Amazing Titanic Wreck Footage | The cranes, windows and decay

ladies and gentlemen this your friend Mike Brady from ocean liner designs um I have been in the United States I actually just got back to uh to England before I fly back home to Australia and uh today I thought we'd do something fun last week or the week before I forget exactly when but we looked at some wreck footage from the RMS Titanic inks Dives to the Titanic from around about 2010 I believe these Dives are from uh there's still a lot more that we can look at so I thought today we'd have a little look at some of the things buried down there in their wreck footage that is really really interesting before we get started I just wanted to thank RMS Titanic Inc for providing this remarkable footage it's really beautiful stuff they've actually launched a new experience I'll tell you a little bit more about that later on but thanks to RMS Titanic Inc for uh for hooking me up so the last time we looked at this footage we were looking around the bow section we were looking at some of the more recognizable pieces of the ship and uh we looked at the stern as well where the ship broke apart today what I thought we'd do is just kind of have a look at some of the stuff in between because there's a lot of things in the debris field that uh kind of sometimes very difficult to work out what you're actually looking at I often struggle a little bit staring at the screen wondering exactly what it is that I'm looking at it is uh it is a mess down there this is an interesting one this is a uh an electric crane Titanic was fitted with a number of cranes that were essentially designed to be able to uh pick up cargo and lower it into hatches that were placed at convenient strategically convenient locations around the ship so there were uh about three large hatches forward uh one on the the very bow of the ship the folks deck we actually looked at that cargo hatch and the two behind it uh in the well deck at the uh in the first video you can actually say they go right right down into the into the bottom of the ship one of those is where the the famous Renault car the town car was loaded into uh on sailing from Southampton now to load the majority of the heavy cargo uh at the forward end of the ship Titanic was fitted with a cargo Derek it's like essentially a really tall crane arm that sits flush with the forward mask and this could be uh rigged with lines and block and tackle and all that kind of stuff and those lines would then be rigged to the steam winches that were positioned around it so the crew could like just physically maneuver this thing around and load up cargo and winch it up and drop it onto the well deck if need be and then the cargo cranes were uh these electric cranes that were designed to then supplement this boom so there were two in the forward well deck and their entire job was essentially to pick up like pieces of luggage and things like that that were held in bags or or on essentially like the equivalent of pallets and then lower these into the um into the cargo hatches so it's a pretty efficient way of of loading the ship where you've got your your your Derek picking up all the heavy stuff and dropping it on the on the deck over and over again over the side and then the electric cranes lowering it lowering it down Titanic also had uh a few more AR so she had two on a deck two on B deck in her in her well deck and then two on the at the very stern of the ship on the uh on the poop deck which everybody seems to laugh at every time I say that this is one of the cranes uh from the after end of the ship so obviously the stern section went through some pretty horrendous violence when it broke apart and so the cranes most of the cranes at the stern of the were just like ripped off and deposited um all over the the wreck debris fi the way we know this is because the ones at the forward end uh in the forward well deck are still there so I don't exactly know where this one is from um there is one still attached to the stern section it's one of the ad cranes um this could well be one of the one of the poop deck cranes but you can see that the the Crane's arm itself has been twisted around there down on the bottom left you can see that it's just kind of been like bent right around and it's just really interesting seeing that uh the the force is required to bend that that cargo Crane's arm around because it was designed to load you know like a significant amount of cargo very interesting seeing that kind of uh that kind of damage and destruction on the wreck like this that's another good view of of another crane you can see it's um that one seems to be a lot more intact that one you can actually see the uh the motor below it what seems to be a significant portion of the of the motor that would have then been housed in like a cylindrical housing you can see it in photographs that there was like a fairing over it to to hide the Machinery um but this this was pretty Cutting Edge stuff back in the day these were all electric cranes and um that was that was fairly impressive to have that kind of stuff on on ships back then cuz everything was steam powered for the most part and a long for for a very long time you know all kinds of cranes were were steam powered this is the debris field and there's just a lot of stuff that looks like a bathtub down there it's a it's a mess it's a hot mess sometimes very difficult to figure out what it is you're looking at this is a uh an engine cylinder still attached to its crankshaft we actually looked at that in the in the first video but it's it's pretty PR remarkable to see that the kind of force required to bend um the the rod around like that that one would have sat perfectly upright pile of davits on the ocean floor we talked about the davits in the um in the first episode of this the uh the forward end of the the bow so you can see all the ballards all the pieces of equipment used for for moing the ship in a minute we're going to see some of the super structure and this gives us a real glimpse into how Titanic is being um slowly eaten away essentially so so we know that there are bacteria actually eating the steel of Titanic uh it was actually discovered and named after the ship itself so the rusticles that you can see forming they look like um the the kind of like formations you see on the roof of a cave these are uh these are called rusticles and it's basically deposits of of the steel as it's being essentially eaten away it's like like remnants of the of the steel just hanging from hanging from the roof hanging from deckhead and things like that but it's just interesting to me that it this kind of view is remarkable because you get to see how much of Titanic is being eaten away so you can see above it how the the very thin um super structure plating has been kind of eaten between these these frames this is not structural steel so this is in the uh the super structure of Titanic Titanic's Hull up to B deck was the main structural part of the ship the hull was was everything and then the super structure on top of it from um B deck up to a deck and the boat deck was more like a kind of like a layer cake that you put on top with like nice little you know um accommodations and public rooms and things like that but the hull was doing most of the work so the hull is made out of very very um thick steel the super structure is not the Super structure is very thin and so you can see that it's being eaten away now this footage was taken a little while ago so it will be very interesting seeing the footage from the current Expedition and getting a sense of how much of Titanic has been eaten away since um I think we're going to start to see a lot of this area of the ship being being eaten away very very soon um this is down forward at B deck uh you can see some of these really nice rectangular passenger stateroom windows are still intact this is something Titanic had that the Olympic didn't it's really really spooky seeing the light reflecting off those you just think when the last time was that light light hit them when she was on the surface people always ask what's going to happen to the Titanic wreck how long it's going to be around for um I don't know but this kind of footage gives us a sense of what's going to happen to it and um we'll start to see a little bit more of of this hopefully in a minute um but typically wherever there is damage on the wreck that's where the ship will be eaten away from first wherever the damage already is from the break up at the surface or the sinking that's where over time the corrosion and the microbial kind of attacks if you will will will really intensify so typically you start to see it around the breakup point so Titanic is mostly being in away from the the bow section from the the the point at which she broke up forward so there's a lot more damage further off than there is further forward if that makes sense so this is the expansion joint um all the way forward on the bow section the expansion joint essentially allowed the super structure as I explained it's just kind of sitting on top if you will it's obviously riveted and attached to the hull but the hull is doing a lot of work the hull is doing a lot of like bending and flexing as it's going over waves and the super structure on top has to kind of follow so the superstructure would need to breathe it would need to be able to um expand and then contract as the hull itself was was bending and flexing over over waves so they provided them with Expansion Joints like they do on Bridges so that it kind of like almost like an accordion could open up or it could close and in big Seas It's Not Unusual to see on old ships like this Expansion Joints um moving a lot it can be a little bit disconcerting but it does happen and we can see that Titanic essentially her back has been broken and that expansion joint has opened way way up that would never have expanded that much during her uh during her service life or her career but these beautiful close-up shots uh you really get a sense of of the the actual color of the wreck in a lot of photographs and paintings and things it looks green or blue green but it's not it's a it's a rusty rusty ship so cool seeing this what a what a great shot interestingly you can see um also here that the decking has been eaten away for the most part there's no uh wood planking there on the deck save for the the teak margin planking so the uh outsides of the deck there would have been um sort of margin planked the exterior side would have been sort of had have like a a teak frame and the inner part of the deck was mostly Pine like various types of pine like Pitch Pine yellow pine that kind of thing the Pine's long gone but the teak lasts a very very long time teak is extremely resilient and if you've got outdoor furniture and it's wood and it's lasted a long time chances are it's probably te the bismar R has actually got some really nice um teak decking still in place all the decking still there because it's it's made out of te it's going to be around a long time that's a much nicer shot of the teak planking the margin Planks on the outside there and you can also see where there would have been um Pine decking you can just make out where the bolts that secured the pine decking to the deck plate are all in a row um and they've kind of like mushroomed out as they've like corroded over time but the planks are are long gone so this is on the roof uh of the boat deck this is right on top of the ship you can see there's just piles of what look like piping and the uh the Expansion Joints open way up that you can probably just see what looks like a sink in there but even more interestingly uh I'm pretty sure that this is this is original paint that's still there you can just make out I mean it looks like a rust colored now but it's still white paint just below that window on the right hand side you can basically see uh original paint still still attached weirdly weirdly white paint seems to take the longest time to be fully eaten away it's the same with the SS United States the holes peeling away the funnels peeled off but the the the white paint seems to be holding on for whatever reason this is another crane you can actually see this one's still attached to its cylindrical base and I this could be one still on the wreck I'm not sure if this is the one that's still attached or if that was actually uh on the sea Flor but that one you could actually still see the cylindrical the cylindrical base part below it this is on the boat deck now so this is back um quite close to the bridge so you can see on one side we've got um a it looks like a bit of a mess but we can make sense of this you can see there's a staircase cover so there were two stairs for the use of officers um just in the vicinity of the bridge on the boat deck these had covers on them that they could then descend down to a deck and then again down to uh to B deck so really convenient way for the officers to get around so the staircase cover is still there um just in Board of that is the uh a bulkhead that would have been one of the officers quarters uh walls essentially has just Fallen as that has pancaked out um James Cameron and his team think that was actually from the ship's mast during the sinking the Mast seems to have snapped back and smashed this area up including the Wheelhouse the bridge so there's not a lot of the bridge left um and that forward end of the of the officers Waters just kind of like exploded and sped outwards like that and then in Board of that we seem to have a dbit so a misplaced dbit has has just kind of been bent around in fact a pair of dbits have just been bent around and and uh plopped on the boat deck like that but yeah this this area should not look like this at all the teloor this is uh a pretty iconic part of the wreck we've spoken about it quite a bit on the channel but the telemo was essentially a um a device that that mounted the ship's main wheel so you can actually see the the the outline of what would have been the ship's wheelhouse so this is where this is what's called a combing and it's essentially a little steel margin that they install to rivet the the walls the bulkhead of a of a compartment or a room and so the combing is there but the Wheelhouse itself is gone because the Wheelhouse like most of the navigation Bridges bulkheads and roof and things like that were made out of out of wood and that was to prevent any metal from interrupting or interfering with the uh the compass it was all magnetic and so although they could uh correct the compass and things like that it was still like best practice to make the the vicinity the thing around it um mostly out of out of wood make sure it's in a in a in a happy place where it's not going to be uh interrupted too badly it means on the recre of Titanic there's not a lot of the bridge area left and sadly the only still remaining uh remnant of the of the navigational equipment is the telemotor so the ship's wheel the main wheel would have once sat there it would have been enclosed in the wheel house and the Helmsman the guy actually steering the ship a Quarter Master would have been stood there with the ship's wheel and he didn't need to see where he was going because he's just responding to orders from the officers out on the on the bridge who can see where they're going so the Helmsman it's a tough job and it was one of the jobs that had some of the the shortest um the shortest shifts if you will the shortest watches but you're just standing there with the wheel checking the compass and just making sure that you're you're sticking true to the the orders you've been given on the night of the sinking of course just before striking the iceberg um The Quarter Master was standing here with the ship's wheel when he was given the order um and flung The Wheel hard around and attempt to get out of the way so the wheel was attached to this the tel motor's job was essentially to fire a signal a hydraulic line connected it to the ship's steering engine all the way you know 800 odd feet back at the stern of the ship and then that would engage a a basically a miniature triple expansion steam engine whose sole job it was to turn the rudder which itself was like the height of a of a six-story [Music] building oh yeah this is the the one standing davit on the ship still the davits being the Lifeboat cranes uh responsible for launching the ship's lifeboats there is one left um still standing upright on the ship and it is over on the starboard side and this is a a pretty well-known piece of trivia but I'll tell you just in case you didn't know this um most of the davits are in the cranked out position they're actually essentially these would sit upright on the ship in normal day use and then in the event of a sinking they could be hand cranked out so they'd swing the Lifeboat out over the side of the ship the Lifeboat would be lowered away as they did on the night of the sinking then the crew would then move to the next davit so they'd leave it swung out but right as Titanic was about to take her final plunge um the crew were struggling to lower the boats and launch some of the boats that were left at the very very forward end of the boat deck and so in an attempt to then lower the next set of collapsable boats they Crank that dbit back in um in an attempt to then rig it and then lower the the next boats away they didn't get the time and essentially the ship sank out from underneath them and kind of like an app poignant Monument um to their efforts and their heroism that night that davit is still sitting pointing upright where they cranked it in in an attempt to lower the next life boats and and sadly quite a few of them didn't make it um especially first Officer William Murdoch who was responsible for that part of the ship more davits more debris you can see those davits are in the cranked out position but they've just broken free from their their position on the deck and they've collapsed and fallen over just with the ravages of time presumably um but there was a lot of a lot of damage done as Titanic was sinking from the ship's um funnel shrouds and stays these are the big thick heavy cables that once connected the the funnels to the to the ship's decks and they just kind of went crazy wh up and down the deck ripping things off and uh doing some doing some bad damage after the ship sank this is the remains of the Mast um collapsed over the well deck and so uh the the kind of to give you context the perspective of what we're looking at here is the uh the the bow the very front of the ship is to the left and then heading to the right you'd be like getting towards the bridge so that's where we're looking at so where the camera is basically on the port side of the of the ship's world deck and you can actually see where the The Crows Nest once was so when they first found Titanic The Crows Nest the Lookouts position was still attached to the wreck it was still on the Mast even though the Mast itself had like obviously collapsed you can tell the Crow's Nest was here because you can see there's a little hole uh down here on the left in the Mast with some kind of like handlebars like some railings there so there was actually a a track inside the Mast there was a ladder and you could access The Crows Nest by climbing up the inside of the Mast emerging through this little hatch using those handrails to to grab and pull yourself up and through and you can just see where the the kind of the combing is to actually attach the uh The Crows Nest below it so that's where they would have been standing and then above all of this you can see this tiny little like hook looking thing and that was the mounting point for the ship's main Bell and that was the Bell that Lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee rang the night they they spotted the bur the Bell has been recovered um but that's where it once would have sat and that would have been a significant height over the folkal deck and you can see now the Mast has snap back fallen down looks a little sad these are those uh cranes I was telling you about that are still in place on the forward part of the um of the world deck you can see the Mast is is decayed straight through there it's really falling apart I don't think that'll be around much longer at all amazing this is looking up now um towards the bridge and you can actually just see the uh some of the hand railings are still there this is the port side of the folkal deck you can see a skylight cover there for what would have been the the crew Galley um below it that's where the crew would have cooked their meals for the fireman for the trimmers those guys this is a funny little thing um there's a lot of things down there where there shouldn't be things so this is in Titanic's well deck I believe right at the bow and you can see um a beautiful brass decorative thing that was not mounted there during the ship's day-to-day life this is an electric heater from first class they made use of electric heaters instead of actual fireplaces because it was more convenient in fact I think Titanic had one working fireplace and it was the in the first class smoking room and it was a Coal Fire not a wood fire they supplemented these with a lot of electric heaters that were positioned in state rooms and around the the grand staircase entrance and some of the public rooms and things like that would have been nice and toasty but of course when Titanic broke up they just kind of Spilled Out and probably slowly floated down the bow section of the wreck at that point probably weighed if you consider it was like 20 to 30,000 tons of steel and it was full of about 20,000 tons of water at least it just kind of sank like a rock and the boilers and big heavy pieces of equipment machinery like that sank like rocks as well but the smaller lighter bits of equipment like heaters and things like that would have slowly floated down over time and that one by coincidence just happens to to have landed uh on the welldeck a place where it never would have been and so that can be a little bit confusing sometimes you're looking at footage or photographs of the wreck like I think they found one of the ship's boilers and sitting on top of it was a teacup or something like that it just you know just happened to land there so there's a lot of weird coincidental placement of things uh where they where they shouldn't be looks like the railing is just like slowly melting you know like it's been left in the sun too long just slowly melting off that would have sat perfectly straight once and just with time it's just amazing what uh salt water does to steal you can see though in this fo in in this shot here um the hull is in really really nice condition I mean this is a lot further forward by the looks of it on the bow but that I mean I mean it almost also looks like the the original paint is still there it's still black it it will take a long time Titanic will eventually be eaten basically down to her frames and she will kind of look like the mahino wreck eventually where there's just basically the rib cage but it's going to take a long time by the looks of it this is one of the ship's main anchors again it kind of blows my mind that they're just still sitting exactly where they uh where they were you know where they were sitting the night the the ship struck the Berg they are held in place really really well um by the Machinery that was designed to hold it in place back in 1912 and is still doing its job again one of those things that one of these days they they will uh finally eventually be let go and fall to the Sea Flor but for now they're still in place so we're still at the bow section we're back at the uh the super structure area and we're getting some nice uh views of um some pretty famous spaces here so uh there are there's the Captain's Quarters are essentially exposed now because the the the damage from the Mast or the funnel the collapse of the first funnel um essentially collapsed a big section of the uh the forward officers quarters uh deck house there and um with time a lot of the the you know that very thin plating has been eaten away um if you want to see how thin any of that plating is go and stay on the Queen Mary in Long Beach and you realize you hear everything you can hear everything that's going on next door if people are walking past you can hear it uh it's remarkable it's all very thin so um that's just been eaten away remember what I said where there's damage there will be more um eating away of Steel but it's done something weird where here it's actually just kind of exposed this bathtub and you can see the the fittings all the brass fittings are still there um this is I believe Captain Smith's bathtub um from the uh Captain's Quarters it I think has since been covered in in more debris because this part of the ship has collapsed more but you can definitely see where it's being eaten away this is a really cool shot this is uh I was talking about the the ship being eaten away where there's damage this is where the uh the officers quarters kind of ended and the um first class accommodations essentially began so this is heading towards the grand staircase entrance on the on the boat deck and you can see that the the deck house is basically collapsed and been eaten away and it's looking very very sad so we're now looking um AF we're looking down the ship's starbard side the right hand side we're looking towards the breakup point in the foreground you can see an electric winch now this is in very very good condition this electric winch was used to uh basically lower or raise lifeboats um on the night of the sinking they didn't use these they were mainly used to raise them actually because the the lifeboats weigh tons themselves they would essentially rig the line to the davit to this winch and use that to then pull the Lifeboat up and out of the water save the crew some some hard backbreaking labor um but on the night of the sinking obviously didn't have cause to use them behind this you can see like a little curved u-shaped pipe or a pair of pipes now these were pneumatic tubes and they are still shining which is remarkable brass pneumatic tubes and they ran all the way to the uh Marone room the wireless room from the person's office and the idea was that uh passengers in first class could send telegrams Marone grams to Shore and they would essentially go to the P's office pay the uh the cost of the of the Marone gam and then the message would be put into a pneumatic tube and then fired up um through these tubes All the Way Forward into the uh the Marone room very cool technology and the tubes are still standing even though the deck house around them has been reduced to Carnage it really doesn't look very good down there it's a bit sad but the tubes is still there this this is what I was talking about this is on uh ad deck and uh this is where the ship is the most damaged this is very close to where the breakup happened and you can see that um what was once the the screen on ad that um the white star installed at the last minute on Titanic to provide some enclosed space for passengers to walk in uh In First Class the screens have been eaten away and essentially all you've got now are the uh the frames uh that would have once been in between the the screen Windows um the deck house above on the boat deck has been eaten away as well you can see there's really kind of nothing up there uh it's all collapsed she's not in good shape and that's where Titanic the super structure is being eaten away from the most and collapsing as As Time takes place as time does its thing you know the Titanic's super structure will essentially collapse eventually and you know like I said you want to see what Titanic will look like check out the mahino I think that's a pretty good analog well there you have it that was some pretty interesting interesting stuff um I wanted to thank again RMS Titanic Inc for providing that beautiful wreck footage um they've I said at the start of the video they've partnered with um artifact Labs artifact labs and they have built this thing called Titanic's digital journey and it's essentially a membership program that gives you access to um some digital Collectibles some behind the scenes stuff to do with the the wreck you can get to learn more about the the artifacts also at the moment they're running a expedition to the wreck and our friend James panker from Titanic honor and glories on board the ship James if you're watching this get back to work the motivator behind this is that not everybody can go and see the artifact exhibitions they're pretty amazing and Titanic's digital Journey essentially brings the artifact exhibition to you so you can uh purchase a membership and then basically explore the artifacts and learn a lot more about them they're dropping some pretty regular um consistent updates on their expeditions that they're running as well um so you'll get access to all that information as it's coming through you can also attend events through this speaker series where they've got some um Titanic experts and people uh associated with the the wreck and and the exploration of it coming in and doing some interesting talks and you can attend those and learn more about the ship so if you're interested in Titanic's digital journey and you enjoy this kind of stuff please go ahead and visit them at member. Discover titanic.com and if you use this code ocean liner you will receive a discount on sign up again that code ocean lighter difficult to remember I know well it's always fun to sit down and look at wreck footage with you guys until next time thanks so much for watching stay safe stay happy and I'll see you then bye-bye