Few realize that the Titanic had two nearly identical sister ships, the RMS Olympic and the HMHS Britannic. The Olympic had a successful career as a liner until she was broken up in 1935, but the Britannic met with a fate nearly as unlucky as that of the Titanic. Serving as a hospital ship in the Aegean, it was either torpedoed or the victim of a mine on 21 November 1916, and sank within an hour. Thirty out of its crew died. Robert Ballard will search for the wreck of the Britannic and explore the evidence surrounding its dramatic end.
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00:00Tonight on NOVA, the Titanic.
00:03In 1912, the unthinkable happens when this unsinkable liner sinks.
00:08In the aftermath, Titanic's sister ship, Britannic, is built stronger, safer.
00:14But just four years later, Britannic goes down twice as fast.
00:18What went wrong?
00:20Today, an ambitious undersea explorer uses state-of-the-art technology to search the watery grave of
00:27Titanic's lost sister.
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01:36Aboard this ship, moored off the island of Crete, an undersea exploration prepares to get underway.
01:45Oceanographer Bob Ballard, renowned for his discovery of Titanic in 1985, is setting out to explore an intriguing wreck.
01:58Titanic's forgotten sister, Britannic.
02:04The expedition will need an impressive array of deep-sea technology.
02:10And Ballard does not travel lightly.
02:15Besides the crew of the support ship Carolyn Chuest, he has in tow three historians,
02:23two remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, equipped with cameras,
02:31and a small U.S. Navy nuclear submarine, the NR-1.
02:37The object of his search has a remarkable heritage.
02:42Sister to Titanic, a ship whose fate still captures our imagination.
02:48Britannic is the last of a formidable trio built by the White Star Line
02:54in an effort to dominate the North Atlantic passenger trade.
02:58Her history is cloaked in intrigue.
03:00Britannic sinking while serving as a hospital ship during World War I is still the subject of much debate.
03:08Was she the victim of a deliberate German submarine attack?
03:13Or did she hit a mine intended for a military target?
03:18The historians on board, Simon Mills, the only published author on Britannic,
03:23and Eric Sauter, an expert on the White Star Line,
03:27are hoping this expedition will resolve the mystery.
03:32A third expert, Ken Marshall, is the foremost illustrator of Titanic
03:38and other notable 20th century ships.
03:42The technical accuracy of Ken's work has made him invaluable to Ballard in past expeditions.
03:48This is a painting that I did about five years ago of the Britannic
03:53as we think it may have looked to see a twin sister ship of the Titanic,
04:00virtually identical in most respects, her dimensions and so forth,
04:05to sense the size of that ship on the ocean floor,
04:09and particularly in a shallow enough depth where I can actually see it.
04:12Ballard is also excited at the prospect of seeing Titanic's sister ship lying on the ocean floor.
04:22The discovery of Titanic was the highlight of his career.
04:26He was the first man on board to see it.
04:29He was the first man on board to see it.
04:32He was the first man on board to see it.
04:35He was the first man on board to see it.
04:38The discovery of Titanic was the highlight of his career.
04:44But since then, thousands of objects have been salvaged from the wreck site.
04:51Powerless to stop it, he has explored other wrecks in the pursuit of a personal vision.
04:59I've been really searching for the optimum piece of history.
05:07To experiment on and try to create the first undersea museum.
05:14I thought it might have been the Lusitania.
05:17But when we went out there, it was so tragic to see how destroyed it was.
05:22There's certain things we must preserve.
05:25The Titanic was incredible.
05:28The feelings, the power of going there was like going to Gettysburg the day after the battle.
05:33Why should I be the only one that gets to go to a place and as soon as I leave, it's leveled?
05:44That's what's really brought me here to the Titanic.
05:48It has not been pillaged in very few years.
05:53The technology will make it possible for people in the luxury of their homes,
05:58on the information highway, to visit this site live.
06:04I would love to protect this ship, set it aside and let people visit it.
06:10And I'm going to do it. I'm going to give it my best shot.
06:16Ballard is gambling that after 80 years underwater,
06:20the Titanic will be in good enough condition to display as the first undersea museum.
06:25Before he can determine that, he and David Olivier, the commander of the NR-1, must first locate the wreck.
06:33Then your divers in the water.
06:35Put our divers in the water to put the cameras and strobes on.
06:40And then we'll get ready to do our first reconnaissance submergence.
06:56The NR-1 and the Caroline Chouest make their way to the Kea Channel.
07:07The Titanic lies 400 feet below the surface of the Aegean, off the island of Kea.
07:15Below decks on the support ship, the historians pore over the models of the ill-fated sister ships.
07:22White star struck out so badly with this, the big three.
07:27But the work at hand cannot obscure the fact that for explorer and historian alike,
07:32the object of their search is not just another shipwreck.
07:36Titanic and her sisters possess a mystique.
07:40They are powerful symbols that speak to us from another time.
07:46The largest and most luxurious of their day,
07:48they were among the first of a new breed of super liner that would revolutionize transatlantic travel.
07:55While their upper decks catered to the wealthy, the real money was made down below in steerage.
08:02Immigrants, millions of immigrants, by 1905 was the first million passenger year for the North Atlantic Liners,
08:11wanted to get from the old world to the new.
08:13And the only way they could go was by sea.
08:16And that accounts for two things.
08:18First, the enormous number of ocean liners that were built for the North Atlantic.
08:23And second, their incredible size.
08:30Belfast, Ireland.
08:32In the deserted corners of the modern Harland and Wolfe shipyard,
08:37are visible reminders of the massive effort it took to build these very special transatlantic states.
08:43The steamers.
08:58The pride of the White Star Line.
09:01Olympic, first of the class.
09:05Legendary Titanic.
09:09And lastly, Britannia, the forgotten sister.
09:14The magnificent interiors of these ships have either been lost to the ocean depths or dismantled.
09:22This room is all that remains.
09:26We're in the White Swan Hotel, in the interior of the lounge of the Olympic.
09:32It's all that we have left from her. There are bits and pieces of her all over England,
09:38but perhaps nothing quite as lovely as the lounge.
09:42And it's a splendid reminder of those fabulous days of 1911, 1912, before the war,
09:50before all these wonderful ships were swept away.
09:53A gilded era.
09:56Despite the attention lavished on decor, it was also an era of technological innovation.
10:03Perhaps Harland and Wolfe's greatest accomplishment
10:06was the simultaneous construction of Olympic and Titanic in just four years.
10:14At the time of their launching, their unprecedented size and luxury made headlines.
10:21But as we recall their story today,
10:24it was the failure of their innovative safety systems that captures our interest.
10:29The Olympic-class ships were designed with 15 transverse bulkheads extending above the waterline,
10:36creating 16 compartments separated by massive watertight doors.
10:41In the event of flooding, the captain could instantly close those doors from the bridge by means of an electric switch.
10:49An innovative backup system allowed the doors to be closed both manually and by a float mechanism.
10:55Damage could be sustained to any two adjoining compartments,
11:00or the first four starting at the bow, without endangering the ship.
11:04This system of safety features would prompt the most reputable of British shipbuilding magazines
11:09to call the Olympic-class practically unsinkable.
11:13That word unsinkable came actually from the great bible of the British shipping industry
11:19called the Shipbuilder and Marine Engine Builder.
11:21This was the great journal of shipping that every new ship appeared in.
11:26And lengthy articles were written about the ship and all the safety systems.
11:31And in this article they talked about the watertight compartments which every ship had.
11:36And it said if these doors were closed, it would render the ship practically unsinkable.
11:42Fair enough.
11:44Well, somebody grabbed unsinkable, not the White Star Line, out of that report
11:48and circulated it on both sides of the Atlantic as though Titanic were unsinkable.
11:55It was an unfortunate label.
11:58As Britannic's keel was laid in Belfast,
12:02the greatest maritime disaster of this century would claim Titanic
12:07and in the same moment alter Britannic's fate.
12:11Titanic collided with an iceberg on her maiden voyage
12:15and sank in less than three hours,
12:18taking some 1,500 souls with her,
12:21making the limitation of her much-touted safety features tragically clear.
12:27The iceberg came through here, started scraping along, scraping off rivet heads,
12:32buckling the plates, tearing the seams apart.
12:35Not a big gash like a can opener, but just a scrape.
12:38It buckled the plates in and went from here for about 240 feet or so aft,
12:43two feet into the coal bunker of boiler room number five.
12:48The bow started to sink, the water eventually, inevitably,
12:52came up over that bulkhead and flowed into the next compartment
12:56and into the next and it was just a mathematical certainty, plain and simple.
13:00No matter how you sliced it, the ship's going down.
13:04Titanic was doomed.
13:05Titanic was doomed.
13:07But why the staggering loss of life?
13:10The time it took for the ship to sink
13:13should have allowed ample opportunity to evacuate all on board.
13:18The disaster reached epic proportion because of a bureaucratic oversight.
13:24The Olympic-class ships had far too few lifeboats
13:28due to outdated Board of Trade regulations.
13:31The regulations had been written in 1894
13:35when the largest ship afloat was considerably smaller than Titanic.
13:41Of the more than 2,000 passengers and crew on board,
13:45only 705 would survive.
13:51The disaster stunned the world.
13:55White Star immediately recalled the Olympic from service
13:59and halted construction on Britannic.
14:02Harland and Wolff set about correcting every flaw
14:05that might have contributed to Titanic's demise.
14:09In the case of the Britannic, that was fairly easy to do
14:12because the ship had not advanced very far in terms of its construction.
14:15In the case of the Olympic, the reconstruction was so extensive
14:18that it took the ship out of service for six months.
14:21The safety features of these two ships were completely overhauled.
14:26They were fitted with an inner skin
14:28that ran the length of the boiler and engine room compartments.
14:33Five of the bulkheads were extended up as far as the bridge deck.
14:37These precautions would allow both ships to float
14:40with six compartments flooded, two more than Titanic.
14:45Belfast, February 1914.
14:49Britannic is finally launched.
14:52The new passenger liner was hailed by the shipping line and the builders
14:55to be as perfect a specimen of man's creative power
15:00as is possible to conceive.
15:05As the Britannic slid down the ways,
15:08a cataclysm was just around the corner,
15:11a war that would engulf not only Europe, but the world.
15:18Even as the last of her grand interiors were being installed,
15:22Britannic was requisitioned by the British Admiralty
15:25and transformed into a hospital ship.
15:31She completed five successful missions to the Mediterranean theater of war
15:36before sinking mysteriously on her sixth outbound voyage.
15:41Today, she lies at the bottom of a sea she was never intended to save,
15:46a casualty of war.
15:49Her mysteries as yet unsolved.
15:56The object of Dr. Ballard's search.
16:08Tomorrow, Ballard will make his first dive on the Britannic.
16:13Well, we're at the end of the first day
16:16and we're transiting north from Crete, from the sub-base we just left.
16:21And sometime tomorrow morning we'll arrive on scene.
16:25The ship was traveling northeast.
16:28It struck something, whether it was a torpedo or a mine.
16:32The captain immediately began to try to save his ship and beach it,
16:36so he began a quick turn to starboard and heading back to Kea,
16:40but before he got to the beach, he sank right there.
16:42This is where the British say they were sunk
16:46and this is where Cousteau, 20 years ago, said he actually found the ship,
16:50so obviously we believe his position more.
16:55In 1975, Jacques Cousteau made the first search for the Britannic.
17:00His discovery of the wreck was complicated by misleading coordinates
17:04reported by the British Admiralty in 1916,
17:07which were off by eight miles.
17:10Yet another mystery surrounding this enigmatic ship.
17:14But, you know, we've got to relocate it. We don't know exactly where it is.
17:18So, first and foremost, we'll transit over from the support ship,
17:23get in the sub and go down and find it.
17:32The support ship and the nuclear submarine have arrived in the Kea Channel
17:35and are now stationed over Cousteau's coordinates.
17:47Ballard boards the NR-1 for the first exploratory dive to locate the Britannic.
17:54All right.
17:56All right, welcome aboard.
17:58Wow, hang it. You ready to go?
18:00I'm ready. Let's do it.
18:02All right, let's dive.
18:06The NR-1 is a one-of-a-kind submarine,
18:10a U.S. Navy ship designed to conduct scientific research and covert missions.
18:18Like all other U.S. submarines, the NR-1 has many seats.
18:25What the Navy will acknowledge is a diving depth of 3,000 feet
18:30and a submerged speed of three and a half knots.
18:34Prepare to submerge.
18:41Dive, dive.
18:51The NR-1 is only 12 and a half feet in diameter and 145 feet long,
18:57half the length of a Navy attack submarine.
18:59Two-thirds of that space houses its nuclear power plant.
19:05The crew of 11 works, eats, and sleeps in the remaining one-third.
19:10It's a little cramped.
19:15The submarine has cameras mounted on the hull,
19:18giving the search team many views of the undersea environment.
19:23But the real work of detection and navigation is covered by sonar.
19:27NR-1's Deep Submergence Obstacle Avoidance sonar
19:31has a classified range and frequency.
19:34Ballard hopes that if the Britannic is even close to this last reported position,
19:39this powerful sonar will detect it quickly.
19:48Sonar was essential to the 1975 expedition.
19:52After weeks of searching, Jacques Ballard decided
19:56Jacques Cousteau turned to Dr. Harold Edgerton of MIT
20:00and his new device, the side-scan sonar, for help.
20:05Edgerton discovered that by transmitting the sound pulse
20:08toward the ocean floor at an oblique angle rather than straight down
20:12as conventional sonar does,
20:14the signal would reveal much more detail about the ocean floor
20:18and anything that might lay on it.
20:21With the British Admiralty's coordinates so far off Britannic's true position,
20:26Cousteau may never have located the wreck without Edgerton's device.
20:30Side-scan sonar allowed Cousteau to locate Britannic
20:34and revolutionized underwater exploration.
20:37Over an hour into the dive, and still no trace of the ship.
20:50The sonar has locked on Britannic.
20:53It's locked on.
20:55We have a new sonar.
20:57It's locked on.
20:59It's locked on.
21:01It's locked on.
21:02That's the ship.
21:04The sonar has locked on Britannic.
21:06This looks like the rudder and propeller's right there.
21:09That's the sweep of the hull.
21:11That would be the bottom. That would be the superstructure.
21:14So it looks like we're coming in on the stern.
21:16You're coming in this way.
21:18You're coming in from the northeast.
21:20That sounds right.
21:22And we'll see whether we see a bow or a propeller.
21:24Yeah.
21:26That'll tell us. It looks like it's believable.
21:29Thank you, Mr. Cousteau.
21:32Thank you, Captain.
21:35These ghostly black-and-white images from the NR-1's cameras
21:39offer a tantalizing first look at this once-proud Leviathan.
21:48The second-class smoking room where gentlemen would retire after dinner.
21:56The first-class promenade deck where society's elite were meant to stroll.
22:03The lifeboat debits.
22:07Still in position to lower the boats.
22:14The individual images are promising.
22:17But they fail to give Ballard the overview necessary for an accurate picture of the ship's condition.
22:23For that, he will rely on the modern version of Dr. Edgerton's side-scan sonar.
22:33Thanks, Jeff.
22:36See you next time.
22:42Printed out on board the Shoe-S, the side-scan images are unrolled for all to see.
22:48Look at that.
22:50Oh, wow. Look at that.
22:52Oh, my God.
22:54Oh, my God.
22:56That's a photograph.
22:58Look at the docking collar.
23:00Docking bridge right there.
23:02It even shows cables lying on the hull.
23:05The shadow of the cables in every strake in the hull plating,
23:09which visually, from the submarine, you can hardly even make out.
23:14The sonar's sophisticated imaging system reveals an amazing sight.
23:19The silhouetted shape of the Britannic in its entirety.
23:23Ballard and his team are elated.
23:26It's yours from here.
23:28You can go home.
23:30Look at this.
23:32The slightest little relief.
23:34Here's where you see the top of the damage, and that's where the compass tower shows up.
23:37Oh, my God.
23:39Look at that. You can see through the rudder to the other propeller.
23:43Ken, you're out of a job.
23:47This is the first evidence that Britannic is as well-preserved as Ballard had hoped.
23:52Here lies a nearly intact version of Titanic.
23:59Let's talk about what we're going to do next.
24:03So I would like to just get the NR-1 in position and go and image it for a while.
24:08Put the NR-1 down and approach it, and then try to move down into the boat deck area on that boat deck.
24:15These davits are here.
24:17These davits are here.
24:19It's a problem. You don't want to get...
24:21You want to sort of... I'd like to be above the vehicle, down in the water.
24:24Tomorrow, Ballard will return to the wreck with the remotely operated camera platforms
24:29for the first in-depth photographic survey of Britannic.
24:39The colored images of this once majestic ship should reveal a moment frozen in time.
24:44The moment of Britannic sinking.
24:48It was 1960.
24:49Fighting had spread from the trenches of Belgium and France to the Mediterranean.
24:53The struggle to control the straits of the Dardanelles,
24:57a narrow passage linking the Aegean with the Black Sea,
25:01would claim tens of thousands of lives.
25:04As the tide of wounded swelled,
25:07the British admiralty was faced with the task of transporting them back to England.
25:12The ship's captain was a British man,
25:16The ships that had been requisitioned for use,
25:21mainly Union Castle ships,
25:24were not providing adequate space to remove the sick and wounded.
25:31The whole system, actually, in the eastern Mediterranean was on the verge of breaking down.
25:36You have these six or eight thousand ton ships
25:39and literally thousands of casualties occurring during the course of a given week.
25:42So within a very short time, the largest ships available,
25:46Aquitania, Mauritania and Britannic,
25:49are placed into hospital ship service.
25:52On Britannic's return trips to England filled with wounded,
25:56every minute was devoted to patients.
25:59But on her outbound journeys, the medical staff had little to do,
26:03leaving time to enjoy the amenities of a first-class cruise.
26:06The sixth outbound journey started no differently.
26:10As they entered the Kea Channel, the mood was relaxed.
26:15But a dangerous and unpredictable threat lurked beneath the sea.
26:20The submarine.
26:24U-boats could strike without warning.
26:27They could fire torpedoes or lay underwater mine barrages.
26:31In either case, Britannic was defenseless.
26:36November 21st, 1916.
26:39At 8 a.m., the medical staff had just sat down to breakfast,
26:43when without warning...
26:48There was a shudder that went through the ship.
26:53That's the way Sheila Mitchell described it.
26:56And she said that everybody froze.
27:01Britannic had been hit.
27:04Had she been returning to England with her full quota of 3,000 patients,
27:09the loss of life would have rivaled Titanic's.
27:13But thanks to the efficient lifeboat system installed after Titanic sinking,
27:18most on-board ships were able to survive.
27:21But thanks to the efficient lifeboat system installed after Titanic sinking,
27:25most on-board would escape.
27:28Sheila Mitchell, a nurse on the Britannic, was interviewed by Jacques Cousteau.
27:33Everybody's heart was in their mouths.
27:36When she was turning, of course, I was thinking,
27:40oh, my trunks will be sliding under the other girl's bed.
27:46And all the oranges and lemons I bought in Naples
27:51will be on the floor.
27:54And where is my clock? You know, things like that.
27:59The speed with which Britannic sank is one of her great mysteries.
28:05This period footage can only simulate the awe-inspiring sight
28:09of watching such a massive ship disappear.
28:13Britannic, a ship that was fully redesigned to benefit from the lessons of Titanic,
28:18somehow sank in a mere 55 minutes.
28:22The Britannic was in the very early stages of her construction when the Titanic sank.
28:27They stopped the construction and rethought everything
28:31in order to make Britannic really, really safe.
28:35And they learned from the Titanic. They made the bulkheads much, much higher.
28:38They gave her a complete double hull, a double skin,
28:41so that it just covered all the bases.
28:44And here she went down in less than an hour.
28:47For Simon Mills and Eric Sauter,
28:50the bigger mystery surrounds the cause of the initial explosion.
28:54A mine or a torpedo?
28:57At the time of the sinking, everybody thought it was a torpedo.
29:00It had to be. You know, they were at war.
29:02The Germans, the filthy Hun, they wanted to sort of sink this ship.
29:05It was a powerful competitor after the war.
29:07They had to sink it, and torpedo was the only way to do it.
29:10As time went by, it wasn't quite so clear-cut.
29:12Even the English officer carrying out the inquiry
29:15decided that there was no definite evidence one way or the other
29:18to say mine or torpedo.
29:21I propose to drink to the Britannic,
29:24to the splendid ship that you have been on board.
29:27Sixty years after her sinking, Jacques Cousteau
29:30gathered together Britannic's remaining survivors
29:33in an attempt to uncover what happened that morning.
29:36What is your opinion? Was the ship torpedoed, or did they see the mine?
29:39No torpedo, without a doubt.
29:42Without a doubt, torpedo. Thank you.
29:45Now you, Miss.
29:47Without a doubt, torpedoed.
29:49At least one, one torpedo.
29:51My explanation is she torpedoed.
29:54I'm saying torpedoed.
29:56It was a mine without a shadow of a doubt.
30:04So that way we don't have to do anything.
30:06We just get out of their way.
30:09They come in underneath us, reposition their chin on that.
30:13The next and most difficult phase of the expedition
30:16will attempt to solve these mysteries.
30:19It will be the first joint operation involving the support ship,
30:22the ROVs and the NR1s.
30:25What do you think her turning radius was?
30:28She couldn't turn by the rudder because she was disabled.
30:32She had to turn by the screws.
30:33In fact, she couldn't turn in quite a tight area, I think.
30:37Ballard has promised the historians
30:39that he will try to explore the area where the explosion occurred.
30:46If the ROVs can maneuver into the damaged area,
30:50the hidden recesses of the gash
30:52might provide clues to Britannic's mysterious explosion and rapid sinking.
30:57As the ROVs are lowered over the side, the tension mounts.
31:02The NR1 is in position.
31:05Her powerful light is illuminating the wreck.
31:09Ballard and his team are in the command station
31:12on board the Caroline Chouette.
31:18I'm going to move kind of east-north-east,
31:21trying to picturize...
31:23Monitoring.
31:25Monitors connected to the ROV cameras are the focus of the room.
31:32Ballard directs the ROV pilot
31:34who controls the depth, direction and speed of the robot
31:37from a distance of more than 300 feet.
31:46All eyes are on the monitors,
31:50waiting for the first clear image of this once majestic ship.
31:54There it is. We're at the halt.
32:25The Britannic.
32:27Bigger, safer,
32:29more luxurious than her sisters,
32:32but destined never to carry a paying passenger.
32:38Think of the millions and millions of hours
32:42labor is put into these ships
32:45in Belfast, New York.
32:48It's a lot of work.
32:51Years and years of effort on the part of so many people.
32:56Iceberg is one thing.
32:58That's an act of God,
33:00but to have mankind blow up such a wonderful work,
33:04that's a waste.
33:21Britannic's massive propellers,
33:2423 feet in diameter,
33:28evoke memories of a gruesome incident.
33:35Following the explosion,
33:37the ship lay motionless.
33:39The captain, isolated on the bridge,
33:42was unaware that the crew had already begun to load lifeboats.
33:46In a last-ditch effort to save the ship,
33:48he gave the order to start up the propellers
33:51and head for nearby Kea Island.
33:54They wanted to beach the boat
33:56where there was sand,
33:58the other side of the island.
34:00And so the minute we touched the water,
34:03she went on,
34:05and the propellers were coming up,
34:08and turning,
34:10and at the back it was a whirlpool.
34:12The lifeboat in front of me
34:14and the one behind
34:16were drawn in by the propellers.
34:18They had cut them to ribbons.
34:20If anybody escaped from those boats,
34:24it was because they jumped out
34:26and perhaps could swim away.
34:28One near-casualty of the propeller incident
34:31was nurse Violet Jessop.
34:33Her story is remarkable,
34:35as one of the few known to survive passage
34:38on all three White Star sisters.
34:41Violet Jessop, whom I had interviewed for a book,
34:44told me that she was not only
34:45on the Titanic when it went down,
34:48she was also on the Olympic
34:50when it had not a very serious accident,
34:52but there was a collision in Southampton water.
34:54Then the hat-trick that she was also
34:57on the Britannic as a nurse's aide
35:00is extraordinary.
35:02Violet told me that she got into a lifeboat
35:06which was lowered down,
35:08and when it reached the water
35:10and was cast loose from the blocks,
35:12the descending blocks,
35:13she suddenly saw everybody jumping out.
35:15So Violet jumped over the side
35:17and thought she was going to sink forever,
35:19and finally came up
35:21and hit the bottom of the lifeboat,
35:23her head fitted as she came up.
35:25Then she groped around in the dark
35:27thinking her end was nigh
35:29and found a hand, a man's hand,
35:31which she could tell was alive,
35:33and they held her hands together
35:35and came up to the surface.
35:39Leaving the propellers behind,
35:40Ballard guides the ROVs toward the bow
35:43for the first look
35:45at the most dangerous part of the wreck,
35:47the jagged gash caused by the explosion.
35:50The damage, depicted by Marchand
35:53based on Cousteau's accounts,
35:55gives Ballard reason for concern.
35:57The jagged hull plating
35:59could easily sever the ROV's umbilical cord.
36:02Keep going.
36:04There's the beginning of the gash.
36:06So now,
36:07go left,
36:09and drive the gash line
36:11down to the left.
36:14Marchand and Mills have switched
36:16to the second ROV monitor
36:18for the long-anticipated look
36:20at the damaged hull.
36:22The images from this ROV,
36:24NASA's Voyager,
36:26are in stereo,
36:28and with the 3D glasses,
36:30the two experts can see much more detail.
36:32I think that
36:34if it's backward and then backward,
36:35that must have been the impact
36:37to hit the deck.
36:43The bow is buckled off
36:45to the starboard side,
36:47and we're just seeing
36:49that stubbed-toe effect
36:51of the bow buckled in and twisted,
36:53and the rest of the ship
36:55just bent apart,
36:57buckled and collapsed into the sand.
36:59So we're seeing this
37:0130-40 foot wide gap.
37:03Down at the keel level,
37:05and it can't be
37:07the damage actually caused
37:09by the mine or torpedo,
37:11because the ship would have sunk
37:13in five or ten minutes
37:15with a hole that huge.
37:17The massive damage caused
37:19as Britannic's bow impacted
37:21with the ocean floor
37:23obscures all traces
37:25of the initial hole
37:27caused by the explosion.
37:29There is no evidence here
37:31that can shed more light
37:33on the issue of mine
37:35did Britannic's watertight doors
37:37fail to close.
37:41A single mine or a torpedo
37:43of that era would have damaged
37:45no more than one or two compartments.
37:48The watertight doors
37:50should have contained the flooding,
37:52allowing the ship to float indefinitely,
37:54yet she sank in less than an hour.
37:57What went wrong?
37:59The evidence is buried
38:01deep inside the gash.
38:03And right.
38:05Okay, go over there.
38:07In a clean area.
38:09Go to clean water.
38:11Go back.
38:13Kick back. Now. Now.
38:15Ballard has pulled the ROV
38:17back from the wreck
38:19after a close call.
38:21The watertight doors
38:23the team wants to see
38:25are deep inside the wreckage.
38:27But Ballard does not want
38:29to risk losing an ROV
38:30because this side
38:32has a large shifted area of hull.
38:34It comes down right here
38:36and then it like
38:38comes up on a different plane
38:40and there's this large section
38:42that sticks out maybe like that.
38:44This is very festooned with...
38:46The historians,
38:48denied an in-depth investigation,
38:50must piece together the disaster
38:52with the existing ROV footage
38:54and eyewitness accounts.
38:56Here was a Britannic,
38:58effectively she was a commission ship
39:00and the only thing we can assume
39:02is that around about 8 o'clock in the morning
39:04when the damage occurred, the explosion,
39:06the watertight doors must have been opened
39:08so that the firemen could change their watch.
39:10Now the firemen normally bunked
39:12in the forward ends of the ship
39:14and maybe some aft.
39:16And to get to their boiler rooms
39:18they would walk down a fireman's tunnel
39:20into these specific compartments,
39:22all six along here.
39:24Now come 8 o'clock in the morning
39:26when the watch changes
39:28the doors would have been opened
39:30whenever she hit
39:32at the exact wrong moment.
39:34But even if the doors were opened
39:36when the flooding began,
39:38they should have closed automatically.
39:40Maybe when the explosion occurred
39:42the bulkhead of the watertight door
39:44was then shifted slightly
39:46so the jam went out of alignment
39:48so the door couldn't be forced closed.
39:50Ballard's ROVs reveal another possible clue
39:52to Britannic's rapid sinking.
39:54Many of the lower portholes
39:56were wide open.
39:58A number of portholes
40:00along this particular deck here
40:02should not have been open, but they were.
40:04Now, strictly speaking,
40:06they should not have been.
40:08But it was a case of
40:10they were arriving at Madros later that morning
40:12they were airing the ward
40:14for the patients who would be going in there.
40:16As the ship settled by the bow
40:18and enlisted to starboard
40:20it brought the portholes underwater
40:22which let water into the undamaged compartments.
40:24If these theories are correct
40:25the carefully designed safety features
40:27installed after Titanic
40:29were undone by human error.
40:33Operating in a war zone
40:35Britannic was an accident waiting to happen.
40:39The final and most dramatic mystery remains.
40:44Was Britannic's sinking
40:46accidental or deliberate?
40:49As a hospital ship
40:51Britannic was protected
40:53by the Geneva Convention.
40:55Did their new boat commander
40:57deliberately torpedo a Red Cross ship?
41:00Cousteau's team suggested
41:02that Britannic might have been
41:04carrying an illegal cargo
41:06of armaments and munitions.
41:08If true, this would account
41:10for the British Admiralty's desire
41:12to obscure the exact location of the wreck.
41:14Why was the wreck so badly misplaced?
41:16I mean, 8 miles is quite considerable
41:18when you consider there are
41:20very easily identifiable landmarks in sight.
41:22Basically, the theories that are coming up
41:23are the Admiralty deliberately misplaced
41:25the ship so there could be no exploration.
41:27Had divers gone down
41:29they may have found that Britannic
41:31was indeed carrying weapons
41:33which he should not have been.
41:35But in the many hours surveying the wreck
41:37Ballard found no trace of armaments.
41:39With no evidence of a motive
41:41does the torpedo theory
41:43still make sense?
41:45I'm saying torpedo.
41:47Torpedo.
41:49Torpedo.
41:51Torpedo.
41:53And to the survivors,
41:55it certainly did.
41:57One thing we mustn't forget
41:59about the First World War
42:01and Britain in particular
42:03was the absolutely rabid paranoia
42:05about what the Germans were doing.
42:11So the consensus was
42:13when the Britannic went down
42:15which not many people knew.
42:17You see, don't forget
42:19this was cloaked in wartime secrecy.
42:21This was not something
42:23the perception was
42:25that it was somehow
42:27a German torpedo.
42:29Now, beastly as they used to say
42:31the Germans could be
42:33I don't think they would have
42:35torpedoed a hospital ship.
42:37Yet in February 1915
42:39the hospital ship Austerius
42:41was attacked with torpedoes
42:43in the English Channel.
42:45The ship took evasive action
42:47but in this case
42:49the markings of a hospital ship
42:51were no defense
42:54It was after the war
42:56that things began
42:58to be a little bit clearer.
43:00Among the captured German papers
43:02there was evidence
43:04that the U-73,
43:06a German long-range
43:08mine-laying submarine
43:10had laid mines in the Kier Channel
43:12at the end of October.
43:14Now that was a full month
43:16before the Britannic was in the area
43:18but it would appear
43:20that this particular barrage
43:21was no better than torpedo theory.
43:23The U-73
43:25belonged to a class
43:27consisting of U-71
43:29through U-80
43:31and these were relatively
43:33small submarines
43:35and they were mine-layers.
43:37They were not really known
43:39for their torpedoing capabilities
43:41although they did have some.
43:43Commander Gustav Zeiss's logbook
43:45made public after the war
43:47gave precise coordinates
43:49for the placement of
43:51the mines.
43:53The boat dove to a depth
43:55of 65 feet
43:57to avoid detection.
43:59We also have
44:01the interview done
44:03by British intelligence services
44:05of a prisoner of war.
44:07He said without any doubt
44:09the Britannic had hit a mine
44:11that had been laid by the U-73.
44:13If Britannic were sunk
44:15by a mine
44:17then evidence should remain
44:19on the ocean floor
44:21to hold the mine in place.
44:24This is the mine
44:26the type of mine
44:28that the U-73 laid
44:30just before
44:33the Britannic passed
44:35through this channel.
44:37This is what the Germans
44:39claimed the ship hit
44:41and the British
44:43naturally said
44:45it was torpedo.
44:47And so if we find this
44:49and around it
44:51then it will
44:53pretty well
44:55ice it and it hit a mine.
44:57We have an idea.
44:59In pursuit of this
45:01physical evidence
45:03Ballard will rely
45:05on a method of
45:07undersea investigation
45:09that enabled him
45:11to find Titanic
45:13when so many
45:15before him had failed.
45:17The debris field theory.
45:19Everyone sees ships sink
45:21so instead of just falling
45:23straight to the bottom
45:25which most people would assume
45:27what happens is
45:29the ship breaks up
45:31in the case of the Titanic
45:33it broke in half
45:35and all of these objects
45:37went into the water.
45:39Some were very heavy
45:41like a safe
45:43and some were very light
45:45deck chairs and gloves
45:47and shoes.
45:49Ballard found that
45:51this breakthrough
45:53enabled him to try
45:55a new approach
45:57in searching for Titanic.
45:59I realized that
46:01I don't want to look
46:03for the Titanic
46:05it's only 94 feet wide.
46:07I want to look for
46:09its debris trail
46:11and it fell 12,000 feet.
46:13In other words
46:15could I be looking
46:17for something that was
46:19a mile long
46:21led to the Titanic.
46:23In the case of her sister
46:25the logic will be reversed.
46:28Since Britannic
46:30traveled some 55 minutes
46:32after the impact
46:34there should be a clear
46:36trail of debris
46:38leading from the wreck
46:40to the anchor chain.
46:42The U-boat commander's
46:44coordinates and Britannic's
46:46last recorded position
46:48are added to the equation
46:50The next step
46:52is to send the NR-1
46:54around the wreck
46:56to find the start
46:58of the debris field.
47:07The ROVs are ready
47:09to photograph
47:11anything the NR-1 might find.
47:20An hour passes
47:22and then
47:24an exciting discovery.
47:28The NR-1
47:30finds Britannic's
47:32gigantic funnels
47:34virtually intact
47:36strewn in a distinct path
47:38leading away from the ship.
47:50Funnels are a rare
47:52find at a wreck site.
47:56The ship's smokestacks
47:58their enormous size
48:00belie their fragility.
48:04Funnels have been known
48:06to just be swept away
48:08in strong winds and heavy seas
48:10sometimes on ships
48:12so they're not like
48:14the hull itself
48:16that is really strong
48:17but they're still intact
48:19that they're not corroded away.
48:21I'm amazed, yeah.
48:23Very rare.
48:25Four Britannic funnels
48:27still virtually intact.
48:30But are they the start
48:32of the debris trail?
48:34We looked at these two
48:36and then we went out
48:38and saw a single funnel.
48:40If we go back through
48:42the site along
48:44from the center of the wreck
48:45to the one out there
48:47that that would start us
48:49on the trail
48:51toward the course
48:53the ship was taking
48:55and could lead us back
48:57through the debris trail
48:59to the spot where
49:01the mine, we think it was a mine
49:03actually blew up.
49:05With the Carolin Chouesse
49:07due back in port
49:09time is short
49:11to follow this promising lead.
49:13Ballard gives the NR-1
49:16the submarine sets off
49:18on what Ballard and his team
49:20hope will be the Britannic's
49:22debris field.
49:24You can see the little squares
49:26going this way.
49:28The NR-1's cameras
49:30are trained on the ocean floor
49:32searching for tell-tale
49:34pieces of hull plating.
49:38The hours pass.
49:46Stand by.
49:52Second target is about
49:54five and a half miles.
49:56The NR-1 returns
49:58with disappointing news.
50:00The search has revealed
50:02no trace of an anchor chain.
50:04In the command station
50:06of the Chouesse
50:08the historians review
50:10the hours of videotape
50:12brought back by the submarine
50:13and some clue that
50:14might have been overlooked.
50:16Now there's another one
50:17of those cylindrical things.
50:18But see look at this.
50:19I mean you've got
50:20a perfectly square
50:21or possibly rectangular.
50:23Maybe it's a flake?
50:24It's just like the thing
50:25we saw before.
50:27All these things,
50:28nothing has to do with mines
50:29and nothing has to do
50:30really with...
50:32Well that's the interesting thing.
50:33We've not found one trace yet
50:34of anything to do with
50:35the submarine which
50:36we know was there.
50:37No.
50:38We know she laid the mines.
50:39We know she laid two
50:40barrages of six mines
50:41and yet all the scans
50:42we've done so far
50:43indicate nothing at all.
50:45To my mind it's a simple matter
50:46of taking a compass
50:48and drawing one mile
50:49radiuses or radii
50:51out from the wreck site
50:53and we may be just looking
50:55too close to the wreck.
50:56I mean it's got to be
50:58at least two miles away
51:00to the south or to the southwest
51:02where these mines were.
51:04The only conclusion
51:05we can come to is that
51:06the German captain
51:07Gustav Zeiss
51:08probably got his position wrong.
51:10I have a feeling that
51:11they're a bit further
51:12to the southwest.
51:13Somewhere down there.
51:15No anchor chain,
51:16no debris field
51:18and no more time to search.
51:21Without conclusive evidence
51:22the question of whether or not
51:24Britannic was the victim
51:25of a vicious attack
51:27or an unlucky casualty
51:29must remain open to speculation.
51:33But Ballard is far
51:34from disappointed.
51:36His vision extends
51:37beyond this expedition.
51:39There's something mystical
51:40about a great ship like this.
51:44It's sort of like to solve
51:46everything is to make it
51:47no longer important.
51:50No, I'm real happy.
51:52Having been disappointed
51:54by the Lusitania,
51:55having gone out
51:56to find this perfect ship
51:58and to find something
52:00that was far worse
52:01than the Titanic,
52:02far worse, just destroyed,
52:04a pile of junk
52:05in the bottom of the ocean,
52:06to then come and find
52:08that perfect ship.
52:11I mean, this is the most
52:12perfect ship of this vintage.
52:15I mean, I'll certainly
52:16sink one tomorrow
52:17and it'll look prettier,
52:18but this is the most
52:19perfect ship I've ever seen.
52:23I think the Britannic,
52:24when everyone sees
52:26how well preserved it is,
52:28it'll lead the way
52:29and then I will move
52:30into the next phase.
52:33Of all the wrecks
52:34Ballard has explored,
52:35none have offered
52:36as much potential
52:37for his plan
52:38to create an undersea museum
52:40as Britannic.
52:44In the memory of those
52:45who perished in the sinking
52:46of the HMHS Britannic,
52:49November 21st, 1916,
52:52and dedicated to all those
52:54who lost their lives
52:56in the war of 1948...
52:58This commemorative plaque
52:59is a point of honor for Ballard,
53:02who firmly believes
53:03that wreck sites
53:04should be left undisturbed.
53:07The only mark of his passage
53:08will be this token of respect
53:10for those who perished here.
53:15For all of our technology,
53:17the oceans of the world
53:18remain largely unexplored.
53:22Their dark floors littered
53:23with forgotten relics
53:24of human history.
53:27And even those clues
53:28that are brought to light
53:29keep a jealous hold
53:31on their secrets.
53:35If Britannic someday
53:36offers us a virtual window
53:37into her past,
53:39it will be the lure
53:40of those secrets
53:42that will keep us coming back.
53:59Is there an unsinkable ship?
54:01From Titanic
54:02to today's luxury liners,
54:04NOVA investigates blueprints
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56:28a stonemason and an archaeologist
56:30travel to Egypt
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56:32how the great pyramids were built.
56:34With an Egyptian crew
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56:37one of the world's oldest mysteries
56:38by reconstructing this old pyramid.
56:41Next time on NOVA.