A retirement party is held in Captain Smith’s honour. But as ice warnings come in over the radio, he must decide what to do about them. The richest man on board and his mistress do their best to dodge scandal. Titanic’s engines are put through their paces, as passengers place bets on how fast the ship can go. And at 11.39pm, on Sunday April 14th, something large is spotted, dead ahead… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Stephanie Barczewski, Jerome Chertkoff, Julian Fellowes, Veronica Hinke, Clifford Ismay, Tim Maltin, Stephen McGann, Susie Millar. Written by Duncan Barrett | Produced by Miriam Baines and Duncan Barrett | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by Miri Latham | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay and Rob Plummer | Compositions by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay | Mix & mastering: Tom Pink | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann | Nautical consultant: Aaron Todd. Get every episode of Titanic: Ship of Dreams two weeks early, as well as ad-free listening, by joining Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What fears did Esther Hart have on Titanic's final night?
It's April the 14th, 1912, the early hours of Sunday morning. RMS Titanic is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, plowing through the black night at more than 20 knots. Most of the passengers aboard the ship are sleeping soundly. But in her second-class cabin on EDEC, Esther Hart is wide awake.
Since the ship left Southampton, she's refused to sleep a wink at night, gripped by an irrational fear that something terrible is going to happen. Mrs Hart kips during the daytimes instead, while her husband takes their daughter Eva around the ship, exploring. Right now, the two of them are sound asleep in their bunks.
Mrs. Hart, exhausted from her repeated nocturnal vigils, has forsaken her reading table for her own bunk underneath her husband's. She won't sleep, just rest her head a little. The night is as quiet and still as the previous three have been. Only the throbbing of the ship's engines and a gentle creaking noise that she's heard every night of the voyage
too subtle for anyone to notice in the bustling daylight hours. But at night, even the tiniest noises are magnified. Mrs. Hart jolts upright in her bunk. Was she asleep? She can't be sure, but she's certain she just felt the ship move in an unnatural way. Ben, she hisses, get up. Something dreadful has happened. Groggily, Mr. Hart slides down from his own bunk to join her.
Even in the dark, she can see that he's annoyed at being woken. But when she begs him to go on deck and investigate the sudden strange movement, there's no hiding how terrified she feels. Reluctantly, her husband pulls on his trousers and exits the cabin, taking care not to wake little Eva. Mrs. Hart waits anxiously for him to return.
When he does, the irritation on his face has given way to a more patient expression. Everything's all right, he reassures her. The sea is calm. The ship is traveling smoothly. Mr. Hart undresses and climbs back into bed. Within minutes, his wife can tell he's asleep again. She knows perfectly well what he thinks of her. The same thing the rest of the passengers at the breakfast table think.
That she's a silly, superstitious woman, obsessed with the idea of impending disaster. Like Cassandra, prophesying the fall of Troy, or in this case the sinking of a so-called unsinkable ship. Perhaps they're right. But then, Cassandra turned out to be correct. And in less than 24 hours, Mrs. Hart's fears will also come to pass.
This time tomorrow, many of those who laughed at her superstitions will be dead, and RMS Titanic will be lying, torn in half, at the bottom of the ocean. From the Noisa Podcast Network, this is Titanic Ship of Dreams, part four. As dawn breaks on Sunday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Hart receive a delivery in their cabin. The latest edition of Titanic's regular news sheet, the Atlantic Daily News.
There's a little printing press down on D-Deck where the menus for the dining saloons are produced. And when they're not busy laying out the latest offering of consomme Olga or apricot Bordalou, the men who work there turn their hands to a bit of journalism. Their daily newspaper is delivered by stewards to everyone in first and second class.
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Chapter 2: Who were Titanic’s wireless operators and what challenges did they face?
Start your test today for one euro per month on shopify.de slash radio.
Did you know that the team behind Titanic's Ship of Dreams makes other podcasts too? Discover them all at Noisa.com, the home of the Noisa podcast network. Real Dictators, also hosted by me, Paul McGann, returns on April the 30th with the story of Fidel Castro. Head to Noisa.com to find out more. At 11.47am, Phillips and Bride receive a second iceberg warning.
this time from Captain Kroll of the SS Nordam, sailing from New York to Rotterdam. Captain SS Titanic, congratulations on new command. Had moderate westerly winds, fair weather, no fog. Much ice reported in latitude 4224 to 4245, and longitude 4950 to 5020. Compliments, Kroll. Captain Smith instructs Phillips and Briar to send a reply. Captain Nordam, many thanks.
Add moderate variable weather throughout. Compliments, Smith. Professor Stephanie Baczewski.
It was a really bad season for ice. It had been quite a warm winter. And so a lot of ice had broken off of the glaciers in the Arctic and had drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes. You know, everybody knew that. But again, it was something that they thought of as that sort of modern shipbuilding technology had conquered that.
You know, maybe 20 years ago, some ship disappeared and was never heard from again. And maybe it hit an iceberg. But there's really no record of an iceberg being able to do that kind of damage to a ship. It's always been fine.
Screenwriter Julian Fellows.
Well, obviously the Titanic has changed the way we view icebergs, but it wasn't unknown. I had a great, great, great, great uncle called William Dorset Fellows, who was the captain of a ship called the Lady Hubbell, which was sunk by an iceberg in 1817. So it wasn't that nobody thought an iceberg could sink a ship. They knew it could, but they didn't think it could sink a ship like Titanic.
They did know icebergs were dangerous. And that's why there were iceberg warnings. You know, a big part of the Titanic story is that these iceberg warnings were coming in and they were largely being ignored. And that's where, again, I'm afraid you do come back to Smith.
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Chapter 3: What iceberg warnings did Titanic receive and how were they handled?
So there was one eyewitness account that said this. I think most Titanic historians, including myself, have always found it very implausible that they were going to try to dock a ship the size of Titanic in New York at night, right, in the dark, essentially. If we think about particularly the quality of like electric lighting that would have been available at the time.
And also that there would have been a big kind of welcome ceremony arranged for the following morning. So, in fact, it probably would have garnered less publicity, not more for the Titanic to arrive at night. So all of this seems highly implausible.
I do believe Elizabeth Lyons, actually, because I think that both Ismay and Smith wanted to have the headlines. They both loved headlines. They weren't racing for the Blue Ribbon, but the Titanic was in a race and she was racing her sister's maiden voyage. So what they were doing is they were watching the charts and they were looking at where was Olympic on her maiden voyage and where are we?
And they were like, great, we're way ahead.
Whatever their aspirations, the relationship between Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay is critical to what happens next, and who is to blame for it.
They'd known each other for years. Smith had known his father, Thomas Ismay.
Does Ismay push Captain Smith to drive the ship even faster on Sunday, just as Titanic is entering a part of the ocean already known to contain icebergs? And if he does, is it an order the Captain is bound to follow? In the years to come, Ismay's role on Titanic will be hotly debated.
Ismay had quite a confusing status aboard Titanic because he was traveling on a first-class ticket and therefore was technically a passenger. But of course, as the ultimate boss, he even employed the captain, as it were. He really was also a sort of super captain or, if you like, another member of the crew. And what we see is we see him flipping between these roles throughout the voyage.
So sometimes he's eating and meddling with the passengers. Sometimes he's carrying a message from the bridge. He's walking between these two worlds.
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Chapter 4: Why was there no lifeboat drill on Titanic’s maiden voyage?
And I think some of the passengers are like, are we going to slow down? He's like, of course not. We're not going to slow down.
the message from the Baltic isn't the only iceberg warning that's come in that afternoon. At 1.49 p.m., Harold Bride picked up a transmission from the America, reporting that they'd just passed a pair of large bergs. There was no MSG, or Master's Service Gram, attached to it, the prefix that means a message should be brought to the captain's attention. So Bride never passed it on to Captain Smith.
At a quarter to six that evening, Titanic changes course. The ship has reached the corner, the point where the northern and southern Atlantic shipping lanes diverge. At this time of year, all vessels will be taking the longer southern route, the one that's supposed to be free of icebergs. But even on the southern route, it's getting colder.
Titanic's outdoor spaces have been all but abandoned, as passengers throng to cozier spots indoors. Someone who has braved the chilly evening air is journalist Edith Rosenbaum. She's on the boat deck, taking in the stunning view off Titanic's bow. She vividly describes what she sees that evening. The foam whirled in a great cascade, made blood-red by the rays of a setting sun.
It looked like a crimson carpet stretching from the ship to the horizon. By 7pm, the sun has disappeared altogether, and Edith Rosenbaum has retreated inside. As the light fades, First Officer William Murdoch orders the foc'sle hatch to be closed. The glow from the hatch is making it hard to see what's ahead. Out on deck, the temperature has dropped to 6 degrees Celsius.
Meanwhile, eight decks below, things are hotting up. Titanic's last three boilers are ready to come online. They've been gradually warming up over the past few hours. Now the time has come to connect them to the engines.
The boiler rooms were several decks deep and they occupied the area of the ship on top of what we call the tank top. And underneath that, you had the bilges and things like that. So in other words, it's the lowest deck that there is on the ship, but going up several heights of decks to accommodate the size of the boilers.
And then towards the stern of the ship, you had the engine room proper, if you like. And that's where these two giant reciprocating engines were.
Down in the bowels of the ship, men like my great uncle Jimmy McGann are hard at work. My brother Stephen has researched Jimmy's story.
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Chapter 5: How did Captain Smith and Bruce Ismay influence Titanic’s speed decisions?
Veronica Hinckley.
These people in first class were the super, super wealthy at the time, the Jeff Bezos of the time. Many of them were the kind of wealth that we can't even imagine. Their lifestyles were palatial.
Life on board Titanic for those few days seems to have been like a big party, definitely for the first class passengers. They were all sizing each other up to begin with. A lot of them were coming back from business trips from London back to New York. So there was a kind of pecking order even amongst the first classes as to who was the most important there. There was a lot of networking going on.
for many travelers, Titanic is not just a booze cruise, but a schmooze cruise. And the pecking order among the richest guests is a complex one.
It wasn't that all these people were the same and they all came from the same club. They didn't. Any more than everyone in first class today on an airliner is someone you want to have to dinner next Thursday.
First class on Titanic is dominated by wealthy Americans. Richest of all is John Jacob Astor IV, a man whose family have topped the New York rich list for generations.
His ancestor, the first John Jacob Astor, built his first fortune on fur, which was then a very important ingredient in fashion. And he made a very, very large sum of money.
By the turn of the 20th century, the Astors have amassed a vast property empire, including the famous Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Fifth Avenue. John Jacob IV has grown up in the lap of luxury, but all the privilege in the world has done nothing to protect him from scandal.
His mother had built this enormous palace for herself. So he was then living in a house, you know, not much smaller than Buckingham Palace, with a ballroom on the back. And he had this tremendously socially active wife who was very good looking and a great leader and a clever woman. And everything was tickety-boo until he fell in love with his second wife, Madeleine, who was very much younger.
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Chapter 6: What was the significance of Titanic’s speed and passenger expectations?
He was the most experienced captain on the North Atlantic. He was quite a good-looking man with a big, rough sort of moustache, which was typical of captains of the time. And yet he spoke in very hushed, very calm tones. He had sparkly blue eyes. And passengers loved him. They would change their passages to actually sail with him. He was urbane. He was sophisticated.
He could talk about all the court cases of the day, you know, with the wealthiest people of the day.
I think he was a very congenial figure. I think he was good fun and chatty and he rotated the first class passengers around so he got to know them all and he sat with them all and he was very pleasant. But of course his job was to sail the ship. His job was not to keep the passengers happy any more than it would be to load the lifeboat. That wasn't what he was there for.
He was there to sail the ship.
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A little before 9 PM on Sunday, Captain Smith does return to the bridge, but not for long. He has a brief conversation with Officer of the Watch, Charles Lightoller. Lightoller is an experienced sailor with quite the personal history. He's been shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean, worked as a cowboy in Canada, even walked the American railroads as a hobo.
He's a hard nut, but also an extremely competent officer. By now, the air on Titanic's bridge, which is open to the elements on both sides, has dropped to just one degree above freezing. And that's not the only thing that's happened while Captain Smith was dining with the wideners. Telegraph operator Harold Bride has received yet another iceberg warning, the sixth of the day so far.
This one is from Captain Lord of the Californian. Three large bergs, five miles southward of us. Titanic's lookouts haven't spotted any icebergs, but in these conditions they aren't always easy to make out. It's a still, cold night. No wind. That means no ripples at the base of the bergs, one of the usual giveaways. Lightoller doesn't like it. He tells Captain Smith as much.
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Chapter 7: What was Bruce Ismay’s ambiguous role aboard Titanic?
Nearly 100 passengers came to the service and sang. And what was really ironic is the songs that they ended up singing were almost, in hindsight, telling of what they would experience later that night. Probably the most coincidental is For Those in Peril on the Sea.
Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, who bidst in the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep. O hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea. All of these songs, you know, as you look back on that hymn service and the fact that it was within a few hours of what they were going to experience was really remarkable.
though nobody has seen one yet. Titanic has been sailing past icebergs for over an hour, ever since Captain Smith was at dinner with the Wideness. The lookouts in the crow's nest can smell them. The telltale mineral odour that signals a berg is nearby. First-class passenger Elizabeth Schutz has noticed it too. She remembers the sinister aroma from a visit to the Eiger glacier in Switzerland.
By now the temperature on deck has dropped below freezing. There are ice crystals forming on the portholes of empty, unheated cabins, as well as around the lamps at the front of the ship. The effect is strangely beautiful.
Quartermaster Road said you could see whiskers around the light, which means little ice crystals floating in the still air, which made beautiful rainbows around all of Titanic's deck lights. Another point while we're talking about the incredible beauty and majesty of that night is that there was a lot of phosphorescence in the water.
So as Titanic plowed on to her destiny, if you like, on this black ocean that was absolutely calm, there was a green V shape, almost like geese flying, if you like, but a green V coming out from her bow.
At 9.52 p.m., Titanic's wireless room receives another warning. It's from a freighter, the SS Masaba. Saw much heavy pack ice and a great number large icebergs. Wireless operator Jack Phillips is too busy to take it to the bridge. He's still trying to clear his backlog of passengers' messages. He puts it under a paperweight to deal with later.
At 10pm, the pipe party down in Steerage wraps up, as stewards arrive to turn off the lights. Most of the third-class passengers go to bed. In first class, meanwhile, lights out won't come for another hour and a half. Actress Dorothy Gibson is in the reading and writing room on A-Deck, enjoying a game of bridge with her mother and a couple of New York bankers.
At 10 past 11, Jack Phillips receives another message on the wireless. It's the Californian again, the same ship that issued an iceberg warning two hours ago. Now the Californian's captain, Stanley Lord, has been forced to stop for the night. His path is blocked by an impassable ice field.
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Chapter 8: How were Titanic’s engines and boiler rooms operated during the voyage?
Beautiful it may be, but these strange conditions are also highly dangerous. And at the time of Titanic's maiden voyage, they're poorly understood. In fact, it's not until relatively recently that experts have managed to piece together an exact account of what happened, atmospherically speaking, on the 14th of April 1912. an account that helps explain what caused the sinking of Titanic.
So far in this series, we've followed the famous ship all the way from Belfast via Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown, and most of the way across the Atlantic Ocean. But now we need to consider the movement of the iceberg as well, because it too has been on a journey.
There had been quite a warm winter in the Arctic in 1911, and a lot of ice had come out of Bathin Bay and was actually sort of marooned, if you like, along the shore around Newfoundland. And then what happened was there was quite a high tide. And what happened was that the high tide lifted all the icebergs, and then they suddenly floated in a giant rush down the Labrador Current.
The Labrador current flows down the east coast of Canada and out to sea, where it meets the warmer Gulf Stream.
So what happened was the cold water flowed a bit like a cold snake wriggling over the hot desert floor. That's how the Labrador current that was freezing flowed over or into the Gulf Stream, but without mixing. When you get very, very cold water of the type I've been describing, you get the opposite of a desert mirror.
So in the desert, the surface is very hot and light travels faster along the surface and slower in the colder air, slightly higher up. And that causes the light beam to bend upwards. And what that means is it brings a sliver of the sky, bends it down and sort of paints it on the ground in front of you. And then it's your brain that actually thinks it's water.
The exact same things happens, but in reverse when it's very, very cold on the surface. So what happened is that as you get into this very, very cold Labrador current area, the light, instead of bending upwards and showing you the sky, it bends downwards around the curvature of the Earth and shows you a bit more beyond the horizon. It has the effect of raising the horizon slightly.
What they started to see when they got into the Labrador Current was a very thin layer of what looked like haze, a band of haze all around the horizon. It had the effect of camouflaging the iceberg. And so this little band of haze all around the horizon just meant they probably picked up the berg, I don't know, 15 seconds, 20 seconds later than they would otherwise have done.
It's not much, but those few seconds could be enough to make all the difference. At 11.39 on Sunday evening, all is quiet on RMS Titanic. Captain Smith is asleep in his cabin, as are most of the passengers on board. On the bridge, First Officer Murdoch is taken over from Lightoller. So far, it's been an uneventful watch. But then, suddenly, a harsh sound pierces the cold night air.
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