[music playing] narrator the sinking on its First Crossing created the most extraordinary sense of loss and reversal of fortune. People did think titanic was unsinkable, and yet it would end up at the bottom of the sea. Its very haunting. And you think of that staircase lying fathoms deep, when only a few hours before beautiful women in their garments had been parading down it. Guggenheim asked the people at the time dreamt of leading their lives. They were so glamorous and marvelous. And suddenly there they were in the icy sea. It sort of shakes you. And i think that titanic going down shook the western world. [theme music] hello. And welcome to how it really happened. Im jesse l. Martin. The final calls for help from titanic revealed the distress of the ships last moments afloat. First, cannot last much longer, then losing power. Finally, just before the ship went down, come quick. Who on the ship will survive the titanic disaster . And how will they be saved . Tonight, titanic part 2, the dreadful last moments of the ship and all its people. This is how it really happened. [music playing] i was asked to write a version about the titanic for television for the 100th Anniversary in 2012. But i just got more and more curious about the drama and the fates that engulfed them all. The lookouts described it as a dark mass that came through that haze. And realized it was an iceberg and they started turning to the left. It looked like it was going to miss the iceberg entirely at first. And thats when they heard a grinding noise. At the time of the collision, they were going the fastest they had ever gone during the voyage. Titanics top speed was 24 or 25 knots, which is about 28 or 29 miles an hour. Now when she struck the iceberg, she was doing 22 knots, which is about 25 miles an hour. Its extremely fast for a ship weighing 72,000 tons. They had sideswiped the iceberg too where they flooded enough, fast enough, that they couldnt keep up with the pumps. It was a series of punctures in the hull of the ship. Everyone really felt the collision in a different way. If you were away in the stern, you didnt even feel it. There were other passengers that actually slept through it. If you were close to it, you felt a big jerk. But to the people in the one boiler room, they said it was like a whole side of the ship gave away. The clock in the wheelhouse said that it was 11 40 pm precisely. One person that felt the collision was Captain Smith himself. Smith came forward onto the bridge and says, what was that . Dorothy gibson and her mother were in first class and was walking back to her cabin, when she heard this scraping sound, as she described it. And soon, she came across Thomas Andrews who was the Chief Engineer in what she described as a palish green complexion. And she knew then something was terribly wrong. Her Survival Instinct was incredibly strong. So she pushed forward with her mother pauline to get on that very first lifeboat. Titanics officers thought the ship would only last one hour or an hour and a half maximum. The first Distress Call went out at 12 37 titanic time, which is about 40 minutes after the iceberg hit, saying, please come, we need help. Chaos starts to ensue. It creeps up, and then slowly spreads to the rest of the ship. [music playing] tragically, as the last lifeboat left the side of titanic, there were still 1,500 souls remaining on the ship. As the titanic sank, guggenheim and his valet were on the deck chairs of Titanic Sipping Brandy and smoking a cigar, dressed, of course, in their best. Guggenheim and his valet did not even attempt to try to get into the lifeboat. And there was a code of honor that existed within first class men, that they would not behave in such a dastardly fashion. John jacob astor, of course, would never see madeleine again. And he would never see their child too whom she was carrying. Isidor and ida straus were still on board. Ida straus refused to leave her husband isidor aside. My great grandmother saw them sitting together holding hands. Arm in arm on deck chairs on the deck of titanic as it went down. Throughout the sinking, the band was on board playing ragtime tunes to try to keep the spirits up. But things grew more dire. And at about five minutes before the actual titanic fully went down, they played one final song. [music playing] theres a controversy as to what The Last Song was that the band played on the ship. If i had to give my own opinion, it would be nearer my god to thee because thats what Wallace Hartley said he would play if he was ever on a sinking ship. [music playing] not one Single Member of the band survived. They all died. [music playing] the sinking really accelerated around 2 15 when water reached the bridge. As the weight of water pulled the bow lower and lower, you still had this very buoyant stern of the titanic. All of a sudden, a wave sort of came over them and engulfed them. They felt the ship really sinking. People were trying to run up the decks to the stern to stay out of the water. People tried to cling onto anything they could. And at a certain point, unless youre holding on to something, youre just going to slip down the decks into the sea. People were falling, dropping into the ocean. There was screams. There was panic. There was hysteria. Some of the lifeboats that were very close in could see the ship rearing up over their heads, which must have been very frightening. And survivors were able at quite close range to just observe titanic as she slowly sank. And they noticed the portholes blazing with light, one after another dipping down under the water, one by one disappearing under the North Atlantic. And then the lights went out. And suddenly, all they could see was the black hull of Titanic Silhouetted against the stars. There was a mention of the stern sticking straight up like a Finger Pointing at the sky. When suddenly youve got all this weight out of the water, it had to break. This is a massive amount of pressure to the tune of like 2 million foottons of pressure. The stress is concentrated on a specific area right about where the third funnel is. The bow and stern would separate and they pulling apart like a party popper. And a few moments after that, the ship broke in half. Madeleine astor was very upset in the lifeboat. And i think she even stood up at one point because with all the screaming going on when the ship went down, she thought she heard her husband John Jacob Astor calling her. [music playing] my great grandmother, she saw the ship sink from these lifeboats. [music playing] it plummeted into the sea 2 hours and 40 minutes after the collision. Titanic slipped beneath the waves for the last time at 2 20 am. [music playing] as its sinking, the ship itself breaks apart and begins to go down faster. The rms titanic is lost. As water fills in, the air rushes out. The stern goes down slower, spinning as it falls and scattering its debris over a larger area on the bottom. As the two pieces fall, the bow and the stern land an incredible distance apart on the bottom of the ocean. On the surface of the atlantic, it would have been horrifying a scene of absolute despair. One of the more horrific details about the sinking are the stories of the people in the lifeboats and what they were hearing after the sinking. Their loved ones are people they knew in the water, and they could do nothing to save them. People screaming at a pitch of hysteria they could never imagine. And many of the survivors were haunted by this sound for the rest of their lives. All the screams from 1,500 people saying, help, come now. A team of scientists carried out what they called the largest Underwater Scanning Project in history. In order to do this, magellan took over 700,000 images of the entire wreck site the bow, the stern, and the debris field in between. And then they used ai to stitch all of these images together to create this digital twin of the titanic wreck site. When i first saw it, it literally blew me away. These 3d scans that have been done. Theyre Getting Better and better and more in depth. It really shows the ship actually as it is. Were now able to see things at the level of detail within the wreck, almost as though the water has been drained away. They believe the large scale Underwater Scanning Project may solve the mystery of what exactly caused the luxury Passenger Liner to sink in the atlantic in 1912. Steel doesnt lie. You can see where it broke. It actually helps you explain this is what happened, how it actually came apart. Where the bow broke off. [music playing] when the titanic went down, it was about 2 20. And you had all these people in the water. The temperature of the sea meant that nobody was going to live more than a few minutes. The conditions in the water were absolutely brutal. The Air Temperature was 30 some degrees, but the Water Temperature was 28 degrees. But if you swam to one of these lifeboats, you stood a chance because you could get completely out of the water, and that was critical to survival. And there was one woman who swam to a lifeboat. And she was the only woman to go down with the ship and survive. But if you were in the water, it was just going to suck the heat out of you. You were going to freeze. There were eyewitness reports at the time of Working Class Mothers in the Water Holding their babies aloft trying to save them, to keep them out of the icy water. There are boats that were virtually more than half empty. They could have gone back and just chose not to and didnt. Its very hard for a modern audience to understand why the lifeboats didnt go back to rescue more passengers. A lot of them had rowed as far away from the ship as possible. They would have seen people drowning around them and had that awful pressure thinking, shall we go and help these people, or shall we keep our lifeboat safe, secure, emptier without more people, so we survive. The other thing is theyre in a lifeboat in the North Atlantic. You can hardly imagine how scary that would be in the dark with thousands of people screaming for help. And what they did believe is they would be immediately swamped. One lifeboat perhaps heroically rowed back towards the wreck to see if there were any survivors. The famous event is Lifeboat Number 14 commanded by fifth officer lowe, he went back to the scene of the sinking after it quieted down. They were amongst all kinds of bodies by the time they got there. One of the crewmen said he just couldnt look over the side of the lifeboat because he just thought hed break down. Very sadly, about 1,500 people drowned in the titanic disaster. All that remained of the Majestic Rms Titanic was a handful of lifeboats and some survivors clinging to life. Even on board the lifeboats, there was still danger. The sea started to pick up as they were floating around for hours. It wouldnt have taken a whole lot to swamp the 16 wooden lifeboats. It was very, very cold in the lifeboats. They had no water. They had no food. They barely had any light. And your mind goes to a dark place. Am i going to float around until i freeze to death . They have no idea that the carpathias steaming towards them full steam ahead. Some people perished in the lifeboats from hypothermia. I can imagine juliet trying to keep her daughters warm. Its hard enough to keep yourself warm, let alone trying to keep two little girls warm and calm and not panic or freak out. All of a sudden, theyre seeing icebergs everywhere, huge icebergs 70 feet, 100 feet icebergs looming over them. And they think, were all dead. Carpathia was captained by Captain Rostron. Captain rostron prepared for the worst. He had extra lookouts. He knew that titanic had encountered ice. And so he wanted to make sure that in his dash to the disaster scene, he didnt fall victim to the same fate. When the carpathia got the message, it was about 59 miles away. So Captain Rostron knew its going to take me several hours to get there. But he didnt know how quickly the titanic was going to sink. All he could do was just go and hope. His First Priority was to close the distance and then followed it up with all those other decisions that you had to make in a rescue situation. Captain rostron said, do not wake our passengers. I want you to wake up all of the extra stokers we have. Put them stoking the fires. Captain rostron actually cut the heating on hot water for his own passengers to make sure that all the steam power of his boilers went into the propellers in order to get there as fast as possible. He raced through the night. [music playing] i dont want you to move. Im gonna miss you so much. You realize well have Internet Waiting for us at the new place, right . Oh, we know. We just like making a scene. Transferring your services has never been easier. Get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. Can i sleep over at your new place . Can katie sleep over tonight . Sure, honey this generation is so dramatic move with xfinity. When others divide. We unite. With Real Solutions to help our kids. Like community schools. Neighborhood hubs that provide everything from Mental Health services to food pantries. Academic tutoring to prom dresses. Healthcare to after care. Community schools can wrap so much around public schools. And through meaningful partnerships with families, they become centers of their communities. Real solutions for kids and communities at aft. Org extensive search in the north of their communities. Atlantic ocean is growing even more urgent, as experts believe the missing Titan Submersible is nearly out of oxygen. On board, oceangate ceo and founder stockton rush, british adventurer and businessman hamish harding, one of pakistans richest men, british businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19yearold son suleman dawood, and french submariner and exnavy officer paulhenri nargeolet. With what could be less than 24 hours of oxygen left on board titan, hope at this point may rest on banging noises detected by sonar. There were reports of knocking sounds at regular intervals coming from underwater. Banging noises that makes people think, well, human beings perhaps in that submersible are making them, desperately trying to signal where they are. It gave hope that they were trying to communicate. If the missing sub is trapped at the bottom of the ocean, it could be in water many times deeper than any rescue ever successfully done before. Underwater rescues are inherently complicated, dangerous, and the deep sea makes it all harder. They need another submersible with an artificial arm that can tie the submarine to the other one. And then they would surface together. Theres only a handful of machines that are capable of reaching down to these enormous depths. [music playing] with the titanics Distress Call, a handful of ships tried to get there as quickly as possible. It was the carpathia that saved the day. [music playing] titanic passengers were just in the lifeboats, hoping somebody was going to show up. And at that point, they were just surrounded by icebergs. And theyre starting to be lit by the dawns light. People wrote afterwards, they were like coralcolored icebergs as the sun rose, and pinks and faint blues, just the most Incredible Sunrise if you lived to see it. It was spectacular. It took the carpathia four hours to reach titanic. Captain rostron aboard the carpathia sees a green flare fired up from one of the lifeboats. The carpathia was not in a safe position. Because they were in the same ice field that sank the titanic. And then he can start to pick out the lifeboats on the water. And theyre all making their way to carpathia. Mrs. Ogden was traveling on the carpathia with her husband, and theyre the ones that had the camera aboard. They had just gotten it. It was brand new and took the only pictures of titanics lifeboats coming up to the carpathia. So those pictures exist today because Captain Rostron actually asked mr. Ogden personally, can you record this for history. The first lifeboat that reached the carpathia had an officer in it. And it was officer boxhall. Captain rostron said, hello, young man. Can you tell me what happened to the titanic . He just bawled his eyes out, just started crying. And all boxhall could tell him is the ships gone down. All these people are dead. And at that point, thats the first time anybody outside of the people that were directly impacted realized how significant the disaster really was. Remarkably, for that time, there was a second camera on board the carpathia, and that is part of what led us to see the shellshocked survivors as they were pulled from the water. They were given food, drink, found a place for them to stay. Quite a few of the carpathia passengers started helping the titanic people, taking them below decks. And some are crying, some are screaming. The things people saw that night would have been absolutely horrific. Welcome back to how it really happened. The last section of the titanic hull still floating before she finally sank was the stern. It was standing on end out of the water. The last people still aboard titanic were at the stern, hanging on for life. Titanic movie director James Cameron meticulously researched the human drama at the back of the ship. And he made room in his film for several of those Miraculous Survivor stories. Many movie watchers wondered if they could possibly be true. One of the most famous stories features the titanics baker, who incredibly found a way to survive the sinking. Did that, could that have really happened . We have to move. When James Camerons movie came out in 1997 sud