It has haunted these waters for 100 years.
Titanic.
Why go back to Titanic? What's left to be seen?
The answer is, everything.
A new expedition brings us closer than ever before.
It gives you that feeling of size and immensity.
For the first time 3D cameras and advanced sonar technology
capture startling new information.
This mission really gave us the ability to finally understand
the Titanic wreck site.
Never-before-seen sections...
The 3D made it real and tangible.
...and thousands of missing pieces.
It's a time capsule.
You know that this object was used in 1912.
The most extensive, high-tech exploration of Titanic ever...
Finally being able to see the big picture.
...reveals a 3D world no one could've imagined,
one that brings astonishing new dimension
to the stories of those who survived
and those who did not.
Out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
some two-and-a-half miles down,
lies a patch of muddy ocean doftom.
A place where few fish even venture.
Yet, it is the most studied and photographed piece of real estate
in the deep ocean.
Because this is the final resting place of Titanic.
In 1912, it was the greatest ship ever built.
At almost 900 feet,
the largest moving man made object on the planet.
The builders and survivors of Titanic
remember the legendary ship
in their letters, journals, and testimony.
Their actual firsthand accounts are as essential to understanding Titanic
as all that lies on the bottom of the North Atlantic.
It was rather a novelty to be on the largest ship yet launched.
Take her to sea!
No exaggeration to say that it was quite easy to lose one's way.
If you had seen or knew the process of actual work
that went into this ship,
you'd say it was impossible to sink her.
Titanic's engine configuration is designed to propel the ship
at speeds over 20 knots.
The ship is scheduled to complete its maiden trans-Atlantic voyage
is less than a week.
But that record is denied
when Titanic slips beneath the waves 100 years ago
in the early hours of April 15th, 1912.
Now, state-of-the-art 3D technology
gives us the most complete look of the shattered ghost.
In 2010,
a unique team, including Woods Hole Oceanographic,
RMS Titanic Inc., the Waitt Institute, NOAA,
and The History Channel
is assembled for an unprecedented expedition.
Using the latest sonar and 3D imaging technology,
they plan to explore and map the entire wreck site
for the first time.
Fifteen square miles.
It will be the world's first look in real time
at 3D images from the ocean floor, two-and-a-half miles below.
The footage shocks
even the most seasoned Titanic researchers.
In the submersible,
I'm constrained to whatever I can see out of the seven-inch view port
and several inches of Plexiglas.
But with the 3D camera,
it's almost like you're on the outside of the submersible
because you've got this wide field of view.
It's almost ethereal,
like you're floating next to the wreck and seeing it with your own eyes.
In the past, a lot of the imagery that came back from Titanic
was fairly high-altitude and looked down.
And from this camera point, everything is flattened.
The 2010 mission got down in the weeds,
and we started seeing profiles and oblique angles that we had not seen.
That itself is fascinating.
With the power of the 3D
you can literally be on the deck of Titanic.
You can see more than you would if you were diving in a sub.
And with that you can connect to the past.
You can vicariously experience
not only the other worldliness of Titanic as a ghost ship,
you can also, with a good imagination,
picture what it was like then, on that late night of April 14th
and the early morning hours of April 15th, 1912.
Wednesday, April 10th, 1912.
Titanic departs from Southampton, England,
the second of three giant ocean liners built for the White Star Line.
After brief stops in France and Ireland,
Titanic set sail at 1:30 p.m. the following day for New York.
The world had waited expectantly for its launching,
and again for its sailing.
When our boat left the dock, there were thousands of people,
all of them waving goodbye,
wishing the Titanic Godspeed on its first voyage.
The majority of Titanic's passengers are traveling in third class,
immigrants on their way to a new life in America.
All third-class passengers due here for health inspection.
It was a beautiful ship, exactly like a city.
It was so good, it was impossible to make it better.
We were shown to our berths and taken to see the Dining Room.
A little later, we were shown where to get lifeboats
and some other of the lifesaving gear.
None of us ever thought we would be needing it.
Welcome aboard.
Titanic's master is Edward Smith.
At 62, he's one of the White Star Line's
most experienced captains.
He plans to retire at the end of this voyage.
When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience
in nearly 40 years at sea,
I merely say, "Uneventful."
I've never been in any predicament
that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
- Would you care for a drink, sir? - Yes, I'll take a mint julep.
Disaster is unimaginable for Titanic's first-class passengers,
surrounded as they are by every luxury and convenience.
The ship was like a palace. My cabin was ripping.
Hot and cold water very comfy looking bed, lots of room.
Fancy strawberries in April, and in mid-ocean.
Why, you would think you were at The Ritz.
There was nothing to indicate or suggest
that we were on the stormy Atlantic Ocean.
Titanic's Second Officer 38-year-old Charles Lightoller
is also thankful for the fine weather.
From the moment we left Belfast, we had marvelous weather.
It was as smooth as the proverbial millpond.
Surprisingly, given her size, Titanic's engines are not the biggest.
But greater efficiency makes the ship fast.
Engineers were very quick to realize
that the reciprocating engines could now discharge into a turbine,
and the turbine becomes kind of like an after-burner
or a hybrid device.
And with that power, you can actually drive a separate propeller.
That's why most ships of Titanic's era have only two propellers.
Titanic has three,
and the third one is to accommodate that center-line turbine.
Titanins Chief Design Engineer, Thomas Andrews, is onboard,
pursuing his dream to build the perfect ship.
He had papers of all descriptions on his table during the day.
He was working all the time.
Oh, I just love your dress.
Thank you. It's a Lucile gown. I hear the designer, Lady Duff-Gordon...
Andrews' grand staircase has become iconic.
On the night of April 13th, 1912,
first-class passengers gather here
to socialize and enjoy the grandeur of the space.
Up to that point,
most naval architects, most interior decorators for ships
had what's called a "closed-floor plan."
In the case of Titanic,
the staircases open up into these huge foyers.
And at the base of the staircases, they open onto reception rooms.
So it's an open floor plan.
This was the first time on a British ship
that ladies were able to make a grand entrance, a society entrance.
Below deck, things are less formal.
- Pass the tatties, would you? - All right, doll. Here you go.
White Star had a good reputation among immigrants.
It was known for how well they treated their third class.
To some Titanic was the most luxury they had ever seen in their lives.
April 14th, Titanic's fourth day at sea.
Although there are sporadic reports of icebergs,
Captain Smith feels confident enough to increase the ship's speed
to 22 knots.
Second Officer Charles Lightoller is on duty.
On that night of April 14th,
we all, that is the Captain and officers,
knew perfectly well that we were just about entering
the region where ice might be sighted that particular time of year,
and had taken all the necessary precautions.
Weather conditions were predicted to be clear,
and the feeling at the time was,
it was okay to go full speed through a known region of ice.
Some considered it preferred because they felt that
if the ship was making its best speed,
it was also at its best maneuverability.
We were steaming that night at a good 22 knots.
At 10:00, I was relieved as Officer of the Watch by Murdoch.
W.M. Murdoch.
He and I had been shipmates in many of the ocean greyhounds.
Both of us had crossed this ice region times without number.
After the usual formalities, I handed over,
wished him joy of a few perishing cold hours, and went below.
I expect his watch went on as mine had done,
nothing to see and nothing to hear
except the distant roar of the water at her bows.
That, and the half-hourly bells with the lookout men's cry of "All's well."
Of course, he knew nothing of the death trap lying ahead of us
any more than I did.
100 years after Titanic's maiden voyage,
3D cameras are casting new light
on the events of April 14th and 15th, 1912.
There were three sharp clangs on the crew's nest bell,
followed by a cry from the lookout cage,
"Ice right ahead,sir."
The call comes from 24-year-old Frederick Fleet,
one of the men on duty in the crow's nest.
The masts are made out of steel and they're hollow.
There's actually a ladder inside,
and when you get to the crow's nest level,
there's an oval aperture in the steel, and you simply climb cot.
On either side you can still see the grab rails.
Ninety feet above the ocean,
Frederick Fleet rings this bell, recovered from the wreck site.
He rang a bell three times,
which is an audio signal to everybody onboard
that there is a collision hazard exactly on course with the ship.
And then he turns around and picks up the telephone,
and the only person you can talk to is the Bridge.
And he says, "Ice right ahead,sir."
39-year-old William Murdoch is First Officer
and in command on the Bridge.
Murdoch evidently saw the massive ice
practically at the same time as the lookout men did,
and shouted, "Hard to starboard."
When Murdoch gets the call,
his next step is to go to the telegraphs
and take both handles and move them to the "full astern" position.
The telegraphs simply signal the Engine Room
that they need a change in speed
and it's up to the engineers to effect that change.
His idea was to swing her bow clear
and then put the helm hard over the other way,
and so swing her stern clear.
And it wasn't just turning the bow to port,
because ships don't steer like cars.
They steer from the stern, where the rudder is.
So you turn the stern, and the bow follows.
So as soon as he got the bow moving, Murdoch had to reverse the helm
and kick the stern away.
And given half a chance, I believe he'd done it.
But going at that speed, it was too late.
As it was, her bow swung a bit, but not enough and she struck.
What was that? Did you feel that, too?
We had retired to our stateroom
and the noise of the collision was not at all alarming.
When the ship struck, if one had a brimful glass of water in hand,
the shock was so slight, not a drop would've been spilled.
My first knowledge that all was not well
was when a steward pounded on the door and his cries awakened me.
Get your lifebelts on!
Second Officer Lightoller is now off duty in the Officers' Quarters
directly behind the Bridge.
I was iaying in me bunk when I felt the slight jar.
No sense of collision. but more of a shiver ran through the ship.
Anyway, it was enough to bring me out me bunk in one jump.
Out on the deck, I ran to one side, and then to the other.
But there wasn't a trace of anything we'd struck,
so back I went to my bunk and waited.
Below deck, the situation is more dire.
28-year-old fireman Frederick Barrett is working in Boiler Room 6.
I shouted, "Shut all the dampers,"
and that order was obeyed.
But the crash came before we had them all shut.
There was a rush of water into my stokehole.
I jumped through the doorway into number five section.
The watertight door between the section was then open,
but it shut just as we jumped through.
Now, the ship has just 2 hours and 40 minutes to live.
She took the blow along her starboard side,
masses of ice actually falling on the foredeck.
But what was worse,
she was pierced below the waterline in no less than six compartments.
And from that moment, nothing could've saved her.
Most passengers and crew
still don't know that Titanic has suffered a mortal blow.
It wasn't long before Boxhall, the Fourth Officer,
poked his head round me door and said,
"Youk now, we've struck an iceberg."
"I know you struck something," I told him,
not thinking that it was anything serious
and feeling none too pleased.
Then he said, "The water's up to F Deck in the Mail Room."
There was no need for him to say anything more.
I was into a pair of pants, sweater and bridge coat
and out on the deck almost as soon as he was.
What's going on? What's this absurd noise?
Now, we'd been running under a big head of steam,
and the sudden stopping of the engines lifted every safety valve,
and as a result, the steam roared off at all exhausts.
The row was absolutely deafening.
Shout as loud as you like, no one could hear a word.
It's obvious the ship isn't going to go anywhere.
So what they do is, they open the relief valves,
and huge cascades of steam shoot out of the tops of the funnels.
Design Engineer Thomas Andrews races through the ship
to inspect the hemege.
Twenty-five minutes later, he reports to the Bridge
and informs the Captain of his terrible calculation.
In an hour, two at most, the ship will go down.
I happened to meet the Captain,
and I asked him by cupping me hands over his ear
and yelling at the top of me voice,
"Shall I get the women and children away, sir?"
He just nodded,
I started to fill the first boat.
Just about now, thank goodness, the roar of escaping steam stopped.
The passengers, now they could hear themselves think,
started asking me,
"Why are you getting the boats out,
"and why are you putting women and children in them?"
I told them that it was merely a precaution
and that very likely they would all be taken onboard again at daylight.
Women and children, your attention! All women and children!
We went on deck and everything seemed quiet and orderly.
The orchestra was playing a lively tune.
There was little excitement.
A man came to me and put a lifejacket on me,
assuring me it was only taking precaution,
so not to be alarmed.
My father went away and spoke to one of the sailors
and came back and said, "We've hit an iceberg.
"They're going to launch the lifeboats,
"but you'll all be back onboard for breakfast."
Getting into a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean is the trial.
The boats carried cranes called davits,
and the davit picks the lifeboat up,
and then swings it over the side of the ship.
And normally, there's a gap of maybe a foot or so, 18 inches.
It took a lot of courage to get across that gap
'cause it's a sheer drop of several stories to the ocean.
Up to the time of getting away the first few boats,
no one believed that the ship was actually in any danger
I'm afraid my own confidence that she wouldn't or couldn't sink
rather conveyed itself to others,
for there were actually cases
where women absolutely refused to be put in a boat.
I just want to go back to my room.
As the lifeboats were being launched,
many of the first-cabin passengers
expressed their preference of staying on the ship.
At first, the boats were loaded among joking crowds,
and some women rotnood to go into them, tooling eater aboard the ohig,
which they said was unsinkable.
You could not get people to go on the lifeboats. You could not.
They felt safer on the Titanic than in the lifeboats.
I remember one young couple, evidently not long married,
walking up and down the boat deck.
I asked the girl, she was only a girl, from the western states, I should say,
if I should put her in the boat.
But, no, she wouldn't be parted from her husband.
"Not on your life," she said.
"We've started together and we'll finish together."
Brave girl.
But she didn't know how near that finish was.
Certainly, I didn't.
A new expedition is mapping the Titanic wreck site
in groundbreaking detail,
capturing stunning 3D images of newly explored sections of Titanic.
It's allowing us to rediscover what happened that fateful night
in the North Atlantic, 100 years ago.
12:15 a.m., April 15th, 1912.
Thirty-five minutes after Titanic strikes the iceberg,
Chief Radio Operator 25-year-old Jack Phillips,
and his assistant, 22-year-old Harold Bride,
begin sending out distress signals.
The Captain put his head into the cabin,
"We've struck an iceberg. Send the call for assistance."
They were a little incredulous at first,
but being professionals,
they immediately set about the task of trying to find anybody within range
that could come to their assistance.
Phillips worked the key the entire night.
Phillips began to send CQD.
He flashed away at it, and we were all joking while he did.
All of us made light of the disaster.
We ioked that way,
while he flashed signals for about five minutes.
Then the Captain came back.
"What are you sending?" he asked.
"CQD," Phillips replied.
"Send 'SOS" I said.
"It's a new call, and it may be your last chance to send it."
Phillips changed the signal to "SOS."
SOS, the newly adopted distress call for ships at sea,
is tapped out over Titanic's state-of-the-art wireless technology.
The signal sounds very different from other ships transmitting that night.
The old, plain spark transmitter had this very ragged sound to it.
Titanic's was more like what you think of today.
So, out of all of these spark sets out there transmitting
back and forth...
High above it is this...
And it's the death call of Titanic, above all these others.
It's got to have been very eerie to have heard that,
this very unmistakable voice above all the others, saying,
"We're dying. Come help us.
On the boat deck,
Lightoller and the officers begin forcibly placing
women and children into the lifeboats.
Just when I first realized how desperately serious things were,
I don't know.
But I do know that before many boats were away,
I got to piling more and more people into them,
partly because I knew she was going,
partly because the boats weren't remaining by the ship
to be filled to their capacity.
Bring the boats alongside!
Titanic carried two megaphones. They were made out of sheet aluminum.
Normally,they're used when the ship comes into port,
but that night, during the commotion on the boat deck,
Captain Smith is reputed to have picked up the megaphone
and shouted orders.
I heard the commander two or three times
hail through the megaphone to bring the boats alongside,
and I presumed he was alluding to the gangway doors,
giving orders to the boats that go to the gangway doors.
As the situation grows more desperate,
the crew begins setting off distress rockets.
These are the actual rocket engines
that were used to shoot up distress signals.
There's been discussion about
the color of Titanic's rockets.
They've always been depicted as being all white,
but this is evidence that they did have colored rockets.
If Titanic fired up different colored rockets,
somebody seeing it might think
that it was some kind of company signal,
instead of a consistent distress signal.
Titanic's distress rockets go unanswered.
Her passengers and crew remain alone in the cold North Atlantic,
fighting for their lives.
It was plain to me that
if we were gonna avoid the unutterable disgrace
of going down with boats still hanging at their davits,
we've got not only to take chances,
we've got to work like blazes.
The lifeboats were in nests of four on the deck,
and after the lifeboats were sounded,
the ropes, the falls that used to connect to the lifeboats,
were just hanging there.
When the Titanic sank,
those ropes got tangled together around those davits.
Titanic carries more lifeboats than regulations require,
but still not enough for everqese onboard,
some 2,200 people.
You've got to remember,
there weren't enough boats to take half the people
and the chances of the other half in that icy, cold water
were absolutely nil.
Those who survive in Titanic's lifeboats
remember their final good-byes with startling clarity.
"Women and children first."
Someone was shouting these last few words over and over again.
They meant my own safety,
but they also meant the greatest loss I'ye ever suffered,
- the life of my husband. - They started to load the boats.
My father put mother and I in without any trouble at all.
- My father never said anything. - I never saw him again.
He was smoking a cigar.
He put my mother and me into a lifeboat, and he walked away.
As I was put into the boat, he cried and said to me
"It's all right, little girl. You go. I will stay."
As our boat shoved off he threw me a kiss
and that was the last I saw of him.
Echoes of those last memories
are sometimes presemed in objects reclaimed from the deed.
Essentially, I'm in charge of preserving the artifacts
that have been recovered from the wreck site.
Artifacts are recovered only from the scatter field,
and that means things that have been thrown off
or out of the ship.
So when you find those items,
there are a variety of things that really retain life,
such as ceramics.
China remains in relatively good condition,
it might be chipped, it might be broken,
but it survives well in a marine environment.
Metals, on the other hand, generally do not.
Iron is particularly susceptible to corrosion,
whereas copper alloys such as bronze, which are used very often on ships
for bells and similar items, survives very well.
It's important to remember that
Titanic was the largest moving object
made by man in 1912,
and that means it's really big.
While many objects are extremely large,
personal items are smaller and more fragile.
We are very fortunate
to have recovered paper and textile artifacts from the wreck site.
The reason we have them is because
they were contained within leather suitcases or bags.
Protection of the leather from the microorganisms
allowed them to be preserved.
You begin to build a picture of the person who owned those things,
and that's really an exciting moment
because you can bring that person back to life.
Adoiphe Saalfeld was a chemist and perfume salesman
from Manchester, England.
He had a portfolio with him
that had 62 vials of new perfume scents
that he had developed.
He survived, but his perfume container did not,
and so we were able to recover that
and bring his scents, his fragrances back to life again.
Once-valued possessions are left behind
as Titanic sinks lower and lower into the Atlantic.
For almost two-and-a-half hours, Titanic has slowly foundered.
In the final moments,
things begin to happen much faster.
Now, between lowering one host ash enether,
I frequently took a roam forward
and a quick look down the long stairway
that led from the boat deck, three or four decks down.
Frankly, I'm never gonna forget the sight of that cold greenish water
creeping step by step up that stairway.
Some of the lights were shining down on the water,
and the others already submerged
were giving it a sort of ghastly transparency.
I could tell by that staircase measurement
exactly what was happening,
how far down she'd gone and how quickly she were going.
100 years after Titanic goes down,
the most complete 3D exploration of the wreck site
brings new meaning to the firsthand accounts of the sinking.
Almost two hours after the collision with the iceberg,
many of Titanic's passengers are still trapped below deck
behind locked gates.
We could go up to the second-class deck,
but those on second class and steerage
couldn't pass through the guarded gates
that led to the first-class upper deck.
Third class felt the impact
much more strongly than first or second did.
Therefore, they felt a sense of urgency
that was absent in the upper classes.
They also felt the decks begin to pitch.
And pretty soon, it becomes a question of, "How do we get up there?"
- Here, grab my hand. - I can't!
We were told it would be wise to get to the first-class upper deck
in order to have a better chance of getting into a lifeboat.
- Here we go. Follow me. - I'm coming, Mum.
The only way this could be done was to climb an iron ladder
from the steerage deck below,
up five or six decks to the lifeboats above.
By the time many in third class reached the boat deck, it's too late.
By 2:00 am.,
there's only one official lifeboat
left to be launched.
To prevent the crowd from rushing it,
crewmen linked arms. Officer Lightoller pulls his revolver
and fires warning shots in the air.
Then came the very last boat of all,
a sort of a raft with collapsible canvas sides
stowed upside down on top of the Officers' Quarters.
Come on lads, over here. Up here. Let's get this one up.
The last lifeboats to be launched
were the collapsibles under the number one funnel.
These were four bonus boats that White Star had put on
in excess of what was legally required.
And more importantly, they aren't under their own davits,
theyre actually stored one deck up,
immediately at the base of the number one funnel.
Quick, over here.
Pull that line! Cut it!
Does anyone have a knife?
A seaman named Hemming,
he'd been with me in many of the mail boats.
He and I cut this one adrift and threw it down on the water
which was now about two feet above the boat deck.
Come on, now, push!
Here she comes.
She's away.
Run the lights.
In the frantic moments loading the last boats,
passengers report that an officer fires his gun into the crowd,
killing two people, before turning the gun on himself.
Some believe that officer is William Murdoch.
Mr. Murdoch was on the starboard side,
I was on the port side.
Murdoch was the deck officer aboard Titanic.
He was the one in command of the ship at the time of the accident.
Murdoch is known as a steady and dependable seaman,
but his final actions are unclear
Most witnesses agree that shots were fired into the crowd
and an officer took his life,
but the identity of that officer has remained a mystery.
Did Murdoch die in the line of duty?
Or was he the one who shot two passengers,
and then turned the gun on himself?
One researcher believes the 3D footage holds new clues.
When we look at the wreck,
we see the two forward-most davits survive on the ship,
the port and the starboard one.
The port one was run by Second Officer Lightoller,
and it is left in the cranked-out position.
So what that means is,
it had essentially launched its last lifeboat
and was left in that outboard position.
But the one on the starboard side,
the one that was supervised by Murdoch,
is cranked inboard,
and that means it's being readied
to accept another boat to be launched.
Second Officer Lightoller had said
that he had seen Murdoch
right at the end, working at the falls,
trying to launch the last collapsible lifeboat
when the water overtook him.
I was practically the last man
and certainly the last officer to see Mr. Murdoch.
He was then endeavoring
to launch the starboard forward collapsible boat.
He was working hard,
personally assisting overhauling the forward boat's fall.
Other reports as to the ending are absolutely false.
Mr. Murdoch died like a man, doing his duty.
This leather satchel
with the initials "W.M." is found in the debris field.
Its surviving contents include officers' buttons,
a shoe brush, and a pipe.
Many believe this bag belongs to William Murdoch.
You see, it's in very fragile condition,
but we can replace the strength within the cell walls
by immersing it in oils or wax.
There are different materials you can use for this purpose,
and therefore, you can stabilize it and perhaps regain some of the shape.
The pipe Murdoch is holding in this picture
matches the one found in the bag.
The buttons match the one Murdoch would have worn
on his officers' coat.
The initials "W.M." are his,
but also belong to over a dozen other people
on board the Titanic.
There are many things that we'll never know,
but that doesn't detract from the artifact itself.
The artifact has had a very historic experience
to have gone on Titanic, to have gone down two-and-a-half miles,
and then to have come up and survived, that's a lot.
At 2:17 a.m.,
Titanic sends her last radio message
and Captain Smith issues his final order.
Men, now it's every man for himself.
Titanic's stern becomes the stage
for the ship's last desperate human drama.
During the first couple of hours of the disaster,
there was steady, progreseive flooding is the bow,
and little by little, the bow lost its buoyancy.
You had a situation
where the bow was losing almost all of its buoyancy, and the stern,
thanks to the famous watertight subdivision
that Titanic was known for,
remained entirely buoyant.
There were still hundreds of people round.
I looked down from the top of the Officers' Quarters,
where we were standing, and the ship took a sudden dip.
The sea came roaring up, carrying everyone with it.
Many were drowned there and then.
Everyone that could just instinctively started
to scramble up towards the after end of the ship.
That was only putting it off,
and no ones chances were gonna be improved
by getting mixed up in a struggling mass.
100 years after Titanic sank
beneath the frigid waters of the North Atlantic,
state-of-the-art 3D cameras
are recording high-resolution images of the world's most famous shipwreck.
Just past 2:00 a.m. on April 15th, 1912,
Second Officer Lightoller is one of the last
to abandon the stricken ship,
as it begins its final plunge to the ocean floor.
I was on top of the Officers' Quarters
and there was nothing more to be done.
The ship took a dive,
and I turned face-forward and also took a dive.
Striking that water was like
a thousand knives being driven into ones body.
Temperature was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing.
That point just before the break,
you essentially had two ships,
one that was going to float and one that wasn't going to float.
And they were held together by this little membrane, if you will,
and then, finally, that broke.
The bow just plunged into the ocean floor,
burying the stem so high up
that the anchors that used to be very high off the surface
are now very close to the bottom.
The 3D footage gathered by this expedition
is shedding new light on accounts of Titanic's final moments.
I was sucked down,
driven back against the grating, what we call the fiddley,
which leads down to the stokehold.
And it was against this grating
that I was sucked by the water and held there.
Then this explosion, or whatever it was, took place.
Certainly, I think it was the boilers exploded.
It was a terrific blast of air and water,
and I was blown out clear.
Lightoller was sucked against the fiddley grate,
and then he was blown clear by
warm air coming up from inside the vessel,
and some people question that.
When Isaw the 3D,
one thing immediately popped out at me,
and that is, the grating bars that make up that grate
are bowed outward,
as though something from inside the ship had pushed it up.
Seeing that kind of dimensional aspect to it
helped corroborate Lightollers story.
In fact, I got right near the edge of things
before I finally came up alongside that collapsible
we'd hauled into the water from the top of the Officers' Quarters.
And there, I hung on.
He doesn't realize it yet,
but that number one funnel is going to topple in a few moments.
If he did not get on that lifeboat
and get away from the scene,
he would have been another victim of the number one funnel,
which collapsed during the sinking
and crushed a number of people to death.
The funnel, weighing perhaps 50 or 60 tons,
fell down with a crash on the water.
It missed the raft and some of us hanging on to it by inches.
There were a good many it didn't miss.
Next thing I remember,
I was still hanging on to a bit of rope attached to the raft
some 30-40 yards from the ship.
The wash of the falling funnel
had evidently picked us up, raft and all,
and flung us clear of the ship altogether.
Several others scrambled up on the slippery bottom of the raft,
and it was from there I saw the Titanic sink.
As I watched, the stern lifted higher and higher,
till it was right out of the water.
There was a solemn sort of rumble and roar,
as her massive boilers all left their beds
and went crashing down through the bulkheads
and everything that stood in their way.
In 3D, these indentations or implosion marks
are clearly visible for the first time.
They suggest that the boilers were hot when the ship sank.
They may have been lit for speed,
or they could have been lit after the collision
to continue to provide power to the ship
until it went down.
Up to that moment, she had stood out, clear as clear
with her rows of electric lights, all burning.
When the boilers broke away,
she was, of course, plunged into absolute darkness,
though her huge black outline was still perfectly distinct
sg against the stars and sky.
Slowly, she reared up on end,
then, quite quietly, but quicker and quicker,
she seemed just to slide away under the surface and disappear.
As she vanished,
everyone around me on that upturned boat,
as though they could hardly believe it,
just said, "She's gone!"
Once the ship sank, the survivors in the lifeboats
are immediately presented with a moral question.
There's maybe thousands of people in the water,
and hundreds of them are now screaming for help.
What do you do?
A few go back, try to pick some people up,
but the general feeling is, "We'll be swamped."
There's too many of them,
and the lifeboats stay where they are.
It was terrible lots of shouting and people crying as she went down.
Never heard enpthinp like it.
The partially filled lifeboat, standing by about 100 yards away,
never came back.
How could any human being fail to heed those cries?
So many people who, perhaps, just didn't know what to do
or knew that there was nothing they could do,
and I think many people made a decision,
and for others, a decision was made for them.
Many died from cold during the night,
and a mighty long time it seemed before daylight broke.
Standing wet-through, up to our knees
in icy water on our upturned boat...
Frankly, I don't think many of us expected to see daylight.
The night was bitter cold,
and it grew colder and colder just before dawn,
the coldest, darkest hour of all.
No help seemed possible.
The stars slowly disappeared,
and in their place
came the faint pink glow of another day.
1,496 of Titanic's passengers
did not live to see that sunrise.
One hundred years later,
high-resolution 3D images
allow us to see, in intimate detail,
the ship that failed them.
And to better understand
what happened in those last few days and minutes.
You don't have to be one of the few
that go two-and-a-half miles down in a submersible
to see this wreck.
Anybody now
is going to be able to see Titanic in 3D.
They're gonna be able to feel how big the ship is.
They're going to be able to distinguish the depth.
You'll be able to look into spaces.
Almost nine hours after the collision,
only 712 of the over 2,200 people onboard
are rescued from the icy Atlantic.
When daylight did break, most of us were still heads up,
and we of the upturned boat transferred to one of the lifeboats.
At full daylight,
there was the Carpathia steaming towards us.
I needn't say just what sort of a welcome sight it was.
Cruising slowly round, she collected boats one by one.
Even as Titanic's passengers are rescued,
their possessions are already becoming a part of history.
Today, artifacts recovered from the wreck
give a new voice to those who survived
and those who did not.
I think that's what brings them back to life,
and it's a way of honoring their legacy
that they're not forgotten,
that someone is actually still trying
to find out about their life and who they were
a hundred years later.
Even if Titanic ultimately became
a spot of rust on the sea floor,
it will always be one of those places,
due to the power of the stories,
due to the connections that bind us
because of what it means in our hearts,
that will always be a special place
that people remember,
just as surely as we remember other spots
where great and sometimes terrible things happened.
At last, everyone was safely onboard,
and with the 700-odd survivors of that night,
she turned away from that tragic spot and headed for New York.