Titanic sinking in real time

[Pixelated]

greek_jester (and anybody else who's interested), here ya go ...

Just some notes:

• This is 2 hours and 40 minutes long -- as long as it took the Titanic to go down
• It starts at about 11:39 with somebody shouting "Hard to starboard" as they first see the iceberg
• There is no background music or narration. There are texts throughout the video to help show the progression the the tragedy
• There are sounds that might have been heard on the ship itself -- creaks, groans, explosions, and so on
• Up until the very end, you hear nothing of the spreading panic and terror that must have engulfed the passengers as the ship began to go down
• They do indicate at what times the Titanic got messages from other ships, including the Carpathia, which said it was rushing to the rescue ... but it was four hours away.

[mjr]

greek_jester (and anybody else who's interested), here ya go ...

Just some notes:

• This is 2 hours and 40 minutes long -- as long as it took the Titanic to go down
• It starts at about 11:39 with somebody shouting "Hard to starboard" as they first see the iceberg
• There is no background music or narration. There are texts throughout the video to help show the progression the the tragedy
• There are sounds that might have been heard on the ship itself -- creaks, groans, explosions, and so on
• Up until the very end, you hear nothing of the spreading panic and terror that must have engulfed the passengers as the ship began to go down
• They do indicate at what times the Titanic got messages from other ships, including the Carpathia, which said it was rushing to the rescue ... but it was four hours away.

This is interesting. I've seen a link to it before, but I don't have the time right now to sit and watch the full 2 hours, 40 minutes.

[Pixelated]

I have to admit, I used a large portion of it as background noise while I was doing other stuff. Just kept glancing up or over as needed when text came up. There do seem to be fairly long periods where not much is happening, although I'm sure there was a lot actually going on at the time.

[Food Lady]

It's horrifying and calming at the same time. I am about to go to bed so I skipped to the end and I cried. I sometimes think about going on a cruise but I don't know...

[mjr]

It's horrifying and calming at the same time. I am about to go to bed so I skipped to the end and I cried. I sometimes think about going on a cruise but I don't know...

One of the scenes in the James Cameron movie that would really make you cry is when the ship's band is playing "Nearer My God To Thee" and the red-headed Irish lady is telling a bedtime story to her children...and Ida and Isador Strauss are laying in bed together. Also in the below clip, the lady who has a baby and walks up to the Captain asking where she should go -- after the lifeboats are gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJQOSAgXxDQ

That must have been terrifying.

[Food Lady]

I own it. I totally know.

[Pixelated]

One of the scenes in the James Cameron movie that would really make you cry is when the ship's band is playing "Nearer My God To Thee" and the red-headed Irish lady is telling a bedtime story to her children...and Ida and Isador Strauss are laying in bed together. Also in the below clip, the lady who has a baby and walks up to the Captain asking where she should go -- after the lifeboats are gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJQOSAgXxDQ

That must have been terrifying.

They were so very horribly unprepared. Not nearly enough lifeboats. No drills. Lifeboats launched that were half-empty, or even less. Lifeboats and inflatables that didn't launch properly (most, I think, ended up carrying at least some passengers). The captain apparently tried to call the half-empty lifeboats back to pick up more people but none came back ... whether people couldn't get them back to the ship, or just wouldn't, I'm not sure.

[mjr]

They were so very horribly unprepared. Not nearly enough lifeboats. No drills. Lifeboats launched that were half-empty, or even less. Lifeboats and inflatables that didn't launch properly (most, I think, ended up carrying at least some passengers). The captain apparently tried to call the half-empty lifeboats back to pick up more people but none came back ... whether people couldn't get them back to the ship, or just wouldn't, I'm not sure.

Indeed. The lifeboat thing was directly the White Star Line's fault. Titanic was originally designed to have 64 boats, and if each boat was large enough for 65 people, that would have been enough for everyone onboard. It was cut down to 32, then to 20.

Even so, they wouldn't have had time in this case to save everyone, even with enough boats. They believed that in the case of some kind of emergency that Titanic could stay afloat long enough for them to use the boats to ferry passengers to another ship. Unfortunately, that never happened.

The Californian could have helped, but their radio operator had turned off their radio and gone to bed minutes before Titanic's CQD calls.

According to lore, the The captain did try to call one of the boats to come back, but you're right, they didn't go back to the ship. I think their fear was that there would be a crush of people and either the boat would be swamped with people, or would be capsized.

The BBC (I believe it was) actually did a very interesting project where they took the messages sent to and from Titanic that fateful night and "translated" them into voices, so you could hear what was being said back and forth. Here are some links, I think the last link is the longer version...but still these are interesting.

You'll need Flash to play it, but here it is: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00q89fy

And here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqstKa3qcTw

And here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bxUOlYu6dY

[Food Lady]

^ It gets more horrifying as it goes on.

[mjr]

^ It gets more horrifying as it goes on.

It does, indeed. Especially when they realized that the ship wouldn't stay afloat long enough for help to get there.

And it all starts with a CQD interrupting a message being sent to Cape Race, Newfoundland.

Interesting side note: Ships at that time had 3-letter "call signs" (at least British ships, did).

Titanic's call sign was MGY.

So in the above, when they sent out "CQD this is Titanic", they really sent something like CQD DE MGY.

Since it was Morse Code, they obviously used a lot of prosigns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code