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Titanic Secrets of the Shipwreck S01E01
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00:00The Titanic is the world's most famous shipwreck.
00:04The iceberg was enormous.
00:06As it swept past Titanic, the lights of the bridge lit it up.
00:09Absolutely brilliant white.
00:10This is the story of those who've tried to find it.
00:14First, you've got to recognize we're taking a voyage into history.
00:18He had a call name called Cadillac Jack.
00:21He loved to gamble.
00:22The Titanic was a big one.
00:24He occasionally joked that he was the biggest shipowner in the world,
00:28but most of the ships were on the seabed.
00:30It's a story of incredible scientific innovation.
00:34I said, well, I don't have the equipment to do this.
00:37And he said, build it.
00:39Nothing like that has ever been done, to my knowledge, in oceanography.
00:44A story of Cold War intrigue.
00:46The primary purpose of the expedition to find the Titanic was not to find the Titanic.
00:52It was 100% completely classified.
00:54And it led to one of the greatest discoveries in history.
00:59You had to stay focused.
01:00We were looking for something that might be kind of small.
01:03And you want to see it when it shows up.
01:05For every generation, Titanic is reborn.
01:07When Bob Ballard found the wreck in 1985, this was another whole new chapter.
01:12At the time it was built, Titanic was the biggest ship in the world.
01:25And yet, four days into her maiden voyage, she collided with a giant iceberg.
01:32The sinking of the Titanic is the world's first global news story.
01:37On the night in question, which is the 14th of April, it was a Sunday night.
01:48It was incredibly dark.
01:50There was no moon in the sky.
01:53The iceberg was enormous.
01:55They go hard to starboard to try to avoid it.
01:58As it swept past Titanic, the lights of the bridge lit it up.
02:02Absolutely brilliant white.
02:03It looks for a second as if the Titanic is turning enough in order to avoid this iceberg.
02:10But at the last second, they graze the ship.
02:15The iceberg opens up a significant section of the Titanic to the North Atlantic water.
02:20And as soon as this happens, it is mathematically certain
02:26that Titanic will founder, that the Titanic will sink.
02:29In 1912, the sinking of the Titanic was considered the greatest maritime disaster in history.
02:40And in the weeks that followed, the quest for answers began.
02:46From the first moment that the world realised with horror what had happened,
02:51they wanted to find the ship.
02:53And they wanted to find Titanic as fast as possible.
02:56There were all kinds of ideas at the time of trying to raise her,
03:00involving balloons that can sort of lift up the wreck.
03:05Sending a barge to the crash site, getting a crane with a hook and winding the Titanic up.
03:10Other more sophisticated ones later on were using diesel bags, which is slightly lighter than water,
03:16to start to raise the Titanic.
03:19But the idea of raising the Titanic was soon abandoned.
03:22Submarine technology in the 1910s can't even really be described as being in its infancy.
03:30It's at fetus stage at this point.
03:32And it does become clear very quickly that any attempt to find the Titanic is beyond the remit of
03:38the technology available in the 1910s.
03:40There's also really not as much of an interest in the Titanic for various reasons.
03:44Two years after Titanic sinking, a far greater tragedy took place.
03:53Titanic disaster is then more or less forgotten because of the First World War.
03:59That level of suffering on that scale dwarfs interest in the Titanic for a very long time.
04:05And that continues really through the Jazz Age and the Great Depression.
04:08And it's not until the 1940s, 1950s that you see a massive resurgence in interest in the Titanic.
04:14There's this remarkable book that comes out by a chap called Walter Lord,
04:18and it's called A Night to Remember.
04:20And this is made into, at the time, the most expensive movie in history,
04:26premieres to great acclaim.
04:28That really reintroduces Titanic to a whole new audience, and it keeps the memory of Titanic alive.
04:35There is a feeling that the generation of the Titanic is starting to die out.
04:39There is growing nostalgia in Britain for the Edwardian era and for stories of British bravery
04:47and Edwardian stiff upper lip.
04:49There is a sense that that world is coming to an end, and the Titanic becomes the arc of that story.
04:56And as interest in the Titanic rejuvenates, the final piece of the puzzle,
04:59the end of the story, is what happened to the wreck.
05:05Titanic was known to be some 400 miles from land, so she's a very long way from anywhere,
05:16which would provide very difficult conditions to finding the wreck to begin with.
05:22And the other issue is she's right down at the bottom of a bank, at a sea plateau, very deep.
05:30In the early 50s, rumours began to circulate of the first serious mission to find the Titanic.
05:41In 1953, a few newspaper articles start appearing about a salvage firm,
05:50Rist and Beazley attempting to find the treasure of the Titanic.
05:57Possessions that could have been owned by the very, very wealthy on board,
06:02and they're using explosives to try and find the ship.
06:06There was an edition of a book that was encrusted in diamonds and gems.
06:14So the newspapers are quick to pick this up as one of the things that Rist and Beazley are on the hunt for.
06:23The company was named after its founder,
06:25a man with close ties to the British Admiralty and a reputation for secrecy.
06:30Rist and Beazley is something of an enigma. Not very much is known about his personal life,
06:39or indeed his working life, because he famously hated publicity.
06:45The only photograph I've been able to produce, which I got from my former boss,
06:52was taken off his passport after he died. He occasionally joked that he was the biggest
06:58shipowner in the world, but most of the ships were on the seabed. That was the way he was. He was
07:05something of a gambler. He was very willing to take a gamble on something to do with Rex.
07:10He was quite a character, and obviously he knew a tremendous lot about the Titanic,
07:16about all these shipwrecks after World War II. I mean, think of all the ships that had gone down,
07:21and the money to be made for salvage if you went out there.
07:25It seems Rist and Beazley went to Canada with a ship called The Help. This started to interest
07:36people who wondered what this ship was doing with these explosive charges. And the fishermen
07:43and people in Canada could not really understand what this ship was doing. And this is when the
07:50stories started to circulate about Rist and Beazley and the Titanic.
07:57The British Admiralty reportedly imposed a security blackout on Rist and Beazley's activities in the area.
08:05People put two and two together. There was this somewhat secretive company. There was this
08:11fantastic wreck that everyone knew about. And there was this treasure, the star-studded gems.
08:18It's an inviting idea, a company from Southampton, treasure hunters looking for the wreck of the
08:23Titanic. There's enough possibility in the idea that allows us to speculate indeed that is what
08:31they were looking for, the Titanic. If the rumours were true, Beazley's mission was doomed to failure.
08:38His locating device, the ASDIC would not have worked at anything like that depth.
08:44Back in those days, the deepest was about 894 feet. The Titanic was over 12,000 feet in depth. It would
08:55have been the most complex, the most difficult salvage ever achieved.
09:02Rist and Beazley neither confirmed nor denied that he was searching for the Titanic.
09:10Of course, to the popular side, there was only one wreck on the Grand Bank, or near the Grand Bank,
09:17and that's the Titanic. In fact, there are hundreds of wrecks on the Grand Bank, but they thought they
09:24must be after the Titanic. It would be several decades before Rist and Beazley, or anyone else,
09:33could have had the technology available. Remote operated vehicles, such as the ones that found the
09:40Titanic eventually, just weren't developed. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, several plans were put forward to
09:49find the Titanic. But these were later abandoned, largely for financial reasons. Then, in 1979,
09:56a man finally stepped forward with a serious proposal. A millionaire oil executive from Texas,
10:04named Jack Grimm. He had a call name called Cadillac Jack. He always drove Cadillacs. You know,
10:13he loved to gamble. And of course, that's part of the predisposition of an adventurer. Jack was a
10:20successful oil and gas man, and he had lots of money. I mean, he had 300 to 400 wells pumping oil,
10:29so his income was pretty great. He was fun-loving. He loved history. You know, anytime he felt like that
10:37there was an adventure coming, his eyes would just dance. He took that money, and he spent it to continue
10:45to be an adventurer. He spent everything he had on his searches. One project, he was after Bigfoot,
10:53and the next time, he was after Noah's Ark. Loch Ness Monster. I mean, he loved that. Jack, how long did
11:01you dream about this expedition? You've done many interesting things. Well, it had haunted me,
11:06the story of the Titanic had haunted me from childhood, and my mother and father, who vividly
11:11recall the great accident. And I just, I was raised with the legend and the story about the Titanic.
11:19He and my brother would always go out to those mines, those abandoned mines, and search and
11:26and look for treasures. We went up into Nevada, and that was where he found the old newspaper article
11:34that showed about the Titanic sinking. There was a newspaper that was found by he and his son in a
11:42mine in Nevada, and there was the report of the sinking of the Titanic. He immediately, immediately
11:51looked at that and said, well, I'm going to go find it.
11:56We have struck an iceberg sinking by the head. Losing power cannot last much longer.
12:18When the Titanic went down, nations around the world were stunned. No other modern event has
12:28inspired such a steady and overwhelming flow of books and novels and poems and songs and movies.
12:38Lost in the depths of the dark and frozen sea, it's captivated the public imagination for decades.
12:46And now has inspired a daring team of scientists and explorers to launch an unprecedented expedition
12:59of historical discovery. In early 1980, a millionaire from Texas began assembling an elite
13:07team to attempt to find the Titanic. They would be the subject of a major documentary narrated by Orson
13:14Wells. The lead scientist was William Ryan of Columbia University.
13:20I started at Columbia in 1962 as a graduate student and have stayed on as staff, ending up going to sea
13:28on research ships probably for two or three years at sea on ships in all the world's oceans except the Arctic.
13:36I came back from an Alvin diving expedition on the Galapagos. I was delayed at what was then
13:43Idlewild Airport here in New York. The past the time I picked up this issue of the New York Times
13:50and reading through it, way in the back page was a tiny little article that a millionaire
13:56from Texas was going to search for the Titanic. All I knew was his name was Grimm and he was from Abilene,
14:04Texas. I bought a postcard and a stamp and I wrote him a postcard. He's a wildcat oil man, very successful,
14:15used to taking huge gambles and he was also a world-class poker player. I knew nothing of his
14:23previous famous interest that he was going to find Noah's Ark or he was going to look for Bigfoot or
14:29look for Atlantis. I learned that all later.
14:31The search is being financed by Texas oil man Jack Grimm, a daring investor well known for backing
14:39adventurous and difficult expeditions. And that's one of the answers that we hope to find when we
14:47reach the Titanic. When I got back to my office here at Lamont, the phone had been ringing. It was from
14:57Texas. My postcard addressed to Mr. Grimm Abilene, Texas had found him and he wanted to talk to me.
15:05I made it clear to him that I was going to bring to him the most qualified professionals
15:13in the United States with this near bottom deep toe technology that required to find a very small
15:22ship on the bottom of a very deep ocean. News of Jack Grimm's search for the Titanic was soon
15:28captivating the world's media. It's a big dark ocean. The uncertainty if you take the
15:35technological and scientific activities will be coordinated by Dr. William Ryan from Columbia
15:41University's Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory. That radius of the difference of those positions,
15:47you have a real piece of real estate the size of Rhode Island. But behind the scenes, Jack Grimm's team
15:54faced a huge challenge, getting hold of the technology needed to search the depths where the Titanic was
16:01believed to be. He wanted to find the Titanic that summer. I said, well, I don't have the equipment
16:11to do this. And he said, build it. I think history should remember Jack Grimm for his spirit of
16:24adventure, being willing to take a risk. And he did that over and over again in his life to be able to
16:30say, just do it. We can do it. Let's try. And the Titanic search took two unique men getting together
16:41and having a can-do attitude and going forward with it. Well, the big problem was, uh, first it's in 13,
16:4712 to 13,000 feet of water. And that's, uh, we don't have many kinds of surveying equipment that can
16:53work in water that deep. And we built the device
16:56in a few months. I called up Mr. Grimm. He was interested. And he said, but I want to do video
17:04photography of the wreck. I said, we've never done deep sea video. He said, do it.
17:11We followed up with a camera system that could also withstand pressures of four to five thousand
17:16pounds per square inch. Both of these vehicles, both the sonar for mapping the ocean floor and the camera
17:23for photographing the ocean floor had to be tied on the end of a cable, 18,000 feet long, towed behind the ship.
17:32The camera that Jack used, they built that camera and put it together on the ship going to search for the Titanic.
17:42It was just amazing. Nothing like that had ever been done, to my knowledge, in oceanography until that
17:49little camera system with little handheld flashes put in heavy duty housing that could take the bottom
17:56of the sea floor pressure. And they did it. It was amazing. Jack Grimm was confident that his team of
18:04experts and their brand new technology would finally solve the mystery of the lost Titanic.
18:10Well, men, first, you've got to recognize the fact that we're taking a voyage into history,
18:16and that's just what it is. Hopefully we can find the wreck and gain access to the person's office.
18:22It's my film. If I want to talk on and on and on, I think I will. Jack Grimm's missions received a
18:27wealth of public attention. But this was nothing compared with the attention the Titanic received on
18:34its maiden voyage nearly 70 years earlier. On Titanic's sailing day, which was Wednesday,
18:42the 10th of April 1912, she was due to sail at noon. As she gets ready to sail, crowds begin flocking on
18:51the quayside to wave her off as she heads off into the great sea. She is a vast ship. She's sparkling white.
19:00The press are interested in this sailing of the Titanic because of how many members of the upper
19:07classes will be traveling. So you have the wealthiest people in the world like John Jacob
19:12Astor. You have film stars like Dorothy Gibson. You have tennis players. You have advisor to the
19:21President of the United States of America. But you also have some people that are leaving Britain
19:28to start a new life in the United States where they think that life will be better for them.
19:37So in a sense, the Titanic is almost like a microcosm of the whole of society in 1912.
19:47At the time that Titanic actually is steaming down what we call Southampton water,
19:51the passengers were sitting down to lunch. It was the widest dining room afloat. It was 92 feet wide.
19:59It had these white tablecloths. The whole of Titanic is a kind of bespoke, handmade, beautiful craft.
20:06And she really gave people the impression of a country house on land. There was a swimming pool,
20:12there was a gymnasium, there was a squash court. Miles and miles of electrical cables and lots and lots of
20:18hot water pipes and things that people didn't even have in their homes in 1912. There are concerts
20:25in the afternoon and in the evening for first and second class passengers. Everything is going smoothly.
20:32Many people were actually sitting on the deck in the sunshine, reading a book, chatting, drinking tea,
20:38coffee, that sort of thing. So it was very relaxed. And really what they were doing was killing time
20:43until their next meal. It was really a sort of eating and chatting fest. The first two days,
20:48Wednesday the 10th of April and Thursday the 11th. There's really no cause for alarm. No one ever
20:53thought that there would be panicked messages going out at 2am, 1am in the middle of the Atlantic for
21:01come quickly danger. Come at once. We've struck a berg. It's a CQD old man. We have struck iceberg.
21:11Sinking fast. Come to our assistance. Titanic's first distress message is not sent until nearly midnight,
21:19about 47 minutes after the collision. The message itself says, we are the Titanic sinking. Have your
21:26boats ready. This is a shock to all of the shipping that hears it on the North Atlantic that night.
21:32We are sinking fast. Passengers being put into boats. Women and children in boats cannot last much
21:38longer. This is Titanic. CQD. Engine room flooded. They would then send out the coordinates that they
21:46thought that Titanic was at. The trouble was those coordinates were wrong. The fact that searches for
21:53the Titanic will be starting where the Titanic said it was that night in 1912 means that they are
21:59starting in the wrong place. It will unintentionally leave a red herring for decades for people trying
22:04to find the Titanic. In the summer of 1980, when Jack Grimm and his team set off to find the Titanic,
22:23they were unaware that an error made by her wireless operators 68 years earlier would make their search
22:30that much more difficult. On July 7th, 1980, a 39-member crew assembles at the Tracor Marine Shipyard
22:39at Port Everglades, Florida in preparation for an historic voyage. Using the most advanced oceanographic
22:46equipment available, they will scour the ocean floor in an area 300 miles southeast of Cape Race,
22:53Newfoundland, somewhere 13,000 feet below in the dark icy waters.
22:58The work of the scientific team would be captured by a documentary film crew headed by explorer and
23:06producer Mike Harris. But the filmmakers and the scientists didn't always see eye to eye.
23:12Mike Harris and his film crew videoed all the activity we did in the lab, launching the instruments
23:19and so on. When we arrived in Florida to find that Mike Harris had brought up this
23:26monkey that was to come to see with us. And I guess this was for their documentary film to entertain.
23:33It was supposed to hold its nose as if it was going underwater whenever somebody said to the monkey,
23:40Titanic. I said, if the monkey comes, we don't. This is not a circus. We're going out into high seas,
23:50very dangerous environment. The Titanic was a graveyard, enormous loss of life,
23:57and it was to be respected. We have to take this with the uttermost professionalism. And that was agreed upon.
24:05With all gear and personnel loaded on board and the technical equipment fully operational,
24:10H.J.W. Fay makes preparations to save.
24:14Have a good trip. Relax. Don't hit any icebergs. Thanks.
24:19Steady. Steady. Let's go get her. Very good, sir.
24:25We're gonna find the Titanic in her cold and lonely grave.
24:31Yes, we'll find the Titanic with her cowards and her brain.
24:37We've only told the story of the tragedy and glory of that great ship Titanic at the bottom of the sea.
24:51Approaching the site historically considered to be the location of the Titanic's
24:55last coordinates, the researchers launch a series of three transponders. They are dropped into the
25:01ocean at five-mile intervals in a triangular pattern around the site.
25:07Thus, in position on the ocean floor, the transponders will serve as constant
25:13reference points for the search operation as signals are sent out from the ship at regular
25:18intervals and then bounce back. This will allow the scientists to pinpoint precise locations
25:25of objects thought to be the Titanic.
25:35While the team were aware that the Titanic's last coordinates were most probably not accurate,
25:42they did not know the extent of the error.
25:45Because of the uncertainties of where the Titanic distress position was, where the lifeboats were,
25:51we would have to search an area 30 by 20 miles, 600 square miles.
25:58We started the survey of the bottom. The sea mark was towed one to 200 meters above the seabed
26:05on a 25,000-foot-long cable. In this animation, a signal is sent out by the ship's echo sounder and then
26:15bounced back by the transponders. And then the echoes came back. If the Titanic was sitting on the seabed
26:25and the sound was broadcast to it, its hull would create an acoustic shadow behind it.
26:31So we were looking for some high-standing, bright target that would cast an acoustic shadow.
26:39We went up past the coordinates that had been telegraphed from the Titanic by Harold Bride,
26:45that fateful night. Drove for 10, 20 nautical miles. We had encountered an enormous
26:54canyon that cut diagonally through the survey area.
26:56So we made some passes down the canyon, but no big shadows. There had to be some navigation issue.
27:06The Titanic was to change its clocks to local noon at midnight. Maybe there had been some
27:13screw-up on the map of the nautical chart. William Ryan was right. There was an error on the nautical
27:23chart dating back to the 15th of April 1912, when Titanic sent out a distress signal on her state-of-the-art
27:31Marconi machine. The Marconi machine communicated in dots and dashes, which we call Morse code.
27:39It was operated by young men at the time who were, they would kind of be the geeks of today, if that
27:44makes sense. And the interesting thing is, they all knew each other, because they were all trained
27:49in this place, they nicknamed the Tin Tabernacle in Ireland. All of these young operators have a
27:55similar sense of humor. They're industry in-jokes. So one of the things they do is that they make fun
28:01of the upper classes and the way that they speak to each other. So they use kind of posh ORP,
28:08public boarding school lingo to each other. So that's why when you see some of the transcripts
28:14off the Titanic's messages, it will be one of the Titanic operators saying,
28:19all well here, old boy. How are you, old chap? Yes, chap. Thank you.
28:23They jokingly call each other old man. And that actually plays out
28:26rather interestingly when we come to discuss the actual sinking.
28:30CQD, old man. We've struck iceberg. Sinking fast. Come to our assistance.
28:37Position latitude 41.46 north. Longitude 50.14 west. Cannot last much longer.
28:46Titanic's distress position is actually wrong. The reason for this is that when the officers
28:53on Titanic took the star sights at about 7.30 on the evening before the collision,
28:59they all matched so they knew they were correct. However, Pittman is quite a young officer.
29:05He makes a mistake of one minute in transferring the star sight time to Titanic time. And that one minute
29:13equated to an error in longitude. This caused enormous problems for the future. Because what it did
29:20is it effectively gave the wrong map position for where Titanic's wreck would eventually be found.
29:27In spite of the error in the nautical chart, by late July, Jack Grimm's sonar had detected
29:38several possible locations for the Titanic.
29:41The canyon had an area's relief of six, 800 feet of vertical relief into which the Titanic could be hidden.
29:52In those first five or six days,
29:55only blotches occurred. No shadows. The amplitudes of the feature looked to be quite reasonable.
30:04That's our little banana. For a possible target, right. Chiquita banana.
30:07We would label them target one, target two, target three, target four.
30:14But the team were unable to confirm if any of these targets were in fact the Titanic.
30:19And they soon faced challenges of a different kind.
30:22I don't know, Chuckie. You got some small problems.
30:27Got a hurricane heading this way and a gale heading this way. I don't know what's going to hit us first.
30:31I think that's great. Doesn't it? Charming. Just charming.
30:36I think that it's hard for people to appreciate how challenging it is
30:40to tow a heavy piece of equipment several miles down on the end of a cable in high winds and high
30:49waves. It's dangerous for the ship. It's very difficult for navigation.
30:55The weather got atrocious. We recovered the vehicle, weathered out a gale for two or three days,
31:01put the vehicle back down, continued the search. And eventually we had covered not only the whole
31:07SOS CQD location, but we covered much of the canyon. And as no real big target with acoustic shadow
31:15appeared, there was a bit of a, it'll be on the next watch, it'll be on the next watch, it'll be on
31:20the next watch. The search goes on while the exhausted crew maintains a desperate night vigil.
31:27William Ryan and his colleague Fred Speece began to wonder if the Titanic was further away from the
31:35distress position than they'd anticipated when planning the expedition.
31:40The place at which Titanic thought it was at the time it sent out its SOS signal is right here at
31:51this spot we've labeled Site One. Let's put a marker on there. Next nearest ship was the Californian.
31:59Titanic could conceivably have been up as far north as here if the Californian's position was right.
32:04I finally encouraged Dr. Speece, let's go further east. Why were the lifeboats found so far east of
32:12the CQD position? Totally hypothetical. So we would put one track way out on the eastern edge
32:19of our survey box going from north to south and off on the starboard transducer and suddenly was a very
32:29loud crisp reflector. Bang, bang, bang, bang. And then we were past it. When we examined the sonar record,
32:40it was a linear object but only 600 feet long. Titanic was over 800 feet long.
32:46It was widely assumed that the Titanic had sunk intact. This object was not the full length of the
32:53Titanic. That was a big concern, whatever this object was. I think most pressing, both to Dr.
33:00Speece and to Mr. Grimm, was the distance from the distress position. To Dr. Speece, who'd been a
33:07submariner in World War II, widely awarded for his duties, who had surveyed for the Navy other sunken ships,
33:15a navigation area that large could not have occurred. And to Mr. Grimm, 600 feet was not long enough.
33:25And so it was written off as perhaps a pile of rocks, scattered debris and rocks. And that was the
33:32description of target number nine. So at the end of the expedition, we had 14 targets and none verified.
33:40This crisp, 600 foot long object is the bow section of the Titanic. We did not know that.
33:50On Jack Grimm's first mission, his sonar passed right over the bow of the Titanic.
34:08But this target was written off because at the time, no one knew the extent of the error in Titanic's
34:14distress position. And it was widely accepted that the ship had sunk intact.
34:22If you watch any movie about the sinking of the Titanic before the 1980s, they will show it sinking
34:29intact. And that was really the established narrative that came out of the inquiries
34:33into the Titanic sinking. At the time it was built, it seemed inconceivable
34:39that a ship the size of the Titanic would sink, let alone split in two.
34:44As the Titanic rises progressively over the skyline of East Belfast throughout 1909, 1910 and 1911,
34:51the men who are working on it are creating what they know will be the largest man-made moving
34:56object thus far in human history. The ship was utterly enormous. She's 800 feet long. She's 10 decks
35:03high. She's got enormous funnels big enough for a train to pass through. They never believed that
35:10Titanic would sink. There was a big inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic soon afterwards.
35:16During the inquiry, the officers are all asked, did Titanic break in two?
35:21Now, possibly in order to protect the reputation of the White Star Line, or possibly because they
35:26actually believed it, they say no, the Titanic did not break in two. And their testimony was believed.
35:32That becomes the narrative that is established for years between the sinking and the discovery
35:38of the ship. This leads to confusion, however, when it comes to attempts to find the Titanic,
35:42because those searching for it are under the impression they are going to find one intact,
35:48882-foot object, when in fact, that is not how it will look when they find it at all.
35:54In June 1981, 69 years after the Titanic sank, Jack Grimm's team embarked on a second mission to find the wreck.
36:05If they found it, everyone assumed it would be in one piece.
36:09We sail June 28th from Massachusetts aboard the Texas A&M research vessel, the Gyre.
36:14She's gallant and she serves us well, like a faithful Labrador retriever.
36:21She wants so much to please.
36:22It's an unprecedented second trip. We've been given a reprieve.
36:28We're going back to find it this time. Hopefully we can find the hull basically intact, sitting
36:35on its keel on the bottom of the ocean in some 12,000 to 13,000 feet of water.
36:42The area we're interested in is this area where we found the 14 targets last year,
36:48of which there are six high priority. There are two or three that are outstanding targets,
36:53and we will go back to those targets and map them in detail.
36:58We had the right equipment. We had the side scan sonar system. We had the camera system.
37:02We had everything we needed. All we needed was good weather and being able to cover all the bases.
37:09Fred Spieth had submitted a proposal to Mr. Grimm that he would use his deep toe instrument.
37:16It had cameras and a TV snapshot camera in it, and it had a magnetometer. So if he could get
37:25his vehicle to within two or three hundred meters of one of our targets, he could decide from video
37:32and the magnetometer that it was a metal hull, a metal wreckage, or not.
37:38Launching the deep toe takes all hands in the cook. The device is out of harm's way once it is in the
37:45water, but each launch and recovery is done much like two porcupines making love, slowly and carefully.
37:52Yeah, but number 13, that's the one we're looking at next.
37:54Number 13 is coming up next in a couple of hours.
37:57Yeah, this is really one of our number one priority targets. Well, this is roughly 900 feet long,
38:03and the Titanic was 882. So it's pretty close, and it shows a relief, I think, of a hundred and some feet.
38:10And in the next five or ten minutes, we're going to be by this with the magnetometer. And it should show
38:16up over there on a scale if there's any metal associated with this particular target.
38:22And by one by one, he visited these targets. And one by one, no magnetic signature,
38:29no magnetic signature, no magnetic signature. He ran up and down the canyon floor,
38:35no magnetic signature. They're knocking off 13 of the targets. He said to Mr. Grimm,
38:43it doesn't exist here. We have just passed target 13, one of our top priority targets,
38:49and there has been no change in the Earth's magnetic field. 13 is a dry hole, so we're heading up the line.
38:57Almost even there. Everyone aboard relaxes and passes the time on the long stretches between
39:05targets in different ways. Jack and some of the men play poker. The days race by, and it feels like
39:12sitting in traffic in a New York taxi with a meter running. Having eliminated all the other targets,
39:19the only remaining target was number nine. And it was about six or seven hours remaining before we
39:26absolutely had to head back to port. So I said, could we use my camera vehicle and tow the video to the
39:34target number nine, way out to the east, beyond your transponder net.
39:42We are launching the video camera sled for its first, last, and only run of the trip.
39:46This particular configuration has never been used before, and Dr. Bill Ryan looks on as anxiously
39:54as any expectant father in a hospital waiting room. This is a last-ditch attempt to recover some
40:00physical evidence of the Titanic, at least for this trip. And everyone knows it and says a silent prayer.
40:08We had live black and white video showing us the bottom so we could put the wire,
40:14tow wire up and down to keep the camera just 10 feet or 12 feet off the bottom. And we towed eastward.
40:25And about three hours into the tow,
40:30this object suddenly appears. The camera hits something and it tilts something.
40:36And the reaction was, what is this? What happened? And we hit some big glacial boulder dropped out of
40:45one of the icebergs. The crunch and scrape of hitting something hard, it really couldn't be anything
40:52but a man-made object. We opened the glass sphere, this huge big glass sphere, in which held video cassette
41:01recorder. And we inserted that into the videotape player. Everyone who could gathered in the lounge to
41:09watch the video, like a bunch of kids around a Christmas tree when the magic moment comes to open presents.
41:14And we had set up a monitor, watching the bottom go by, starfish and brittle stars and little
41:24corals and an occasional rat tail fish would swim through the picture.
41:29And suddenly, in the view, comes this object that we've hit.
41:58Somebody shouts, play it back.
42:04And there it was. A few frames of videotape we would look at again and again.
42:09Its immediate impression caught the eye and froze the mind.
42:12Somebody in the room shouted, that's a propeller blade. That's a propeller blade. And we played it
42:18back and called the captain, our man, in to take a look at it. And he said, oh yeah, that's the
42:23propeller blade of a very large ship. The scientists are saying, could be. Okay,
42:31it looks like a propeller, but we need proof. Anita took the film, developed a shipboard in
42:36our color film processing system, and then made prints and put together a mosaic of the flash,
42:44flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash. The camera system was basically dangled,
42:52like a yo-yo, from the ship. And so every single image was, had a different scale to it. We just had
43:00to find portions of the image that match the portions of the next image and overlay it and get the scale
43:06adjusted for that enlargement and then the next one, the next one. And that had the shape of
43:14the blade of a large propeller. Mr. Grimm was very pleased. He took that mosaic with him
43:22upon departure from the crews.
43:27And it was thrilling to be able to have something for Jack to take home with him.
43:33That, you know, hey, it looks like we probably found it. Let's, let's hope.
43:40All the way back to Boston, the debate continued. Whether the blade we see in this still picture
43:45taken from the videotape is the right size and shape to belong to the Titanic. We could not know
43:50and did not know until we got home to Texas, that on Jack Grimm's desk was this picture of two
43:56commercial divers from Scotland, Mr. Simon Martin and Mr. Alec Crawford, with a propeller blade from the
44:01oceanic. This ship of similar vintage and size in relation to the Titanic was wrecked off the coast
44:07of Scotland 60 years ago. And the similarities between the two pictures speak for themselves.
44:14When Jack Grimm returned, he explained he believed that that was the Titanic's propeller. He was
44:21convinced it was a propeller. I think the reaction of the public was interesting, but it was oh hum.
44:29And your camera that you were pulling just went right over this, bumped over it.
44:34And we didn't know any of this until hours later. So I went back in the summer of 83 to try to confirm
44:40that discovery and we lost all of our camera systems in the storm there and was unable to confirm it.
44:46I stayed neutral because I had no really firm navigation to know where that propeller had been
44:54photographed. I knew it was on the transect towards target number nine. And I think that that was very
45:01frustrating to Jack. He really wanted to find it. He thought we were so close. Yeah, he had a hard time with that.
45:11While Jack Grimm did not find the Titanic, his missions uncovered some vital clues.
45:17He didn't find the ship and packed in one piece right next to the propeller. But it was his information
45:25that was used for further exploration by others.
45:28This is my own opinion, but I think it gave the spot where the Titanic was.
45:37And why in the world would adventurers not seek to reveal more of it?
45:44Jack, of course, everybody knows about your wonderful expedition last summer, about to find the Titanic.
45:51Jack Grimm did not undertake any further missions.
45:55He planned instead to dive on target nine, hoping to find the propeller once again and prove this was
46:03where the wreck was located. But before he got the chance, there would be another team who would
46:10finally solve the riddle of the lost Titanic.
46:19And Titanic Secrets of the Shipwreck continues next Sunday at 8.
46:23We explore Japan's reluctance to surrender to the Allies at the end of World War II.
46:2824 hours, the Japanese surrender Saturday at 10 past 8 here on Channel 4.
46:33Up next, they're ramping it up physically, mentally and emotionally.
46:37Expect the unexpected in Celebrity S.A.S.
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