Ever since I first started learning about the Titanic story I’ve been really interested in
knowing more about the breakup and the sinking process it may be in part thanks to the 1997 film
as I’m sure it is the same with a lot of you watching at home as well
but there's a question in this because watching the 1997 film you might be mistaken for thinking
well if the breakup of Titanic was so obvious as depicted in that movie
then why at the British rec inquiry and the senate inquiries held after the sinking of Titanic
did they come to the conclusion that the ship sank in one piece it seems really unusual and
for the longest time I thought that most passengers actually didn't see it break up
at all that was only a select few but if you've read this book here on a sea of glass there's
dozens of passengers who saw it ripping itself apart and this is really interesting because
while a large number of passengers say they saw the ship sink in one piece probably an equal
amount saw it actually breaking in half so what was it about that night that caused half of the
witnesses to say it sank one way and the other half who said it sank another well today what
we're going to do is try and animate the sinking as it may have looked like for passengers that
night who are actually sitting in a lifeboat dead on watching it sink to do that we first need to
rewind a little bit and get an understanding of the way that we see Titanic sinking today
and how media has kind of you know played a little bit of a role in in shaping the way that we see it
now first let's have a look at the way that Titanic sinking has already been depicted in media
and film because media changes the way that we see historical events and it kind of shapes the way
that we think things might have happened so in the context of Titanic the sinking has been portrayed
you know quite a few times there's the probably the most famous and well-known sinking uh sequence
from the 1997 20th century fox uh James Cameron directed film Titanic then of course a night to
remember from the 50s uh the other 1950s Titanic film Titanic and some series as well specifically
we'll talk more about the 2012 mini series that show Titanic sinking in various different ways
and they all look distinctly different from one another this is a really important thing here
because you've got a historical event that actually happened over here and then the
creative team behind this film over here doing their best to try and bring this back to life
but they can only use their imagination so they're going to try and bring this historic event back to
life using techniques that they think would make it look the way they think it might have looked
now this is really important because it means whatever the film shows is the director's idea
of what happened it doesn't mean it's necessarily what it really looked like so we'll start with the
1997 James Cameron directed film you see Titanic with its stern way up in the air and the lights
flicker out it's a horrifying moment and you have to remember James Cameron is a brilliant action
director and this is what he does best and as soon as the lights go out you'll notice it's still
pretty bright there's this uh god light that's shining over everything and it's casting this
this blue light over everything so you can still see what's going on and this is really
important because we know on the night the Titanic sank it was a moonless night
there was no moon to illuminate to cause this kind of light but it was incredibly starry it was a
brilliant clear night there was no light pollution that you'd get standing in the middle of the city
today so you could see all the stars and it looked absolutely spectacular but it meant that objects
at a distance had almost no light shining on them and there are two bits of testimony that
stand out in my mind the first is James Bissett who was an officer on board Carpathia which was
the ship that was rushing to rescue Titanic's passengers I did a video on that I’ll put a link
in the description because it's worth watching but the Carpathia was charging through the night
they almost smashed straight into an iceberg like Titanic had the only way that Bisset saw
it in time is uh some stars were reflecting off the surface uh the top of the iceberg because
there was no moon even though an iceberg is a big white piece of ice it should be easy to see
it looked pitch black against the horizon and they just saw some stars just reflecting
off of it and another way that we can tell that it was extremely extremely dark and objects would
have looked nothing like they appear in the 97 film is that both Frederick fleet and reginald
lee who were the two lookouts on board Titanic that night when she struck the iceberg it didn't
say they saw an iceberg in their testimony they say they saw a black shape on the horizon and
this is really important because they probably connected the dots and said oh that's an iceberg
but it appears like just a black form so when we think about the 97 Cameron film when the
lights go out you can see all the detail you can count the rivets down the whole of Titanic
and of course this is a Hollywood piece of media and entertainment right so James Cameron's primary
objective is to make sure that you as the viewer are entertained and you can see everything on
screen and you're enjoying what you're seeing so they make creative decisions to this effect
now Ken Marschall is an absolute hero of mine and brilliant maritime painter and historian served
as a technical consultant on the 97 Cameron film and there were many times apparently when
James Cameron would come up to him and say look I’m really sorry you've
told me exactly how many lights there are on the exterior of the ship but I just had to put more on
so I could get more light onto my actors so we can see more of what's going on another great example
of this down in the dining saloon Titanic's dining saloon tables did not have lamps on them but in
that scene they do the only reason for that is so that the actors had more light shining up at them
to illuminate their faces and make them seem more natural so that shadows don't fall on their faces
like me right now I’ve got two lights uh shining straight in my face at all times I still get
shadows on my face so lighting a scene is really important another creative decision they made on
Titanic is casting this blue light over everything they want you to know that it was a cold night and
so the way to do that is cast a cool hue of blue across everything this is called colour grading
and directors and production teams do it all the time to make you the viewer feel something so
for example you might have watched breaking bad or any tv series that has a scene set in Mexico
they always apply this yellow tinge in the colour grading to make Mexico feel
a little exotic and really warm if you've ever been to Mexico believe it or not uh
there's not a yellow tinge on everything but they want you to feel like you're somewhere else that
is in the united states and that it's warm it's hot in Mexico right saving private Ryan they
wanted the film to feel gritty and realistic and a little bit like world war ii newsreel so they
desaturated the colours way down and made it look a little bit black and white like one of those old
newsreel films and it totally works so it creates a mood Titanic they want you to feel cold when
you're watching this scene so everything is blue now that is really coloured the way that
a lot of people see the sinking of Titanic because in a lot of contemporary depictions
now you'll see everything's all blue and washed out hell even I’ve done it you know again it's
a creative decision it probably wouldn't have looked like that in real life so we know in the
night of the sinking it was extremely dark and this is really important because again
um on a night to remember it looks like it was shot during daytime and it's really bright and
clear and again if it was that clear and bright how could anyone have ever argued if Titanic broke
in half or sank intact you watched Titanic 1997's Titanic when it breaks in half it's so obvious
so how could people have argued against that and say well one side's saying no it broke in half
and the other group's saying well we saw it sink intact another thing that comes into play here
is the sheer scale of Titanic and the witness's viewpoint of the sinking if you are sitting
side on to the sinking ship in a fair way away you have a great vantage point to see the ship
breaking side on if you're really really up close you're not seeing the whole ship you don't have
this omnipotent you know bird's eye view of the sinking so you know everything that's going on
it's suddenly pitch black because the lights have gone out and there's no moon
and if you are up close and slightly to the side so you're looking down the length of the ship
it's not going to be very obvious at all that the Titanic has broken in half now one of my
absolute favourite depictions of the Titanic sinking was from the 2012 mini series because
they kind of bucked the trend a little bit had the camera dipping in and out of the water as if you
yourself were being immersed and the breaking up of the Titanic happens kind of in the background
and you can see it's a little more subtle it's not this very obvious break like the 97 film
in the 97 film the Titanic stern just crashes down with this huge wave and as a viewer you
think well everyone must have seen and felt that but in the 2012 mini series it's a lot more subtle
and this now brings me to my final point which is this idea of how the Titanic broke in half in
the first place you've got something the size of multiple city blocks in length that's the height
of a 10 or 15 storey building and it's made up of a lot of individual pieces that all begin to fail
and still has a degree of plasticity it's not just like glass it's not going to shatter and
immediately the ship's going to have exploded apart even in normal operation the ship would
be expected to bend and sag up to multiple inches at a time as it crested over the top of
big waves kind of like this so you can imagine that as Titanic's breaking apart the steel
is failing but it's doing so slowly as each individual member gives out from the strain and
the stern begins to fall back probably gradually into the water without any massive violence
creating this huge wave like you see in the 1997 film that would make it a lot harder to see so if
you take these multiple things into consideration that it's pitch black there's no moon you're
probably fairly close up to the ship paying attention not to the ship so much but to saving
yourself and to how cold the water is and third of all the ship is breaking up slowly and gradually
so what would it have looked like on the night in reality well let's animate it and find out just a
couple months ago I animated this for the 110th anniversary of the wreck here's the animation
now I’ve colour graded this and done the lighting to look a little bit like the James Cameron movie
to begin with you can see it's nice and bright and what we're going to do
is just play this animation and I’m going to narrate a little bit of what's going on and then
what we're going to do is we're going to turn the lights off and we're going to make the lighting
look a lot more like it might have looked like on a moonless night on the north Atlantic ocean
and you can tell me honestly and truthfully if you would be very confident at an inquiry in
saying that you saw Titanic break in half okay here we go so Titanic's lights flicker out at
around about the time that her back breaks and now the stern is falling back gradually and slowly
into the water as the funnels collapse and the bow section you can just see there to the right
separates from the stern and drops away and as it drops away the stern now can float on its own
as its own individual hull form but now the sheer weight of the engines that are just sitting there
at that now torn off section pull the stern up and back so that it begins to flood and now it's being
pulled down into the water by the weight of these engines and it's done in an alternate reality it
is not impossible to think that the stern could have separated entirely from the bow section say
the engines got ripped out of it and it could have floated there but I think that the sheer weight of
these engines pulled her down and now the ship begins on its final plunge to the sea floor
you may notice that there's a small lamp burning on the after mast
there are some accounts of lights remaining on the Titanic now to what degree these were whether it
was a full emergency set that was burning until the end I don't know entirely there
were some who say they saw one light one or two lights still flickering this could have been an
oil lamp that was rigged to the mast there just to provide some visibility to passengers that night
that they didn't extinguish before the sinking either way I’ve just put it there to orient
ourselves a little bit so you can see what's going on and their Titanic is slipping below the waves
and she's done now what we're going to do is play that exact same animation
from exactly the same viewpoint but we're just going to tweak the lighting
to seem more natural and realistic as if it were a moonless knight and watch the sinking again
you can see straight away how much more disorienting and confusing this would have
been that you're not looking so much at a ship sinking now you're looking at just a black mass
illuminated only by the stars behind it and I think only the most astute of people would
have picked up that oh this ship has broken in half the other thing that's going on here is
how people interpret the sound of what's going on I don't think I’ve ever really been able to
accurately replicate this sound but it's been described as like a constant raw like ongoing
thunder and it really reminds me of the sound of the twin tower collapse in 2001 it just sounded
like this freight train roaring sound now on the night of the sinking a lot of those who thought
the ship sank intact interpreted this noise as the boilers and the engines falling through
the bulkheads of the ship as they came loose from their seating we know that that didn't happen
because they're all still intact on the wreck the engines included so what they were really hearing
was the ship tearing itself apart but in the pitch black when you can't exactly see what's going on
you're sitting there interpreting this as well the ship's sinking in one piece and everything that's
loose in the ship is now tumbling forward and it's creating this this roaring noise
so there you have it I love the James Cameron film I really enjoy a night to remember
but it's interesting to think that our idea of what Titanic might have
looked like sinking has been shaped and changed by this media over the years
and that Titanic sinking may have looked starkly different to what we have in mind it's a pretty
scary picture to be honest with you and I don't think I would have wanted to be there that night
ladies and gentlemen it's your friend mike brady from ocean liner designs
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until then stay safe stay happy and i'll see you again next time