All language subtitles for Titanic.in.Colour.S01E01.1080p.All4.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR

For over a century,

we've been gripped by
the story of the Titanic.

This drama, this soap opera,
played out as the ship sank.

We all see ourselves there

and we wonder what would
we have done?

In April 1912, the Titanic was
the most spectacular vessel afloat...

The ship must have been absolutely
dazzling

for some of
the third-class passengers.

..but it's a story often told in
black and white.

Now, we reveal the ship in
its true colours.

Anyone who'd spent money on
the first-class tickets

would have been very pleased coming
in here.

Photographs and film footage of
the Titanic

and her sister ships are colourised,

some for the very first time,

bringing to life the people who built

and sailed on the 20th century's
most famous ship.

Artefacts and clothing from
the Titanic

and her passengers give insights
into their lives...

The reason this has been saved
isn't a relic of tragedy,

it's a relic of pride.

..and relatives of those on board
tell their dramatic stories.

One of the men in the group

turned to my dad and he said,

"There's nothing for it now, lad.

"It's every man for himself.

"You'd better jump for it."

These accounts take us inside
the legend of

the world's most famous ship.

The Titanic is a never-ending
story.

It will continue to thrill us

and enthral us for years to come.

In the summer of 1910,
two giant vessels

dominated the skyline of
the city of Belfast.

Commissioned by
the prestigious White Star Line,

they were designed to be the largest

and most luxurious ships on
the planet.

They had to build special
construction sites for them

because nothing on that scale
had been built before.

The two ships were the Olympic

and her sister ship, the Titanic,

and were being built at

the world-leading
Harland & Wolff shipyard.

The vessels were
to be almost identical,

inside and out.

These are big,
they're 882-feet long,

and they're 92-foot wide,
so they're going to be

the largest
moving objects on the planet

and they're each going to be able
to carry about 2,500 passengers.

And so you have the public
and the press

watching their construction
with fascination

and also quite a lot of pride.

The ships were the product of
the Edwardian era,

symbolising modernity
and optimism for the new century.

The Edwardian period
really expresses

a time of calm between two storms.

We have the death of
Queen Victoria,

the end of the Victorian age,

and then we have, in 1914,

the outbreak of
the First World War,

which will change
the fabric of Britain irrevocably.

Everything is just bigger
and faster,

and so in 1909 you have

Winston Churchill declaring,
really quite prophetically,

"We have arrived at a new time.

"A Titanic world
has sprung around us."

In this brave new world,

international travel became
accessible to millions.

Shipping companies built
the largest vessels

the world had ever seen,

nicknamed "liners" as they sailed
on fixed routes or "lines".

The ocean liner began to emerge as

a status symbol between some of
the world's greatest nations,

as this symbol of national pride
that is

an advertising board for
the mother country

to show that, "No, we are the best.

"We are capable of achieving
great things."

The steamships are getting faster,

they can accommodate more people.

So what used to be a much lengthier

and trickier journey is now sort
of within

the reach of ordinary people.

In 1907,

the British company Cunard led
the field

with its superliners,
Lusitania and Mauretania.

Carrying over 2,000 passengers each,

these vast ships made
the crossing from Southampton

to New York in just under five days.

There's very few restrictions
on migration.

There's no real world of
passports as we understand it now.

That comes in after
the First World War.

So people are free to move,
they're free to travel.

People are attracted to America

because they've heard stories
of great wealth to be made.

There's the prospect of gold,
of land,

of bettering themselves.

Cunard's direct competitor
was the White Star Line.

They decided to retaliate

with three ships that were
50% larger,

but their size would make them,
by default, slower.

White Star Line hits on
an ingenious strategy,

which is to turn this potential
weakness into a selling point.

They start to advertise ships that
are larger than

the Mauritania and the Lusitania
and a day slower.

And how they present this to
the travelling public is,

we will get you there in one
extra night,

but you won't be shaken across
the Atlantic like a cocktail.

You'll arrive more comfortably than
you would on

the Lusitania and Mauritania.

The genius behind the design of
the Olympic

and the Titanic was Belfast man
Thomas Andrews.

Thomas starts his apprenticeship in

the shipyard when he's just 16

and he works with the painters
and the fitters

and his rise is pretty swift

and he ends up becoming manager
of construction

at the pretty young age of 28.

He's really well-loved by all
his workers

and he's really well-respected.
Why?

Because he's not afraid
to take on bullies

and he's also very willing
to break up sectarian fights.

The Titanic was built against
the backdrop of political unrest

in the province of Ulster.

Most of Belfast's protestant
population were opposing calls for

a degree of independence
for Ireland, known as Home Rule.

This was a ship that was proof of

the Ulster that they believed in,

that they identified with.

So the Titanic takes on
a political significance

to these people,

but it also takes on
an emotional significance.

As a shipyard worker,

you're usually assigned
to one ship,

so you will be working on this
leviathan for three years,

day in, day out.

You will become attached
to it emotionally

and there's a huge, huge sense
of pride in this ship as well.

And when you were creating
something

that was being called one of
the wonders of the world,

that pride was particularly
understandable.

PR was a vital part of
the White Star Line's strategy.

Even before their launch,

their new ships needed
to be seen as exceptional.

So, in October 1910,

the Olympic was painted light grey.

It was actually an early
ship-building photographer's trick.

At the time, it was very difficult

to get these ships
to appear impressive

and stand out in that early kind
of grey,

black and white photography,

and to get them to stand out
against

the industrial backgrounds that
were behind them.

So painting them light grey or

a white colour would make them
appear large

and impressive against
the background.

The only photographs we have
of these giant vessels

are in black and white.

Colour film would not be readily
available until the 1930s...

..but modern technology can transform
these images.

With her hull complete,
the Titanic was launched

eight months after the Olympic,

on the 31st May, 1911.

Many employees from
Harland & Wolff were there.

Many onlookers, bystanders,

children, all the way to old men

who probably never imagined

they would
see such a sight in their city.

There are no champagnes cracking on
the bow.

Instead, just after midday,

a single firework is released up
into a perfect turquoise sky.

FIREWORK EXPLODES

There is this moment where this
behemoth they've been working on is

slipped into the River Lagan
with all of the grease

and soap so that it would
slide easily.

Titanic was nicknamed
"the Olympic - perfected."

Now, you've got various
modifications

that make her 2% heavier

and that gives her the title of
the largest ship in the world.

The Olympic was the first of
the three superliners

and was feted by the press.

The Titanic was in her shadow,

meaning there is only one piece
of film footage

of the legendary ship.

It was taken nine months after
her launch,

on the morning of
Saturday 3rd February, 1912.

The footage reveals
a ship unfinished,

dirty and not yet fully painted.

It does have the feel
of something very unofficial,

very behind the scenes,
very sort of "making of",

for lack of a better term

and the White Star Line was
completely about appearances.

And so it does have that gritty
sort of feel

of something maybe we weren't quite
supposed to see.

After more than a century in
the archives,

the minute-long film is damaged
and grainy.

But after expert restoration,
removing scratches,

sharpening the images,
repairing broken frames,

and then adding colour,
the Titanic comes to life.

FOGHORN HONKS

I think you only really get
a sense of scale with that footage

when you look at the men on the bow
of the Titanic

and you just see various indistinct
blobs of black moving around

and that's the men in
their overcoats.

The colour footage reveals that one
vital part of

the ship has already been painted.

Towards the top of the ship at
the front end,

there's the wheelhouse.

This is where the vessel would be
steered from,

where a lot of the navigational
equipment

was installed for the bridge,
but that part is painted white,

as it would've been when she was
finished.

The things around it are
unpainted steel.

The reason for this is that
the wheelhouse was different

to the rest of the ship.
It was made out of timber

so that it wouldn't interfere with

the ship's magnetic compasses used
for navigation.

So when it was installed,
it was painted up

and we can see that the rest of
the ship remains

to be unpainted around
the wheelhouse.

Inside, the interior of
the Titanic was being transformed.

The largest ship in
the world was becoming a colourful,

high-tech superliner.

On 2nd April,

the Titanic passed her sea trials
in Belfast Lough.

She was ready to sail for Southampton

and pick up passengers.

Jean Legg's father, Sidney Daniels,

was a steward with
the White Star Line.

My dad had a bit of shore leave

and he was expecting he would be
assigned to the Olympic

for the next trip.

But then he was told
he had been selected

to go on Titanic.
He couldn't believe it.

To be selected he thought was quite
an honour.

He'd been on the Olympic,

the first of the trio
of Olympic liners.

Now he's going to go on
the Titanic.

Also, he had promotion.

No longer would he be
a plate washer,

he now had what they called
"people in his care".

So he was assigned
to third-class cabins.

Before the liner came
to Southampton,

he went to Belfast
with other crew members to pick up

the liner to make her ready for
the maiden voyage.

He was on board,
thrilled to bits. He got promotion,

extra money,

and on a second liner's
maiden voyage.

The White Star Line advertised
their new vessel with

a promotional booklet,

but nothing compared to
the real thing.

There was plenty for the new crew

to discover on its ten massive decks,

including four large dining rooms

and over 800 cabins.

You have the ship's second officer
saying that it takes him two weeks

from when he joins the Titanic

to find his way around the ship.

What's left of Titanic's lavish
interiors

now lie rotting at the bottom of
the North Atlantic...

..but in a hotel in
the small town of Alnwick

in the North of England,

it's possible to see and feel

what it must have been
like to be on board.

This incredible space is
the first-class lounge

from the ship Olympic,

the sister ship of Titanic.

It was brought here by
Algernon Smart,

who was the hotelier in
the 1930s.

When Olympic
was decommissioned,

she was taken out of service
and stripped of her parts

and those parts were auctioned.

Smart managed to purchase several
of them,

and also this entire room.

I think it gives you a real sense

of what it would've felt like to be

a first-class passenger aboard both
the Olympic

and the Titanic.

Anyone who'd spent money on
the first-class tickets

would have been very pleased
coming in here.

The lounge was a place where
passengers could relax

and socialise during the voyage.

They could have conversation,
they could play cards,

they could write
to their loved ones.

There were writing desks in
the bay window here.

You could also have afternoon tea.

There were bells around
the room that you could ring

to order from one of the stewards.

It was a space in which you could
spot celebrities,

you could see and be seen here,

it was a performative space.

Everything is a feast for
the senses.

The Titanic was not only sumptuous,

it was technologically advanced.

In an era when most streets
and homes were lit by gas,

the vast number
of electric lights installed across

the Titanic would have been a marvel.

There were generators aboard
the ship that powered everything

from the deck cranes to
the potato peelers in the kitchen,

and there was actually 200 miles

of cabling that was cleverly hidden
in the design.

Despite being state of the art,

the ship looked reassuringly
old-fashioned.

The first-class lounge copied
interiors from

the Palace of Versailles,
but carved in English oak.

For the Edwardians,
it was very trendy

to have rooms that were decorated
in different styles -

from as far afield as the Tudor age,

and other parts of the ship were
in the Louis XVI style,

and other parts were Georgian,

and so they were borrowing from all
these different time periods

because passengers of the Titanic in
the first class

would be familiar with those spaces.

They had inhabited them before.

But it was also a bit of fun

to be staying in these themed rooms
that were all each different

and almost no two of them were
the same.

Harland & Wolff were proud of

the craftsmanship employed on
their ships,

as this publicity photograph reveals.

We see a sculptor who is finishing

a plaster-sculpted head
of Neptune, God of the Ocean.

These notes, there are numbers,

there are serial numbers
all intended

to really make sense of the puzzle

that was this complex, huge ship.

Because it's a staged image,
I think what it's doing here,

it's promoting not only
the finished product

that passengers
can buy into by buying a ticket

to come aboard the Olympic,

but it also says something about
the value that

the White Star Line places in
artisanal craftsmanship

and the quality
and making process itself.

Like the first-class lounge,

something else from
the ship survives.

At the Maritime Museum in
Greenwich, London,

is a genuine piece
of undamaged Titanic carpet,

taken by a Harland & Wolff employee

as a treasured souvenir before
the ship sailed.

It gives us a glimpse into
the colourful experience

of life aboard the ship.

This square of carpet might
seem small,

but the story it tells is mighty.

It tells us so much about what

the Titanic would've looked
and felt,

and even smelt like on board.

We can only see

such a small part of what we imagine
to be

a much bigger pattern.

There's nothing necessarily
decadent about this carpet.

What we do see is
something well-made,

well-constructed
and probably built to last as well.

The objects and the images

that tell the story of the Titanic

so often might feel far away from
us in that they are now part of

the wreck or that they were
brought onto

the ship by passengers.

They were never native to the ship.

This carpet is different.

This was part of the fixtures
and the fittings.

This carpet draws us back to
the roots of the Titanic,

to everything that went into them,

thousands of people
who would've worked

to make this liner

one of the most fabulous
constructions in the world.

And it's remarkable, really,

that a worker decided to save
a piece of that,

to have a souvenir without

the foresight that it would become

the most famous ship that
ever sailed.

So, the reason this has been
saved isn't

a relic of tragedy,
it's a relic of pride.

The Titanic cost £1.5 million
to build,

about £170 million today.

White Star Line were so confident
in their new ship's construction,

they could devote more
time to its luxury than its safety.

We know from the managing director
of Harland & Wolff,

Alexander Carlisle,

that in the early conversations
with

the White Star Line about what
the ships would look like,

they actually spent two hours,
he says,

on the carpets for
the first-class cabins

and only 15 minutes on
the lifeboats.

On the morning of Tuesday
the 2nd April, 1912,

the Titanic left Belfast
for Southampton.

The massive liner dwarfed
her escort tugs.

She was newly painted,

ready to impress her
first passengers.

There's almost like a formula

for painting ocean liners
at the time.

These are all coal-fired ships.

They use tonnes and tonnes of coal.

The issue with this is that coal is
extremely dirty.

So the sides of
the hull were painted mostly black.

This was the area that
the ship would be

receiving coal through the chutes

that she would be refuelled with

and so it hid the dust.

The red underside got the colour
actually from Venetian red.

It's a pigment that was used in
the...what is called anti-foul.

It's the coating that would be
applied on

the underside of the ship to
prevent

the build-up of things like
molluscs

and marine growth that would
actually slow the ship down.

But it was also mixed in with things
like arsenic

to prevent this kind
of growth from building up.

There was a tradition by that point
to paint

the superstructure of ocean liners
white,

but it also provided reflection
from the sun

and would keep some
of these upper passenger spaces

a little bit more cool.

On the evening of the 2nd April,

the Titanic began its 570-mile
journey to Southampton,

where it would pick up its precious
cargo of passengers,

and her maiden voyage could begin.

On the 4th April,

the Titanic sailed into
Southampton docks.

The port was intended to be
the starting-off point

for her transatlantic voyages
for many years to come.

In six days' time, Titanic would
start taking on passengers,

but first, supplies
and coal had to be loaded,

and the rest of the crew signed on.

Titanic, like all White Star ships,
didn't have a dedicated crew.

Instead, men were recruited voyage
by voyage.

For her maiden trip,

more than three quarters of
the crew came from Southampton.

Henry Pugh's grandfather, Samuel,

was one of over 700 local seamen
taken on.

He went on board

and saw the youngest brother,
Alfred, up on deck.

And he was a bit nonplussed at this,

because two brothers on
a ship is unlucky

and Alfred told him that
the middle brother, Percy,

was down below as
a leading fireman.

My grandfather didn't think too
much of that.

Two brothers on a ship was unlucky,

three is really tempting fate.

I think he might've been
right there.

So put his kit bag on his shoulder
and walked off.

Samuel remained in Southampton,

while his brothers stayed onboard.

It would be almost two weeks before
he would discover

what happened to them.

The Titanic's designer,
Thomas Andrews,

sailed with the ship from Belfast.

What he's doing is supervising all
those last-minute preparations,

you know, even flowers,

really fresh flowers to cover up
the smell of new paint

and even organising the furniture
for the Parisian cafe.

And Andrews is pretty confident

because he writes to his wife that
the Titanic is complete

and we'll do Harland & Wolff credit
tomorrow when we sail.

The first of Titanic's 2,240
passengers started

to arrive on the morning
of the 10th April.

Over 900 would come on board
at Southampton,

some more at Cherbourg in France,

and the final few at Queenstown
in Ireland.

Often the glamorous
and glitzy side

of the Titanic has taken precedence

and we've forgotten that it had
this other purpose,

which was really just to move people
across the Atlantic

who weren't planning on
coming back,

who were seeing it as
a one-way journey.

Coming on board the ship,

there must have been so many
people.

We know there were
Scandinavians, Irish,

Italians,
Eastern Europeans, Lebanese,

Chinese.

People coming from all around
the world

who wouldn't have otherwise
ever met each other.

Among the first to arrive at
the second-class gangway

were Dorothy Kendle's mother Edith,
then 15,

and Edith's parents,
Thomas and Elizabeth Brown,

who had travelled from
South Africa.

They were going to go
and emigrate to America,

to Seattle.

My grandfather was going to open
a hotel there.

My grandmother had
a sister there

and she wrote to them
and she said,

"Why don't you come over to America?

"It's booming here."

So that's what he did.

He sold everything
and he took all his money with him.

When they saw the size of
the Titanic,

it was so long,

my mother said you couldn't see
the end of it.

And she said all
the lettering was all in gold.

And as they went up the gangway,
his face went white

and my grandmother turned around
and said, "Are you ill?"

He said, "No, but something's
going to happen."

Before the Titanic sailed,

second-class passengers were
allowed to get

a taste of first-class life.

As they walked along,
my mother said

they came across
the grand staircase.

She said that was magnificent.
It was so beautiful.

The dining area of
the first class,

that was already laid

with Irish tablecloths,

real silver cutlery.

Very much at home in first class
was

a highly successful American
fashion journalist named

Edith Rosenbaum.

Returning to the United States

after an assignment in Paris,

she lived and breathed fashion.

Edith took her clothes
so seriously

that she booked two
cabins on the Titanic,

one for her to sleep in,

and a completely separate one in
which she would store that season's

pieces that she had picked up
in Paris.

Some of Edith's collection
still survives

and are held in
the Maritime Museum in Greenwich,

including the shoes she wore as she
escaped the Titanic in a lifeboat.

It is really remarkable
to see these shoes,

not just because of the vibrancy
and the beauty of the design

and the pattern and the colour,
they're so opulent.

Who wouldn't want to wear

a pair of shoes like this today?

The fact that we can still see
these shoes

over a hundred years on,

this is really special.

The colours have been preserved
so beautifully,

and it gives us a sense

of just how colourful
the Edwardian world was.

Quite often we look at history in
black and white,

and these slippers show us that
it was far from that.

The slippers really represent
everything about upper class,

aristocratic life at the time,

particularly upper-class life
on board the Titanic.

These slippers would've been worn
by Edith

to the evening meal, the dinner,

the last dinner aboard the Titanic.

We know from the label,

the very faded label
that we can see inside the shoes,

these would've been made in
Paris.

They would've been made in

the most fashionable quarters
of Paris,

probably made and designed
for Edith herself,

probably one of a kind.

I can't see Edith sharing her
designs with anybody else.

They're silk, and you can see
the gentle sort of ruffle

around the rim here.

They've got these beautiful
rosettes.

These are not hardworking shoes.

Edith didn't only pack clothes
for the voyage,

the museum has something else
she took in the lifeboat.

In 1911,
a year before her Titanic voyage,

Edith had been involved in
a fatal car accident.

This toy pig was
to protect Edith from further harm.

Her mother, Sophia,
had sent over a pig in

the aftermath of the car crash,

hearing that it was a traditional
good luck symbol in France.

Edith had promised her mother,
Sophia, that she would keep it

with her no matter what.

Few passengers on the Titanic

took as many possessions
as Edith.

Second-class traveller
Elizabeth Mellenger,

photographed here in the 1930s,

packed only essentials for
a new life in America,

fleeing an unhappy marriage.

She wore this cape in
a lifeboat as protection against

the cold of the North Atlantic.

She lived a fairly well-off,
quite comfortable life.

That all changed when she had
to leave her husband.

So now as a single woman with
a family,

she was travelling over
to Vermont to take up

the position of a housekeeper.

She would've had
to be quite pragmatic

about what she brought with her.

Because she was entering into
domestic work,

there was a certain level
of morality

and uniformity and standards that
you had to upheld.

And this coat, to me,
really speaks to

the sort of role that she was going
over to America to take up.

She clearly wore this coat
quite a lot.

We can tell that from
the replacement buttons

and the missing button here.

It has those little features that
we ourselves have

of our own clothes when
they're well-worn and well-loved.

And if you were to give this
a first glance,

you'd probably think,
"That's what you'd

"want to be wearing in that cold
night air."

The majority of the passengers on
the Titanic

were American or European
like Elizabeth and Edith,

from countries like Britain,
Ireland and Sweden,

but others came from China,
the Middle East and the Caribbean.

On board in second class was
a 25-year-old engineer from Haiti

named Joseph Laroche,

travelling with his pregnant
French wife, Juliette,

and their two young girls.

Joseph was part of a growing trend.

Colonial elites,
Indian independence leaders,

leaders in Algeria
and Southeast Asia and Haiti,

they are converging on Paris
and London.

They are often joined together in
anti-colonial movements

in the European cities
and meeting each other there

and discussing politics.

So I think it wouldn't be at
all surprising to me

if Joseph Laroche belonged
to those circles.

Often it's by coming to Europe
and to places like the Titanic

that people who are black and Asian

at this time become really
aware of race and racism.

Joseph had had enough of
the discrimination he faced in Paris

and his uncle,
the president of Haiti,

had made an attractive proposition.

He took his uncle's offer up
to actually go

to Haiti and work as
a mathematician.

He'd be well-paid there

and he'd probably have a home
at the presidential palace.

So this was a good deal for him
and his family.

For Joseph and Juliette,

their daughters,
Louise and Simone, were a priority.

They opted for the Titanic

because of the White Star's
child-friendly policy.

Joseph's mother sent
them first-class tickets.

The actual line that they were
booked on

did not permit children
to dine with their parents.

So, the type of family they are,
they wanted to be together

and also Louise was quite sickly,

so they didn't
want to leave her in a nursery.

So that prompted them
to switch tickets

to the RMS Titanic.

Just after midday on
the 10th April,

the Titanic pulled away from her
berth in Southampton.

Dad said there were people at
the quayside.

There were photographers,
there were reporters,

crowds of people.
So she had a good send-off.

Amongst those watching was one

of White Star Line's bosses,
Benjamin Steele.

He looks confident at her going out
into the world.

And, of course, he's seen this scene
a thousand times.

This is nothing new for him

and there's absolute confidence
that Titanic will do well.

She's described as
practically unsinkable.

There is,
from Steele's point of view,

nothing to worry about.

Then things start to go wrong.

As the Titanic rounded
the end of the jetty,

she passed a smaller liner,
the New York.

Titanic's sheer size sucked in
the smaller ship,

and the New York actually
breaks free,

and they were
so close that one newspaper said,

"You could have thrown
a hat from one ship to another."

Now, disaster is only averted by

the really swift intervention
of two tugs.

To be frank,

it's not a great start
to her maiden voyage.

The close shave with
the New York

put the Titanic almost
an hour behind schedule.

Some of those on board

believed the incident was
an ill omen.

Having called at Cherbourg,

by mid-morning on the 11th April,

the Titanic was well on her way
to Queenstown

to pick up the remaining passengers.

There is no footage of
the Titanic out at sea,

but in 1921,

you have the White Star Line making
a promotional film

to encourage first-class passengers
to sail on the Olympic.

There are only very few differences
between the two ships,

so this footage allows us
to see what

the Titanic would've looked like
as she sailed.

Below deck, the 280 men of
the ship's engine department

toiled to keep the Titanic sailing.

The toughest men were the stokers,
tasked with getting

850 tonnes of coal
a day into the 29 boilers.

Julie Cook's great-grandfather,

William Bessant,
was a Titanic stoker.

He lived in a house
with his wife, Emily,

and five children.
They weren't well-off.

She wouldn't have worked in 1912.

Many women obviously didn't.

So she would've been preoccupied
with caring for the children.

They had to survive
with just William's earnings.

And, of course, if ships weren't
sailing, they had none.

So when an opportunity like
the Titanic came along,

he would've taken it
with both hands.

The 160 stokers worked in
gruelling conditions.

You would've been able to spot
the stokers a mile away.

They were often described as
walking skeletons

by the time they walked off
the ship.

They were bedraggled.
They'd lost weight.

They would be literally staggering
along the street.

And they were known
as the "Black Gang",

because they were covered in soot
and coal.

As the stokers fed the furnaces,

above them, second-class
passengers Thomas

and Elizabeth Brown

and their 15-year-old daughter,
Edith, were up early and on deck.

They always took
a swift walk before breakfast

and Captain Smith stopped
and talked to them.

He was telling them about
the weather

and everything that was going on.

Then he turned around
to my mother and he said,

"How do you like my ship,
young lady?"

And my mother said,
"It's very nice, sir."

Also travelling in second-class
were the Laroche family,

25-year-old Joseph,

his French wife, Juliette,
and their two young daughters.

I think a mixed-race family
would've been treated

with some form of curiosity...

..because it wasn't the norm
to see a black man

and a white lady together in
open society.

They found another couple who
spoke French,

and I think they had children
as well.

So they were able to
kind of take advantage of that.

I think any parent who has two
children under the age of five

is quite grateful that they have
other children

to play with on the ship.

So that would've been quite nice.

Juliette Laroche wrote a letter
to her father,

to be posted at Queenstown.

"I'm writing to you from
the reading room

"and an orchestra is playing next
to me.

"One violin,
two cellos and one piano.

"If only you could see how big
the ship is.

"One can hardly find his
or her cabin

"in the succession of hallways.

"People are very nice on board.

"Yesterday, the girls were both
running after

"a gentleman who had given
them chocolates."

During their first full day at sea,

passengers explored the vast ship.

One first-class traveller came
armed with a camera...

..Jesuit theological student
Frank Browne,

photographed here in the 1940s.

In 1897,

Frank has been given
a camera by his Uncle Robert,

and Frank takes it everywhere
he goes.

And then, in 1912,

he gets another gift from dear old
Uncle Robert,

and that is a first-class ticket for
a two-day voyage

between Southampton
and Queenstown

on the brand-new Titanic.

Now, Frank's photographs are
going to become

the best record we've got
of life on board.

He visited the gym

and took pictures of
the state-of-the-art equipment

and the so-called Physical Educator,
Thomas McCawley.

The Edwardians that we see on
the Titanic

are a different generation from
the Victorians

that we'd seen barely
two decades before.

They are modern,

they are a bit more
forward-thinking.

They have more of an outlook
on life

to be lived leisurely

and that is something about
moving away

from something slightly austere

into something modern
and I don't want to say frivolous,

but I think it's that thing
of just wanting to enjoy life.

Between one and three
in the afternoon,

children had the run of
the equipment.

The film footage from 1921 shows

the very child-friendly policy of
the White Star Line,

which so appealed to Joseph
and Juliette Laroche.

For the rest of the day,

children played where they could.

Frank Browne captured one
of those moments.

Six-year-old New Yorker Douglas
Spedden, playing in first class.

In the photo, Douglas is spinning
a top on the deck.

His father is in the scene

and it is just this lovely moment

of a first-class family
settling in to life on board.

It's just a slice of life.

In the background is
a steamer chair,

and, contrary to the popular saying,

the Titanic did not have deck
chairs to rearrange,

it had these wooden steamer chairs
that you could hire

for the whole voyage
for four shillings.

Frank Browne's brief time on
the Titanic gives us

a valuable insight into
life onboard.

He even took photos of his
first-class cabin or stateroom.

He thought it "large
and prettily furnished."

What this film from 1921 shows is

a typical first-class stateroom on
the Olympic,

which looked just like
the ones that are on the Titanic.

Now, they were designed to be
a home-from-home.

They're really big. I mean,

you can entertain all your friends
in them

and they're also equipped even
with telephones,

which you could use to book
a shave or a Turkish bath,

you name it.

First-class accommodation was
magnificent on the Titanic,

but second and third-class cabins

were also much better than on other
shipping lines.

For decades,
really, the steerage class,

the immigrants in third class
had been expected

to essentially be crammed in
wherever they could

in horrendous conditions,

typically down towards where
the ship was steered from,

right down the very back,

which is ostensibly where they got
the name steerage.

By the time of Titanic's day,
though,

standards had increased immensely.

Companies began to realise
that these people too

deserve their own bumps in
standards of quality and comfort.

The ship must've been absolutely
dazzling for some of

the third-class passengers.

You've got flushing toilets,
food.

The whole environment must
have been

absolutely overwhelming,
I think,

for people who'd come from
some of the rural

and poorer backgrounds.

At 11.30 in the morning,

the Titanic dropped anchor
off Queenstown.

High up on the bridge,

Captain Smith watched
the boat carrying

the passengers come alongside.

Seven passengers disembarked,

including photographer
Frank Browne...

..albeit reluctantly.

Frank apparently befriended

an American couple who offered
to pay his fare to New York.

He's really tempted.

And so he sent a wireless message

to his Jesuit boss asking
permission,

but, thankfully for Frank,

the reply he gets back ordered him
right off the ship.

At the quayside,

a doctor examined
third-class passengers

for signs of disease or disability.

The ship could be right there in
the bay.

They might have saved up

or borrowed money at high interest
rates.

They finally got this ticket,

but there's still the very serious
risk

that they'll be turned away.

One of the last photographs of
the Titanic

shows third-class
passengers at the stern

looking back towards Ireland.

The ship was full

of people who needed to make
a change,

wanted to make a change,

were at these precipice moments in
their life.

For first-class passengers,
not really the case,

but for third class,
that's the story.

So, there will have been all of
the emotions

that we associate with
the emigration experience

in the Edwardian period.

There is hopefulness.

There is, I assume, excitement for
the life ahead of them,

but there also was
a great deal of sadness.

PIPE MUSIC PLAYS

One of those third-class passengers
went back up on deck

and played on his pipes
a song called Erin's Lament,

a farewell to Ireland
as Ireland faded into

the horizon in front of him

and the Titanic started

the 3,000-mile journey towards
New York.

Below deck, the chefs prepared
a meal of oysters, duck,

and French ice cream for
the first-class passengers.

The weather forecast for
the next few days was excellent...

..but it was a geological event years
earlier that would change the lives

of Titanic's passengers
and crew forever.

In about 1909, a massive iceberg,

probably two miles across,

broke off a glacier in Greenland

and started to drift slowly south.

By April of 1912,

although it would've been
a fraction of its original size,

it was still about 400-feet across
and 100-feet high

and in the path of Titanic.

The largest, most luxurious
and colourful ship in the world

would prove to be no match for
this vast ice monster.

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