iceberg 100 years ago on april 15, 1912. of hose onboard, 1496 perished and 712 were saved. to mark the anniversary, author halperin spoke at the archives about a modern day report and the 20th century most storied disaster at sea. this program is about an hour. >> i want to welcome you and our c-span audience for another program on our popular noontime lunch or ceaseies. today's top sick reporting to the loss of the s.s. titanic, centennial reappraisal by samuel halperin. before we hear from mr. halperin i would like to point out a couple of other titanic related programs that we have happening for you. friday, april 13, julie williams will be on hand to discuss her

book, "a rare titanic family." saturday, april 14, we will be showing the classic titanic film, "a night to remember" based on the book by walter lord. the exhibit will be there until april 23. we are displaying artifacts held as a result of the american hearings into the disaster. finally, in a different vein, friday, may 4, dan rather will be on hand to discuss his book. you may follow us on facebook at national archives. if you live outside of the d.c. area, and you would like to get a copy of the books and you are unable to attend our programs,

you can contact the archives bookstore 20, 2-- to purchase a signed copy or reserve a book. samuel halperin, study of naval architecture, and the practice of celestial and coastal navigation. he has a b.s. degree from monmouth university and an msse degree from the pouniversity of new york university. researchers in the study of titanic. he has written numerous articles about the titanic historical societies and titanic community -- sorry. the british titanic society's atlantic daily bulletin and the irish titanic historical society's white star journal and the titanic international society's voyage.

also a publish a number of online articles. the great lakes titanic society. titanic research and modeling association. and mark chernsdale's reception room and his own titanic-ology website. mr. halperin has also presented several papers on titanic at the 2006 titanic technical symposium at a paper dealing with the collision between stockholm and andrea dia to a class on casualty on analysis in november of wait. please join me in welcoming samuel archive to the national archives. >> good afternoon. thank you for being here. this project started about

august of 2010 when i was doing research that required to be looked at, the british report over the loss of the titanic. as i go through this, the 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. with that concept i decided to call up other researchers and collectively decided it is probably a good thing to do to get our collective work together and publish a book, a report into the loss of s.s. titanic as viewed 100 years later which is now called centennial reappraisal. with me, i'm not the only author. 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 tout book, lets lay it out in the same order given in the report by the british commission that the loss of titanic and so we have a total of 15 chapters in the book, starting with an introduction and 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 in washington which is known as the american inquiry. that was followed shortly thereafter by the british inquiry into the loss of the titanic. as in the original british report, they also go into some descriptions of the ship itself. the -- passengers and crew that were lost and saved and then they go into the meat of it, of the report, which deals with the

ship's journey across the atlantic and the meeting with the iceberg collision, what -- happened to the ship in terms of how much damage occurred and how -- and what took place in order to safe the lives of those that were onboard. then it will also followed into such things as the rescue by the rescue vessel that picked up the lifeboats from the titanic. so we -- we deal with that in the -- more or less the same order as the original report but it has been all modernized and revised, making use of all of 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 was the s.s. california which was a transsteamer that actually saw the distress

rockets for the titanic and failed to do any action. they just stood there all night. also, another ship noticed which arrived the next morning about two hours later. so we deal with those as well in this book in two meaty chapters. much more so than was -- 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 start of the ma maiden voyage on april 10, 1912, that went through the collision and rescue onboard. what's different about this chronology that -- compared to others is that it is fully referenced, every event is referenced throughout -- you can always go back and know where we received the sources. many of the chronologies you see are -- the publications, they never say where these -- the

information came from. some of it is made up. we actually go through that and 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 total of ten appendeces. 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. show their faith, divided by class, passengers, and by the department for the crew. and you go into other details, things that are listed here which just don't have enough time to deal with in the main body of the report itself. so let's begin -- what i plan to do today is go through more or less very -- very high level the highlights that are in the book and what we discovered in terms

of differences between what was known then versus what's known now. first of all, what was included by the 1912 inquiries that remained the same. for one thing, they came to the conclusion that titanic was -- through a field of a region of known ice at a high speed. that's true. that remains to be the case. they did take any evasive action and did not slow down and did not try to divert the course of the ship to avoid the ice. being able to spot ice in time so that they could avoid anything that was in their path. unfortunately they -- they -- did not know on a very -- 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 a mile way. that was a misjudgment on their part. as everybody knows, titanic did not have enough lifeboats for all onboard. they were not only not enough lifeboats but, u., they were underutilized. they only were on average 61% occupied. and the evacuation of the ship itself was not very -- was not done very well because they never practiced it. there's no lifeboat drills at the time. as people know. what they also came to, several conclusions, since been shown to be false, first of which was the position of where titanic sank.

what they accepted as -- as fact was titanic sank at 47 north of -- 41 degrees north, 46 minutes north, 50 degrees, 14 west. this was the position of the s.o.s. position that was put in the historical record. it took until 85 years later when dr. robert discovered the record of titanic that we found that this site was erroneous. titanic sank about 13 miles east of that position. the other thing that happened is that 1912 there were a number of eyewitnesses that said they saw the ship split apart before it sank. the -- they did not accept that. they accepted word of four people, two of which happened to be titanic survivor surviving officers. that said they saw the ship sink intact.

and they were believed as we know now the ship split apart about two, three minutes before it actually went down and actually, as you will see, i will show you, appears in two places at the bottom of the atlantic. another thing that was concluded there was about only 37 seconds of warning between the lookout of the iceberg, where the ship actually struck. this was based on one of the eyewitnesss, the who said the ship turned 22 degrees to port, to the left side, before it actually struck the useberg. and tests done, 37 seconds to turn. so they assumed that the iceberg was spotted just a second or would before and only had 37 seconds to avoid. they did not avoid p iceberg.

that turns out to not be true. as we will see in a few moments. the other interesting myth that came out of the original inquiries was they traveled 58 miles in 3 1/2 hours to reach the titanic lifeboats. and the reason why that turned out to be not true is that we know now tyitanic did not sink t the original coordinates. 13 miles to the east. never made to it 17 1/2 knots. actually turns out to be impossible for her to have reached that speed given what we know about the ship itself and how it is designed. the other conclusion was that this vessel, the californian, if she would have acted immediately upon seeing the first does stressed rockets instead of sitting there all night, if redacted -- react immediately to go to the rescue, that they -- the california could have

rescued moist, if not all, of the titanic people. turns out that's not really true. and for various reasons we show that it would have -- if anything, california would have gotten there maybe in time to see the ship. under the best scenario possible. and the other thing is if you look at the lost/saved numbers you will see different numbers. we try to -- update those to what we know now in terms of the actual loss/saves statistics. first of all, i would like to walk you through more or less highlights as we went through the book. starting with the journey across the atlantic and we are showing here in this slide -- in the book, the -- tracks, normal tracks taken by steam ships depending if they are coming out of ireland or coming from the

english channel. during that time the we are they take great circle route to a point in the middle -- mid atlantic. once they reached the corner, they split out depending which port of call they would actually take. the tracks over here were actually designed to avoid icebergs known to come down from new finland, you know, that time of the year. and as it turned out, 1912 the ice and icebergs came down even farther south than normal than was ever expected. even though the tracks were laid out to avoid the fact is that some ships, for example, mt. temple, went further south to avoid ice that was recorded by wireless. this slide shows the actual position of titanic site shown here versus 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. 85. took 85 years to discover this fact. what we see on the bottom of the atlantic today is not one but two. two major sections of titanic. there is the bough section shown up here which is about 800 yards north of the stern section. so we -- and what happened is that the 14 eyewitness who swore that the ship split you a part actually -- we are correct. did not sink intact. we take the middle, located over here, to be the exact spot over which titanic's broken half and came -- and sank. those coordinates are, as you can see here are well moan today. the other thing we talked -- mentioned before is that there

was no 37 seconds of water. they were given a lot more than that. and once the water 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 30 seconds to strike the iceberg, it turns out that the iceberg would have had to have been to the left of the center line of the ship in order for it to actually have struck the iceberg in the bough as shown here. bottom line here shows where the iceberg would have had to have been if it -- if it turned the 22 degrees that was said at the time of the collision. we know this because we were able to reproduce the actual turning circle of titanic from data provided by holland and wolf, designers of the ship. we will come back to that in a moment. what actually happened, what we

learned, is that once the lookout bells were sounded, lookout p -- lookout sight ed, they struck the bells up. three times. ding, ding, ding, which is a warning saying there is some object ahead. doesn't mean dead ahead. it doesn't say what kind. with the lookout then did, struck the bell, he went to a telephone and called down to the officer of the bridge to tell them what it is that they saw. when -- the phone was finally answered, the dash entire conversation was what do you see? the response was iceberg right ahead. the response from the officer was thank you. turns out -- during the kw inquiries, american inquiry, frederick fleet was questioned by senator fletcher about what happened and so forth.

as you can see here by reading what is shown in the -- question and response is that frederick fleet said that he was at the phone for about a half a minute. the order that turned away did not come until after the phone call was responded with and thank you. and when the officer who -- responded in the wheel house put down the phone, he called out to the officer of the watch, william murdoch, said iceberg right ahead repeating. what have you heard from the lookout. then you know that -- murdoch called out to turn the ship away. called out the words. the ship turned to the left. questioning the man at the wheel, according to robert hitchens, he was asked about did you -- when did you first notice that something was wrong here? he said -- when he heard the three gong and he 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? his response was well, as near as i can tell, about half a minute. we have two independent iowa witnesses. both supporting each other saying will was about a half minute delay between when the lookout bells were sounded to when the order was given for the ship to turn away. we have more supporting evidence from the porter master, standby porter master, alfred oliver, who happened to be at the platform on the ship which was located midship about between the second and third frontal and when he heard the three bells he knew what that meant. meant that an object sighted ahead but did not know what it was ahead. he decided to walk all along up to the bridge and as he entered the bridge right here, he felt the ship hit something and he

heard this grinding sound of screeching, of metal along the bottom. and he then turned around and looked and what he saw, what he looked at over to the side was an iceberg passing the stern of the bridge. okay. well, what we are able to do is go -- is -- actual will you figure out how long did this -- distance was he had to walk from the platform at the time he heard the three bells and until he entered the bridge. we find out it would take 50 to 5 seconds to do that. including some reaction time as well. three, four seconds to figure out what should i do. the result of that is that we feel that it would have taken 50, 55 seconds from the three bell warning until the iceberg was struck, not 37 seconds. 50, 55 seconds of which 37 30 seconds was spent from -- at the

time from the lookout in the crow's nest going on the phone and getting information relevant aed back down to the first officer on watch. what actually happened in terms of the collision scenario is once the order was given to turn away, titanic started to turn to the left and -- and actually struck the berg 20 to 25 seconds later and not 30. as soon as the -- the iceberg went past the bridge, the first officer called out port. turn to the left side so the ship would turn to the right. and the purpose of doing that was to clear the stern so -- that we all know titanic was damaged along the bough, front part of the ship, along the side. the idea was not to 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 pointing northward. when it finally came to a stop. this is an an make of exactly what happened in 2 1/2 second increments beginning with that order. it was also -- five seconds later acknowledged that it was hard over. now the -- agonizing wait and the unfortunate collision that took place right will in terms of first contact and then as you can see the water came and the ship now has to turn its stern away from the iceberg and you will see it pulling away from the -- we were able to actually use a model of the -- turning --

curves of the vessel to create this particular animation. so it is actually to scale as you see here. you see the ship turning to the right as -- as a result of that. over to the other side. eventually the iceberg was seen off tas the iceberg disappeared into the night. 1912, everybody -- the titanic disaster, you know, came up with ideas of what took place. one of which came from scientific america. this is a picture of what they thought happened. an iceberg, ice under water, cutting a gash into the side of tyne. they were talking at that time there was 300 gash like it was opened up as if it were a

sardine can. turns out that is not true. what we know now is that defiant not open up like a sardine can. the seams opened up to allow water to come in. this was done using a subbottom profiler to actually determine where some of the damage is. most of the damage you see here is below the mud line where the bough section is. it was like 12 square feet.

we were able to calculate how much water intake would come into the ship as a function of time 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 stages, 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 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 eventually 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 lost-saved, 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 lost-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 number, 1,496 were lost and 712 actually survived. one of the tragedies of the disaster was the fact that not all classes of people were treated equally. nothing is more -- shows that up more strikingly than this statistic here. there were 522 women and children on board titanic on april 14th. and we all know there were not enough life boats to accommodate everybody. the total lifeboat capacity that they did have amounted to 1,178. if you think about it, all 522 women and children should have been saved if it was true that the emphasis was women and