Stuff You Should Know - How the Titanic Worked: Part One

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

When the Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage in April 1912, the world was divided into two types of people: those who considered her unsinkable and those who weren’t so sure about that. Both types were aboard when she went down with 1500 souls. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Ahoy and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, your captain. There's Chuck, your other captain, and your third captain, Jerry, all of us equal captains here, is out there hovering around

silently like the creepiest captain of all, even creepier than Captain Stubing. Yeah, and that, of course, makes this stuff you should know. I always loved it when Captain Stubing would have the rare love story line. Yeah, it's creepy. Every now and then. Yes. So good. He's usually just overseeing the love of others, you know. Exactly. He was a father figure, so that's why it was off-putting when he had his own love thing. I was off-putting for you. Yeah, but he wants to see Captain Stubing go all the way. We should mention, and I wish I knew her name, but for many, many years, one of our young listeners

asked us to do Titanic at every turn, and I imagine that that young girl is now a grown woman, probably, who doesn't listen anymore. But who knows? Who knows? Also, Chuck, I think, most recently was requested by our Scottish correspondent, Noah. Oh. Don't you remember when he said hi last time? Sure. I don't remember the Titanic part, but Noah, you know, I'm happy for Noah to take the place of this young girl who left us like yesterday's news, which I can't prove. Use this up and just throw us away, Chuck. Yeah, I think we resisted for so long because the movie is so linked to this event, and the movie, despite its faults, did a really pretty accurate job of, and I know that was important to James

Cameron, of kind of really telling the accurate story of exactly what happened, so we were like, why bother? Yeah, there's actually, from the filming of that movie, they may have settled at least one major mystery as to what happened when it sank. Did you look to see? No, what happened to the Grand Staircase, which they found when they finally discovered the Titanic later on in the 80s, was just totally missing. It was now like a seven-story vertical, basically an elevator shaft, a huge hole, and none of the staircase remained. And when they filmed that movie, the Titanic, the Grand Staircase, detached and started to float away. And James Cameron was like, I'll bet you that's exactly what happened to the real Titanic. And I have a feeling that

Jewel of the Sea isn't even right. What was it called? It had a name. Jim of the... There's so many angry people right now. The heart of the ocean. The jam of the on it. I think it was the heart of the sea, the heart of the ocean, something like that. The jewel of the wind. Did you like the movie? Yeah, it was fine. You remember Thomas Jefferson's Bible, where he cut out all the magic Momo jumbo and just had like the morality of the whole thing? If you could go through and cut out like the love story of that movie, I would probably like it much more. Well, I kind of disagree there because you got to frame it around something. Whoa. You got to frame it around some kind of a story of people. Are you just saying you would have done another person's story?

Yeah, why not just throw Captain Stooping in there and have him have the love story? I thought the love story was good. I just think Jim Cameron is... I think he can be a little ham-fisted with his screenwriting sometimes. Yeah, for sure. And there was some stuff like that I remember even at the time, like Billy Zane, you know, little pithy comments like, you know, that Picasso, who's ever heard of him, that'll never be worth a thing, like, or something like that. I just remember at the time being like, come on, man. Billy Zane does what he's told on set. What? The Zane. So yeah, there was another one. I'd forgotten about this line, but somebody else was basically saying the same thing that you are about that movie or James Cameron's writing.

That when Leo was, you know, running with Kate Winslet through first class and there's band, the band is playing and he stops for a second and goes, music to drown to. Now I know I'm in first class. Oh boy. So yeah, the whole thing's just rife with that kind of stuff. But overall, I mean, just the fact that like they went to the extremes that they did to try to get it as accurate as possible and overlaid like a, you know, romantic love story on it. Like it was, I mean, it was a good, it was a good movie in a lot of ways and so many more ways than it was a bad movie that it's just overall a really good movie. Yeah, I think the most brilliant decision in that movie was to have that beginning bit where it's a little ham-fisted, but the part where Bill

Paxton and the sea nerds go over exactly how it sank. Yeah. Like I don't think a lot of people understood that and understanding that as you're watching the movie is pretty critical. So I think that was pretty smart. Yeah. Yes, indeed. And one other thing about that movie, we'll never mention it again for the rest of these two episodes, I'm sure, but it costs about almost exactly half adjusted for inflation to make the movie Titanic as it did to make the Titanic. Oh, wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. And we just did an episode of movie crush, basically. There you go. That was a mini crush. Although Nate DeMeo, this was, this was actually his pick, our buddy Nate from memory balance. Right. He's in Titanic. He did. That's awesome, man. That doesn't surprise me at all.

All right. It's surprise me. I mean, he would love a movie like that that's set, you know, like really accurate historical fiction that would totally be up his alley. Yeah. Okay. So we're talking, believe it or not, everybody, I don't know if you've figured it this out yet, we're talking about the Titanic finally at long last. And like we were saying, you know, we kind of put this off because the movie had just become so widespread that we basically had to wait out its after effects. But I feel like we've kind of finally kind of reached that. So, and like I've been interested in the Titanic since I was just a young kid. Oh, yeah. Yeah. When they found the Titanic in 1985, like I was at just the right age to really get sucked

into that. Yeah. And the, I think that Titanic was probably the first thing that introduced me to like the, just the fascinating creepiness of looking at things that aren't supposed to be underwater. But now it's just perfect for that kind of thing. Yeah. And it's still really cool. Like I was looking at pictures today of that stern sitting there underwater and it's, it's, it's still just like there's something about it that you can't not look at it and just stare at it. I know. And I'm like waiting for the day when things become, when technology reaches the point where we can just explore every square inch of the Titanic on the bottom. I'm really looking forward to that. But so I knew a lot about the Titanic to begin with,

but just researching this, it dawned on me like, I mean, there's just so much I didn't know that I found in the time spent researching this, but it also dawned on me that there is just so much more. Like some people dedicate, like this is their hobby, like learning and talking and researching and reading and thinking about the Titanic. Yeah. And you know, this is, this is going to be a two part episode. And we're going to do it stuff you should know style in probably about 90 minutes. But I'm quite sure there are podcasts out there fully dedicated to the Titanic where it's like, you know, and now episode 120, the cutlery where people know, like, like you were saying, people are obsessed with it. And they know all the details. We're going to, I'm sure,

get some stuff kind of wrong because we're not experts, but we're going to give it the old stuff you should know treatment, you know. Yeah, for sure. So yeah. So as, as like, I knew a lot about the Titanic, there's plenty of people out there who like dedicate themselves to it. But just learning about this, like it's just such a huge monumental thing. A lot of people divide like the 19th century, the like the old era and the modern age upon the sinking of the Titanic. Like that's how colossal a thing it's become. But at the time, I mean, it was actually not that big of a deal. Like it was a maiden voyage of the Titanic, but its sister ship, the Olympic had already sailed. And that was actually kind of a big thing. The Titanic wasn't even sold out when it underwent its voyage,

actually in retrospect, that was a very good thing. But there's a lot to learn from the Titanic, just, just researching it, even if you do feel like you, you already know basically everything about it. Yeah, I mean, I learned a ton of stuff. Yeah. And I saw that movie a bunch. So like I said, the Titanic had a sister ship, the Olympic, and it also had another sister ship, which was originally dubbed the Gigantic. But after the Titanic sank, they went back and renamed the Gigantic the Britannic, because I thought, I think maybe they'd be like, well, we're, we had enough hubris for to last a lifetime with the Titanic. But these three ships came out of a dinner actually, between a guy named J. Bruce Ismay, who was the chairman of the

White Star Line, which owned those three ships. And another guy, what was his name, Piri? Lord William Piri and their, their wives Florence, who was married to Bruce, and Margaret Montgomery, originally Carlisle, and that, you know, that name will come back in just a second. So just put a pin in her. So the, this dinner was basically about how to compete with the Canard lines. The Canard people were eating White Star's lunch to a degree, because they had just released the Morotania and the Lusitania. And I think the Morotania set the, the speed record. These things could make it across the Atlantic in five days, which was very, very fast at the time. And White Star couldn't keep up. So they decided from this dinner, what if instead of trying to make faster and faster ships,

we just kind of go with our thing and make them bigger and more luxurious. So people want to spend that extra day. It took White Star six days to make it across. People want to spend that extra day because the ship is so ridiculously luxurious that they choose ours instead. And not only was this the birth of the Titanic and the Olympic and the Britannic, it was basically the birth of the cruise industry as we understand it today. Just basically making these huge floating luxury hotels that, that kind of became born from this dinner as well. Yeah. And so they said, you know, we want to make them about one and a half times the size of anything that Cunard is putting out there. And they started sketching around a little bit and they sketched up a couple of mast and

four smokestacks. And I think by the time they got to the engineering phase, they said, by the way, we really only need three of these. And they said, no, we must have four. We want it to look symmetrical. And we'll figure out something to do with that fourth one, which they did, became a ventilation system, which was pretty smart. And initially, Alexander Montgomery Karla was the head designer who was Margaret Lord William Peary's wife's brother. Okay. So it was his brother-in-law that was the initial designer. And then that was eventually handed over to Peary's nephew, Thomas Andrews. And he was the guy played by Victor Garber in the movie. The dude from Alias. The dad from Alias, is it? Yeah. I mean, I never saw Alias, but I know that when you're on TV, that's what

you're most famous for. Yeah. Isn't that weird? Except in our case. Right. Always going against the grain. Yeah, for sure. So, so yeah, so Thomas Andrews would become the chief designer of the ship. He had an amazing job of it. But the ship itself, the Titanic was something like 882 feet long, which is a little longer than the trans-American pyramid in San Francisco is. The building in San Francisco is tall. Yeah. Imagine sipping that into the ocean. Yeah. And then you have, like, in the Titanic was slightly longer than that. It was also 92 feet wide. And it had a gross weight of 45,000 tons. It was just by far the biggest ship that had ever been built. And so, like, the idea of bigness and indestructibility kind of was part of the Titanic's whole jam, like,

from the outset. Yeah. And there was one sort of fateful mistake. And, you know, Titanic is one of those things where a lot of people have, in hindsight, said, well, there was, of course, the iceberg. But there were also this and this and this that happened that could have led to, you know, its ultimate demise. And one of those things was the rivets on the Titanic. There were three million wrought iron rivets that apparently upon further examination contained about three times the amount of slag residue as was allowable. And I think the result of that was when they're exposed to coal, they become more brittle. And so some people have posited that those, you know, as a well built ship for the most part, but those rivets could have been weaker than they should

have been when push came to shove. Yeah. And I mean, if your rivets are the weak link in the chain, that's trouble right there. Big trouble. But yeah, not all of them were wrought iron, but enough of them were. And I also saw that they were double riveted. And they probably should have been triple riveted from what I saw in some engineering blog. You got a triple rivet. Exactly. Everybody knows that. Sure. So they also had two engines on board that were just enormous. Each one was about 30 feet tall. Yeah. And they were capable of producing 30,000 horsepower, which is about the same energy produced by 10 diesel locomotives. Just these two engines. And they could push the ship pretty fast. Something like, I think 22 knots was the top speed it hit. And like I said,

the Mauritania had set the speed record at something like 23.9, I think, as far as the record goes. And it lasted until 1929. So the Titanic wasn't setting speed records or anything like that. But it was still going awfully fast, especially considering the size it was. But it was thanks to those huge engines. And they're the enormous propellers that they outfitted the ship with too. Oh man, those like, if you're at home and you can access photographs safely, I strongly encourage you to look up some of these pictures. Just the pictures of the propellers are amazing. There are two three blade propellers that were about 23 and a half feet in diameter. And then one four blade propeller that was about 17 feet in diameter. And just seeing a photograph of these things

is unbelievable to behold, like how big these things are. Yeah. Again, just bigness. It was just a common theme, you know. One of the other things that the Titanic had that was pretty innovative was that so underwater in the hull, what would be beneath the sea surface, as far as the boat was concerned, were 16 bulkhead compartments that had all sorts of things. Like one held the coal or I think multiple ones held all the coal that the Titanic consumed something like 600 tons a day to get that thing to move. And then there were just all sorts of other just like rooms that were beneath sea level. And each of these rooms had an automatic door that would shut it off and seal it. They were water tight. So if any of these

compartments caught water started taking on water, it could fill up. And as long as that door was shut, the Titanic would just be able to keep on keeping on basically. So that was a real innovation that combined with its bigness and just the amount of steel that was put into it, combined to kind of create this idea that the Titanic was unsinkable. That's where that comes from, largely from those compartments. Yeah, I think they said two of the four could flood. And they said really up to four of these could flood. Right. But no more than four. Yeah, put a put a pin in that one. And on that coal, there were 29 steam boilers. And if you're thinking like how much coal you said 600 pounds, or I'm sorry, 600 tons a day. A day. That was 162

furnaces of 200 men shoveling coal, basically nonstop. Yeah, there was actually a fire aboard the Titanic. Like the Titanic was on fire when it was taking on passengers, right? And it was because those those coal deposits, one of them had caught fire. And when you have coal that's on fire in that situation, basically the only way to put it out is to use that coal that's on fire. So not only were they, you know, shoveling like under routine conditions, they were shoveling even more coal than normal to keep the fire from spreading. Yeah. And that's another one of those things that people have now some people experts have gone back and said the fire could have started up to three weeks before they even set sail. And that it could have weakened some of those holds.

They found evidence of like some some burn marks and stuff like that. Yeah. Where they said it could have weakened some of that metal. And, you know, it sounds very strange to have a fire going for three weeks and say, here we go, everybody. Right, exactly. But that was the deal. Plus, it also just gets across how enormous Titanic was that it could have a fire and just be like whatever. Right. It's all good. We're the Titanic. But yeah, they discovered a picture that shows some sort of like kind of a stripe across the hull of the ship that is about where the iceberg hit it. And they said, that's from that coal fire, we think, which is surprising. Still, after all this time, I think that's another reason why the Titanic story is so engrossing is there's

just so much still that people are learning about it even 109 years on. Oh, totally. You also have to remember when you build something this big, you also have to build the things that help you build this thing because they didn't exist. Yeah. So they had to get a boat slip that could accommodate it. So they built the this enormous white star dock and then something called the Great Gantry, which was it sort of looks like a big sort of like a skeleton of a big airplane hangar. You should look at these pictures too. It's pretty remarkable. But it was a series of 10 cranes basically that held this boat in place while it was being built to could lift the people up to work on it, lift materials up to wherever they needed to go. And it's actually something

to behold in itself, like seeing the Titanic suspended like above the ground like that. Yeah. And it took 11,000 people to build this ship, 11,000 people. And they built it. They built the actual ship itself and was launched into the water. I think although it was basically always in the water because it was basically impossible to dry dock. Well, not when it was in the hangar. It was sitting up there. Okay. You're right. Sorry. But it was actually launched into the water then on May 31, 1911. But it didn't have any interior. It didn't have its engines yet. It was fully completed March 31, 1912. And it began its maiden voyage and started taking on passengers on April 10, 1912. And I propose, Chuck, that before we take on passengers, we take a break. Let's do it.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass, the hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So one thing I didn't realize about the Titanic was it had three little stops before it left the UK for New York. I'd started out in Southampton in England, moved on to Cherbourg,

France, and then went on to Queenstown, Ireland before leaving for New York. Did you know that? I didn't know that. That wasn't in the movie. That's right. So the Titanic cost about $400 million in 2019 to make. That's actually less than Carnival Cruise Line's Splendor, which was launched in 2008 for like $450 million. So it's actually for as luxurious as it was, it was a pretty good bargain to tell you the truth. Yeah. And here's my deal with cruises. I think we've talked about cruise ships before. I'm not a fan. I've been on exactly one cruise. And just not a fan. And a lot of it has to do with the decor, like shopping mall carpet and bowling alley carpet and, you know, gold railings and things like that, but not like cool

looking. I think if they took a note from the, and maybe they are building cruise ships like this now, but if they took a note from the Titanic and other ships of the day today and had that really nice wicker furniture and some, you know, if not iron, some stuff painted to look like iron and not so much of that shiny gold shopping mall garbage look, I think I would be more into it. A little more classy refined thing. And I think they could go a long way toward getting people like me on cruise ships. There's some that are like that, like kind of some throwback ones. Are there? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. But I get what you mean. That whole, you know, all you had to say was shopping mall. You kind of nailed it right there. Like when you look at the Titanic,

it looks like something the Kellogg brothers would have been keen on. Well, it's funny you say that because we mentioned this in the Kellogg brothers episode, but they had equipment on board the Titanic and the gym. And the gym happened to be located on the boat deck, which was the same place where the captain's bridge was FYI in case anyone ever asked you about the various decks. Yeah, I think we should. There are a number of them, actually, and they, they, they lettered them by letter appropriately enough. That's right. So there's that boat deck, like you said, where the bridge, the gym, and I think just sort of that nice, lovely pine open deck is. You had the promenade deck, which is the first deck, deck A, and that had those two first class

staircases that you were talking about. Had a lounge, had a reading and writing room, had the all male first class smoking room. Yeah, a lot of all male places. Sure. They had the He-Man Woman Haters Club. There was the Veranda Cafe and Palm Court, which is really lovely if you go look at pictures of this as well. Yeah, that's, that's up my alley as well. Yeah, the Palm Court. It's nice, right? Yeah, I knew you'd love it because I was like, look at all that wicker furniture. Chuck's going to go crazy for this. They would never allow that in a mall. What's on deck B? Deck B, friend, I thought you'd never ask, included the first class cabins and suites, the restaurant, cafe Parisienne, which was this all male second class smoking room, third class poop deck,

which is where the third class people kind of stroll around like gerbils. And then they also kept some of the larger cargo equipment on the poop deck for the third class people that use as obstacles, maybe to climb over and stay fit. Yeah, they tried to hide most of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. Great care and making sure that it looked just like a luxury kind of hotel and not, you know, and that's one of the reasons why they didn't have as many lifeboats, but you know, we'll get to that. So yeah, that was something that I also didn't know about the Titanic is that the designers and builders really went to great lengths to make it as luxurious as possible for everybody, from first class to third class, which is also called steerage. You know, just over the years,

it's been made into such a class conflict social stratification fable. Well, it kind of was. It definitely was. But really, it just kind of followed the conventions of the day. But because of the conventions of the day, a lot of people died who otherwise might not have, which we'll talk about, believe me. It's just really people have kind of glomped onto that. And especially a hundred years later, it just seems so bizarre and awful to us. But at the time, I mean, this is just the way things were. But because of that, you know, that whole idea that was like, you know, there's third class and there's first class, that you just kind of missed the point that they were like, even in third class,

this was incredible luxury compared to what they were used to for passages like this. And it was because the designers purposefully made it that way. Yeah. I mean, they were mostly immigrants coming to America for the first time. And like you said, it was appropriate luxury for third class. Like it wasn't like the rooms weren't these big open rooms with like 30 bunk beds and no door. Right. They were private rooms. They had doors on the rooms. I think they were, were there six people per room down there? I saw four. I also saw six. Okay. Not too bad, though. They had little wash basins in each room, which was a really big deal and a big luxury. Although I do think they had only two bathtubs for third class to share

among the 700 plus people. One for men and one for women. And I saw that explained away as third class passengers probably thought that you could develop respiratory illness by bathing too much. So they probably wouldn't have had much of an issue with that. It doesn't seem as bad as it does to us in retrospect. Yeah. I don't think I would have taken a bath. I would have just been. It's like, I wouldn't take a poop on a bus trip. I'm with you, man. I hope I never, ever go to jail for any extended period of time because I would have a big problem with the pooping thing. You mean when it's just a little silver, silver thing in the corner with all the other people in there? Yes. I mean, yes. Yeah. I think that's a big problem. That would be a problem

for me. I think that would be a problem for anybody. I feel bad. I really feel that's a terrible aspect, I think, of jail life. But yes, that's exactly right. All right. So where were we? Well, ironically, we were on the poop deck. Deck C was the shelter deck. I don't think we said deck B was the bridge deck, but deck C is the shelter deck. Percer's office there, third class smoking room, second class librarian lounge. Everything is very divided by class. Everyone needs their smoking rooms because everybody smoked. Right? Yeah, for sure. Saloon deck, deck D. What do you get in there? First class reception room and the dining saloon. Sure.

Like they had, like when you showed up for dinner, you would probably sit in the reception room and maybe like have a drink while you're waiting to be seated. If you showed up a little early. That's the best. From what I saw, agreed. From what I saw, the dining saloon, the actual dining room, was large enough to seat all of the first class passengers at once. Oh, wow. And I think the second class one was just enormous. Second class is almost never talked about when you just generally talk about the Titanic. It's always first or third, but there's a huge second class, huge space for second class. I think it sat a couple thousand people at once. Third class, I think, was enough to serve the third class passengers over three settings, I believe,

maybe even more than that, maybe four. All right. That's still a lot. It is still a lot. But yeah, for first class, you probably had just one sitting. And I think when you mentioned deck B, that restaurant was an a la carte restaurant. So it's sort of like modern cruise ships. There's the big dining room. Right. But then there's also the pizza place and the this and the that. And I think the little a la carte restaurant was one of those. It's like the mall food court, except probably not as good. Deck E was the second and third class cabins. It's called the upper deck. And then the middle deck, deck F, this is a little confusing, was the third class saloon, the Turkish bath, which they not too long ago got some really good photos of lurking there

at the bottom of the Atlantic. It's amazing. But the Turkish bath was kind of like what you call the spa aboard a ship today. Yeah, maybe some of the, well, actually, I guess the Kellogg stuff was in the gym. Yeah, I believe it was all in the gym because it was like the shaky band. And oh, I can't remember what else the, I think the thing where they would loosen up the poop with the suntan bed. I can't remember exactly, but there were definitely multiple pieces of Kellogg equipment. And it was in the gym. Yeah. So then you've got the lower deck, the Orlop deck. That's where they could play squash if you wanted to. They had a post office. There was a lot of, you know, people love to send posts when they're on an ocean voyage. I know, but I was thinking

about that. You just show up at the post office and they're like, okay, thanks. We'll mail it when we get to the same place at the exact same time as you. Yeah, it seems so dumb. But I think it's being postmarked by the Titanic, which is, you know, what you want. Okay, gotcha. You're like, there's someone working in the post offices, literally turns everyone away. Why don't you just hang on to that and mail it when we get there? Yeah, you're probably better off just dropping it somewhere in New York. You're fine. There's the carpentry shop, the plumbing shop, electrical workshops. You got to have all that stuff. They had these enormous refrigerated rooms that were cooled by these copper pipes, just like miles and miles of copper pipes in each area.

Like you could, you could do a whole episode on just the refrigeration of the Titanic and the cheeses and the flowers and the wines and the foods that they had to keep chilled. And they have, they did it after the cutlery episode. Probably so. And so they, we talked about how luxurious it was. Like it was just as luxurious as anything was in the world at the time, the Titanic with all, but there was also kind of like a airy kind of vibe to the whole thing. Like the choices in colors and wallpapers and plants and all of that and the wicker furniture was all just kind of light and airy and cheery. So it had a really nice feel to it from first to third across the board. Yeah. Like, steerage wasn't just a rat infested

gross place to be. That's how it's always portrayed, you know, like basically a floating tenement is how I've always seen it portrayed. And I think that's kind of how James Cameron did portrayed it too, which is, I guess, where I got my impression like you. I mean, the only thing I remember, I think they maybe showed them in their Leo and his, in Fabrizio, in their little room, and then of course there was the Irish jig that they danced down there when she decided to slum it with steerage. And that did look a little like an old pub and it was a brand new boat. Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So I think I said earlier that the Titanic wasn't full when she set sail. Again, this is her maiden voyage, which accounts for why J. Bruce is made the

chairman of the White Star Line, whose father was the founder, I believe, and why Thomas Andrews, the designer of the Titanic and Olympic and Britannic, were both aboard. It was just custom for the, those people who were in those positions to be aboard a ship for its maiden voyage. But there wasn't, it wasn't sold out. There was room for something like 3,295 people. Total. Yeah. There was only 2,229 people. So there was like room for more than 1,000 passengers, basically, because the crew was virtually full, like the room for the crew was virtually full, but it was the passengers that hadn't booked as much as it was expected. Should we take another break? Oh boy, yeah. All right. Let's take another break and we'll talk about

a couple more things here to round out part one of the Titanic right after this. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was

born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So this thing, I guess we're where it sets sail. Right? Yeah, I believe so, basically. Yeah, at least from being launched in Belfast, right? Yeah. So it started out in Belfast, went to Southampton on April 3rd. And then on the 10th, it went and picked up a few people in Southampton and then went to France and then to Queenstown Ireland to get some more people. Like I said, I never knew like you that this is what it was doing, operating basically like an Uber share. Yeah, I guess so. You ever done that by accident?

No, I never have. I'm very, very careful. I did once and someone they stopped and I was like, what's going on? And someone got in, I was like, really, what's going on? Is this candy camera? I made a new friend. Oh, that's nice. I thought I was in the cash cab. I don't think he stops to pick up other people. He just asks a lot of questions. Yeah, that's true. All right. So it's picked up all the folks at this point in the end. And there's some discrepancy about the final numbers, because a lot of people sold their tickets, a lot of people switch tickets, a lot of people can't quite make it on time. In the case of Leonardo DiCaprio, he wins those tickets in a poker game right before it launches.

No way they could have accounted for him. No, and actually, I mean, that's not exactly that far off. And I suspect it's based loosely on the story of Thomas Hart, who was hired on as a fireman, but went off and got really, really drunk and lost his boarding papers while he was drunk. And they were stolen by somebody else because Thomas Hart showed up and worked as far as anybody's, anyone was concerned as far as the logs went. But it just clearly wasn't that Thomas Hart. He just missed it like that. There was one group of wealthy industrialists starting with Henry Clay Frick onto J.P. Morgan, and then J. Horace Harding, who transferred boarding papers for suites B-52, 54, and 56. Which ultimately were taken on by J. Bruce Ismay.

It just turns out all of them had a reason why they suddenly couldn't go toward the last minute. Yeah, I think the unsinkable Molly Brown's daughter, she was, you know, Molly Brown was portrayed by Kathy Bates. She was the hero of Lifeboat Six that really wanted to go and try and save people. I think her daughter was supposed to come, but she was studying at the Sorbonne, so she did not. So there's a big list of people, they call it the Just Mystic Club. And apparently in 1912, the Milwaukee Journal put that number as high as 6,000 people that were saved because they did not sail on the Titanic. Obviously couldn't have been that much. It's one of those things, I think, where like everyone was at, you know, the game where Michael Jordan

scored whatever points. And, you know, it's one of those sort of things where history fudges itself a little bit. But in the end, they put the number somewhere around 1,324 passengers and those 884 officers, which is a very high ratio of crew members to passengers. Yeah, it really is. And speaking of crew, in addition to Thomas Hart, there were the Slade Brothers who left Southampton after passing Muster and went and got drunk and then came back and they wouldn't lower the gang plank for them again, so they got left behind. Good for them. But most of all, there was a guy named Davy Blair, who was an up-and-coming officer for the

White Star Line, and he was initially assigned the second officer position, which is huge for an up-and-coming guy. He was at the last minute, I think he sailed from Southampton to Cherbourg. And then at Cherbourg, basically, somebody who was a more senior officer than him was given that position and he was moved off to the Olympic. And he was really disappointed about this. There's like a surviving postcard that expresses how upset he was and saddened that he kind of lost that big opportunity. But even more important than that is Davy Blair was on there long enough to be entrusted with the key to the crow's nest locker, which held the binoculars for the crow's nest. The binocular locker.

The binocular locker. It's great. Yeah, I mean, I think there's kind of long been a myth that there were not binoculars on board, but there were. But yeah, he walked with that key and that key and that postcard sold at auction for like 150 grand or something, didn't it? As far as I know, yeah. It's amazing. But that's a big deal because later on they would say that had they had binoculars in the crow's nest, they most definitely would have sited that icebergs in time to maneuver away from them. The lookout said that later on at an inquiry.

Yeah. And of course, people debated that as well. Hindsight is 2020, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt. Yeah. You know, no, definitely wouldn't have. So I mentioned some wealthy industrialists. That was mostly first class passengers were all extraordinarily well above average wealthy people like even for wealthy people, they were above average wealthy. And that was reflected in the ticket prices that some of them paid for passage on the Titanic, dude. Yeah. Big money in today dollars anywhere from 66 grand to 120 grand for passage. Yeah. I don't think that fully gets it across because you're like, okay, I can see a billionaire shelling something like that out. You know, it's gaudy and gross, but what really drove it home to

me was at the time, so they were paying up to $4,500 in their dollars. And at the time, the average American made $800 a year. Wow. And these guys shelled out $4,500 for a one-way ticket. This was not round trip. This was one way from the UK to America. That's crazy. $4,500 bucks. And that nuts. Third class steerage, I think even costs close to $1,000 in today dollars, which is a lot of money. I mean, 35 bucks back then, but that's not cheap. No, but it was definitely a lot more affordable than $119,000. That's right. So I guess we should talk a little bit before we wrap up about kind of the controversy over the size of the ship. As we said at the beginning,

they wanted it to be the biggest and the best, all three of those sister ships, just to be the biggest thing ever, to really rub it in the Cunard line's face. And that presented some problems though, one of which was the board of trade didn't know how many lifeboats or at least hadn't acted on it and said how many lifeboats you should have because in the 1894 Merchant Shipping Act, they topped out at 10,000 tons and said, you need 16 lifeboats if you're 10,000 tons. Titanic was 35,000 tons. And they had 16 lifeboats because that's just where the Merchant Shipping Act ended. And they didn't like the, you know, the unsightliness of them. So they weren't going to add any. It does not mean, because it was three

times the size, they needed 48 lifeboats. I think in retrospect, they said 26 would have done it. But as we'll get to, you know, the whole accident, the speed at which it sank, it may not have mattered anyway. But that was one of the big problems with its size. That was a very big problem. Yeah. Not adding enough lifeboats because they seemed to unsightly, it's not a good move. Another one is that the Titanic only had like six or seven hours of testing before it sailed. And that was mostly just to check its maneuverability. It was never sailed at full speed before it set sail for America. So the testing wasn't very good. And then even more important as far as lifeboats go, they never fully did like a full drill

to lower all the lifeboats aboard. And one of the reasons why people died was not just because there weren't that many lifeboats. That was a huge, huge issue. But also because there just wasn't a lot of needed protocol in launching the lifeboats as far as the crew was concerned. A lot of them had just had come aboard basically the day before they were taking on passengers. And it didn't even have a post or a position while they were passengers on that first day. Yeah. I mean, that's a, it was basically an HR nightmare with people showing up as the passengers are showing up going, where do I go? What do you want me to do? They're like, have you ever waited tables? Have you ever shoveled gold? And they were just kind of sticking people where they needed

them. And like you said, I think they only were able to lower two of those 16 lifeboats. And in the end, what that also means is you don't know how long it's going to take to lower them all. So it was just, they were kind of just flying or sailing blind. Right, exactly. So those were just really, really big problems that would turn out to be extremely important when the ship started going down. Because any one of those things being slightly different or improved or not being a problem means that people's lives definitely would have been saved. You can debate like how many people would have been saved, but there were definitely room for more people to have survived the Titanic than did. Yeah, there was also a weird incident that

happened on April 10th that possibly altered history. The Titanic was being pulled out by tug boats. And I think as the story goes, the captain kind of a little too early said, go ahead and release us and we'll just fire this baby up. He's really itching to get those propellers spinning. And he said, and give me a two while you're at it. And when he started turning those propellers, it was a big violent suction and it sucked this other steamer, the SS New York, into its wake. It was attached to the oceanic. And it started pulling this boat over to it. I think it snapped away from the oceanic. It kind of ripped off the moorings. And if it weren't for quick action by tug boats, reattaching, pulling the New York away, and then the captain realizing

what was going on and hitting the engine hard and turning out of the way, like it shows pictures that they missed hitting each other by just a few feet. That's crazy. And not only would that, if it had actually hit it, that would have caused a delay that could have altered history. But there was a slight delay anyway, just because of this incident. Oh, wow. That, you know, who knows if those, you know, events would have lined up with that iceberg in there at the exact moment it needed to be. Yeah, that's an amazing point, Chuck. I hadn't seen that one. So they, they leave Queenstown, Ireland on April 11th, 1912, I believe, right? Yes. And start heading out to see full speed ahead. And we will stop here. What do you think? Boy, what a cliffhanger. What's

going to happen? I don't know. We'll find out in the next episode of Stuff You Should Know. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody

about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatikler, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts.