Titanic: Secrets Revealed

Titanic: Secrets Revealed is an older documentary.  When the Titanic sank she left a lot of mysteries.  Was there a cover-up of the sinking?  Did her owners commit insurance fraud and sink her deliberately?  Was the sinking a hoax?  This is a documentary you need to take with a grain of salt, however, to keep up with the Titanic theme for April I am sharing this documentary.

Edith Haisman was fifteen when she boarded the Titanic.  She was in awe of the ship when she boarded it.  The Titanic set the bar for style and elegance.  Competition between the shipping companies was fierce.  J. Bruce Ismay wanted a piece of the Atlantic pie and felt he could get a piece of that pie by building luxurious ships.

Titanic was 900 feet long and 220 feet high.  Her interior was the best in the world.  The builders spared no expense.  She only had three screws and three propellers.  Did these propellers factor into the sinking?  Maybe because it made her slow to turn.

Eva Hart and her family were originally going to go to America on the Philadelphia.  However, due to the coal strike, the passengers who were scheduled to sail on other ships soon found themselves boarding the Titanic.  Conveniently, the coal from other ships was transferred to the Titanic.

John Jacob Astor and his young wife invited Molly Brown to come along with them on the Titanic.  In the bowels of the ship, third-class passengers were kept.  George Vanderbilt was supposed to sail on the Titanic, but he canceled at the last minute.  It would prove to save his life.

Eva Hart remembers her mother had a sense of dread about the Titanic.  Although her father tried to reassure her mother, it was a feeling that stuck.  Another premonition was the fire that was discovered in a coal bunker.  The near-collision with the New York also gave passenger pause.  It also annoyed J. Bruce Ismay as the Olympic had a similar event happen with a British Navy vessel.  The Navy vessel was drawn into the side of the Olympic carving a hole into the ship.

The voyage continued and everyone enjoyed themselves.  The sea was calm but the temperature had dropped.  The officers in the crows' nest had trouble seeing.  Passengers would have commented on the chill in the air.  Ice warnings came through to the Marconi operators.  Unfortunately, they were busy sending messages on behalf of the passengers.  Many of the messages did not make it to the bridge.  In this documentary, did Ismay push Captain Smith to go faster?  Passengers commented that Ismay had made comments about beating Olympic’s record for speed.

Suddenly, the men in the crows’ nest saw the iceberg.  The ship attempted to turn, unfortunately, the Titanic struck the iceberg.  Eva Hart and Edith Haisman were sleeping when the Titanic hit the iceberg.  The ship designer, Thomas Andrews went down to inspect the damage.  The hull was damaged on over two hundred feet of the hull. 

To continue to learn more about the Titanic, continue to watch.

BEWARE, there are some shaking issues with the documentary.  The video shakes periodically during the documentary.  It was transferred from a VHS tape to a digital format and then to YouTube.  There is also a nasty tone to the video, especially from the narrator and some of the participants.  It was grating and condensing at times.  It could be as a result of what was known about the Titanic at the time.  As I said at the start this is an older documentary and there have been new discoveries about the Titanic. 

You can access the YouTube documentary here.