April 15th 1912, a day when the unthinkable became reality.
Terror struck Titanic’s passengers as they realized the unsinkable ship of dreams would
soon become an underwater grave.
I’m Paul DuVall, an explorer of history and technology, and you’re watching 20 More
Bone-Chilling Titanic Facts.
Starting us off at number 20, do you know where the original idea for the Titanic came
from?
To answer this question, look no further than another famous ship known as the Lusitania.
You see, back in 1907, the Lusitania, owned and operated by the Cunard Line, was making
waves in the trans-Atlantic shipping world with her immense size and revolutionary technology.
The White Star Line needed to build a ship that would surpass the Lusitania in both size
and luxury, and so the idea for the Titanic and her sister ships was born.
If they had only known at this point that Titanic would steal the spotlight from the
Lusitania for the wrong reasons.
Next up at number 19, the seemingly endless series of unfortunate events surrounding the
Titanic actually began well before she even set sail.
In fact, a couple of Titanic workmen died during the building of the ship.
On May 31, 1911, one of these men, James Dobbins, was pinned beneath Titanic’s hull just as
the ship was first launching.
His fellow workmen found him and dragged him out, but his injuries were too great, and
he died the next day.
And at number 18, Titanic’s maiden voyage took place much later than originally planned.
You see, Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic collided with the British Royal Navy cruiser
Hawke on September 20, 1911.
The collision tore a 40-foot gash in the side of the Olympic, but thankfully no one was
seriously injured.
However, as a result of the accident, Titanic shipyard workers had to stop work on the Titanic
in order to repair the Olympic.
Consequently, this delay in Titanic’s construction pushed her maiden voyage from March 20, 1912
down to April 10, 1912.
Interesting side note: at the time of the Olympic’s accident, she was under the command
of none other than Captain Edward John Smith himself.
And speaking of Smith, that leads us right to number 17.
At the time of Titanic’s voyage, Captain Smith, a grizzled veteran of the seas, was
62 years old.
In fact, this was supposed to be his last voyage before retiring.
And it truly was his final voyage, but certainly not the way he was expecting.
On the Titanic’s final evening above the sea, Captain Smith spent a lovely evening
dining with some of the more affluent first-class passengers on the ship.
This would be the final meal for Smith and many other passengers on the ship.
Up next at number 16, as the Titanic grew close to the iceberg, crew members and passengers
began smelling a strange odor in the air.
What were they smelling?
It was the iceberg itself.
It’s been proven that you can smell icebergs before you see them.
This is due to the fact that icebergs break off from glaciers, and the minerals in them
give off a distinctive odor as the icebergs melt.
One of the Titanic survivors, Elizabeth Shutes, recalled the odor smelled “as if it came
from a clammy cave.”
Little did the Titanic passengers and crew members know that they were actually smelling
their imminent demise.
Next over at number 15, have you heard of the seven lucky stokers?
On April 10, the Titanic was docked in Southampton, and seven stokers from her crew had gone ashore
to visit a pub across from the dockyards.
They stayed at the pub too long and rushed back to the Titanic, only to find the gangway
was being pulled up and new men had already been hired to take their places.
Oddly enough, there was another group of seven people who got off the Titanic the next day.
On April 11th, the Titanic anchored off the coast of Queenstown, Ireland, and a group
of seven passengers got off.
Among those seven passengers was Francis Browne, who was a 32-year-old teacher from Ireland.
Francis had taken many photographs of the voyage so far, and those are among the few
surviving photos from the Titanic.
His ticket was only good to Queenstown.
However, while on the ship, Francis befriended an American millionaire couple who offered
to pay his way to New York.
He telegraphed his superior and requested permission to continue to New York and received
this in reply: get off that ship – provincial.
Francis disembarked from the Titanic, but he didn’t realize until later how providential
this telegraph truly was.
And at number 13, here’s yet another incident to add to the long list of Titanic’s misfortunes.
As she was leaving Southampton, the Titanic nearly collided with another ship, the New
York.
When I say nearly, I mean the two ships got as close as four feet from each other.
The order “full astern” was given and the sudden burst of water from the Titanic’s
port propeller helped push the New York away.
Although no one was hurt, some Titanic passengers remarked that the near accident was a bad
omen for the start of the maiden voyage, and they were right.
Next over at number 12, did you know that at least 15 Titanic passengers were traveling
under false names?
One passenger, Michel Navratil, was having marital problems with his wife in France.
So, he took their two sons on the Titanic without his wife’s permission and traveled
under the name Louis Hoffman.
However, my favorite one is Alfred Nourney.
He dubbed himself Baron Alfred von Drachstedt and bought expensive items to wear.
Alfred waltzed onto the Titanic, presented a second-class ticket, and requested to be
upgraded to a first-class cabin.
His request was granted as the Titanic purser assumed Alfred was of aristocratic status.
Like a boss, Alfred.
Like.
A.
Baus–
Okay at number 11, this one is a bit darker.
Some of the Titanic passengers had particularly unsavory pasts.
One such passenger was Alice Cleaver.
She had been hired as the nanny for two-year-old Loraine Allison and her 11-month-old brother
Trevor.
Some historians believe that Alice had previously been imprisoned for murdering her own baby,
though some argue that this was a case of mistaken identity.
Either way, Alice had a chance to prove herself when she rescued Trevor, only to find out
later that the rest of his family never made it off the ship.
Up next at number 10, speaking of babies, have you heard of the baby that was almost
thrown overboard?
In the midst of the panic, Titanic lifeboat number 11 was crammed with 70 passengers.
It was so crowded on this lifeboat that passengers began tossing unnecessary items into the water.
One item was mistaken to be a bundle of clothing.
Just as the bundle was about to be tossed over the side, it let out a cry, and the passengers
realized in horror that they had nearly thrown a baby overboard.
Horror… that reminds me of bone-chilling Titanic fact number 9.
Some people experienced premonitions and nightmares of the Titanic disaster.
Chief Officer Wilde stated in a letter to his sister: “I still don’t like this ship.
I have a queer feeling about it.”
Eva Hart claimed her mother couldn’t sleep on the Titanic and instead sat awake every
night anxiously awaiting Titanic’s doom.
Perhaps the most eerie of all is that some relatives of Titanic passengers claimed that
they woke up at the time of the sinking with visions of people drowning.
Next up at number 8, while many passengers jumped off the Titanic straight into the bone-chilling
28-degree water, Chief Baker Charles Joughin took an entirely different approach.
As the ship was sinking, Joughin went down to his cabin twice, each time downing a glass
of whiskey.
He then rode the stern down into the water and began paddling around.
In his state of drunkenness, he barely noticed the cold water.
In fact, Joughin remained in the water for 2 whole hours before he was finally pulled
into a lifeboat.
This is quite astounding, considering other passengers died of hypothermia in a quarter
of that time.
Joughin was the last survivor to the leave the Titanic.
By the way, if you’re enjoying this video so far, go ahead and smash that like button.
And at number 7, many lifeboats launched with additional space still available.
The plan was for these lifeboats to pull alongside the Titanic and let passengers climb down
through the gangway doors.
Of course, things didn’t go according to plan.
Captain Smith stood on the deck with his megaphone, ordering the boats to “Come alongside,”
but the seamen that were manning these lifeboats feared they would be sucked underwater when
the ship sank, and to Captain Smith’s dismay, they instead began rowing away from the ship.
Next over at number 6, the passengers aboard lifeboat number 6 were extremely lucky to
have one particular woman on board with them.
Her name was Margaret Brown, aka the Unsinkable Molly Brown, and boy was she ever legendary.
You see, the man in charge of Margaret’s lifeboat was Quartermaster Robert Hichens,
and he refused to go back and rescue more people.
So, Margaret retorted to Robert that he should hand the tiller over to a woman and row instead.
When Robert disagreed, Margaret grabbed an oar and began rowing back in the direction
of the wreck.
At one point, Margaret grew so exasperated at Robert that she even threatened to throw
him overboard.
I for one am a huge fan of the Unsinkable Molly Brown.
Up next at number 5, John Jacob Astor IV was the richest man aboard the Titanic, and I
found his death to be particularly bone-chilling.
I can only imagine the sense of dread he felt as he helplessly watched Titanic’s massive
forward funnel falling straight towards him.
Thankfully for Astor, his death was much swifter than many others.
His body was later found crushed and covered in soot.
And over at number 4, the Carpathia was en route from New York to the Mediterranean and
had to turn around and head back to New York after picking up the Titanic survivors.
During Carpathia’s journey back to New York, a heavy storm rolled in and terrified the
shell-shocked Titanic passengers who thought the thunder from the storm was the Carpathia
also hitting an iceberg.
Next up at number 3, unsurprisingly, after the Titanic disaster, the Olympic’s crew
refused to sail.
In fact, the Olympic was just about to leave for its first voyage across the Atlantic since
the Titanic sank, when its stokers went out on strike.
They demanded that the Olympic be fitted with enough lifeboats for everyone on board.
In addition, ticket sales were abysmally low.
This forced the White Star Line to make major safety renovations on the Olympic.
The inside of the Olympic’s hull was reinforced, five bulkheads were raised to B-deck level,
and most importantly, forty-eight lifeboats were added for a total of 68.
Coming down to number 2, this long-forgotten photo of the Titanic reveals a very important
clue to the Titanic sinking.
To the untrained eye, everything appears normal in this photo, however, upon closer inspection,
experts spotted this black mark on the front starboard side of Titanic’s hull.
It was discovered that this mark was due to a coal fire that had been burning inside
of the ship’s boiler rooms.
This information was kept hidden, and the Titanic sailed despite a compromised hull.
Oddly enough, it was this same part of Titanic’s hull that struck the iceberg.
Some experts believe the combination of the internal fire and external iceberg caused
the Titanic to sink even faster.
Was the Titanic intentionally sabotaged?
We may never know.
And finally, at number one, when Robert Ballard and his crew discovered the Titanic wreck
in 1985, they were greeted with a very chilling scene.
There lay the unsinkable ship of dreams at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Pairs of shoes were seen where bodies once lay, and scores of sea creatures had adopted
the wreck as their home.
Robert Ballard considered the Titanic wreck to be a gravesite and wished for it to remain
undisturbed.
His team even left two commemorative plaques on the wreck.
One was left on the bow capstan, asking future explorers to leave the ship in peace.
The other was left on the poop deck in memory of those lost in this terrible catastrophe.
Now let’s all dive down to the comment section and honor the memory of those who died on
the Titanic by leaving roses and thoughtful comments.
I’m Paul DuVall.
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