Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 6 hours ago

Category

📺
TV
Transcript
00:00My husband tried to join me in our lifeboat two men grabbed him
00:16Officers were there with guns
00:20He offered no resistance
00:23And backed off back onto the ship
00:27Began yelling and crying
00:30As they wanted to join him on the sinking ship
00:33Action!
00:55He told me that apparently we'd struck something
00:57I didn't become alarmed
01:08There was no danger
01:10They said
01:11I told her to come at once, we were sinking
01:18You can imagine the chaos and the fear and the terror of finding water in your cabin and you're in the bowels of the ship
01:29It makes me panic just thinking about it
01:31The story of the Titanic is the human condition spread out, pinned on a board for us to examine
01:40Then came the terrible cry
01:42Women and children, women and children
01:45Audrey
01:46Two men lifted me up and put me in a boat
01:49Move it! Move it!
01:50It's these small decisions, these little butterfly effect moments that change the outcome
01:55It really was every man for himself
02:10My heart stood still
02:13My heart stood still
02:23Hurry up!
02:26Pull!
02:28If we're gonna die
02:30The best to die gripping something
02:32It's a split second decision
02:33It's a split second decision
02:37What would you do?
02:38What would I do?
02:46It was a terrible son
02:48Men
02:49Swimming
02:50I'd been brought up to believe in a hell
03:03After death
03:11For now I think I went through a hell that night
03:20Because I was forced to revel my life
03:22I mean
03:23It's no time
03:24I don't know
03:25I Ford
03:26I feel
03:27How?
03:29How can I do?
03:30He was...
03:32You
03:33I've put it in there
03:34To the same deal
03:40Does this might tekame
03:41When?
03:42What happened?
03:44Weird
03:46What happened?
03:47I was working in the engineering.
04:11We got the order, all hands on deck, put your life preservers on.
04:17The deck was full of male third-class passengers.
04:22The last boat was getting lowered.
04:26About this time, I met all the engineers as they came trooping up from below.
04:33Up to that time, they had loyally stuck to their guns.
04:37When the crew come up on deck, these guys who've worked so heroically to try to keep Titanic afloat,
04:51they expect that there will be a place for them in the lifeboats.
04:55And, of course, that is not the case.
05:00British Hierarchical Society is always there to shaft the underdog.
05:06Those people who had risked their lives were not going to get any help at all.
05:13It was a bleak and hopeless spectacle that met their eyes.
05:18Empty falls hanging from every david head.
05:23Not a hope for any of them.
05:24Titanic has enough people on board that we're really seeing the whole range of reactions to facing death.
05:41From resignation to fight and flight to acting out of love and empathy to help other people.
05:49And at this point, some people choose to do things that may look quite strange.
05:53One fellow said, go to the first cabin bar room.
05:59There was a steward filling up tumblers on a tray.
06:04He said, go on lads, drink up.
06:08She's going down.
06:14Some people prefer to stay in their cabin and let the waters rise up.
06:18Others go to the bar and just start drinking the place dry.
06:21Everyone has to choose to die in their own way, whatever that is.
06:26I was for going down into one of the first-class cabins, but if how Matty wouldn't let me...
06:34Matty said to me,
06:36we'll have to jump for it.
06:46It makes me panic just thinking about it because I can imagine the chaos and the fear.
06:51It's not fair, you know, when passengers embarked on this ship, they were told it was unsinkable.
07:01They probably didn't pay much mind to how many lifeboats there were, but now that it's of the most crucial importance to them, they see that they've been failed.
07:08Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews, the ship's designer, must have been in hell. This was their unsinkable ship.
07:23Thomas Andrews was trying to do something because he is the architect of this disaster.
07:32Andrews was seen throwing steamer chairs into the water with the idea of actually helping those who got into the sea to have something to support them.
07:43It's very difficult to know what the captain's final moments were.
07:52During the Falklands War, I was a captain of a ship that was bombed, which I had to abandon.
07:57And so I know the pressures he was under, and I personally think that he probably stayed on the bridge and waited to meet his fate.
08:06But I think he would have been feeling to himself that he had failed in this last great appointment of his.
08:16There's something of the stiff upper lip happening here, but inside there must be inner turmoil.
08:22Because survival instinct is really powerful, and the captain is probably suppressing it as much as he can.
08:29The social codes of conduct fighting against that very ancient part of the brain, the primitive part that just drives us forward biologically.
08:39People just have that, the will to survive.
08:43The adrenaline system is working overtime. They've almost got nothing to lose.
08:49I wanted to jump out and try to catch one of the empty lifeboat falls.
08:53Jack Thayer has been on a dream holiday in Europe with his parents.
09:02They've got separated in the crowds, and now that dream has become a nightmare.
09:07I couldn't just jump.
09:09We might hit wreckage or a steamer chair and be knocked unconscious.
09:14Milton dissuaded me.
09:15Milton Long, 29-year-old American law clerk, and Jack had struck up a conversation many hours earlier in the dining saloon.
09:25And now they find themselves facing this life-or-death moment together.
09:30So many thoughts passed through my mind.
09:34I thought of all the good times I'd had.
09:36Of all the future pleasures I'd never enjoy.
09:46My father.
09:49My mother.
09:52I was watching myself as though from some far-off place.
09:59Sincerely pitied myself.
10:00Sincerely pitied myself.
10:17Back in the wireless room, Jack Phillips has stuck to his post right to the end.
10:23Even when Captain Smith has said it's every man for himself,
10:25because he believes he's doing something useful.
10:28He's spent the last few hours trying to communicate with other wireless operators,
10:33oblivious to everything going on around him.
10:37And his junior, Harold Bride, is deeply loyal to and respectful of Jack Phillips.
10:44The sea has almost reached the wireless room,
10:48and they have just minutes before it's filled with freezing water.
10:51I was back in my room getting Phillips' money for him.
10:55And as I looked out the door,
10:58I saw a stoker or somebody from below decks
11:02slipping the life belt off his back.
11:05You know, I remembered in a flash the way Phillips had clung on,
11:09how I'd had to fix that life belt in place because he was too busy to do it.
11:14I felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor's death.
11:17A decent sailor's death.
11:26I did my duty.
11:34I hope I finished him, I don't know.
11:35We left him on the floor of the wireless cabin.
11:40He wasn't moving.
11:44I climbed on top of the officers' quarters.
11:50Yet I saw the last of Phillips.
11:53Jack Phillips is absolutely overwhelmed by the impossibility of this situation.
12:02He disappeared, walking aft.
12:09He doesn't say goodbye, he doesn't give any explanation,
12:12there's no clap on the back to his junior.
12:14He's done everything, there's nothing more to do.
12:15The man is ready to die.
12:18At this stage, all the lifeboats on the boat deck have been launched,
12:34and of course there's a panic that there are no lifeboats left.
12:37But there is actually two more stashed away on the roof of the officers' quarters.
12:43Collapsible A and B.
12:45I saw the boat and the men trying to push it off.
12:59They couldn't do it.
13:01I went up to them, lending a hand.
13:03The collapsible lifeboats were very much a secondary option,
13:10which would need to be rigged so they could be used.
13:15Now the crew are trying to launch them in increasingly difficult and desperate conditions.
13:24Just then the ship took a slight but definite plunge.
13:27The sea came rolling up in a wave.
13:35When a large wave washes collapsible A and B overboard,
13:40you've just been given that hope.
13:42But in amongst the chaos, the lifeboats are stolen from you by the elements,
13:46and that is just devastating.
13:50The big wave carried the boat off.
13:51I had hold of an oarlock and went off with it.
14:00Water was washing right across the deck.
14:04And we were in water right to our hips.
14:07Another lurch threw myself off and away from the ship into the water.
14:13I fell into a mass of people.
14:22I was underwater.
14:24I knew I had to fight for it.
14:28The temperature in the water is minus two degrees.
14:32So as soon as that cold water hits the body,
14:35there's a shock reaction and the mind is reacting in a state of panic.
14:38Everything I touched seemed to be woman's hair.
14:46Children crying.
14:49Women screaming.
14:53Their hair in my face.
14:56If only I could forget those hands and faces that I touched.
15:01I could forget those hands and faces that I touched.
15:15The ship was sinking on its head very quickly.
15:18The water was right up to the bridge.
15:22The crowd moved with it, pushing towards the stern.
15:25The sight that doesn't bear dwelling on.
15:29To stand there above the wheelhouse.
15:33Watching the frantic struggles to climb up the slope and deck.
15:37Unable to even hold out a helping hand.
15:42We were a mass of hopeless, dazed humanity.
15:47Trying to keep our final breath until the last possible moment.
15:54I nuked the futility of following that instinct for self-preservation.
16:00It would only be postponing the plunge and prolonging the agony.
16:06Turning to the bridge, I took a header.
16:18Striking the water was like a thousand knives being driven into one's body.
16:24For a few moments I completely lost grip of myself.
16:28We were at the starboard rail to keep away from the crowd.
16:38The ship began to shoot down fast.
16:42The water rushing up towards us.
16:45We had no time to think, only to act.
16:49We wished each other luck.
16:54Then we jumped up on the rail.
16:55Milton looked up at me and he said,
17:00You're coming boy, aren't you?
17:02And I said, uh, go ahead.
17:04I'll be with you in a minute.
17:06Then he'll let go.
17:08The people who choose to jump are ultimately the people who take some form of control in a situation where you're a part of the race.
17:13The people who choose to jump are ultimately the people who take some form of control.
17:17in a situation where you are powerless.
17:18The people who choose to jump are ultimately the people who take some form of control in a situation where you are powerless.
17:35We were about five minutes away from the ship.
17:56But we could still see it as the light stayed on.
18:03The ship stood almost on its nose, slowly sinking.
18:10The people on the Titanic were yelling and crying.
18:17I could see some of them as I jumped into the water.
18:22I found myself drawn against the grating covering a ventilator.
18:42The pressure of the water glued me there.
18:48The shaft led to a stoke hold, a sheer drop of 100 feet right to the bottom of the ship.
18:56I struggled and kicked for all I was worth.
19:00It was impossible to get away.
19:02As fast as I pushed myself off, I was dragged back.
19:09Every instant expecting the wire to go.
19:13To find myself shot down into the bowels of the ship.
19:19The shock of the water took the breath from my lungs.
19:26Down and down I went, spinning in all directions.
19:30The cold was terrific.
19:34Most people think of drowning in a circumstance like this.
19:38It is that ultimately your body runs out of energy.
19:41But actually you can drown as soon as you first hit freezing water.
19:45There's something called cold water shock.
19:48Part of the reaction is to have a big intake of breath and that prepares you for action.
19:52In the case of hitting cold water, it's not in your favour to have a sharp intake of breath.
19:57Some may have cardiac arrest almost immediately because of the shock.
20:05I was still fighting when a blast of hot air came up the shaft and blew me right away from the air shaft and up to the surface.
20:12Finally I came up, my lungs bursting.
20:25The ship was in front of me.
20:29Suddenly the second funnel seemed to be lifted off.
20:33The funnel started to fall right amongst the struggling mass of humanity already in the water.
20:43It missed me by only 20 to 30 feet. The suction of it drew me down.
20:51Those poor people were sucked down in those funnels.
20:57Like flies.
21:01As I came to the surface, my hand came against something.
21:08One of the collapsible lifeboats.
21:10It was floating in the water, bottom side up.
21:14About four or five men clinging on to her.
21:17So I asked them to give me a hand up, which they did.
21:22Sitting on my haunches, holding on for dear life.
21:26It seemed as though hours had passed since I left the ship.
21:32People like Jack and Officer Lightoller are swarming onto Collapsible B upside down using it like a raft in the freezing water.
21:41Just as a way of trying to survive.
21:57The end was very close.
22:02Something in the bowels of the Titanic exploded and sparks shot up to the sky.
22:08Two other explosions followed, dull and heavy, as if below the surface.
22:17The impact was so great, it shook the waters.
22:21And we thought our lifeboat would sink.
22:25Everyone screamed.
22:29The huge weight of seawater in the bows and in the stern
22:33meant that the two things were unable to remain as one part.
22:36The whole superstructure of the ship seemed to split.
22:41The lights suddenly go out and then darkness falls.
22:44The Titanic broke in two before my eyes.
22:45The four part mallowed over and disappeared instantly.
22:49The ship seemed to right herself like a hurt animal with a broken back.
22:50The ship seemed to right herself like a hurt animal with a broken back.
22:55The strange hallucinatory moment.
22:59It looks as though everything's going to be fine.
23:00It looks as though everything's going to be fine.
23:01Because the weird, wonky, distorted angles of the great ship start to settle.
23:02There's people that think of some sort of...
23:03The giant?
23:05It seems as though everything is going to be fine.
23:13For a strange, hallucinatory moment, it looks as though everything's going to be fine, because
23:22the weird, wonky, distorted angles of the great ship start to settle.
23:29There's people that think that some sort of safety feature has kicked in.
23:34You know, at least this half of the ship is going to somehow survive, and those on board
23:38are going to be spared.
23:39But ultimately, that is short-lived.
23:43I saw the Titanic go up in the air, ever so big.
23:50A huge ship reared herself on end, rudder and propeller clear of the water, till at last
23:58she assumed a perpendicular position.
24:04We saw groups of the 1,500 people still aboard, clinging like swarming bees.
24:12The contents of the Titanic is now falling through it, and tragically, people as well.
24:19I think it was only at that moment that many of those poor souls on board realized their fate.
24:27If we're gonna die, I said, it would be best to die gripping something.
24:34We gripped the rail.
24:36We gripped the rail.
24:37A sharp exclamation from my husband.
24:51My God.
24:52She is going now.
24:53The steamer without a sound, except for the shrieks of the people still on board.
25:06It stood right on end.
25:09It stood there several moments, and slid straight down into the water.
25:21As easily as a pebble in a pond.
25:28Our proud ship.
25:31Our beautiful Titanic.
25:34The hurricane is out of part direction.
25:41Let's go.
25:45All the khiura消 somethingone in the wind.
25:51Everyone around me on the upturned boat breathed the two words, she's gone.
26:15I did not wish to see her go down.
26:17I'm glad that I did not.
26:24My back was turned to her.
26:28We were pulling away.
26:31This is his ship. This is his company.
26:35And there is intense professional and personal shame here.
26:40I think that was just too overwhelming for him to be able to look.
26:47Probably a minute passed with almost dead silence and quiet.
26:53Then an unforgettable cry went up from fifteen hundred despairing throats.
27:09Bedlam of shrieks and cries.
27:11A nightmare of both sight and sound.
27:17Hearing desperate, disembodied voices in the darkness of the ocean.
27:28A cacophony of tears and shouts and despair.
27:33It's almost like a soundscape of hell.
27:37Potentially it's your husband, your brother, your father, your loved one's voices.
27:42I don't know how you recover from that.
27:44I've never heard such screams from the hundreds of people floating about us.
28:05They were piercing.
28:06It was horrible, Raoul.
28:29One young man near me shouting.
28:31Mother!
28:31Mother!
28:32Mother!
28:33Mother!
28:34Mother!
28:35Mother!
28:36Mother!
28:37A man, alongside me, clutched me round the neck.
28:44I choked him off.
28:49Nobody knows how they'll react in that circumstance.
28:52You're surrounded by others in a panic with you.
28:55You begin to lose the function of your arms, the function of your legs, the thing that you
29:00need to keep afloat.
29:01And that can happen extremely quickly because that body's reaction to keep your vital organs
29:07warm is so powerful.
29:09And it's painful.
29:10Like, you are being tortured, essentially.
29:13The people in the lifeboats are sitting and listening to others die.
29:23And everyone's response to that trauma situation will be different.
29:27We chatted of little unimportant things.
29:32As people do when they've been through great mental strain.
29:38Try to make feeble jokes.
29:41I remember I teased Miss Frankatelli.
29:44Just fancy, you left your beautiful nightdress behind you.
29:53And we all laughed.
29:57Though in our hearts we felt very far from laughter.
30:03Never you mind, madam.
30:06You were lucky to come away with your lives, said one of the sailors.
30:09Don't you bother about anything you had to leave behind you.
30:17Lucy's comments sound tone deaf to us, but I think they're a trauma response.
30:23It is far easier to comprehend the loss of a beautiful piece of clothing.
30:31She's a fashion designer, of course.
30:32Than it is to wrap their heads around the extraordinary horror of the loss of human life that they're seeing before them.
30:46For those in the water, a fatal countdown has begun.
30:50Once severe hypothermia sets in, you've got about 15 minutes until you'll become unconscious.
30:58When I was wounded in Afghanistan, I knew that that helicopter was coming.
31:05But if you don't know that a rescue is imminent, how long are you capable of holding on for?
31:11A large number of people gave up the struggle and were content to die.
31:16For the water was so cold and there seemed no hope for rescue.
31:22When the darkness starts to creep in on you, that's when you have to have a real word with yourself and remind yourself that you still have some fight in you.
31:31I swam's door, I was in a race.
31:41I got myself away from the crowd.
31:45Behind me there was the horrible volume of groans, which...
31:49I can hear them now.
31:53I came up to me chum, John Bannon, and I said,
32:03Cheerio, Johnny.
32:05And he said,
32:08Am I right?
32:09Then he told me he had seen a flashlight some distance away and pointed out the direction.
32:19As I went off, I cried out.
32:22Not so long, Johnny.
32:23Daddy!
32:33Poor chap.
32:38He was drowned.
32:39It was a terrible sight all around.
32:51Men swimming and sinking.
32:54I saw a boat of some kind and I put all my strength into an effort to swim to it.
33:00It was like work.
33:01I was all done when I had reached from the boat, pulled me aboard.
33:12Collapse will be that had been stored on the roof of the officers' quarters was washed off deck and is now the last hope of the men who jump from the Titanic.
33:23Among the 30 men on Collapse will be, we have Howard Bride, Jack Thayer, Eugene Daly and Charles Laetola.
33:33Others came near, nobody gave them a hand.
33:36The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold and was sinking.
33:42We were very low in the water.
33:45Standing, sitting, kneeling, lying in all conceivable positions.
33:49People came up beside us and begged us to get on this upturned boat.
33:58Saving ourselves, we were obliged to push them off.
34:04One man was alongside us and asked if he could get up on top of it.
34:10We told him that if he did, we would all go down.
34:13His reply was, God bless you, goodbye.
34:22To look another human being in the eye and say to them, you're going to have to perish.
34:28Like that is an impossible thing, not just to live through in the moment, but then to have to live with.
34:33There are 1,500 people in ice-cold water in the Atlantic and there are some lifeboats that are full to capacity and there's nothing they can do.
34:47But there are many others that are even less than half full.
34:51There are less than 700 people in the lifeboats.
34:56Because the 18 lifeboats are not a capacity, there's still space for over 400 people.
35:02It could save them from almost certain death.
35:08Within the lifeboats there's an intense dilemma.
35:10Do they go back and save people or do they stay at a safe distance so that they don't get overcrowded and everyone in that lifeboat end up in the water?
35:21These boats are fragile. They're in the middle of this vast sea.
35:26There's already been tragic and terrible, huge loss of life.
35:30This is their one and only chance to survive.
35:33Three times an officer ordered his men to turn about.
35:40But each time they were prevented from doing so by some of the passengers.
35:46They grasped the oars so that the seamen were forced to give up turning back to rescue any of the unfortunates.
35:53In the Duff Gordon boat, one of the crew members says it's up to us to go back and see if we can pick anyone up.
36:05The Duff Gordons object. They say they'll be swamped and they persuade the crew not to go back.
36:11At the later inquiry, Cosmo Duff Gordon said, it's difficult to say what occurred to me. I was minding my wife and we were in a rather abnormal condition, you know.
36:25I find it chilling that the Duff Gordons are just openly hostile to letting anyone in their lifeboat.
36:30All along, they have been given privileges that other people haven't been given.
36:37And to die slowly in ice cold water within earshot of people who might save your life, I think there's a particular cruelty to that.
36:49Men and women were going to their death beneath the icy waters of the Atlantic.
36:54But I noticed in a hazy, detached sort of way.
37:01I've gone through too much in those aisles to think clearly.
37:07Lucy's talking about trauma here.
37:09She's talking about going through so much emotion that she's effectively shutting down.
37:13She's so traumatized, she's not able to get out of her own experience enough to engage with what those people in the water are going through at that time.
37:24The partially filled lifeboats standing by, only a few hundred yards away, never came back.
37:38Why on earth they did not come back is a mystery.
37:42How could any human being fail to heed those cries?
37:45I think it is extremely unfortunate the lifeboats didn't go in and start to rescue people.
37:55They were willing to sit with people screaming and dying in the water, and I find that quite surprising.
38:01We're highly attuned to other people's emotional expressions.
38:05Out on the lifeboats, it's dark and they're quite far away.
38:09So not seeing those faces may be one way of distancing themselves from that suffering.
38:14I became so numb I could hardly swim.
38:24My head was so queer.
38:25But when I was almost at my last gasp I shouted,
38:34Boats are high!
38:37Only off chance that one might be near.
38:40I had room for a dozen more people in my boat.
38:47But it was dark.
38:50We didn't pick up any swimmers.
38:54We all like to think that we'd be the noble one that does the right thing.
39:02But that's not how survival works.
39:05Ultimately as human beings we are animals who have survived.
39:10That's how we've evolved to be what we are.
39:12So survival instinct is absolutely within our DNA.
39:15And so you have no idea what you are capable of until you are pushed to an extreme.
39:20Disasters reveal an aspect of your personality that you might not know is there.
39:25And you might not like being there.
39:27To save your own life, to let hundreds of people die,
39:30I think that's something that would weigh heavily on you for the rest of your life.
39:36Perhaps a thousand.
39:38Perhaps more.
39:42Gone down with her.
39:49There's a cluster of lifeboats closer to where the Titanic went down.
40:01Including lifeboats 14 and 4.
40:04And this is a kind of case of right place, right time for some people in the water.
40:09Fortunately, my shout was hurt.
40:13Over here!
40:15I was hauled into lifeboat number 4.
40:17About seven people are rescued because of that boat, including Thomas Dillon.
40:25I think I'd been 20 minutes in the water.
40:30I was told afterwards I was unconscious for a long time.
40:34I was not properly right when I came to.
40:39Thomas Dillon survived because he's young and he's fit.
40:44But by the time he's picked up by the lifeboat, he's got early symptoms of hypothermia.
40:49I would rather die a hundred times than go through such an experience again.
40:57Mr. Lowe went in search of other lifeboats.
41:04He found four or five and took command of the little fleet.
41:07The whole of you are under my orders.
41:08Lifeboat 14 is very full, but Lowe realises that actually if this group works together, they have a chance of being able to launch a rescue mission.
41:21He ordered that the boat should be linked together with ropes to prevent any drifting away.
41:39They're able to redistribute those passengers and they actually free up an entire lifeboat, which allows them to go in and search for survivors.
41:52I went with just the boat's crew, no passengers.
41:59Of course, I had to wait for the yells and shrieks to subside, for the people to thin out.
42:09Officer Lowe is very aware of the potential risks.
42:13You can be capsized when trying to pull survivors into the vessel.
42:17The vessel can be swamped, but they choose to go back.
42:22They're not just survivors in this moment, they continue to be crewmen.
42:25Their sense of service, particularly those that had a military background, ultimately outweighs their sense of survival.
42:34Your training just kicks in and you have a responsibility to those around you, even before yourself.
42:40I searched the wreck thoroughly and found four persons.
42:44One was a Mr. Hoyt from New York.
42:48He was bleeding from the mouth.
42:52I loosened his shirt so as to give him every chance to breathe.
42:56But unfortunately, he died.
43:00I suppose he was too far gone when we picked him up.
43:14Most of those who jumped in the sea died within a quarter of an hour.
43:18The awful moaning ceased after that.
43:23We saw nothing but ice into our bodies.
43:32I remember the very last cry.
43:34It was a man's voice calling loudly.
43:39My God.
43:41My God.
43:49I think it would have been very haunting to slowly hear fewer and fewer voices.
43:54And that's one of the most traumatic memories that people had, is the sound of those screams.
43:59The air was leaking from under the boat, lowering us further and further into the icy water.
44:20Soaking wet, freezing, the pack of huddled men on Collapsible B have survived so many odds.
44:31But that's all for nothing if nobody comes to your rescue.
44:34And they don't know if that's coming.
44:36Some lost consciousness and slipped overboard.
44:41Every wave threatened to swamp us.
44:48The problem with trying to stay on an upside-down boat, which are now using as a raft, is that it's not stable.
44:55This is a balancing act, literally, to save your life.
44:59Every bit of strength and spirit from every one of those men on that boat raft was going to be about staying alive.
45:06Their class differences ceased to be important.
45:11We've got men from first class, men from third, crew members, united by this will to survive.
45:17We prayed.
45:20And sang hymns.
45:23Harold Bride helped keep our hopes up.
45:27He said time and time again, the Carpathia is coming as fast as she can.
45:32The Carpathia is coming as fast as she can.
45:34Lightholler found his whistle.
45:41After desperate calling, we got the attention of the other lifeboats.
45:50Two of the boats realized the position we were in and drew toward us.
45:55They had a right-side-up boat.
46:02And it was full to its capacity.
46:05Yet they came to us and loaded us all into it.
46:09Officer Boxall took some green flares from the bridge and now he's lighting them, hoping that he will attract the attention of the approaching rescue vessel.
46:30Time will be standing still.
46:39All they can do is sit in the boats and wait.
46:43About this time, the edge of the sun came above the horizon.
47:01To feel that glowing warmth, which we'd never expected to see again, that's something never to be forgotten.
47:13I have no idea of the passage of time during that awful night.
47:27We were all very tired when we saw a big light.
47:34Suddenly a flicker of hope. A ship getting closer every minute.
47:48Coming towards the site of the wreck and the lifeboats bobbing about in this freezing, empty sea, finally, is the Carpathia.
48:03She's come as fast as she could through the ice flows, through the night, responding to Jack Phillips' distress calls.
48:10Nothing has ever looked so good to me as the lights from the Carpathia.
48:27Even through my numbness, I began to realize I was saved.
48:34That I would live.
48:40That I would live.
48:43She stopped maybe four miles away.
48:49The task of rowing over to her was one of the hardest things we had to face.
48:54At last, the Carpathia was alongside and people were being taken up by rope ladder.
49:15One man was dead.
49:16I passed him and went up the ladder.
49:28The dead man was Phillips.
49:32He had died on the raft of exposure and cold, I guess.
49:35He stood his ground until the crisis had passed and he collapsed.
49:45Only I could have slipped more clothing on Phillips.
49:50We're just saved him.
49:55When I was wounded, three people lost their lives.
49:57So I know what it's like to trawl over in your head the what could I have done.
50:00And ultimately, life is unpredictable.
50:04You know, you live or you die.
50:07And you cannot change that fate.
50:08But learning to live with that, it takes time.
50:09No survivor.
50:10No survivor.
50:29No survivor.
50:31No survivor knows better than either.
50:43Cruelty of disappointment.
50:47I had a husband to search for.
50:53A husband whom I believed would be found in one of the boats.
51:01He was not there.
51:15I let myself be saved because I believed he too would escape.
51:25I sometimes envy those whom no human power could tear them from their husband's arms.
51:42What do you remember of the Carpathia?
51:51Uh, consoling.
51:58And being consoled.
51:59My friends were all among the missing when the role was called.
52:11The loss affected me badly.
52:15The big narrative is always going to be about heroism and loss and sacrifice.
52:31But the Titanic was a disaster.
52:35These are real people's lives that are lost.
52:40Real people who suffer.
52:42They hasta luego and the hell out there is no fear they still namor lower to the hospital.
52:49But I didn't deserve it.
53:00Holy crap!
53:01Let me just love it.
53:05To them, let me just forget to make a word BET website and is if you help me cafe.
53:09The engineers were the heroes, I think.
53:20They kept going until minutes before the Titanic went out of sight.
53:25Not a man of them was saved.
53:31In 1912, it was taken for granted that the price of a first-class ticket
53:37included a greater likelihood of surviving.
53:40It was seen as a reflection of the natural order.
53:46What the Titanic teaches us is what happens
53:49when people's lives are given unequal value.
53:54Every element, from your breakfast to how you're treated in an emergency,
53:59all of that is impacted by class and hierarchy and status.
54:03This happened in an age where the British stiff upper lip was stiffer than ever.
54:09But the reality is, it doesn't matter how resilient you think you are,
54:13sometimes we're just not capable of processing that level of horror.
54:19Personal trauma was not recognised.
54:21You just suffered and you carried on.
54:24Those people who survived,
54:26they were just now going to have to pick up their lives as best they could and manage.
54:29These are searing memories that never leave them.
54:34And the grief was huge.
54:37But I like to imagine that there were those who felt that this encounter with death
54:42made them live the rest of their days more fully
54:46and that they owed it to those who died to live.
54:49ORCHESTRA PLAYS
55:01AND CONTINUE
55:03ORCHESTRA PLAYS
55:07ORCHESTRA PLAYS
57:40I lost my pipes, which I prided myself so much on.
57:46I lost all my clothes and 98 pounds, which had taken me many years to save.
57:53Here I am stripped of all I had, but thankful to God that he left me my life.
58:29Transcription by CastingWords
58:59CastingWords
Be the first to comment
Add your comment

Recommended