First Officer Murdoch takes evasive action, attempting to swerve around the iceberg. As Titanic sustains multiple hull breaches, water starts flooding in. As chaos engulfs the engine room, Jimmy McGann and his pals do their best to shut down the engines. And the two wireless operators broadcast their first ever SOS… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Stephanie Barczewski, Julian Fellowes, Clifford Ismay, Tim Maltin, Stephen McGann, Susie Millar. Special thanks to Southampton Archives, Culture and Tourism for the use of the Eva Hart archive. Visit SeaCity Museum for an interactive experience of the Titanic story (seacitymuseum.co.uk) 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 Liam Cameron | Compositions by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | 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 happened on the night Titanic hit the iceberg?
It's 11.39 p.m. on April the 14th, 1912. The Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. RMS Titanic, all 47,000 tons of her, is plowing westwards at a speed of 22 knots. Up in the crow's nest, 90 feet above deck, lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee are scanning the horizon. They're approaching the end of their two-hour watch, and they can't wait to get back inside.
The night is still and clear, but the temperature is only a few degrees above zero. The sea ahead looks like black glass. The stars shine brilliantly overhead, but all around is nothing but darkness. The lookouts have no binoculars, only the naked eye, although in these conditions artificial magnification might not make much difference. It seems clear enough, but looks can be deceiving.
In fact, the peculiar atmospheric conditions on this particular night are creating a cold water mirage, scattering the light in unusual ways. The horizon isn't quite where it's supposed to be, and as a result, anything just below it is camouflaged behind an indistinct haze, including anything directly in the path of the ship.
The two lookouts are still casting their eyes ahead of them, searching for anything out of the ordinary. But all they can see is darkness, stretching into infinity. And then, almost imperceptibly, something begins emerging dead ahead. It's hard to make out at first, just a blank patch that looks somehow different from the space around it.
Chapter 2: How did the lookouts spot the iceberg on Titanic?
The men squint, trying to make sense of what they're seeing. With every passing second, the strange object grows larger. Then suddenly they realize what it is. Frederick Fleet reaches frantically for the bell in the crow's nest. He rings it three times. With his other hand he lifts the receiver of the telephone that connects to the bridge. What did you see? Comes a voice from the other end.
By now there's no doubt in Fleet's mind. Iceberg, he replies. Right ahead. From the Noiser Podcast Network. This is Titanic Ship of Dreams. Part 5. On the bridge, Titanic's first officer, William Murdoch, is in command. He's 39, a Scotsman, and a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve. Both his father and grandfather were captains before him. But Murdoch has never faced a challenge like this before.
Now with the lives of more than 2,000 people in his hands, Titanic's first officer has just seconds to avoid disaster. Harder starboard, he calls out to the helmsman, throwing the engine telegraph into reverse. Slowly, the ship starts to turn.
Chapter 3: What evasive actions did First Officer Murdoch take to avoid the iceberg?
Murdoch's plan was to do a maneuver called porting about the berg.
Tim Moulton, author of 101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic But Didn't.
Everyone knows the famous order harder starboard. And this was from sailing days when in fact the tiller of the helm would be put harder starboard, which would actually move the bow to the port or left. So that's what Murdoch did to get the front to clear the berg. And he did that. The bow missed it. But Titanic isn't out of the woods yet. He then gave a less famous order, which is harder port.
And that's because having swerved the bow away, it was then presenting her whole starboard side to the Berg.
With the helm harder port now, Titanic's stern swings away from the iceberg. It looks like Murdoch's audacious maneuver is going to work.
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Chapter 4: Could a different maneuver have prevented the Titanic disaster?
Titanic nearly missed the berg. It missed the part of the berg above the sea. Unfortunately for Murdoch, there was a very large flat spur of ice that was a couple of meters below the surface. In fact, the harder port order, instead of or as well as clearing the stern, it actually had the effect of driving the bow of Titanic into the ongoing iceberg.
The explosive force of hitting the iceberg was a million foot tons a second. It was enough to lift the Washington Monument a foot in a second. So in other words, it was like a bomb going off. People have said that if Murdoch hadn't actually swerved, if you like, to nearly avoid the iceberg, that then there would have been a head-on collision.
And it's true that this actually would have saved Titanic because it would have had the effect a bit like a car crash, if you like, with crumple zones. It would have the effect of concertina-ing in the first hundred feet of the ship. But the rest of the ship would have been completely intact.
And in fact, the deceleration at 22 knots in, say, the first 100 feet of crumpling would actually not have even thrown people out of their beds. So it would have been like a motor car of the day gradually coming to a stop.
Professor Stephanie Baczewski, author of Titanic, A Night Remembered.
If Murdoch had made what would have been a terrifying but probably correct decision to say, we cannot possibly turn this ship in time, so we're just going to ram into the iceberg head-on. The Titanic was designed to survive that kind of collision. He would have crumpled the bow.
He probably would have killed 200 people in the front of the ship because the impact of something that big, of that ship hitting a big iceberg full-on, would have been absolutely devastating. It just would have crushed the front of the ship and killed a lot of people in the process. But the ship would have survived.
It's a classic trolley problem. Do you risk the lives of everyone on board, gambling that you can save them all, or consign a small number to a certain death, knowing that their lives will buy the safety of everyone else?
Now that would have very sadly killed all 80 of the firemen who were birthed down in the bow of the ship who were not on duty at the time.
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Chapter 5: What was Captain Edward Smith’s role during the iceberg collision?
Hey guys, Bear Grylls here, just dropping in to let you know about this new book I've written called The Greatest Story Ever Told. To be honest, it's the proudest thing I've ever done, hands down. Part of me can't quite believe it's never been done before. The real story of Jesus Christ, retold for a new generation. Told as a part thriller. William Murdoch is not even Titanic's captain.
That position is held by Edward Smith, Commodore of the White Star Fleet. After a glittering three-decade career with the company, he is on the cusp of a well-earned retirement. But Smith is resting in his cabin at the moment the ship hits the iceberg, having spent most of the evening dining in the a la carte restaurant with some of Titanic's wealthiest passengers. Author Clifford Ismay
Would Captain Smith have issued different orders? I think that's something we would never know. No captain can be on the bridge all of the time. He needs his personal time, his sleep time. Had Captain Smith actually been on the bridge at that particular point, who knows what difference it would have made.
It takes less than a minute for Captain Smith to make it onto the bridge. His cabin is conveniently located right next door. What was that? he asks Murdoch as soon as he arrives. An iceberg, sir, Murdoch replies. Captain Smith wastes no time following the Titanic's state-of-the-art safety protocols. Close the watertight doors, he orders.
That way, if the ship's hull has been breached down below, any water coming in should be contained within a single compartment. Murdoch assures him the doors are already closed. Right now, though, no one knows the extent of the damage the ship has received or, crucially, how it's distributed.
The total size of the hole that was open to the ocean is about the size of a doorframe, right? It's very, very small.
It was only light damage, but the problem was that it was over 200 feet. that she was designed to float with any two watertight compartments flooded, and she was designed to float even with her first four watertight compartments flooded. What she wasn't designed to float with was breaches in her first five compartments.
When the wreck was discovered, I think everybody thought there was going to be a gaping hole in the side of the ship, right? Well, it's not. It's a line, really, more than it's a hole. It's maybe six inches wide that runs down the side of the ship
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Chapter 6: How extensive was the damage caused to Titanic by the iceberg?
Screenwriter Julian Fellowes.
It didn't occur to anyone that a gash that long would be made in the side of a ship. What they thought is that it would collide in some way. I mean, there wasn't a ship that could have done that damage. Only an iceberg could do it.
The bird just slightly nicked into the fifth watertight compartment, which, if you like, was the Achilles heel. It was the thing which meant that Titanic would sink to the bottom.
The impact of the iceberg has been felt very differently in different parts of the ship. Many of the passengers have slept right through it. And those who are awake at the point of impact don't realize the damage the iceberg has caused. To Kate Boss on EDEC, it sounds like the scrape of an ice skate. To bedroom steward Alfred Kessinger, like a rowing boat being dragged over gravel.
Predictably, Titanic's very own Cassandra, Esther Hart, takes things more seriously. She's been refusing to sleep at night ever since she came on board. And right now, she's convinced the bump she just felt must spell disaster.
Had she been asleep, it wouldn't have wakened her. It didn't waken anybody else in the cabins round about there at all, but she was wide awake and she felt this bump. She said it was just like a train pulling into a station. It just jerked. It was very slight, but she said she knew that it was this dreadful something and she wakened my father.
She wakened me and my father said no if he wasn't going up on deck again. But she literally pulled him out of bed and made him go up. My father came back very quickly because he could get up to the boat deck in the lift very quickly from where Kevin was. And he came back and he picked me up and wrapped his blanket tightly around me as if I were a baby. And my mother said nothing to him.
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Chapter 7: How did passengers and crew perceive the impact of the iceberg?
And I used to say to her sometimes, years afterwards, I can't understand why you didn't say to him what was it. And she said, I didn't have to say what was it. I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was this dreadful something that I had to live with for months. There was nothing more I could say. So he put his very thick coat on her and put another on himself.
And without any words at all, we went out of the cabin and into the lift and up onto the boat deck. Now, if we hadn't done that at that time, I pretty much doubt I'd be talking to you today.
While the Hart family's neighbors on Titanic's port side are fast asleep in their bunks, in other parts of the ship, the iceberg's impact is felt more strongly. Millionaire Molly Brown is thrown to the floor of her first-class cabin on E-Day. 21-year-old Gretchen Longley wakes to find ice coming through a porthole.
Virginia Clark, a young mother from Montana, stares in amazement as a white mountain seems to glide past her cabin. And down in boiler room six, the violence of the impact is unmistakable.
as soon as titanic made contact with the iceberg the forward right hand if you like as you're looking going ahead part of the boiler rooms just exploded or looked like they exploded and suddenly fountains of water started spurting out from between the seams in the plates
So this would have been extremely shocking and worrying to those men who were trimming and the firemen and the stokers down there. And in fact, some of them felt that they must have run aground on Newfoundland because they couldn't imagine anything else that would do that much damage. I think some of them would have been quite surprised to know that all of that damage was caused just by ice.
even if they weren't on duty at the time. Trimmers like my great uncle Jimmy McGann would know that something bad had happened to the ship.
Everyone down below would have been aware of the collision immediately because as well as half the people were on duty and half of them were sleeping, but their sleeping quarters were low down in the ship, right in the bow. So they would all have been immediately woken up by the loud crash of the iceberg hitting Titanic
We don't know whether or not Jimmy was working at the time of the impact. But either way, he was almost certainly at his post within a matter of minutes. My brother Stephen has researched our great uncle's story.
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