00:00The look out shouts, Iceberg right ahead!
00:05The Titanic strikes the ice.
00:08Water starts flooding in.
00:09Third class passengers are locked up.
00:12There aren't enough lifeboats for everyone.
00:14Panic sets in.
00:16Violins are playing.
00:17The ship sinks.
00:18Well, we all know the story of the movie Titanic like the back of our hand by now.
00:24But what if I told you that Hollywood lied to us?
00:27To tell the real story of what happened that freezing night in 1912, we need to rewind
00:32a bit.
00:35The lookout shouts, Iceberg right ahead!
00:38Yep, that part was true.
00:40Just before 11.40 at night, Frederick Fleet noticed something darker than the sea directly
00:45ahead.
00:46As the ship got closer, he realized it was an iceberg.
00:51The engines were quickly reversed and the ship turned sharply.
00:54Instead of hitting it head on, Titanic scraped along the side of the berg, sprinkling ice
00:59on the forward deck.
01:01If you remember, in the movie, Jack and Rose are having a romantic moment when they feel
01:06the ship shudder after hitting the iceberg.
01:10Everything shakes as if they were in the middle of a light earthquake.
01:14Some real-life passengers reported feeling something similar after the impact.
01:18But according to Titanic survivor Frank Prentiss, it wasn't exactly like that.
01:24He said there was no impact as such and it all felt more like slamming on your car brakes.
01:30The ship stopped and that was that.
01:33Some people even slept right through the collision, confirming that there wasn't such an abrupt
01:37impact.
01:39Mr. Prentiss, curious about what had happened, left his cabin and went out to the deck.
01:44When he got there, all he could see was a little ice on the surface, not the towering
01:49iceberg that Jack and Rose saw.
01:52As we all know by now, the real damage happened below the waterline, where the iceberg had
01:57a jagged spur that slashed a 300-foot gash in Titanic's hull.
02:04Once the crew realized how severe the damage was, they immediately began sending distress
02:08calls to nearby ships, asking for help.
02:11At some point in the movie, the radio operator goes to the captain and says there is only
02:16one ship nearby, the RMS Carpathia, which later ends up rescuing many passengers.
02:23But in real life, there were more ships around.
02:26It's believed that the SS Californian was only about 23 miles away.
02:31This ship might have actually seen the Titanic sinking, or at the very least, seen its rockets
02:36exploding high in the sky.
02:39Yet for reasons we will never fully understand, they didn't try to help.
02:46Let's get back to the story.
02:48Now people need to get off the ship.
02:50At 12.45, lifeboat number 7 was the first to be lowered.
02:54Just like in the movie, women and children were told to go first.
02:58But in reality, some women were hesitant and even refused to get into the lifeboats.
03:04Mr. Prentice said this happened mainly for two reasons.
03:07First, these lifeboats were high and passengers were terrified of the 70-foot drop from the
03:12deck to the ocean below.
03:15And second, most women didn't believe the Titanic would actually sink.
03:19It was called unsinkable after all, so the idea of getting into a lifeboat seemed pointless
03:25at the time.
03:28This mindset probably explains why Eloise Smith, a first-class passenger, recalled that
03:33there was no panic or chaos at first.
03:36Other survivors backed this up, saying that no women or kids were crying.
03:41The one thing that was indeed concerning, at least for the crew, was the possibility
03:46that the lifeboats might buckle under too much weight.
03:50This is one of the theories why the first few lifeboats left carrying only a fraction
03:55of their full capacity.
03:57Like lifeboat number 7, which only carried 27 people in it, even though it could hold
04:02up to 65.
04:05In total, Titanic had 20 lifeboats, which could carry about half of the 2,200 people
04:10on board that night.
04:12But that didn't happen, and now we know the passengers had no idea there weren't
04:17enough for everyone.
04:19As women were calmly getting into the first lifeboats, musicians headed up to the deck.
04:24Their only goal was to play and keep the passengers calm.
04:28That's a pretty well-known fact, but the real story is that some survivors said they
04:33never saw or heard the band.
04:35No violinists whatsoever.
04:39It's not like Hollywood misled you, though.
04:41The musicians did play for over two hours after the ship had hit the iceberg.
04:46So maybe these passengers were just too panicked to notice the songs or the musicians started
04:51playing later than we think.
04:56Now it's time to talk about the terrible treatment that third-class passengers received.
05:01The movie portrayed the crew as cruel, locking the less fortunate below deck like animals,
05:07giving them no chance to reach the lifeboats and save their lives.
05:11But the official inquiry into the disaster suggested that wasn't true.
05:15I mean, yes, fewer third-class passengers survived compared to those in first and second
05:20class, but there were other factors at play.
05:24Many third-class passengers were reluctant to leave the ship, clinging to their belongings
05:29and had a harder time making their way up from the cabins, which were at extreme ends
05:34of the ship.
05:38Some survivors confirmed that they were not locked up.
05:40In fact, it was quite the opposite.
05:43Mrs. George Wabi, a Lebanese woman traveling in third class, said that when chaos had erupted,
05:49some brave crew members and well-dressed first-class passengers had actually helped her get up
05:54to the first-class deck and eventually onto a lifeboat.
05:59At first, the Titanic was sinking slowly, bit by bit.
06:04Rescuers reported seeing the water rising and hearing pops and cracks.
06:08Then there was a loud boom!
06:11Some said there had been just one explosion, while others described it as a series of smaller
06:16explosions, which they'd thought had been the bulkheads giving way.
06:20And there's also a group of people who said they had only heard a rumbling sound.
06:25So not everyone agreed on the sound they had heard, but one thing is a fact.
06:30By 2.18 in the morning, the lights on Titanic went out, and the ship plunged into complete
06:35darkness.
06:37As the bow continued sinking, the stern rose out of the water, putting immense pressure
06:42on the middle of the ship.
06:44This caused the Titanic to break in two.
06:47In James Cameron's movie, this moment is pretty dramatic, with the ship sinking almost
06:52straight down into the water.
06:55But in reality, the break probably happened at a much lower angle, likely just below the
07:00waterline.
07:01Even so, it tilted enough that people couldn't stay on their feet and started sliding into
07:06the water.
07:09One interesting thing is that it wasn't until the wreckage was found in 1985 that it was
07:14finally confirmed the Titanic had broken apart.
07:18Up until then, survivors had given conflicting stories.
07:22At least eight survivors claimed they had seen the ship split.
07:26Emily Ryerson, a first-class passenger, described it as if the Titanic had been sliced in half
07:32with a knife.
07:34But there was also a small number of witnesses that insisted Titanic had gone down intact.
07:40At the time, this theory was more accepted because most people still didn't believe that
07:45the supposedly indestructible ship could break in half.
07:50So why the conflicting reports?
07:53Okay, so what you don't see in the movies, for obvious reasons, is how incredibly dark
07:58it was when the tragedy happened.
08:00It was like being in a room with no light, where you can only make out shapes and shadows.
08:05That's what it was like on the lifeboats.
08:08This means passengers couldn't really see what was happening.
08:12And most of those who were close to the ship either lost their lives or were too focused
08:16on trying to survive to pay attention to the details of the wreck.
08:21Although James Cameron's film didn't fully capture how terrifyingly dark the disaster
08:26truly was, the 2012 TV series, Titanic, did a better job of showing the pitch-black horror
08:33of that night.
08:35Even then, the reality was much darker and more terrifying than either of these two productions
08:40could portray.
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