figure of the grounds of the national academy of science. children especially enjoy climbing into the lap of the scientific genius with the smile of a grandfather. there's a new website for "american history tv" where you can find our schedules and preview upcoming programs. watch featured video as well as access ah tv history tweets, history in the news, follow "american history tv" all weekend every week end on c-span3 and online at c-span.org/history. the titanic sank into the atlantic ocean after striking an iceberg 100 years on ap -- of those on board -- about the

findings of a modern day report into perhaps the 20th century most store read disaster at sea. this program is about an hour. >> good afternoon everyone. i'm doug swanson, visitor services manager for the national archives experience. i want to welcome you and our c-span audience for another program in our popular noontime lecture series. today's topic is reporting to the loss of the ss titanic, a centennial reappraisal by samuel hall person. before we hear from mr. hall person, i'd just like to point out a couple of other titanic related programs we've got happening for you. on friday, april 13th, julie williams will be on hand to discuss her book, a rare titanic family. on saturday, april 14th, we'll be showing the classic titanic film "a night to remember" based on the book by walter lloyd. as an added bonus we ask you

please visit our special titanic exhibit that is currently in the rotunda gallery. lit be there until april 23rd. we are currently displaying some titanic artifacts held by the national archives as a result of the american hearings into the disaster. finally, in a different vane, on friday, may 4th, veteran journalist dan rather will be on hand to discuss his book "rather outspoken: my life in the news." for information on these and other programs, you can visit our website, www.archives.gov/calendar or follow us on facebook at national archives noon lectures. if you live outside the d.c. area and you'd like to get a copy of the books and you're unable to attend our programs, you can contact the archives bookstore at 202-357-5271 to reserve or purchase a signed copy.

samuel hall person is a systems engineer, technologist and private pilot with a long-standing interest in wireless technology, as tron many, team ships and sailing vessels, the study of naval architecture and the practice of celestial and coastal navigation. he has a b.s. degree from monmouth university and mse. degree from the poly tech nick university of new york. he's an analyst in the study of titanic and his center ship olympic. he's written numerous articles for the tie annic historical societies, the at ln los angeles tick daily bulletin, the white star journal and the titanic international society's voyage. he's published a number of online articles at encyclopedia titan ka. the great lakes titanic society, titanic research and modeling

association, mark churns dale's reception room and his own titanicology website. he's also presented several papers on titanic at the 2006 titanic technical symposium at a paper dleelg with stockholm at the marine maritime academy in november 2008. please join me in welcoming samuel hall person to the national archives. [ applause ] good afternoon everyone. thank you for being here. this project started about august of 2010. when i was doing some research that required me to look at the british report into the loss of titanic. as i was going through this

inquiry that took place in 1912, the thought occurred to me, how different would the report have been if they knew then what we now know after 100 years later. so with that concept, i decided to call up several other researchers and collectively we decided that it's probably a good thing to do to get our collective work together and publish a book essentially a report into the loss of "s.s. titanic" as viewed 100 years later which is now called a centennial reappraisal. with me -- i'm not the only author, but there are ten other co-authors in addition to myself that took part in this undertaking. the book itself that, when we decided to lay out this book, we decided to let's lay it out more or less the same order as was given in the report by the

british wreck commission into the loss of titanic. so we have a total of 15 chapters in the book starting with an introduction and a summary in this case of what took place during the two hearings that occurred immediately after the disaster in 1912, the first of which occurred here in washington which is known as the american inquiry. and that was followed shortly thereafter by the british inquiry into the loss of titanic. as in the original british report, they also go into descriptions of the ship itself, the passengers and crew that was lost and saved. then they go into the meat of the report which deals, what happened in terms of how much damage there occurred and how it

sunk and what took place in order to save the lives of those that were on board. and then it also followed into such things as the rescue by the "s.s. car path yeah" which was the rescue vessel that picked up the life boats from titanic. so we deal with that in more or less the same order as the original report. it's been all modernized and revised, making use of all the information that we now know. one of the other things that they had just touched on was some of the circumstances dealing with a couple of other vessels that were involved in the area. one is the s.s. californian which was a tramped steamer that actually saw the distress rockets from titanic and failed to do any action. they just stood there all night. and also, another ship known as the "mount temple" which arrived the next morning, about two

hours later. we deal with those as well in this book in two meaty chapters, much more so than what took place back in 1912 since we know so much more. in terms of the book itself, i think one of the most important contributions is chapter 13 which is actually a very detailed chronology of the events that took place beginning with the maiden -- the start of the maiden voyage on april 10th, 1912 and went through the collision and rescue of those on board. what's different about this chronology compared to others is it's fully referenced. every event is referenced throughout and so you can always go back and know where we received the sources. many publications never say where this information came from. some of it is actually made up. we actually go through that. we also have a series of notes which just tend to justify why certain times were assigned to certain events.

backing this up, we have a couple of ten appendices, including the first six of which we list the name of every passenger and crew member that sailed on titanic including the alias names used by some of the passenger and crew members and show their fate. it's divided by class. what passengers and by department for the crew. we go into other detailed things that are listed here. we just don't have enough time to deal with in the main body of the report itself. what i plan to do today is go through more or less at a very high level some of the highlights that are in the book and what we've discovered in terms of differences between what was known then verses what is known now. first of all, what was by the 1912 inquiries that have

remained the same? for one thing, they came to the conclusion that titanic was speeding through a field of known ice, a region of known ice at a high speed. that is true and that remains to be the case. they did not take any evasive action. they did not slow down. they did not try to divert the course of the ship to avoid the ice. what they did was to entrust the safety of everybody on board to the eyes of the lookouts and the officer of the watch to be able to spot ice in time so they could avoid anything that was in their path. unfortunately they did not know that on a very dark, clear, moonless night, an iceberg the size of which titanic struck could only be seen at most about a half a mile off. they assumed they would be able to see icebergs maybe two miles away and easily avoid them.

so that was a misjudgment on their part. the other thing is that, as everybody knows, titanic did not have enough life boats for all on board. they were not only -- not enough life boats, but unfortunately they were underutilized. they only were on an average 61% occupied. and the evacuation of the ship itself was not very -- was not done very well because they never practiced it. there was no lifeboat drills at the time as most people know. what they also came to is several conclusions which have since been shown to be false, the first of which was the position of where titanic sank. what they accepted as fact was titanic sank at 46 north -- 41 degrees north, 46 minutes north, 50 degrees, 14 west.

this was the position of the s ofrnltss position that was put in the historical record. it took until 85 years later when dr. robert ballard discovered the wreck of titanic that we found that this site was erroneous. the titanic sank about 13 miles east of that position. is the other thing that happened was in 1912 there were a number of eyewitnesss that said they saw the ship split apart before it sank. both the wreck commissions and the american hearings did not accept that. they accepted the word of four people, two of which happened to be titanic surviving officers that said they saw the ship sink intact and they were believed. as we know now the ship split apart about two or three minutes before it actually went down. actually, as you can see -- as i will show you, appears in two places at the bottom of the

atlantic. another thing that was concluded was there was about only 37 seconds of warning between when the lookout spotted the iceberg and when the ship actually struck. this was based on one of the eyewitnesss, the helps man, robert hitch ins who said the ship turned 22 degrees to port, to the left side, before it actually struck the iceberg. tests done to titanic's sister ship olympic showed it would take 37 seconds for the ship to turn down a mount. and so they assumed that the iceberg was spotted just a second or two before and they only had 37 seconds to avoid, and ave. course they did not avoid the iceberg when it was struck. that turns out to be not true as we'll see in a few moments. the other interesting myth that came out of the original

inquiries was that car path yas traveled 58 miles in about 3 1/2 hours to reach the titanic life boats. and the reason why that turned out to be not true is that we know now that titanic did not sink at the original coordinates. it sank 13 miles to the east, and car path yeah never made it to 17.5 knots. this actually turns out to be impossible for her to have reached that speed given what we know about the ship itself and how it's designed. the other conclusion was that this stopped vessel, the california an, if she would have acted immediately policying the first distress rockets instead of sitting there all night, if they would have acted immediately to go to the rescue, "the california" could have rescued most, if not all, of the titanic people. it turns out that it's not really true and for various reasons we could show that it

would have -- if anything, californian would have gotten there maybe in time to see the ship split apart and sink under the best scenario possible. the other thing is, if you look at the loss-saved numbers written in the inquiries, you'll see different numbers. what we've tried to do is update those to what we know now in terms of the actual loss-saved statistics. i'd like to walk you through more or less the highlights as we went through the books, starting with the journey across the atlantic. and we're showing here in this slide, and it's in the book, the tracks, the normal tracks taken by steam ships heading westward across the atlantic depending if they're coming out of ireland or coming from the english channel. they would take a circle route to a point in the mid atlantic known as the corner. once they reached the corner,

they would split out depending on which port of call they would actually take. these tracks over here were actually designed to avoid ice and icebergs that were known to come down from newfoundland that time of the year. as it turned out in 1912, the ice and the icebergs came down even further south than normal, than was ever expected. even though the tracks were laid out to avoid, the fact is that some ships, actually mount temple, went further south to avoid ice that was reported by wireless. this slideshows the actual position of titanic wreck site shown here verses the sos position. you can see what we now know is the titanic sank about 13 miles eastward and slightly south of where the sos position was given out. it took 85 years to discover

this fact. what you see on the bottom of the atlantic today is not one hull, but two. two major sections of titanic. there is the bow section which is shown up here which is about 800 yards north of the stern section. and what happened is the 14 eyewitnesss who swore that the ship split apart actually were correct. it did split apart. it did not sink intact. right now we take pretty much the center of the boiler field located just about over here to be the exact spot over which titanic broke in half and came -- and sank. those coordinates are, as you can see here, are well known today. the other thing i mentioned before is there was no 37 seconds of warning. actually they were given a lot more than that. once the order was given to have the ship turn away from the

iceberg, the ship did not take 30 seconds to strike the berg. if it took 37 seconds to strike the iceberg, it turns out that the iceberg would have had to have been to center line of the ship in order for it to have struck the iceberg in the bow as shown here. that's the dotted line here, shows where the iceberg would have had to have been if indeed the ship had turned the 22 degrees that was said at the time of collision. we know this because we were able to reproduce the actual turning circle of titanic from data provided by holland and wolf, the designers of the ship from their naval architects. we'll come back to that in a moment. what actually happened and what we've learned is that once the lookout bells were sounded, once the lookout sighted an iceberg ahead, that struck the bells in

the crow easiness three times, ding, ding, ding, which is warning saying there's some object ahead. it doesn't mean dead ahead, it means ahead of the ship. it doesn't say what kind of object. what the lookout did after he struck the bell, he went to a telephone nest and called down to the officer on the bridge to tell them what it is that they saw and when the phone was finally answered, the entire conversation was what do you see? and the response was "iceberg right ahead." the response from the officer was "thank you." it turns out during the inquiries in 1912 at the american inquiry, lookout frederick fleet who running the three bells was questioned by senator fletcher about what happened and so forth. as you can see here by reading what is shown in the questioned response is frederick fleet said that he was at the phone for about a half a minute.

the order to turn away did not come until after the phone call was responded with with a thank you. and when the officer who responded, officer booty in the wheel house put down the phone, he called down to the officer of the watch, william murdoch and said iceberg right away, repeating what he heard from the lookout and reknow murdoch called out to turn the ship away. we called out the words "hard star to the right so the ship would turn to the left. questioning the man at the wheel, quarter master robert hitch ins he was also asked about when did you first notice that something was wrong here? he said when he heard the three gongs from the crow easiness. and he knew what that meant, certainly knew what that meant. then he was finally asked by the attorney general, this is at the british inquiry, how long was it before the order came "hard of starboard." his response was, "well, as near as i can tell, about half a

minute." so we have two independent eyewitnesss, both supporting each other saying there was about a half minute delay between when the lookout bells were sounded and when the order was given for the ship to turn away. we also have more supporting evidence from the quarter master who was stand-by quarter master, alfred oliver who happened to be at the standard platform at the ship located mid ship between the second and third funnel. when he heard the three bells, he knew what that meant. he knew an object was sighted ahead. he didn't know what it was. he decided to leave the compass platfo platform. as he entered the bridge, he felt the ship hit something and heard this grinding sound of screeching, of rending metal along the bottom. he then turned around and

looked. what he saw when he looked over the side was an iceberg passing the stern of the bridge. what we are able to do is go -- actually figure out how long the distance was that he had to walk from the compass platform at the time he heard the three bells until he entered the bridge. we found out it would take 50 to 55 seconds to do that including some reaction time as well, three or four seconds to figure out what should i do. the result of that is that we feel it would have taken 50 to 55 seconds from the time of the three-bell warning until the iceberg was actually struck, not 37 seconds, 50 to 55 seconds, of which 30 seconds was spent from -- at the time from the lookout in the crow easiness going on the phone and getting the information relayed back down to the first officer on

watch. what actually happened in terms of the collision scenario is once the order was given hard of starboard to turn away, titanic started to turn to the left and actually struck the berg about 20 to 25 seconds later, not 37 seconds. as soon as the iceberg went past the bridge, the first officer called hard of port. that meant have the tiller go to the left side so the ship will turn to the right. and the purpose of doing that was to clear the stern. we all know that titanic was damaged along the bow, the front part of the ship, along the starboard side, the right side. the idea was to not prevent further damage along the side by swinging the back end of the ship away from the iceberg as the iceberg went past. as a result of that, titanic actually did a loop like you see here, eventually winding up

pointing northward when it finally came to a stop. this is an animation of exactly what happened in 2 1/2 second increments, beginning with that order of hard of starboard. it was also tn seconds later acknowledged that the help was hard over and now the agonizing wait and the unfortunate collision that took place right there in terms of first contact. and then, as you can see, the order came hard of port, and the ship now is asked to turn its sturn away from the iceberg. you'll see it pulling away from there. we were able to actually use a model of the turning curves of the vessel to create this particular animation. so it actually is to scale as you can see here. as you can see, you'll see the ship turning to the right as a

result of the help being put so far over to the other side. the iceberg can be seen off the starboard quarter as the iceberg disappeared into the night. in 1912 everybody after the titanic disaster came up with ideas of what took place. one of which came from scientific america. this is april 27th edition, a picture showing what they thought happened and what they depict once the iceberg, having a spur of ice under water, cutting a gash into the side of titanic and they were talking about at that time that there was like a 300-foot gash as if titanic was opened up as if it were a sardine can. turns out that's not true. what we know now is titanic did not open up like a sardine can, but instead there are a series

of split seams where the seams below the shell plating and the hull opened up to allow water to come in. this was done by paul matthias at the polaris imaging using a sub bottom sonar profiler to actually determine where some of the damage is. most of the damage that you see here is actually below the mud line where the bow section is. they were able to determine the lengths and prove that there was no continuous gash. the total amount of openings that took place amounted to about 12 square feet of openings, the total, the composite amount of openings was like 12 square feet. and what we were able to do while producing this book is calculate just how much water intact would come into the ship as a function of time beginning at 11:40 -- beginning at 11:40

when the ship collided until about 2:15 in the morning when the ship finally broke apart and sank. so you'll see we have curves like this that show the water intake as a function of time. the initial intake over the first 45 minutes amounted to something like five tons per second of water entering the ship's hull, that it slowed down as the waterline came up to the -- as the flooding came up to the waterline. and then in the latter stanls, started to increase again. we have a number of curves that deal with that kind of condition. we also talk about, and as most of you have seen in v in movies that the ship started to sink, go down by the head, started to tilt down. we actually plot the results of how long it took to go down by a certain amount over time. for example, 45 minutes after

the collision, the titanic would have looked like the above image that you see here, only down by the head by about three degrees, not a lot. most people thought that the ship is not going to sink. all right, it took on some water. 2:15 in the morning which is two hours and 40 minutes after the iceberg strike, the vessel looked like this, where the crow easiness had reached the waterline. it was down by the head about ten. and the stresses on the ship at that point were twice as much as what the ship was designed to stand. titanic, by the way, was not a weakly designed ship as some of you may have heard in some reports. they talk about brittle steel, they talk about bad rivets and so forth. titanic was able to withstand anything the atlantic ocean could throw at it. what it could not do is be able to stay intact if it was starting to go unstable and the

bow was lifted greater than about 10 to 15 degrees which' rently happened which the ship eventually split apart. the ship sank not because it split apart. the ship sank because it was going unstable in the lateral -- longitudinal direction. we also get statistics on the loss save, we updated all that in terms of by gender, by class. so we have specific how many lived and how many did not live as a result of that. so here is the one chart that i pulled out of the book to show you of the total loss saved. you may see it written on certain websites and certain articles. a lot of documentaries, more than 1500 people did not survive. it turns out that it was actually less than 1500, the exact