastly larger than the weight of the stern. It was 3 times the weight of the entire ship. THAT is what broke her.
Even chef baker Charles Joughin said indirectly that the ship broke in half when he later said that while he was in the deck pantry on A Deck, he said he said heard sounds of metal breaking while in there. As for Lightoller & Gracie, both would have been very busy trying to keep the upside down Collapsible B from flipping over & casing them into the sea to have noticed the breakup. But what gets me is the borderline obsession with this myth of the ship sinking in one piece until Robert Ballard found the wreck.
There was talk of course that they all knew perfectly well that the ship broke in two, but it was brushed under the carpet to save face. There is some evidence that the design of Titanic's younger sister was altered to include different expansion joints - and that was based on their understanding that Titanic had broken in two.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Yeah, but breaking into two pieces while doing so would make it seem even less structurally sound, and that's the last thing you'd want when you're on trial.
@@firstnamlastnam2141 Why? The ship wasn't designed to withstand the intolerable stresses imposed when her stern reared almost vertically out of the water. I really don't believe that there would have been a conversation along the lines of:- Mrs. Smith, I am afraid that your son drowned when Titanic sank. Oh dear. I am desolated. The ship went down in one piece, by the way. She didn't break up. Didn't it? Oh well. That all right then.
I find it crazy that the debris (especially the door frame from the first class lounge shown in the 1997 film) kind of proves that something pretty serious must of happened to the structure of the ship for all of those pieces of wooden trim from inside the ship to be floating after she disappeared. Yet so many believed she sank intact.
The superstructure being crushed inward by being pulled underwater before it could flood slowly could easily cause wooden portion to break free and float to the surface. After all, the funnels collapsed before the ship actually sank. So there would be no way to tell HOW those wood portions broke free.
@@shirtless6934 It was found much earlier, as early as the 1950s, but never revealed its location until Ballard (who's real mission was looking for sunken nuclear submarines) found it.
The location was known in the 50s right enough, but was not revealing it meant to be an indefinite feature? In 1985, Ballard`s brief was to find those two submarines, the Americans, as far as we know, weren`t in the least interested in finding Titanic. However, either they could use it as a cover story, or if it was just Ballard who was hell bent on finding it, and as he found the subs in good time, they indulged him. If the latter and Ballard was sticking his nose in where it was not wanted, in view of what has transpired since, could it be a case of "be careful what you wish for?"
I remember I felt a little sad when the wreck wasn't in one piece, but was far more interested that they found the ship at all. I think people become quite irrational when they are passionate about a subject like the Titanic, and get emotionally invested in what they want to be true, me included. I was gutted when Anna Anderson turned out not to be Anastasia ,for example.
Great video, Sam. Ocean Liner Designs did the same topic roughly a month ago about the lack of viability during the breakup, which justifies why some people believe the ship sank intact. However, it is also pointed out in documentaries & testimonies that during the time the breakup happened, the ship’s groans & sounds were unbearable. Many could tell by sound alone that the ship was tearing itself apart. How that was not accounted for during the inquiries is beyond me. I feel for all the victims whose voices were silenced by “experts” who had no idea what they were talking about.
Eva always said she heard an horrible explosion and she knows that explosion is what caused the Titanic to break in half. She says this in the interview she gave in 85 when they girst discovered the Titanic. And the interviewer guy pretty much cuts her off and says it sinks whole. Like how do you believe someone who didnt survive the Titanic sinking over someone who was there and survived the event. It's insane. But people back in the 80s were not as educated as we are today.
I remember watching ‘Raise The Titanic’ before James Cameron’s film was made, and thinking it was really dumb. Then my dad told me that nobody believed the survivors about the break until the wreck was found. I was pretty shocked.
I started with TITANIC history back in '78 (or '79?). I can so clearly remember that it was taken as a matter of fact that TITANIC went down intact. In fact I remember NO questioning of a breakup; it was simply so inconceivable, that a breakup wasn't even mentioned. When the wreck was discovered in '85, I even remember a certain New York newspaper showing one of the classic TITANIC photos, pointing out the missing 1st funnel, the 2nd funnel as having been hit by ARGO but was intact, and the 3rd and 4th still standing. It said that, aside from the missing 1st funnel and "a light dusting of sediment", she looked as she did when she was still on the surface. I was elated at this, but then, just like Ken, I became more and more upset and depressed the next few days, as the story kept getting worse and worse; next, the 4th funnel was gone. Then, she was broken in half. Then, the 3rd funnel disappeared... I think that, maybe, the myth of the intact sinking was borne of the fact that back in that day, the idea that a ship of such power and strength as the TITANIC could EVER break up was just so inconceivable that nobody even gave it a second thought. Break up? Impossible!. Simple as that... As far as the "Conspiracy Theory", the expansion joints were not put in to lessen a weakness, it was because of just what you said: they allowed the ship's superstructure to "flex" when at maximum stress during heavy seas left the middle, or bow and stern, unsupported by waves. The difference between TITANIC's and BRITANNIC's expansion joins was, simply, once again as you said: it was just an evolution of the design between vessels (just as TITANIC was an 'evolution' of OLYMPIC). That it was a minor difference, does that negate its' evolution (BTW, for those that don't know, the BRITANNIC had THREE expansion joints, another 'evolution' over TITANIC and OLYMPIC's two. Again, nothing to read into this outside of a minor design improvement).
Ken Marshall's story on how he was devastated when he saw the wreck photos hits hard , even i myself cry sometimes when i see the ship's condition , i also have those words in my mind "my ship is gone....."
I remember that Jack Thayer had someone on the Carpathia do sketching of the sinking (including the split). I also remember hearing the story of the Titanic survivor being told that the ship didn't split. How rude of that person who interrupted her. I would have much rather heard the first person account over some "expert" any day.
That's not how things worked back then. Harland & Wolff came to the UK inquiry with mathematical engineering proof as to how Titanic sank and broke up, but the press and powers-that-be didn't want to know.
@@-_deploy_- Why would 'people' believe that a ship which sank in one piece was any better than a ship which broke up?' Isn't the crux of the matter three short words :- 'THE SHIP SANK?'
@@dovetonsturdee7033 because the fact that it BROKE during the sinking could make people believe that white stairline ships' structure was weak and could break easily at any point
There's a set of videos on UA-cam called 'What They Saw' that goes through the testimonies from the survivors that saw the ship sink. So many of them say they saw it break up, but there are some that said she sank intact.
When i was younger, back in the mid 2000's when i was basically obsessed with everything Titanic, i remember reading something in a book that even after Robert Ballard found the Titanic most people refused to acknowledge the discovery because it WAS in 2 pieces. From my understanding the basically accused him of trying to pass off another ship as Titanic. It took his sub finding and illuminating where it says TITANIC on the bow for people to actually acknowledge the discovery. I have never heard Ballard himself say that so that book may have been misinformed but it wouldn't surprise me considering how deep the belief was that the ship sunk intact.
I have always found thr Titanic to be super weird. I went through a amature maritime historians phase in HS. Titanic is pretty much one of the only ships I personally found that didn't have a extreme list and also broke in half. And also just even more craziness of being a very interesting story. The length of the time it took to sink is also a standout. But not as much. It just allowed for more to happen.
Ah, one of my first Titanic movies! I was introduced to Titanic when my mom was reading the book (she had several Clive Cussler novels) and I asked about the ship on the front cover. Raise the Titanic... say what you will about the movie itself, but it probably has the best film score of any Titanic movie. In fact, it is the music that most frequently goes though my mind when I think of the Titanic.
Welcome back to regular posting Sam, and this is an excellent video! 🙌 It’s always interesting to see the timeline and story of how certain beliefs regarding the sinking came to be, and how incorrect ones have - hopefully - been rectified. 🙂
I always found it so weird that despite so many people saying they saw the ship break in half, the official story was that it didn't. I assumed that maybe naval engineers believed it wasn't possible for the ship to break or something. So they put their opinions above eyewitnesses. Not in the conspiracy sense, but maybe they analyzed the blueprints and concluded that it wouldn't break in half.
It is my understanding that many of the survivors saw the ship break. Eva Hart spoke of it in an interview. At the time of the sinking, any survivor who talked of it breaking was not taken serious because it was bad enough that the White Star line had to admit that their unsinkable ship had indeed sunk. Allowing people to say the ship broke as it sank would have made it appear that the ship was poorly made, thus making the company look incompetent. They couldn't have any of that.
13 of the 65 asked said the ship broke in two on the surface. 4 said it didn't. Eva Hart was seven years old at the time. Do you consider a seven years old to be an expert witness?
One question: If some people thought the ship sank in 1 piece, just how do they explain the black silhouette of the stern suddenly dropping back into the ocean? Like a ship wouldn't just tilt its stern up and decide "man this is boring", smash down, somehow flood super duper fast after that and sink.
@@markbrookes6557 I'm sure she never forgot the sinking. I am not sure she would have been quite so precise about the details. Just as a seven years old's evidence would be regarded with caution in a court of law.
@@floseatyard8063 As Ludovic Kennedy wrote in his account of the sinking of the Bismarck. 'In moments of great stress, people tend to see what they expect to see.' I am simply reporting the opinions of Oceanographers from Wood's Hole. Personally, I believe the salient fact here is that the ship sank, and that her condition at the time of sinking really doesn't matter.
It has been a long time since I read "A Night To Remember" by Walter Lord, but I think (please correct me if I am wrong) that he believed that TITANIC went down in tact. He revised this view in "The Night Lives On;" written shortly after Dr. Robert Ballard found the broken wreck. Jack Thayer, Jr., who stayed aboard the TITANIC until she sank, was one of those who correctly saw that the ship broke in two.
Yeah pretty much anyone who wasn't a witness to it, believed she sank intact until the wreck was found in 1985 & they all went "Oh....well.....shit...."
I've read A Night To Remember a few times. I don't remember that book making any statement about whether the ship broke or not. Walter Lord basically interviewed all or most of the remaining Titanic survivors. The book is mainly made up of their anecdotes and quotes. That is, it is a book about people and what happened to them rather than a technical description of the ship and what happened to it. And if I remember correctly, sometimes there are survivor stories presented that don't even agree with each other.
@@gregorymoore2877 You are correct that "A Night To Remember," much like Mr. Lord's "Day Of Infamy," is a collection of first person interviews of events of the sinking and anecdotal recollections. But I do remember Lord mentioning that he had problems with John Thayer, Jr's and, (if I am wrong, please correct me) Molly Brown's recollection that they saw the ship snap in two. I remember Lord stating that had TITANIC broken in two, the lights would have gone out much earlier. But, since they remained on until she foundered, TITANIC must have went down in one piece.
I forget if you mentioned it in the video but a big reason why testimony of the breakup was disregarded was that other testimony claiming to have heard explosions, loud crashing, etc was able to be "explained" as something else, like the boilers blowing up or the engines breaking free of their foundations and crashing towards the bow. Basically anything EXCEPT the breakup. This is partly why the 1953 film ends with the boilers exploding, cause they based it on those accounts
THE ENGINEERS BLEW THE PRESSURE OFF AND, DOUSED THE FIRES TO PREVENT THEM FROM BLOWING UP WHICH WOULD HAVE CAUSED THE SHIP TO SINK FASTER. AS FOR THE BOW , IT WAS THE PART DAMAGED BY THE ICEBERG SO, IT FLOODED AND, CAUSED THE STERN TO LIFT OUT OF THE WATER WITH NOTHING UNDER IT TO CRADLE IT, SO THE SHIP BROKE IN HALF. THE STERN STILL HAD AIR IN IT AND, FLOATED A BIT LONGER . AS IT SANK, IT IMPLODED WHICH IS WHY IT'S IN WORSE SHAPE THAN THE BOW. SADLY, THE WRECK IS COLLAPSING INSIDE ITSELF AND, WILL BE NOTHING BUT A BIG RUST STAIN ON THE OCEAN FLOOR.
Well the ship is depicted exploding by the time the grand staircase was about to flood, it was more the explosion during the very end of the sinking that was the split interpretation
Based on the location of the split of the wreck, the split happened between boilers. So all that high pressure steam that was driving generators and othere equipment on ship would have been released when pipes broke and that would make a hell of a big bang. I would have to assume the the engines and boilers would have been very firmly attached to the structure since the engines provide a lot of torque. So don't know that they "slipped" down due to angle.
So neat you've put out this video the day before my middle-schooler does a presentation in her science class on how the Titanic actually broke in half and plummeted to the bottom of the Atlantic 🙂 She watched all your videos on how the Titanic sank and how it was found as part of her research. And as someone who loves your channel, I'm so happy she chose this subject. I think my watching your channel rubbed off on someone 🙂
I just always assumed it was because the ship broke at a much lower angle than what was believed up until recently. Couple that with it being pitch black, it’s no surprise people didn’t see it split.
What I find most interesting (if not hilarious) is the 'Raise the Titanic' movie from the 1970's showed the ship coming up not only in one piece but with the funnels all still attached and the crow's nest also standing upright.
Yes, and it even has those two extra smaller masts on either side of the foremast. In the book, they cut the masts and funnels off and seal up all the windows and doors. I guess that would not have looked as good on the big screen. But hey, when your actions are set to that score by John Barry, I guess you can accomplish anything.
I agree with you that changing the expansion joint was just another moderation of the older design since we saw them making these changes so often between the ships. Titanic had moderations too from the original design thanks to its sister ship, the Olympic. Britannic also had other changes after Titanic's sinking. So I agree that the company was just making routine changes. That being said, it's actually one of the better conspiracy theories out there because it's far more plausible than the other ones. It's completely reasonable to believe that the company would want the word of it breaking in two to spread and have their engineering brought into question, along with further claims of accountability. It's not a misplaced smudge in a picture or neglectful claim that the metal and riveting were bad. It's less counter intuitive than other theories.
Why would a company spend time and money to change something that didn't need changing? It's possible, maybe likely, there was something that had zero bearing on the sinking that necessitated the change but until that can be shown I think it's fair to ask. I'd really like to see more about this.
@Craig Cole That's what White Star Line did. It's the reason why Thomas Andrew's was on the ship during the maiden voyage. He was getting an idea of what worked and what didn't. Improvements could increase safety, reduce wasted space, increase passenger enjoyment which equals increasing the popularity of their ships.
Aside from the theory that H&W didn't want their engineering skills called into question, a lot of enthusuadts didn't want to believe that she broke up either. Before the wreck was found, there was still the tantalising prospect of one day raising her, as in the Clive Cussler novel, especially given that the deep ocean wasn't well understood in the 1960s and 70s and it was widely believed that the lack of sunlight and hence marine life at that depth would have caused her to have been preserved in a kind of deep freeze, as happens on the Great Lakes. Of course, the discovery of the wreck blew all of that out of the water, when the images came back of her not only looking like she'd been ripped in two but with all her fine interiors destroyed by the ravages of time and small organisms. Even if she had been found beautifully preserved, would she have been raised? I mean, technically it could probably have been done, although with great difficulty and expense. But we DO have a largely intact, structurally solid Olympic class liner (Britannic) that no-one has ever seriously considered recovering, and that's without the controversy that would result from potentially desecrating the mass grave of some 1500 souls.
Titanic is in a league of its own, so much so they conveniently forget that it`s a mass grave. Obsession with it is out of all proportion, and by contrast Britannic would hold little interest if any at all.
Before 1985 I can remember people talking about major mechanical equipment inside the ship breaking free and making lots of noise. I remember speculation that the boilers would have fallen through the bow of the ship.
I agree with your position. As the senior surviving officer Lightoller was considered an expert witness by the media and the inquiry members. However if you listen to how Lightoller recounts the disaster many years later he does mention very loud sounds of metal breaking which he attributed to the boilers breaking off their foundations and falling forward. This was obviously the breakup he was hearing but due to his position on the overturned collapsible boat and the darkness he wouldn’t have been at a vantage point to see the actual breakup. Archibald Gracie wasn’t either. This is like the myth of the 300 foot gash which was sensationalized by the media. A naval architect which testified at the inquiry said that the damage that sank the Titanic was probably very small but he was also shunned by the media because of their bias towards the 300 foot gash.
Edward Wilding is probably the naval architect you're referring to. He testified that a series of small cuts would make more sense than a long gash, which turned out to be true when the wreck was found.
I always thought that most of the survivors didn't realize the ship broke in two. But that wasn't the case. Most of the survivors were women and children. Curiously they took the words of two prominent men that the ship stayed intact and ignored all of the other input. The implosion that occured when the stern reached some depth underwater must have been terrifying.
Hey Sam, the survivor you were talking about was Ruth Elizabeth Becker. She was 12 years old at the time of the sinking. You really need to do a video on her, it’s pretty interesting :)
@@zeddeka Ruth was also very accurate on where about the ship broke in two. That was before the wreck was even discovered. What’s interesting people always say it was too dark for anyone to see anything, well her lifeboat rowed a pretty far distance and she was still for sure that she broke in two.
@@Tommy-with-a-T Young people as her were a lot more likely to be able to appreciate the details, even in low light, that's probably why she was able to see a far distance.
The closest modern lines to that ocean liner era are, predictably, Cunard, which bought out White Star Line in the 30s, and surprisingly, Disney Cruise Line, which debuted the year after Titanic (1997) came out.
There was a Chinese attempt but it has run out of money. It would look like and be same sizer as Titanic but have modern engines, navigation behind historic bridge, and . . . more lifeboats.
@@dwm53w1k6no the Chinese one was just a floating museum/ hotel. It was not going to move at all. It was just a hotel part of a park. Stop spreading false information and actually research. So shut up
@@Attack_Pillow well it’s annoying that he has the audacity to spread false shit. Other people will think it true when it’s not so I was preventing that.
Thanks for the video. It would be interesting to hear more reactions from officials and survivors after it was discovered that the ship broke in half. Must have felt like quite a vindication for many.
It proves a lot, actually. If she didn't break in half when the survivors say she did, then how would they have possibly known that the Titanic was in 2 pieces before the shipwreck was found? The Bow and the Stern were found almost 2000 feet part from each other. One of the simulations I've seen about how the Titanic made its way down to the ocean floor for her final resting place shows that they believe the Stern went straight down when it succumbed to the ocean and that's why it's as destroyed as it looks. However, the Bow was pointing downwards when it went underwater, and the point of a Bow of ships were designed to cut through water. Even though the ship was sank, the Bow was still able to do what it was designed to do and cut through the water. Which is likely why the Bow looks more intact in the front because after it went under, broke apart and sank, it imploded from any extra air that could have been trapped inside bit then it glided to the bottom of the ocean floor and was able to lay itself down. The fact that they were so far apart from each other and I think even facing each other shows they had (or at least the Bow did) the time to travel that far away from each other even with all the damaged both pieces faced.
@@proudpatriot6567 'how would they have possibly known that the Titanic was in 2 pieces before the shipwreck was found?' That wasn't know until the wreck was discovered and investigated. The ship certainly sank by the bow. When she sank there were no air pockets in the bow, hence no crushing of the structure. The stern, with air pockets initially trapped inside, imploded as it sank.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 the survivors that saw it break knew. So they knew it would be in 2 pieces on the ocean floor. Despite what every expert and the company was trying to put out there instead.
This question was addressed on National Geographic's "Drain the Oceans" special on the Titanic. They postulate that it's entirely possible the ship survived fairly intact until shortly before impact based on the relatively small size of the debris field. Had the ship broken up at the surface, the debris would have be strewn on a much larger area than where it currently lies. I recommend you see it.
It's very dark at the bottom of the Atlantic. Visibility is near zero even with a good light. It's possible the debris field is bigger than we think. Heavier debris would have gone straight to the bottom (like Rose were she wearing the Heart of the Ocean.) Lighter debris would be carried a long way off by the currents. I think James Cameron nailed it with his computer model of the break up.
@@gregorymoore2877 you ought to see the documentary before commenting. Their opinion is based on scientific observation of the debris field following an extensive (Woods Hole spent 4 years on this project) sonar mapping of the area surrounding the titanic. Witness accounts can be largely unreliable, and if they conflict with data should be ignored.
Fun fact : its not only titanic caused britannic’s change of number of expansion joints olympic herself in 1912 went into a massive storm while crossing the atlantic and because of that they with drawn her from service for damage inspection and they did see damage somewhere in b and c decks cracks where discovered somewhere midships and it made a realization that the newest ship and final ship of its class britannic has to be more flexible in the ocean to not suffer what olympic did in that storm and then just months later the titanic reports of her splitting in half came out and it kinda already proved that not all is well on the classes 2 expansion joint flexibility design.
This is so strange for us under-fortys to think about, we’re so used to this fact being well-known and proven. Hard to believe that it was once the other way around.
re: 10:40 .... it was at the 1982 Titanic Convention. Survivor Ruth Becker (1899-1990) was describing the final moments of the Titanic. As she related how the ship appeared to break apart, a chap on the panel named Lou Gorman interrupted her and told the audience that she was mistaken. Ms. Becker apparently had too much class to say something to the effect of, "Shut up, Lou - you weren't there!" 🙄
freaking youtube , i search and search for a video like this for a year , i follow you and many similar artist for years and never shown this. well done on this video , i was expecting something more dramatic , corrupt and hoping for more testimony controversy but this is really really good. thank you sir !
Another interesting thing is that many survivors heard what they thought were boilers exploding in the final minutes of the sinking, but all the boilers are intact. I bet they were actually hearing the ship breaking in half.
There are reports of explosions early in the proceedings, and no-one has yet explained the 2 sections of keel found 1km from wreck site. I am no fan of Brightside, but for me, this guy seems just a bit too eager to slag them off and maybe some of this is down to him rather than his followers. Whilst Brightside may be a load of crap, they could also be considered a loose cannon that might show stuff that the ptb would rather be kept secret. Just a thought.
It's funny how people who weren't even present when the Titanic sank kept telling the survivors the people who were actually there that what they personally saw and witness never happened.
Great video! I was actually just thinking about this recently. I have wondered why the Britannic stayed in one piece as it sank while the Titanic broke apart when they were essentially the same ship design and both sank in fairly similar ways with the bow going under first. I would guess it has something to do with the Britannics stern never being able to rise as high out of the water because of the mid section of the ship flooding sooner than on the Titanic.
Britannic sank in 55 minutes versus Titanic sank in 2 hours & 40 minutes. Britannic spent a lot less time with the weight of the water and gravity putting pressure on the bow & stern against each other. Britannic’s new expansion joint likely helped with the added pressure as well. On Titanic, witnesses inside the ship heard throughout the sinking many types of groans & noises as the hull was being stretched & stressed. Once Titanic reached her sinking angle of 18 to 24 degrees, the amount strain from the previous 2 hours of sinking was too much for the hull to handle & she broke up violently.
And the britannic didn't rise up, it basically went bow first at first then listed towards the right. At the end of the sinking which was probably 20 minutes long, barely enough time for the ship to stress and bend and break apart, the stern was only slightly up in the air and sideways
With the last gentleman "seeing his boat" in one piece, is there any animation to show how the wreck would look today had she gone down intact? I would imagine the bow would have crushed when it hit the seafloor with the kinetic power of the stern.
I was just speaking to someone that was at a convention back in 1980's anda survivor called Ruth can't remember her last name she stated at the convention that the ship did break in half whilst the historian said she didn't, but the lady who was at the convention said she doesn't remember the historian taking away the microphone from the survivor other than the microphone being passed around to the other survivors, and that she doesn't feel that the historian was out of line nor did she feel that Ruth was getting her nose pushed out either.
Sam, the lady you mentioned in the video (the one that was told to shut up when she mentioned the break up in the convention) was Ruth Becker. Hope this helps 🙂
Could you do a video about the stress tears on the bow section of wreckage, caused when she hit the bottom? I'm researching to build a wreck model and it's difficult to find images, video or information on the tears and what's on the other side of them
I think it's wrong that those Titanic experts wouldn't allow the survivors to speak. That's so wrong. She did split in 2. The Titanic wreck proves it. I've heard this before. Talk about rude. Great video Sam. That engine is cool.
I've always wondered why the ship broke in half where it did. It wasn't until I saw Titanic Honor and Glorys make up of the engine room that I realized there was a huge sky light that ran all the way down to the ship. That huge open space along where the aft grand stair case was an obvious weak point of the ship.
There is evidence that the powers that be knew that the ship may well have broken up, but brushed it under the carpet to preserve confidence in the shipping industry. The evidence is in Titanic's younger sister, Britannic, where they altered the expansion joints to possibly avoid a similar break up.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 fairly obvious I would have thought. It was not normal for ships to break into two even if they did sink. You'd be hard pushed to find another example. People would be asking why. The obvious conclusions people would have come to, rightly or wrongly, would have been shoddy workmanship or massive design flaw and that would have been even more catastrophic for confidence in the industry. It would not have been unreasonable for passengers to think that a ship that broke in two may have broken into two in any number of scenarios where the hull was under stress - including rough weather. That's what the expansion joints were for - to allow the ship to flex when being tossed about in rough weather As things stood, they instead believed that Titanic had sunk due to unique bad luck. They thought there had been a massive hole from the iceberg damage (which also turned out also not to be true) but the strength of the ship bad kept it afloat and together to allow at least some people to escape. That perpetuated the idea that the ship was a lot stronger than it possibly was, had just been massively unlucky, and that the iceberg had been solely responsible. They didn't want people thinking that a ship could snap in two.
@@zeddeka 'The obvious conclusion people would have come to' would be that the ship sank. Do you really think people would have been happy to be aboard a sinking liner, if they could be sure that it would not break in two? Really? As you seem to belive in the 'shoddy workmanship or massive design flaw' idea, how would you explain her sister, which was a successful and popular ocean liner for almost 25 years? The fact is that Titanic sank broke her structure was subjected to stresses and forces far beyond anything for which she had been designed. Once too many compartments had been compromised, she had no chance of survival. You seem to confuse Titanic's sinking with the nature of the sinking. The fact is that she stayed afloat for over two hours. Lusitania, by contrast, survived for 18 minutes. Oh, and there are numerous examples of ships breaking in two, All you need to do is a quick search. 'As things stood, they instead believed that Titanic had sunk due to unique bad luck.' Isn't that exactly what happened? Titanic did not break as a result of rough seas or flexing, but because of flooding the six compartments.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 if you read The Only Way to Cross, apparently people in that era preferred four-funnel steamers because they thought that more funnels meant more safety. People’s reasons for confidence in a ship don’t have to be rational. If it had been admitted that the Titanic had split apart, the public would be concerned about ships spontaneously splitting in two in all sorts of improbable situations, thinking that the hulls were weak like a Jenga tower. As a business, you want maximum consumer confidence and have to reassure against every possible fear. So yes, it would have been in the industry’s best interest to have the public believe that although she did sink due to the iceberg, her sturdy hull kept its structure.
@dovetonsturdee7033 there's no point trying to argue with a conspiracy theorist. As if anyone would have went "Gosh isn't it terrible that ship sank and 100s of people died, but thank goodness it stayed in one piece"
My aunt had a fictionalized movie about titanic where they pulled the ship out of the water in piece. She showed it too me as a kid. It was clearly from before they found the wreck
Honestly my theory is that if the ship stayed in tact the back end would have kept it afloat. Due to what you said in another video about the stern still having 100% ability to float before the break up of the ship.
Having grown up post- discovery of the wreckage I was always thought the ship broke in two prior to sinking. However, in 2012, around the 100th anniversary of the sinking, I remember the History channel having a "documentary" about "digitally draining the ocean" and apparently scientists deduced the ship broke up AFTER Titanic was fully submerged. It completely threw me as I've never heard anyone else mention this since!
Because it's not true. Some parts of Titanic did break when fully submerged, but the main break (when it split in two) happened on the surface. There are too many eyewitness accounts that corroborate that fact and it's only shame that both British and American inquiry ignored what the majority of witnesses said.
No it definetely didn't, there's no way or reason for a ship to just snap underwater unless the ship hits the bottom of the ocean violently but even then the ship wouldn't break in HALF like that.
The bow and stern *detached* well after going under sea level. But the breakup would have happend when stern was partly in the air, and would have left portions of structure at bottom of ship still linking stern and bow sections. It is that link that broke later.
On another note , w the same amount of confusion, was the “Discussion” how far away the Californian was from the Titanic. Many survivors said they could see another ship about 8-10 miles… they were refuted …. Saying no the Californian was 20, 30 miles away …
Have you seen the documentary (available here on UA-cam) called "Titanic: Case Closed" ? They present some pretty firm evidence that "refraction" played a major role in the disaster. It's essentially a mirage that distorts how things appear. It can hide things nearby (e.g. the iceberg) but also show things that are very far away and make them appear much closer. It seems very likely that the Californian was actually quite a distance away but appeared much closer to the people on the Titanic.
Californian was 20 miles from Titanic. Another ship was seen from Titanic, that was Mount Temple a CPR liner which was just a few miles away but did not attempt a rescue despite seeing what was happening. Reason for that is unclear.
I'm a newer subscriber, but I gotta say that I hate how youtube slaps every one of your videos with a "context bar" as if you're lying about what you're saying in your videos.. Which you ARE NOT... Great videos, amazing work, keep it up!
Wouldn’t the sound of it breaking been immense? I wouldn’t have thought it was something one could miss. I sincerely hope I never find out first hand though. RIP
Technically, the ship did shink as one piece since bow and stern were still attached. And on the 20th anniversary of his movie, Cameron revisited the sinking along with some other experts who had mapped the debris field and distance between bow and stern and found that the two would remained attached for some time during descent before separating and taking their own path. Cameron also recreated a structural minuature and found that it would have broken up at much shallower angle than he had pictured in his 1997 movie. (so less dramatic breakup than imagined in his movie) If steam production/distribution stopped at same moment as breakup then so would have electricty from generators located aft of boilers. Survivor's eyes would have been accustomed to Titanic's lights and all of a sudden would be blind in total darkness until their eyes got accustomeed to only star light. And *IF* lifeboats had any source of light, visibility of Titanic's shape would likely be very difficult. The breakup would have generated quite a lot of noise from when steam lines broke and all that presure was released. And even if breakup happened at shallower angle, the sterm falling back in water would have generated a big wave. Have any of survivors in lifeboats reported such a wave? Any survivors who were still on stern at time of breakup? If lifeboats were on the bow side of ship, they would have been sheltered from wave generated by stern falling back in water. And they wouldn't have a clear view of the whole ship. If positioned more in line with middle of ship, would have better view of its shape via star light. Depending on timing, it is also possible that by the time survivor's eyes got accustomed to star light, the stern had returned to an angle similar to one prior to breakup which would explain reports from those who say it didn't breakup. In a modern investigation, the location of the witness is analysed to see exactly what the person could and couldn't have seen from that point of view. And such a technique could have provided proper weighting to the diverse "opinions" of survivors on what they saw.
Thats false,in 20 anniversary documentary they never said ship seperated during the descent. With model shown ship seperated almost fully at the surface and then bow bringed the stern down due to double bottom being connected and when the stern was almost fully submerged they seperated.
The ship also broke slowly and then stern just slowly settled back.Also every survivor heard those noices when ship broke up,but most thought it was boilers exploding.
I don't know if you've seen it or not but about 10 years ago there was a new documentary on the Titanic where they found a piece of the keel that had Separated from the ship and did some research and actually found that the Titanic didn't fully break up on the surface it actually split at a shallower angled then previously suspected and then started sinking from the middle crushing in on itself and split into as it was sinking below the surface This was also an explanation for why the Stern was so heavily damaged compared to the bow The damage from the ship crushing in on itself caused the Upper deck peel back From the force of the water as it the Stern sank
To the people that said the ship went down in one piece were you there??? Did you actually see the ship go down??? No and no!!! If you have most or all of the survivors saying that it broke in half what do you think you should believe??? And especially since now there's images of it actually being broken in half... If you weren't there you don't know
It's crazy that someone who wasn't even there tried telling a survivor what they did or didn't see. That survivor should have told that person "were you there? No? Then sit down and shut up." The nerve of that person.
If historians are required to have been present at an event in order to have an opinion, that rather makes the study of history prior to around 1960 impossible.
As pointed out the passengers didn’t “see” the ship break apart in the dark - at best they inferred this from its dark shape moving against the stars and the noise being made. In the 1970’s book “Raise the Titanic" Clive Cussler theorized the noise was the boilers breaking free and tearing through the ship. He needed an intact Titanic for his story but probably also believed it.
If you read "A Night to Remember," Walter Lord mentioned the loud noise was from the machinery breaking loose and smashing down through the bulkheads. This was the most commonly accepted explanation up until the ship was found. On the parts of the ship that are still intact, the machinery is still in its' position.
i can imagine how shamed the people that tried to prevent passengers from talking about the seperation after the ship was discovered in two pieces and the hate they got for it
Great understanding of the break up! Makes a lot sense! Imagine how those who saw it break up! Had to live through that horrible lie! Until it was discovered in 1985!! Most of them didn’t even live till then. If only we had that kind of technology a lot sooner! Would of changed history forever ♾️
I`ve often wondered whether those responsible would have settled for 73 years, or would they have expected longer or that it should never be found. The last thing they needed was an early advance in technology which would leave them exposed, that they should all have passed on would be a minimum requirement.
Despite striking an iceberg and sinking the Titanic was still considered to be significant engineering achievement and a very well built ship. Since it sank at night most people couldn't see that it broke plus there was just a lot of confusion.
"was still considered to be significant engineering achievement " Says who? She couldn't maintain the speed of the faster Cunard Liners, *still* used steam engines when turbines were obviously the way of the future, had an undersized rudder which was of a 1840's design and hopelessly inadequate for 1912 (which is why she turned badly) and pioneered nothing. Titanic most definitely wasn't pushing the envelope as far as design of ocean liners went in 1912. White Star Line themselves knew they couldn't keep up with the technology race and therefore went for size and luxury. "and a very well built ship." Well, aside from the cheap low-quality plates and countless of weak rivets to hurry up and finish an already delayed ship. They had to cut corners here and there.
@@McLarenMercedes Titanic was not built for speed. It was built for comfort. Lusitania and Mauritania were partly financed by the Admiralty. Therefore, they had strict design criteria they had to meet including in the area of speed. They were also built tall and narrow making them borderline unstable. Titanic was much more stable. After receiving damage from the ice it still took over 2 hours to sink and never listed badly enough to prevent launching life boats. I'd still say Titanic was significant engineering achievement. I would also say Titanic was handled very poorly for a ship of that size due to the physics of ships of that size being not well understood yet.
There should be a new inquiry into the biggest lingering Titanic question: "Why did Rose refuse to make room for Jack to float on the door with her?" She had been safely aboard a lifeboat with her mother, but decided to jump back on the sinking ship to be with Jack. Did she want him alive long enough to her complaining about the cold and singing a tone-deaf version of "🎶Come Josephine in my Flying Machine 🎵," while he froze to death?
Indeed, i think it's even probable that, given he was already outside that early during the sinking, while other 3rd class passengers were still down there (correct me if i'm wrong), he would have had enough chance to get on some collapsible or something.
Imagine having to endure one of the most traumatic catastrophe ever recorded and then some kid says "nah fam you didn't saw that correctly sorry :) "
Similar situation happened with Buzz Aldrin when some weirdo went up to him and claimed that he never landed on the moon. Then Buzz flat out punched him in the face.
We don't have to imagine. We have Reddit for things like that.
“Were you there?”
“No”
“I was there”
“Correct”
“I could of seen the ship break”
“Yes”
“And it did”
“No it didn’t you’re just confused from the cold temperature that night”
What is your "Opinion " on how the ship sank @silent gamer
Titanicsplaining
Historian: And then what happened?
Survivor: I saw it break in half.
Historian: No you didn’t.
Basically what happened
@@HistoricTravels Definitely some unbiased historians for sure lol
Historical gaslighting
@@HistoricTravels Don Lynch told the story you're referring to and the passenger's name was Ruth Becker.
Historian: Please tell me how an Olympic class liner breaks in half
Survivor: I don't know
Historian: You don't know because it isn't possible
I can't imagine how scary hearing the sounds of straining metal must have been for the people in the boats
For the passengers who weren’t aware or didn’t believe they were in danger that sound must’ve been very frightening.
Imagine what it was like for anyone inside the hull - right at the break point!
It’s almost like people wanted that movie “Raise the Titanic” to become reality one day and that’s why they didn’t want to believe it broke up
Plenty of survivors saw the break up happen.. unfortunately they were ignored like Eva Hart.. but now after Bob Ballard found the Titanic weackage in 1985 everyone knows they were telling the truth.. White Star just did not want people to know the biggest ship in world 🌍 at the time broke clean in two..in my opinion.
I believe you both are correct.
@@proudpatriot6567 Thx my friend.. best wishes to you and your family
@@jasonhowell-lg5igI believe in you and Sam about the ship broke in half
Oceanliner Designs made a video with a realistic animation of what the sinking looked like. First, you watch it with decent lighting where you can see the lights go out, the breakup, and the sinking. But then you watch the realistic one where it's pitch black as it was that night, with only the stars to illuminate everything. And honestly, seeing it like that I can 100% see why people wouldn't be sure it broke. I think even I would have said it sank intact and that's me watching super closely and knowing what happened. Only those who were concentrating really hard would have been able to make it out. Honestly, after watching that video, I'm really unsurprised why there was so much confusion over it.
That’s a good video it’s true I’m not surprised that they thought the ship sank in one piece
Mike and Tom are the best when it comes to Titanic. They should do a colab
The problems with that video and the reason why I think it only tells half of the truth are the following:
1) For that asumption to work it will require the break to occur so slowly that the dim emergency light wouldn't give away the change off the stern's alignment.
2) It doesn't touch the fact that the noise alone would have give away that a massive structure failure has occurred within the ship, for instance there is a video here on youtube of a cargo ship suddenly breaking in half on some rogue waves and the early break sounds like a high explosion.
Using the lack of light as validation for either the final desition of the official investigation or why some survivors thought the ship sank in one piece is dangerously as wrong as the "V-Break" hypothesis.
@@PointReflex 2) Many were talking about boiler explosions.
Ofc, Lightholler was busy balancing on top of a lifeboat and wouldn't have seen it, but he did hear it.
I can vouch that outside in the dark in countryside, it really is impossible to see.
In 1982, at a Titanic Historical Society meeting, survivor Ruth Becker Blanchard testified that she saw Titanic break in two. The treasurer, Lou Gorman, took her microphone away and told the audience that Ruth was mistaken and what she really saw was a falling funnel. She felt very chastised because of this.
When the wreck was discovered in 1985, I feel Gorman was like "Oh... that lady was right." I have not found anything mentioning Lou Gorman after 1985.
In the Roblox game, Titanic Final Hours, when you're on Boat A or B, it's very difficult to see the breakup.
Some of the T.H.S. officers have been ousted over time because their views became too "radical"; I remember when Charles Haas was President and John Eaton was historian. Despite both being reelected by a comfortable margin year after year, somehow, one year, their vote total went down to about 3,000 to 15 members or something. I thought at the time that was very, very strange, and then Ed Kamuda became T.H.S. President (also bringing in his wife Karen as an officer), and the names Haas and Eaton suddenly disappeared as if they had denounced Stalin or something. The 2 later formed a new group, called "Titanic International", which I joined for a year or 2 alongside my T.H.S. membership. At the first TITANIC International 'convention' (or meeting), I met Charlie Haas and asked him about another former T.H.S. President named Robert Gibbons - I had only just discovered he even existed, as no mention of the man was ever made anywhere in the T.H.S journal, or in any way in the organization. He was clearly uncomfortable with my asking, and really didn't want to talk about it, but he DID tell me, "Yeah, he's (Gibbons) another one of the 'UnPeople'."
Eva Hart was always absolutely adamant that she saw the ship break in two also.
Ms Becker can be seen on UA-cam saying “That’s when I thought the ship broke in half,” bringing up the subject but implying that she must be wrong. It’s tragic to see her doubting what she saw for herself as a 12-year-old. Probably raised to defer to men, like women in my family from that era. At least she lived to be vindicated.
@@abcdeshole She was a child, a female and a 2nd class citizen, 3 strikes against her. Even into the 80's 2 of those 3 strikes were still prevalent.
@@steelpaine9932 what’s the third strike? That she had been a second class passenger? The Beckers must have been pretty affluent to travel as a family all the way from India to Michigan, and in second class on the Titanic. Imagine all the ocean passages, train fares and hotels. It must have cost a fortune. Perhaps their church community raised money for them, as they were missionaries and had to travel for medical treatment, but I’m speculating.
I believe the reason for an intact Titanic at the bottom of the ocean like a time capsule is that the prevailing belief among oceanographers just prior to the wreck being discovered was that the bottom of the ocean would not be able to contain or harbor life so anything that were to sink there would be preserved in the state that it was in 1912.
Elgen Long, a famous Amelia Earhart investigator was interviewed on "In Search Of" in the 1970s and said that he believed her plane was lying on the Ocean Floor since 1937 in perfect condition, for similar reasons... Robert Ballard prove them all wrong in 1986.
I could honestly believe the theory of White Star Lines wanting to play down the possibility of the ship breaking in half to save the company's reputation at the expense of the survivors emotional well-being, seems like something a big corporation would want to do in order to preserve its reputation in the face of such a disaster.
I was always amazed at how accurate Jack Thayer's rough sketch of the breakup was, aside from the fact that it showed the bow floating.
Wasn't his sketch, someone else drew it based on what he said and he said it was wrong (the bow floating).
Skidmore's.
Jack Thayer was correct… the Bow did NOT ‘float’ it was levered up out of the water because the ship folded DOWN in the middle when she broke.
@@christopherpardell4418 which wouldn’t have happened due to the mass weight of water and heaviness in the bow. Once that bow section was fully under. That was it. It was never coming back up again. And you can see by the bow wreak how she landed that she nosed dived straight down. She definitely broke up how you see it in this vid. The bending and both bow and Stern ends due to the different weights and expansion joints. Broke her like a stick.
@@MrPerthglory Sorry, but you are wrong. The bow was Not full of water. It still had air in it. I don’t think you comprehend how buoyancy keeps a ship afloat. Water flooding the ship ADDS WEIGHT to her displacement. If she had 20,000 cubic feet of displacement under normal conditions, as she flooded, she needed to displace 40,000 cubic feet to stay at the surface. That is TWICE the air filled volume BELOW sea level than normal. The water in most of the forward half of the ship never got higher than the tops of the watertight compartments, because it then would spill over into the bottom of the next compartment. She was down by the bow but her stern was not out of the water while she was in one piece because the entire ship was settling deeper to displace more water. But her center of buoyancy kept shifting aft until it was fully aft of the expansion joint. As the last of the boiler rooms started to fill, MOST of her shipped weight in water was just forwards of the last boiler room. And the weight in her center was too much and she folded Down at the expansion joint. That is why everything ABOVE her bottom was crushed, but the bottom is still its full length minus only the 20 foot section of her bottom from beneath the last boiler room that shows no evidence of bending. The weight of her stern was inconsequential compared to the upward force holding the entire ship at the surface. Let say just before she broke she weighed 3 times her normal amount because of the water she shipped. HOW is she still at the surface of the Atlantic? She’s still at the surface because the hull is still able to displace 3 times as much water as normal. That means 3 times as much air filled hull below sea level as before she started flooding, because the portion filled with water is not displacing water anymore. As she filled, the dry portions of the ship were holding up 3 times her entire weight. And as the center of buoyancy shifted past the expansion joint, the forces LIFTING the stern and holding the whole ship at the surface were what snapped the stern up. Because she was still attached along her sides below the end of the expansion joint, her stern lifting up levered the bow back up out of the water ( at this point the bow was only 10 -20 feet bellow the water’s surface, and the bow was still several dry decks below the waters surface, offsetting its weight ) the break was NOT sudden and violent, it was relatively slow because to fold it had to crush all the superstructure above ship’s bottom and THIS process was what lifted the stern out of the water the first time. THEN when the last of the metal tying the upper structure together failed, the bow, now deprived of the buoyancy of the dry stern, and with massive additional flooding from the break roaring in, dropped down and snapped the remaining steel decking and it planes away bow first because the metal decking gave way only when the bow folded back down the other way, and the bow PLANED away bow first and landed a half mile away from the where her boilers spilled when the bottom parted. That is when the stern dropped back down and started filling from the exposed engine room end. Now That is how Thayer described the sinking and HIS description absolutely predicted the condition and orientation of the wreck. SO he is the most reliable eye witness whose testimony is most likely accurate. She folded down in the middle, up at either end. There are a lot os silly assumptions people make without regard to the physics of water. For example, most recreation show the bridge being torn off by the forces of the bow plunging thru the water as it sank. That is not how the bridge tore loose. As the bridge sank, it was DRY INSIDE the bridge. The bridge house was made of wood and was held to the deck with bolts. Like the walls of any house. As the water rose around the bridge, the bridge became buoyant, and it was this buoyancy that tore the bridge loose. You can see this happen in footage from tsunami flooding. The force of the water does not cave in houses… before the water even reaches the windows, the House FLOATS free of its foundation and without the rigidity of the foundation the house break apart. Similarly, Titanic’s funnels did not collapse because of snapping guy wires or the weight of them being at an angle, they tore lose as the water surrounded their bases and created an air space displacing water…i.e. buoyancy. When the force of buoyancy exceeded the strength of the bolts holding the funnels on, The bolts snapped and without that rigid foundation holding their shape, they flexed, buckled and fell. Those bolts were designed to resist the weight of the funnel and lateral wind loading on the funnel, but NOT designed to hold the funnel down against an upwards force that exceeded any other force by a factor of 9. Another example, as her forward hold filled, her forward hatch, which was capable of supporting tons of water coming over the bow, Blew Off because of compressed air in the hold as water filled it up. The hatch was designed to take enormous pressure from outside, but not the pressure building from inside. Once more, the force of buoyancy acting on the stern was vastly larger than the weight of the stern. It was 3 times the weight of the entire ship. THAT is what broke her.
Even chef baker Charles Joughin said indirectly that the ship broke in half when he later said that while he was in the deck pantry on A Deck, he said he said heard sounds of metal breaking while in there. As for Lightoller & Gracie, both would have been very busy trying to keep the upside down Collapsible B from flipping over & casing them into the sea to have noticed the breakup. But what gets me is the borderline obsession with this myth of the ship sinking in one piece until Robert Ballard found the wreck.
There was talk of course that they all knew perfectly well that the ship broke in two, but it was brushed under the carpet to save face. There is some evidence that the design of Titanic's younger sister was altered to include different expansion joints - and that was based on their understanding that Titanic had broken in two.
Think the eeriest part of the baker's story is the implication the the ship was breaking inside long before the actual big break occurred.
@@zeddeka How exactly would any face have been saved? The ship sank, after all, didn't it?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 Yeah, but breaking into two pieces while doing so would make it seem even less structurally sound, and that's the last thing you'd want when you're on trial.
@@firstnamlastnam2141 Why? The ship wasn't designed to withstand the intolerable stresses imposed when her stern reared almost vertically out of the water.
I really don't believe that there would have been a conversation along the lines of:-
Mrs. Smith, I am afraid that your son drowned when Titanic sank.
Oh dear. I am desolated.
The ship went down in one piece, by the way. She didn't break up.
Didn't it? Oh well. That all right then.
I find it crazy that the debris (especially the door frame from the first class lounge shown in the 1997 film) kind of proves that something pretty serious must of happened to the structure of the ship for all of those pieces of wooden trim from inside the ship to be floating after she disappeared. Yet so many believed she sank intact.
Bear in mind that the wreck was not found until September 1, 1985, which greatly hindered the ability to ascertain the truth in 1912.
The superstructure being crushed inward by being pulled underwater before it could flood slowly could easily cause wooden portion to break free and float to the surface. After all, the funnels collapsed before the ship actually sank. So there would be no way to tell HOW those wood portions broke free.
@@shirtless6934 It was found much earlier, as early as the 1950s, but never revealed its location until Ballard (who's real mission was looking for sunken nuclear submarines) found it.
The location was known in the 50s right enough, but was not revealing it meant to be an indefinite feature? In 1985, Ballard`s brief was to find those two submarines, the Americans, as far as we know, weren`t in the least interested in finding Titanic. However, either they could use it as a cover story, or if it was just Ballard who was hell bent on finding it, and as he found the subs in good time, they indulged him. If the latter and Ballard was sticking his nose in where it was not wanted, in view of what has transpired since, could it be a case of "be careful what you wish for?"
@@aj6954 What was the motive for keeping the location of the Titanic secret?
I remember I felt a little sad when the wreck wasn't in one piece, but was far more interested that they found the ship at all. I think people become quite irrational when they are passionate about a subject like the Titanic, and get emotionally invested in what they want to be true, me included. I was gutted when Anna Anderson turned out not to be Anastasia ,for example.
Great video, Sam.
Ocean Liner Designs did the same topic roughly a month ago about the lack of viability during the breakup, which justifies why some people believe the ship sank intact.
However, it is also pointed out in documentaries & testimonies that during the time the breakup happened, the ship’s groans & sounds were unbearable.
Many could tell by sound alone that the ship was tearing itself apart.
How that was not accounted for during the inquiries is beyond me.
I feel for all the victims whose voices were silenced by “experts” who had no idea what they were talking about.
Eva always said she heard an horrible explosion and she knows that explosion is what caused the Titanic to break in half.
She says this in the interview she gave in 85 when they girst discovered the Titanic.
And the interviewer guy pretty much cuts her off and says it sinks whole.
Like how do you believe someone who didnt survive the Titanic sinking over someone who was there and survived the event.
It's insane.
But people back in the 80s were not as educated as we are today.
I actually got mad at the part when that historian took the mic away from that survivor
I remember watching ‘Raise The Titanic’ before James Cameron’s film was made, and thinking it was really dumb. Then my dad told me that nobody believed the survivors about the break until the wreck was found. I was pretty shocked.
I started with TITANIC history back in '78 (or '79?). I can so clearly remember that it was taken as a matter of fact that TITANIC went down intact. In fact I remember NO questioning of a breakup; it was simply so inconceivable, that a breakup wasn't even mentioned. When the wreck was discovered in '85, I even remember a certain New York newspaper showing one of the classic TITANIC photos, pointing out the missing 1st funnel, the 2nd funnel as having been hit by ARGO but was intact, and the 3rd and 4th still standing. It said that, aside from the missing 1st funnel and "a light dusting of sediment", she looked as she did when she was still on the surface. I was elated at this, but then, just like Ken, I became more and more upset and depressed the next few days, as the story kept getting worse and worse; next, the 4th funnel was gone. Then, she was broken in half. Then, the 3rd funnel disappeared...
I think that, maybe, the myth of the intact sinking was borne of the fact that back in that day, the idea that a ship of such power and strength as the TITANIC could EVER break up was just so inconceivable that nobody even gave it a second thought. Break up? Impossible!. Simple as that...
As far as the "Conspiracy Theory", the expansion joints were not put in to lessen a weakness, it was because of just what you said: they allowed the ship's superstructure to "flex" when at maximum stress during heavy seas left the middle, or bow and stern, unsupported by waves. The difference between TITANIC's and BRITANNIC's expansion joins was, simply, once again as you said: it was just an evolution of the design between vessels (just as TITANIC was an 'evolution' of OLYMPIC). That it was a minor difference, does that negate its' evolution (BTW, for those that don't know, the BRITANNIC had THREE expansion joints, another 'evolution' over TITANIC and OLYMPIC's two. Again, nothing to read into this outside of a minor design improvement).
Ken Marshall's story on how he was devastated when he saw the wreck photos hits hard , even i myself cry sometimes when i see the ship's condition , i also have those words in my mind "my ship is gone....."
Even more heartbreaking IMO was the fact that it was Ken who figured out what happened to the bodies while he was assessing the submersible footage.
I remember that Jack Thayer had someone on the Carpathia do sketching of the sinking (including the split). I also remember hearing the story of the Titanic survivor being told that the ship didn't split. How rude of that person who interrupted her. I would have much rather heard the first person account over some "expert" any day.
Unfortunately, I can definitely see how a company could go to great lengths to create a lie to save face with the public.
What lie?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 if they said the ship broke in half, people would start doubting their ship's quality.
That's not how things worked back then. Harland & Wolff came to the UK inquiry with mathematical engineering proof as to how Titanic sank and broke up, but the press and powers-that-be didn't want to know.
@@-_deploy_- Why would 'people' believe that a ship which sank in one piece was any better than a ship which broke up?' Isn't the crux of the matter three short words :- 'THE SHIP SANK?'
@@dovetonsturdee7033 because the fact that it BROKE during the sinking could make people believe that white stairline ships' structure was weak and could break easily at any point
There's a set of videos on UA-cam called 'What They Saw' that goes through the testimonies from the survivors that saw the ship sink. So many of them say they saw it break up, but there are some that said she sank intact.
When i was younger, back in the mid 2000's when i was basically obsessed with everything Titanic, i remember reading something in a book that even after Robert Ballard found the Titanic most people refused to acknowledge the discovery because it WAS in 2 pieces. From my understanding the basically accused him of trying to pass off another ship as Titanic. It took his sub finding and illuminating where it says TITANIC on the bow for people to actually acknowledge the discovery. I have never heard Ballard himself say that so that book may have been misinformed but it wouldn't surprise me considering how deep the belief was that the ship sunk intact.
I have always found thr Titanic to be super weird. I went through a amature maritime historians phase in HS.
Titanic is pretty much one of the only ships I personally found that didn't have a extreme list and also broke in half. And also just even more craziness of being a very interesting story. The length of the time it took to sink is also a standout. But not as much. It just allowed for more to happen.
Fr, Titanic was such a rare event.
One film to check out is "Raise the Titanic" (I think from 1980). It's shown to be intact at the bottom of the ocean.
Ah, one of my first Titanic movies! I was introduced to Titanic when my mom was reading the book (she had several Clive Cussler novels) and I asked about the ship on the front cover. Raise the Titanic... say what you will about the movie itself, but it probably has the best film score of any Titanic movie. In fact, it is the music that most frequently goes though my mind when I think of the Titanic.
@@gregorymoore2877 oh, yeah. John Berry was a great composer.
Welcome back to regular posting Sam, and this is an excellent video! 🙌
It’s always interesting to see the timeline and story of how certain beliefs regarding the sinking came to be, and how incorrect ones have - hopefully - been rectified. 🙂
I always found it so weird that despite so many people saying they saw the ship break in half, the official story was that it didn't. I assumed that maybe naval engineers believed it wasn't possible for the ship to break or something. So they put their opinions above eyewitnesses. Not in the conspiracy sense, but maybe they analyzed the blueprints and concluded that it wouldn't break in half.
It is my understanding that many of the survivors saw the ship break. Eva Hart spoke of it in an interview. At the time of the sinking, any survivor who talked of it breaking was not taken serious because it was bad enough that the White Star line had to admit that their unsinkable ship had indeed sunk. Allowing people to say the ship broke as it sank would have made it appear that the ship was poorly made, thus making the company look incompetent. They couldn't have any of that.
13 of the 65 asked said the ship broke in two on the surface. 4 said it didn't.
Eva Hart was seven years old at the time. Do you consider a seven years old to be an expert witness?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 During a very traumatic experience where your father died, YES, I bet she never forgot it.
One question: If some people thought the ship sank in 1 piece, just how do they explain the black silhouette of the stern suddenly dropping back into the ocean? Like a ship wouldn't just tilt its stern up and decide "man this is boring", smash down, somehow flood super duper fast after that and sink.
@@markbrookes6557 I'm sure she never forgot the sinking. I am not sure she would have been quite so precise about the details. Just as a seven years old's evidence would be regarded with caution in a court of law.
@@floseatyard8063 As Ludovic Kennedy wrote in his account of the sinking of the Bismarck. 'In moments of great stress, people tend to see what they expect to see.'
I am simply reporting the opinions of Oceanographers from Wood's Hole. Personally, I believe the salient fact here is that the ship sank, and that her condition at the time of sinking really doesn't matter.
It has been a long time since I read "A Night To Remember" by Walter Lord, but I think (please correct me if I am wrong) that he believed that TITANIC went down in tact. He revised this view in "The Night Lives On;" written shortly after Dr. Robert Ballard found the broken wreck. Jack Thayer, Jr., who stayed aboard the TITANIC until she sank, was one of those who correctly saw that the ship broke in two.
Yeah pretty much anyone who wasn't a witness to it, believed she sank intact until the wreck was found in 1985 & they all went "Oh....well.....shit...."
I've read A Night To Remember a few times. I don't remember that book making any statement about whether the ship broke or not. Walter Lord basically interviewed all or most of the remaining Titanic survivors. The book is mainly made up of their anecdotes and quotes. That is, it is a book about people and what happened to them rather than a technical description of the ship and what happened to it. And if I remember correctly, sometimes there are survivor stories presented that don't even agree with each other.
@@gregorymoore2877 You are correct that "A Night To Remember," much like Mr. Lord's "Day Of Infamy," is a collection of first person interviews of events of the sinking and anecdotal recollections. But I do remember Lord mentioning that he had problems with John Thayer, Jr's and, (if I am wrong, please correct me) Molly Brown's recollection that they saw the ship snap in two. I remember Lord stating that had TITANIC broken in two, the lights would have gone out much earlier. But, since they remained on until she foundered, TITANIC must have went down in one piece.
I forget if you mentioned it in the video but a big reason why testimony of the breakup was disregarded was that other testimony claiming to have heard explosions, loud crashing, etc was able to be "explained" as something else, like the boilers blowing up or the engines breaking free of their foundations and crashing towards the bow. Basically anything EXCEPT the breakup. This is partly why the 1953 film ends with the boilers exploding, cause they based it on those accounts
THE ENGINEERS BLEW THE PRESSURE OFF AND, DOUSED THE FIRES TO PREVENT THEM FROM BLOWING UP WHICH WOULD HAVE CAUSED THE SHIP TO SINK FASTER. AS FOR THE BOW , IT WAS THE PART DAMAGED BY THE ICEBERG SO, IT FLOODED AND, CAUSED THE STERN TO LIFT OUT OF THE WATER WITH NOTHING UNDER IT TO CRADLE IT, SO THE SHIP BROKE IN HALF. THE STERN STILL HAD AIR IN IT AND, FLOATED A BIT LONGER . AS IT SANK, IT IMPLODED WHICH IS WHY IT'S IN WORSE SHAPE THAN THE BOW. SADLY, THE WRECK IS COLLAPSING INSIDE ITSELF AND, WILL BE NOTHING BUT A BIG RUST STAIN ON THE OCEAN FLOOR.
Well the ship is depicted exploding by the time the grand staircase was about to flood, it was more the explosion during the very end of the sinking that was the split interpretation
@@thecaring9616 well yes they fudged the timeline a bit but i think that's where they got the idea of there being an explosion in the first place from
Based on the location of the split of the wreck, the split happened between boilers. So all that high pressure steam that was driving generators and othere equipment on ship would have been released when pipes broke and that would make a hell of a big bang. I would have to assume the the engines and boilers would have been very firmly attached to the structure since the engines provide a lot of torque. So don't know that they "slipped" down due to angle.
So neat you've put out this video the day before my middle-schooler does a presentation in her science class on how the Titanic actually broke in half and plummeted to the bottom of the Atlantic 🙂 She watched all your videos on how the Titanic sank and how it was found as part of her research. And as someone who loves your channel, I'm so happy she chose this subject. I think my watching your channel rubbed off on someone 🙂
I just always assumed it was because the ship broke at a much lower angle than what was believed up until recently. Couple that with it being pitch black, it’s no surprise people didn’t see it split.
What I find most interesting (if not hilarious) is the 'Raise the Titanic' movie from the 1970's showed the ship coming up not only in one piece but with the funnels all still attached and the crow's nest also standing upright.
Yes, and it even has those two extra smaller masts on either side of the foremast. In the book, they cut the masts and funnels off and seal up all the windows and doors. I guess that would not have looked as good on the big screen. But hey, when your actions are set to that score by John Barry, I guess you can accomplish anything.
I agree with you that changing the expansion joint was just another moderation of the older design since we saw them making these changes so often between the ships. Titanic had moderations too from the original design thanks to its sister ship, the Olympic. Britannic also had other changes after Titanic's sinking. So I agree that the company was just making routine changes. That being said, it's actually one of the better conspiracy theories out there because it's far more plausible than the other ones. It's completely reasonable to believe that the company would want the word of it breaking in two to spread and have their engineering brought into question, along with further claims of accountability. It's not a misplaced smudge in a picture or neglectful claim that the metal and riveting were bad. It's less counter intuitive than other theories.
Why would a company spend time and money to change something that didn't need changing? It's possible, maybe likely, there was something that had zero bearing on the sinking that necessitated the change but until that can be shown I think it's fair to ask. I'd really like to see more about this.
@Craig Cole That's what White Star Line did. It's the reason why Thomas Andrew's was on the ship during the maiden voyage. He was getting an idea of what worked and what didn't. Improvements could increase safety, reduce wasted space, increase passenger enjoyment which equals increasing the popularity of their ships.
Aside from the theory that H&W didn't want their engineering skills called into question, a lot of enthusuadts didn't want to believe that she broke up either. Before the wreck was found, there was still the tantalising prospect of one day raising her, as in the Clive Cussler novel, especially given that the deep ocean wasn't well understood in the 1960s and 70s and it was widely believed that the lack of sunlight and hence marine life at that depth would have caused her to have been preserved in a kind of deep freeze, as happens on the Great Lakes.
Of course, the discovery of the wreck blew all of that out of the water, when the images came back of her not only looking like she'd been ripped in two but with all her fine interiors destroyed by the ravages of time and small organisms. Even if she had been found beautifully preserved, would she have been raised? I mean, technically it could probably have been done, although with great difficulty and expense. But we DO have a largely intact, structurally solid Olympic class liner (Britannic) that no-one has ever seriously considered recovering, and that's without the controversy that would result from potentially desecrating the mass grave of some 1500 souls.
'Largely intact?' Haven't you seen pictures of the wreck?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 he's talking there about Britannic, not Titanic. Britannic's wreck is in much, much better shape than Titanic.
@@zeddeka exactly, thanks for commenting. (Edited my own comment to clarify.)
Titanic is in a league of its own, so much so they conveniently forget that it`s a mass grave. Obsession with it is out of all proportion, and by contrast Britannic would hold little interest if any at all.
Before 1985 I can remember people talking about major mechanical equipment inside the ship breaking free and making lots of noise. I remember speculation that the boilers would have fallen through the bow of the ship.
I agree with your position. As the senior surviving officer Lightoller was considered an expert witness by the media and the inquiry members. However if you listen to how Lightoller recounts the disaster many years later he does mention very loud sounds of metal breaking which he attributed to the boilers breaking off their foundations and falling forward. This was obviously the breakup he was hearing but due to his position on the overturned collapsible boat and the darkness he wouldn’t have been at a vantage point to see the actual breakup. Archibald Gracie wasn’t either. This is like the myth of the 300 foot gash which was sensationalized by the media. A naval architect which testified at the inquiry said that the damage that sank the Titanic was probably very small but he was also shunned by the media because of their bias towards the 300 foot gash.
Edward Wilding is probably the naval architect you're referring to.
He testified that a series of small cuts would make more sense than a long gash, which turned out to be true when the wreck was found.
@@HugoGHA thank you. I didn’t remember his name off the top of my head.
I always thought that most of the survivors didn't realize the ship broke in two. But that wasn't the case. Most of the survivors were women and children. Curiously they took the words of two prominent men that the ship stayed intact and ignored all of the other input. The implosion that occured when the stern reached some depth underwater must have been terrifying.
Really please I found this channel as there's so much detail and many different stories to hear about this fascinating ship wreck.
To see that the Thumbnail actually uses an good model as well as an ACTUAL BOW SINKING WHIT THE FUNNELS FALLING OFF is amazing
Hey Sam, the survivor you were talking about was Ruth Elizabeth Becker. She was 12 years old at the time of the sinking. You really need to do a video on her, it’s pretty interesting :)
Eva Hart always said she saw the ship break in two. She was absolutely adamant.
@@zeddeka Ruth was also very accurate on where about the ship broke in two. That was before the wreck was even discovered. What’s interesting people always say it was too dark for anyone to see anything, well her lifeboat rowed a pretty far distance and she was still for sure that she broke in two.
@@Tommy-with-a-T Young people as her were a lot more likely to be able to appreciate the details, even in low light, that's probably why she was able to see a far distance.
Wish we could rebuild the titanic, she’s. so pretty unlike ships today
The closest modern lines to that ocean liner era are, predictably, Cunard, which bought out White Star Line in the 30s, and surprisingly, Disney Cruise Line, which debuted the year after Titanic (1997) came out.
There was a Chinese attempt but it has run out of money. It would look like and be same sizer as Titanic but have modern engines, navigation behind historic bridge, and . . . more lifeboats.
@@dwm53w1k6no the Chinese one was just a floating museum/ hotel. It was not going to move at all. It was just a hotel part of a park. Stop spreading false information and actually research. So shut up
@@DriftingVRthat was unnecessarily aggressive for a comment. Even more so since it’s over a year old.
@@Attack_Pillow well it’s annoying that he has the audacity to spread false shit. Other people will think it true when it’s not so I was preventing that.
Thanks for the video. It would be interesting to hear more reactions from officials and survivors after it was discovered that the ship broke in half. Must have felt like quite a vindication for many.
It doesn't really prove a thing. Titanic broke in two, but there is no conclusive indication of when.
It proves a lot, actually. If she didn't break in half when the survivors say she did, then how would they have possibly known that the Titanic was in 2 pieces before the shipwreck was found? The Bow and the Stern were found almost 2000 feet part from each other. One of the simulations I've seen about how the Titanic made its way down to the ocean floor for her final resting place shows that they believe the Stern went straight down when it succumbed to the ocean and that's why it's as destroyed as it looks. However, the Bow was pointing downwards when it went underwater, and the point of a Bow of ships were designed to cut through water. Even though the ship was sank, the Bow was still able to do what it was designed to do and cut through the water. Which is likely why the Bow looks more intact in the front because after it went under, broke apart and sank, it imploded from any extra air that could have been trapped inside bit then it glided to the bottom of the ocean floor and was able to lay itself down. The fact that they were so far apart from each other and I think even facing each other shows they had (or at least the Bow did) the time to travel that far away from each other even with all the damaged both pieces faced.
@@proudpatriot6567 'how would they have possibly known that the Titanic was in 2 pieces before the shipwreck was found?' That wasn't know until the wreck was discovered and investigated.
The ship certainly sank by the bow. When she sank there were no air pockets in the bow, hence no crushing of the structure. The stern, with air pockets initially trapped inside, imploded as it sank.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 the survivors that saw it break knew. So they knew it would be in 2 pieces on the ocean floor. Despite what every expert and the company was trying to put out there instead.
@@proudpatriot6567 Why do you think either 'experts' or 'the company' would have any reason to mislead? Wasn't the main issue that the ship sank?
This question was addressed on National Geographic's "Drain the Oceans" special on the Titanic. They postulate that it's entirely possible the ship survived fairly intact until shortly before impact based on the relatively small size of the debris field. Had the ship broken up at the surface, the debris would have be strewn on a much larger area than where it currently lies. I recommend you see it.
It's very dark at the bottom of the Atlantic. Visibility is near zero even with a good light. It's possible the debris field is bigger than we think. Heavier debris would have gone straight to the bottom (like Rose were she wearing the Heart of the Ocean.) Lighter debris would be carried a long way off by the currents. I think James Cameron nailed it with his computer model of the break up.
@@gregorymoore2877 you ought to see the documentary before commenting. Their opinion is based on scientific observation of the debris field following an extensive (Woods Hole spent 4 years on this project) sonar mapping of the area surrounding the titanic. Witness accounts can be largely unreliable, and if they conflict with data should be ignored.
Fun fact : its not only titanic caused britannic’s change of number of expansion joints olympic herself in 1912 went into a massive storm while crossing the atlantic and because of that they with drawn her from service for damage inspection and they did see damage somewhere in b and c decks cracks where discovered somewhere midships and it made a realization that the newest ship and final ship of its class britannic has to be more flexible in the ocean to not suffer what olympic did in that storm and then just months later the titanic reports of her splitting in half came out and it kinda already proved that not all is well on the classes 2 expansion joint flexibility design.
This is so strange for us under-fortys to think about, we’re so used to this fact being well-known and proven. Hard to believe that it was once the other way around.
All that activity in the 1950s and never a suggestion that it had broken in half.
Afraid I wouldn't believe what Officer Lightoller said!
re: 10:40 .... it was at the 1982 Titanic Convention. Survivor Ruth Becker (1899-1990) was describing the final moments of the Titanic. As she related how the ship appeared to break apart, a chap on the panel named Lou Gorman interrupted her and told the audience that she was mistaken.
Ms. Becker apparently had too much class to say something to the effect of, "Shut up, Lou - you weren't there!" 🙄
freaking youtube , i search and search for a video like this for a year , i follow you and many similar artist for years and never shown this. well done on this video , i was expecting something more dramatic , corrupt and hoping for more testimony controversy but this is really really good. thank you sir !
Another interesting thing is that many survivors heard what they thought were boilers exploding in the final minutes of the sinking, but all the boilers are intact. I bet they were actually hearing the ship breaking in half.
There are reports of explosions early in the proceedings, and no-one has yet explained the 2 sections of keel found 1km from wreck site. I am no fan of Brightside, but for me, this guy seems just a bit too eager to slag them off and maybe some of this is down to him rather than his followers. Whilst Brightside may be a load of crap, they could also be considered a loose cannon that might show stuff that the ptb would rather be kept secret. Just a thought.
@@aj6954wasnt there an implosion about 30 seconds after it sunk
@@perkyraid9089 Very likely, but more concerned about explosions before it sank.
It's funny how people who weren't even present when the Titanic sank kept telling the survivors the people who were actually there that what they personally saw and witness never happened.
The survivor was Ruth Becker. Don Lynch recounted the story in that Titanic at 100 documentary that Cameron did.
Very informative video Sam! I really enjoyed watch it! 😉👍
You know it’s gonna be a banger when he says “so hey”
Please know that Sam is never to ruin his vids and proves his statements right
Sam, I really enjoyed this video, looking forward to your special Titanic anniversary video.
Great video! I was actually just thinking about this recently.
I have wondered why the Britannic stayed in one piece as it sank while the Titanic broke apart when they were essentially the same ship design and both sank in fairly similar ways with the bow going under first. I would guess it has something to do with the Britannics stern never being able to rise as high out of the water because of the mid section of the ship flooding sooner than on the Titanic.
Britannic sank in 55 minutes versus Titanic sank in 2 hours & 40 minutes.
Britannic spent a lot less time with the weight of the water and gravity putting pressure on the bow & stern against each other. Britannic’s new expansion joint likely helped with the added pressure as well.
On Titanic, witnesses inside the ship heard throughout the sinking many types of groans & noises as the hull was being stretched & stressed.
Once Titanic reached her sinking angle of 18 to 24 degrees, the amount strain from the previous 2 hours of sinking was too much for the hull to handle & she broke up violently.
And the britannic didn't rise up, it basically went bow first at first then listed towards the right. At the end of the sinking which was probably 20 minutes long, barely enough time for the ship to stress and bend and break apart, the stern was only slightly up in the air and sideways
" My ship is gone. " is a sad line.
With the last gentleman "seeing his boat" in one piece, is there any animation to show how the wreck would look today had she gone down intact? I would imagine the bow would have crushed when it hit the seafloor with the kinetic power of the stern.
I was just speaking to someone that was at a convention back in 1980's anda survivor called Ruth can't remember her last name she stated at the convention that the ship did break in half whilst the historian said she didn't, but the lady who was at the convention said she doesn't remember the historian taking away the microphone from the survivor other than the microphone being passed around to the other survivors, and that she doesn't feel that the historian was out of line nor did she feel that Ruth was getting her nose pushed out either.
Sam, the lady you mentioned in the video (the one that was told to shut up when she mentioned the break up in the convention) was Ruth Becker. Hope this helps 🙂
I just discovered your channel and I love it! Titanic history is so interesting
Could you do a video about the stress tears on the bow section of wreckage, caused when she hit the bottom? I'm researching to build a wreck model and it's difficult to find images, video or information on the tears and what's on the other side of them
That would be super interesting 😊
Harlem & Wolf were worried that Titanic could break in 1/2 in a storm, so they changed the expansion joints on Brittanic
I definitely missed an update about why he's in a different room/house.
I didn't know people fought that idea so hard
Hi Sam, really enjoying your videos. Keep it up
(Maybe another Bright Side video, you know just a little sugesstion)lol
I think it's wrong that those Titanic experts wouldn't allow the survivors to speak. That's so wrong. She did split in 2. The Titanic wreck proves it. I've heard this before. Talk about rude. Great video Sam. That engine is cool.
I really like the new Minimalist set you have going on.
This is probably the thing that confuses me the most about the sinking. Thanks for the video
I've always wondered why the ship broke in half where it did. It wasn't until I saw Titanic Honor and Glorys make up of the engine room that I realized there was a huge sky light that ran all the way down to the ship. That huge open space along where the aft grand stair case was an obvious weak point of the ship.
The break up wasnt in that area though,it was in front of 3rd funnel casing.
@@xxdeckxxdumanyan7413 it obliterated everything around that area. None of it exists anymore.
Is there a link to the young guy telling the survivor in the 1970s that she hadn't seen what she saw?
Crazy how they thought they knew what happend to the titanic better than those who saw it in the life boats
There is evidence that the powers that be knew that the ship may well have broken up, but brushed it under the carpet to preserve confidence in the shipping industry. The evidence is in Titanic's younger sister, Britannic, where they altered the expansion joints to possibly avoid a similar break up.
Why would the ship sinking in one piece have preserved 'confidence in the shipping industry?' After all, the ship did sink, didn't it?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 fairly obvious I would have thought. It was not normal for ships to break into two even if they did sink. You'd be hard pushed to find another example. People would be asking why. The obvious conclusions people would have come to, rightly or wrongly, would have been shoddy workmanship or massive design flaw and that would have been even more catastrophic for confidence in the industry.
It would not have been unreasonable for passengers to think that a ship that broke in two may have broken into two in any number of scenarios where the hull was under stress - including rough weather. That's what the expansion joints were for - to allow the ship to flex when being tossed about in rough weather As things stood, they instead believed that Titanic had sunk due to unique bad luck. They thought there had been a massive hole from the iceberg damage (which also turned out also not to be true) but the strength of the ship bad kept it afloat and together to allow at least some people to escape. That perpetuated the idea that the ship was a lot stronger than it possibly was, had just been massively unlucky, and that the iceberg had been solely responsible. They didn't want people thinking that a ship could snap in two.
@@zeddeka 'The obvious conclusion people would have come to' would be that the ship sank. Do you really think people would have been happy to be aboard a sinking liner, if they could be sure that it would not break in two? Really?
As you seem to belive in the 'shoddy workmanship or massive design flaw' idea, how would you explain her sister, which was a successful and popular ocean liner for almost 25 years? The fact is that Titanic sank broke her structure was subjected to stresses and forces far beyond anything for which she had been designed. Once too many compartments had been compromised, she had no chance of survival.
You seem to confuse Titanic's sinking with the nature of the sinking. The fact is that she stayed afloat for over two hours. Lusitania, by contrast, survived for 18 minutes.
Oh, and there are numerous examples of ships breaking in two, All you need to do is a quick search.
'As things stood, they instead believed that Titanic had sunk due to unique bad luck.' Isn't that exactly what happened? Titanic did not break as a result of rough seas or flexing, but because of flooding the six compartments.
@@dovetonsturdee7033 if you read The Only Way to Cross, apparently people in that era preferred four-funnel steamers because they thought that more funnels meant more safety. People’s reasons for confidence in a ship don’t have to be rational. If it had been admitted that the Titanic had split apart, the public would be concerned about ships spontaneously splitting in two in all sorts of improbable situations, thinking that the hulls were weak like a Jenga tower. As a business, you want maximum consumer confidence and have to reassure against every possible fear. So yes, it would have been in the industry’s best interest to have the public believe that although she did sink due to the iceberg, her sturdy hull kept its structure.
@dovetonsturdee7033 there's no point trying to argue with a conspiracy theorist.
As if anyone would have went "Gosh isn't it terrible that ship sank and 100s of people died, but thank goodness it stayed in one piece"
I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love your intro so much.
My aunt had a fictionalized movie about titanic where they pulled the ship out of the water in piece. She showed it too me as a kid. It was clearly from before they found the wreck
It was called "Raise the Titanic". It was a notorious flop.
@@zeddeka okay thanks I never could remember the name of the movie.
Honestly my theory is that if the ship stayed in tact the back end would have kept it afloat. Due to what you said in another video about the stern still having 100% ability to float before the break up of the ship.
You are such a good communicator.
Even today people think titanic sink didn’t split
Having grown up post- discovery of the wreckage I was always thought the ship broke in two prior to sinking.
However, in 2012, around the 100th anniversary of the sinking, I remember the History channel having a "documentary" about "digitally draining the ocean" and apparently scientists deduced the ship broke up AFTER Titanic was fully submerged.
It completely threw me as I've never heard anyone else mention this since!
Because it's not true. Some parts of Titanic did break when fully submerged, but the main break (when it split in two) happened on the surface. There are too many eyewitness accounts that corroborate that fact and it's only shame that both British and American inquiry ignored what the majority of witnesses said.
No it definetely didn't, there's no way or reason for a ship to just snap underwater unless the ship hits the bottom of the ocean violently but even then the ship wouldn't break in HALF like that.
The bow and stern *detached* well after going under sea level. But the breakup would have happend when stern was partly in the air, and would have left portions of structure at bottom of ship still linking stern and bow sections. It is that link that broke later.
Welcome back Sam! Great video :)
On another note , w the same amount of confusion, was the
“Discussion” how far away the Californian was from the Titanic. Many survivors said they could see another ship about 8-10 miles… they were refuted …. Saying no the Californian was 20, 30 miles away …
Have you seen the documentary (available here on UA-cam) called "Titanic: Case Closed" ? They present some pretty firm evidence that "refraction" played a major role in the disaster. It's essentially a mirage that distorts how things appear. It can hide things nearby (e.g. the iceberg) but also show things that are very far away and make them appear much closer. It seems very likely that the Californian was actually quite a distance away but appeared much closer to the people on the Titanic.
Californian was 20 miles from Titanic. Another ship was seen from Titanic, that was Mount Temple a CPR liner which was just a few miles away but did not attempt a rescue despite seeing what was happening. Reason for that is unclear.
I'm a newer subscriber, but I gotta say that I hate how youtube slaps every one of your videos with a "context bar" as if you're lying about what you're saying in your videos.. Which you ARE NOT... Great videos, amazing work, keep it up!
Fantastic job, Sam!
Wouldn’t the sound of it breaking been immense? I wouldn’t have thought it was something one could miss. I sincerely hope I never find out first hand though. RIP
Its the same with the band . Some survivors say they didnt play to the end , some said they did .
Technically, the ship did shink as one piece since bow and stern were still attached. And on the 20th anniversary of his movie, Cameron revisited the sinking along with some other experts who had mapped the debris field and distance between bow and stern and found that the two would remained attached for some time during descent before separating and taking their own path. Cameron also recreated a structural minuature and found that it would have broken up at much shallower angle than he had pictured in his 1997 movie. (so less dramatic breakup than imagined in his movie)
If steam production/distribution stopped at same moment as breakup then so would have electricty from generators located aft of boilers.
Survivor's eyes would have been accustomed to Titanic's lights and all of a sudden would be blind in total darkness until their eyes got accustomeed to only star light. And *IF* lifeboats had any source of light, visibility of Titanic's shape would likely be very difficult.
The breakup would have generated quite a lot of noise from when steam lines broke and all that presure was released. And even if breakup happened at shallower angle, the sterm falling back in water would have generated a big wave. Have any of survivors in lifeboats reported such a wave? Any survivors who were still on stern at time of breakup? If lifeboats were on the bow side of ship, they would have been sheltered from wave generated by stern falling back in water. And they wouldn't have a clear view of the whole ship. If positioned more in line with middle of ship, would have better view of its shape via star light.
Depending on timing, it is also possible that by the time survivor's eyes got accustomed to star light, the stern had returned to an angle similar to one prior to breakup which would explain reports from those who say it didn't breakup.
In a modern investigation, the location of the witness is analysed to see exactly what the person could and couldn't have seen from that point of view. And such a technique could have provided proper weighting to the diverse "opinions" of survivors on what they saw.
Thats false,in 20 anniversary documentary they never said ship seperated during the descent. With model shown ship seperated almost fully at the surface and then bow bringed the stern down due to double bottom being connected and when the stern was almost fully submerged they seperated.
The ship also broke slowly and then stern just slowly settled back.Also every survivor heard those noices when ship broke up,but most thought it was boilers exploding.
Incredible job Sam great video keep up the good work 👍
A great video and interesting piece of information! 😀
I don't know if you've seen it or not but about 10 years ago there was a new documentary on the Titanic where they found a piece of the keel that had Separated from the ship and did some research and actually found that the Titanic didn't fully break up on the surface it actually split at a shallower angled then previously suspected and then started sinking from the middle crushing in on itself and split into as it was sinking below the surface This was also an explanation for why the Stern was so heavily damaged compared to the bow The damage from the ship crushing in on itself caused the Upper deck peel back From the force of the water as it the Stern sank
Hey everybody! You are a little cutie. And funny. And smart. I really enjoy your titanic videos. Thankyou for blessing us with your knowledge.
To the people that said the ship went down in one piece were you there??? Did you actually see the ship go down??? No and no!!! If you have most or all of the survivors saying that it broke in half what do you think you should believe??? And especially since now there's images of it actually being broken in half... If you weren't there you don't know
It's crazy that someone who wasn't even there tried telling a survivor what they did or didn't see. That survivor should have told that person "were you there? No? Then sit down and shut up." The nerve of that person.
If historians are required to have been present at an event in order to have an opinion, that rather makes the study of history prior to around 1960 impossible.
As pointed out the passengers didn’t “see” the ship break apart in the dark - at best they inferred this from its dark shape moving against the stars and the noise being made.
In the 1970’s book “Raise the Titanic" Clive Cussler theorized the noise was the boilers breaking free and tearing through the ship. He needed an intact Titanic for his story but probably also believed it.
If you read "A Night to Remember," Walter Lord mentioned the loud noise was from the machinery breaking loose and smashing down through the bulkheads. This was the most commonly accepted explanation up until the ship was found. On the parts of the ship that are still intact, the machinery is still in its' position.
Interesting did not know that - must be where Clive Cussler got the idea from.
Hey Sam, have you thought about a video on the Queen Elizabeth? You make some awesome vids.
i can imagine how shamed the people that tried to prevent passengers from talking about the seperation after the ship was discovered in two pieces and the hate they got for it
Great understanding of the break up! Makes a lot sense! Imagine how those who saw it break up! Had to live through that horrible lie! Until it was discovered in 1985!! Most of them didn’t even live till then. If only we had that kind of technology a lot sooner! Would of changed history forever ♾️
I`ve often wondered whether those responsible would have settled for 73 years, or would they have expected longer or that it should never be found. The last thing they needed was an early advance in technology which would leave them exposed, that they should all have passed on would be a minimum requirement.
Makes me wonder how events might've played out if the Titanic hadn't broken in two.
It would have still sank
More relevant would be what if Ballard didn`t find the damned thing>
11:55: "And now all of you watching this video can see how deep it went"
I see what you did there.
I was reading my "i survived the sinking of titanic" book and the titanic in the book did not split
Despite striking an iceberg and sinking the Titanic was still considered to be significant engineering achievement and a very well built ship. Since it sank at night most people couldn't see that it broke plus there was just a lot of confusion.
"was still considered to be significant engineering achievement " Says who?
She couldn't maintain the speed of the faster Cunard Liners, *still* used steam engines when turbines were obviously the way of the future, had an undersized rudder which was of a 1840's design and hopelessly inadequate for 1912 (which is why she turned badly) and pioneered nothing.
Titanic most definitely wasn't pushing the envelope as far as design of ocean liners went in 1912. White Star Line themselves knew they couldn't keep up with the technology race and therefore went for size and luxury.
"and a very well built ship." Well, aside from the cheap low-quality plates and countless of weak rivets to hurry up and finish an already delayed ship. They had to cut corners here and there.
@@McLarenMercedes Titanic was not built for speed. It was built for comfort. Lusitania and Mauritania were partly financed by the Admiralty. Therefore, they had strict design criteria they had to meet including in the area of speed. They were also built tall and narrow making them borderline unstable. Titanic was much more stable. After receiving damage from the ice it still took over 2 hours to sink and never listed badly enough to prevent launching life boats. I'd still say Titanic was significant engineering achievement. I would also say Titanic was handled very poorly for a ship of that size due to the physics of ships of that size being not well understood yet.
There should be a new inquiry into the biggest lingering Titanic question: "Why did Rose refuse to make room for Jack to float on the door with her?"
She had been safely aboard a lifeboat with her mother, but decided to jump back on the sinking ship to be with Jack.
Did she want him alive long enough to her complaining about the cold and singing a tone-deaf version of "🎶Come Josephine in my Flying Machine 🎵," while he froze to death?
Indeed, i think it's even probable that, given he was already outside that early during the sinking, while other 3rd class passengers were still down there (correct me if i'm wrong), he would have had enough chance to get on some collapsible or something.