Episode 1 Titanic with Len Goodman

A century after it sank, it still fascinates us.

HORN BLARES

Titanic.

Gigantic, extravagant, doomed,

and 100 years later,

the ship that has become a legend.

As she headed out to sea,

she carried over 2,200 passengers and crew.

The rich, the poor and everything in between.

And it's their stories I want to discover.

When Titanic hit an iceberg 1,500 men, women and children died.

But the human cost was counted not just at sea

but on land, where the impact of the tragedy lasted for generations.

That is why, to this day, Titanic touches us all.

My Titanic story began when I was just 16, back in 1959.

Now, you might think of me as the dance judge off Strictly.

The spins were fantastic.

But before all that,

I was a welder for Harland & Wolff down at the docks.

They were the company that built Titanic, here in Belfast.

I worked for them 50 years later in London.

I used to weld all day, get home, scrub myself up

and dance all night.

Great times.

But now, I want to meet others with a connection,

to discover how Titanic affected some people's lives forever.

He would wake up screaming in the middle of the night saying

that all he could hear were the screams in the water.

As the ship went down, they sacked the lot of them.

He just couldn't bear the thought of Mary and her unborn child

and he slammed the door in her face.

I want find out why, in the 21st century, this 100-year-old story

still means so much to us.

In this programme,

I'm going to visit the places left scarred by the mighty ship and the story begins in Belfast.

This was the city that built her and it's the place where,

before she even hit the water,

Titanic claimed the lives of her very first victims.

Belfast is steeped in the history of shipbuilding.

Even today, you can't escape the presence of the mighty Titanic.

I hope you like the murals.

I was part and parcel of designing them and getting them put up there.

I've just been looking at it and admiring it.

You may think the Titanic isn't positive, but it is from our perspective and community.

-It is.

-That's the most famous ship in the world and it was built here.

And it was sunk by an Englishman.

-Built by the Irish and sunk by the English.

-That's what we always say.

-Bye.

-Cheerio.

-All the best.

What a bit of luck.

Now, there you go.

There I am looking at it, up comes a guy in a car,

right out of the blue, and he built this.

Titanic's legacy is all over the city.

She was built by Harland & Wolff.

Today, their cranes still dominate the Belfast skyline.

In the 1900s, it was the largest shipyard in the world,

sending ships across the globe.

Then in 1909, the world's biggest shipbuilder began to build

the world's biggest ship.

On this very slipway, 15,000 men took three years to build her

and Titanic's keel stretched from here all the way to the water.

At 880 feet she would be the longest ship the world had ever seen.

And at 46,000 tons, the heaviest.

When they decided to build Titanic, Harland & Wolff realised

there wasn't a dry dock in the world big enough to accommodate her

so they built one and this is it.

Once Titanic's vast hull was afloat, it was towed into this giant dry dock

where she fitted with only feet to spare.

If you want to get an idea of just how giant she was

this is the place to come.

Slowly her hull rose over the rooftops of East Belfast

and the noise of her construction could be heard right across the city.

When I worked in the London yard in the '60s,

I was a welder, but that was all a long time ago now.

Now, look at that.

That's why I gave up welding.

Ships have been welded for around 80 years,

but when they built Titanic they used rivets

and riveting makes welding look like a bit of light handicraft.

It took five men to hammer home just one rivet.

It was a hell of a job.

One lad, usually only a child, would heat the rivet

in a portable furnace until it was white hot.

Then the white hot rivet was pushed through the hole.

Two men braced themselves against the rivet,

while on the other side two more started to hammer with a heavy sledge.

The hammering made the rivet expand and hold the sheets in place.

I'll tell you what, that is hard work.

It took us about four minutes to do just one successful rivet

but in 1912, a riveting team could take just 20 seconds

and there were three million rivets on Titanic.

If I'd been welding on the Titanic, she wouldn't have sailed until 1950.

With red hot metal, ladders and scaffolds to deal with,

the shipyard could be a fatal place to work.

Before Titanic even touched the water

she claimed the lives of eight men.

There are no photographs of these workers,

just their names recorded on death certificates.

"Robert James Murphy, married, 49, a rivet counter.

"Shock following compound fracture of skull

"resulting from an accidental fall."

This is John Kelly, 19 years old.

"Accidentally fell off the ship."

Samuel Joseph Scott, he's 15 years old.

"Accidentally fell 23 feet from a ladder, died instantly."

It really does pull at your heartstrings.

They were just working guys who died doing their job.

It's just tragic and it's sad.

A century ago, deaths like these were a fact of shipbuilding

and Harland & Wolff was no exception.

They worked out there was one death for every 10,000 tons of ship.

Una Reilly, from the Belfast Titanic Society,

has found the cost of each death recorded carefully

in the directors' records.

You can see here they have recorded how much the compensation was.

£795. So we're not talking megabucks here?

No. We're not, indeed. It seemed to be a standard £100 a life.

Here they were building the then biggest ship in the world

and eight deaths was perhaps thought to be not too bad.

Finally, on May 31st 1911, five giant hydraulic rams

sent Titanic sliding down the slipway and towards the water.

She was now the largest moving structure on Earth.

A crowd of workers and dignitaries cheered her on.

The launch took just 62 seconds

but that was long enough for Titanic to claim the life of a final shipbuilder.

"James Dobbin, married, 43 years old, shipwright."

He was responsible for the giant chains and wooden props

that held Titanic secure on the slipway.

"Accidentally crushed under a piece of timber.

"Shock and haemorrhaging followed the fracture of his pelvis."

He was killed as Titanic made her way to the sea.

Like the seven other dead shipbuilders,

James gave his life to Titanic,

but as she left Belfast lock

they were only the first of the victims she would leave in her wake.

As Titanic made her way to Southampton,

her passengers made their way from all over Britain and Europe,

excited emigrants travelling to their new lives,

the rich and famous, who had paid fortunes

to be the first to enjoy Titanic's luxury.

All headed here to Southampton, where hundreds of crew were signing up to work

on the biggest ship in the world.

This is the dock where Titanic took on her first paying passengers.

She filled up with coal, water and food and the crew came on board

and about 700 of them came from right here in Southampton.

So when news of the sinking reached the city,

the streets were filled with dread.

By midnight, Titanic was sinking

but many of her crew stuck to their posts and helped passengers to safety,

until around 2:15am, when the ship disappeared beneath the waves.

Survival time in the freezing water was just minutes.

Soon, three-quarters of Titanic's crew were dead.

Anxious families gathered outside the offices of the White Star Line in Southampton

desperate for news.

More often than not, when the news did arrive it was bad.

Children lost their fathers, women lost their husbands, brothers and sons.

The whole town was in mourning.

The community around the dock wasn't just devastated with grief,

it also faced poverty.

There were 880-odd crew.

Of those, more than 600-odd were living in Southampton.

549 of them didn't survive

and these are the dock communities. This is the old town.

Each of those red dots

is a crew member who was lost.

If you weren't directly affected

-then you knew somebody who was.

-Yeah.

You were related to somebody who was,

your child went to school with somebody who was.

-Yeah.

-It was something that affected every member of the community.

The city archives hold recordings of men and women remembering the aftermath of Titanic.

'A great hush descended on the town

'because I don't think there was hardly a single street in Southampton

'who hadn't lost somebody on that ship.'

'Yeah, I remember ever so plain. This girl at school

'used to come and say, "Are you coming down the dock gate?"

'Me and my sister used to go down the dock gate to see if her father's name was up there.

'Several girls at school had fathers on there, or brothers, or some relation.'

When you listen to these people reminiscing about their childhood,

it's very, very poignant,

and it just takes you back, somehow, 100 years.

Nowhere was Titanic's death toll felt more sharply

than on the streets of Southampton.

More victims came from here than anywhere else in the world.

A charity was set up for victims' families

and donations flooded in from across Southampton.

There were enormous efforts made.

Practically every theatre had a concert or a benefit.

Practically any event that was planned to be happening

-suddenly became an opportunity to collect.

-Right.

And as a result, they managed to raise 41,000,

-just in Southampton, for the fund, and that was a lot of money for the time.

-Certainly.

Memorials to Southampton's Titanic dead are dotted around the city.

Some crew did survive

and found it impossible to put Titanic behind them.

Mandy Reeves' great-great-grandfather was a boot steward on board.

He lived, but was left traumatised.

He suffered terrible sleep sweats

and he would wake up screaming in the middle of the night,

saying that all he could hear were the screams in the water.

He felt guilty to be alive.

Philip Littlejohn's grandfather, Alexander,

was a first-class steward from Southampton.

The months following the disaster were torture.

So your grandfather did survive?

Yes, he survived the sinking but the effects on his life afterwards were very apparent.

That, before the accident.

Within six months, he then looked like that,

-purely through the effects of shock.

-How old was he here?

-40 in both pictures.

-That is incredible.

Just as extraordinary is the way the White Star Line

treated the crew who survived the sinking.

The other thing we need here is his discharge book

which recorded all his voyages,

including the 13th voyage for the White Star Line, the Titanic.

Engaged the 10th April 1912, in Southampton

and discharged on the 15th April at sea.

For "discharge" read "the sack".

In other words, as the ship went down they sacked the lot of them.

It's almost beyond belief that this could happen.

In fact, when they reached New York they were penniless.

White Star washed their hands of them

and Woolworths let them stand behind the counters

and whatever they took in a day they could spend on food and clothes.

So thanks to Woolies, my grandfather got food and clothes.

-Is that really what happened?

-Absolutely true.

The families of crew who died were eventually compensated

but there was no bringing back the loved ones who had been lost.

But what Southampton shows us is that the tragedy of Titanic

isn't just about those who died that night.

It's about thousands of other people as well.

Parents, wives, children and the survivors themselves

were all faced with the struggle to rebuild their lives

in the wake of the giant ship.

The scars left by Titanic are felt not just in Britain

but around the world.

Titanic carried people from over two dozen different countries.

Not just passengers, but also as crew.

In fact, there was one area of the ship

that relied exclusively on foreign expertise.

Dining on Titanic was quite an international affair.

In the a la carte restaurant, the first-class diners expected

the finest food to be served with style and panache

and that responsibility fell to 37 Italian waiters.

Luigi Gatti moved to London from Italy in the 1880s.

By 1910, he ran a very successful restaurant in London.

But he was ambitious and pitched for the contract to operate on-board restaurants for the White Star Line.

He won and one of his first contracts was to run

Titanic's Cafe Parisien.

It was a golden opportunity, a chance to show the world what he could do,

to produce the finest dining to the rich and famous -

the Astors, the Guggenheims - on the world's grandest ship.

So he chose waiting staff that could deliver the goods.

He recruited men he had worked with before,

including the best staff from his London restaurant,

and he tempted away experienced waiters from some of the city's top hotels.

They came from all over Italy and their new boss, Luigi Gatti,

had a fine reputation, both as a chef and as a bloke.

So many of them didn't hesitate to sign up with him

and join him on Titanic.

They faced a daunting task, helping to feed 3,000 people,

three times a day for six days.

Staff needed to dish out over 50,000 meals.

That is a lot of grub and this is a lot of grog.

When Titanic was in Southampton

she took on enough food to feed a small town.

50 tons of meat, 40 tons of potatoes, 35,000 eggs,

1,500 gallons of milk and that was just the basics.

It was a Titanic-sized shopping list

and the chefs on board cooked up some Titanic-sized dinners.

In 1912, Titanic's luxury, opulence and novelty

made it THE way for millionaires to cross the Atlantic.

The 320 first-class passengers all expected the highest standards of service.

So in his Cafe Parisien, Luigi Gatti needed to really pull it out of the bag.

What do you make of that, 11 courses?

I think it's fantastic. There are some great dishes on here.

The advantage of having 11 courses like this is

that you can really show off the opulence, the elegance, the beauty,

the richness, frankly, of the restaurant.

-We're going to prepare one of these dishes?

-Yes, we are.

We're going to prepare this dish here,

the filet mignon lili, which was one of the entrees

and the entrees were really for the chefs to show their skill.

This is a dish which would have taken about two days

to prepare from start to finish.

How are we going to start this off?

We're going to start by making a brown roux which is going to be the base to thicken the sauce.

Cooking this dish shows just how much it took to impress those millionaire passengers.

The sauce alone took two whole days to make.

It has to be thickened, strained, reduced,

concentrated and fortified.

What is amazing,

this isn't one course, this is just a sauce for one course.

Yes, and now we've got potatoes, the artichokes, the foie gras,

the truffle and, of course, the steak to prepare as well.

We've got to peel, slice, roast, blanch, sear,

layer and garnish.

When you see a dish like this you realise why so many of the rich

paid thousands of pounds in today's money to travel on board.

Food in a restaurant is not just about the food, it's also about the service.

It's when these dishes leave the kitchen that the true theatre starts.

So Gatti has got most of his relatives, his chosen waiters,

that really are the chosen few, from his London restaurants.

The best of the best.

But on April the 14th, around 20 to midnight,

Luigi and his team were clearing up, when, suddenly,

they heard an unusual noise.

-CREAKING

-Titanic had hit the iceberg. It tore a gash in her hull 100 metres long.

Water flooded in.

Officers rushed to their posts,

stewards helped passengers into their lifejackets,

the crew manned the lifeboats, but what about Luigi and the waiters?

They were restaurant staff not sailors.

They knew little about what to do on a sinking ship.

So where did they fit in the pecking order for a place in a lifeboat?

We don't know.

What we do know is that Luigi Gatti

and every one of his waiters lost their lives.

There are memorials to the waiters in their native Italy.

One of these is Alphonso Perotti.

Just before he boarded, he sent a postcard to his mother.

His grandchildren still cherish it.

The story of the Italian waiters tells us that Titanic

is an experience shared by all nationalities and all classes.

In the final moments, the ship didn't discriminate.

I've come to Eastbourne,

to discover how two friends chose to die side by side

and how the sinking left a family torn apart.

This is the story of the Titanic band.

Now, we might think we know it well.

As the ship went down, eight brave musicians played on.

But that was only the start of the story.

All the musicians died, but of course, their stories lived on.

And for the family of one,

his heroic death led to a tale of jealousy, bitterness and greed.

His name was Jock Hume

but my connection to him is through one of his best mates on Titanic, John Woodward.

John was a cellist at the Grand Hotel Eastbourne

and like him, I used to perform there, not as a musician but as a dancer.

Ah, yes, yes. This is the place.

It's the early '70s, I'm young,

I'm 25 years old, my hair is dark.

I used to come here for special functions

and we would be the cabaret, my wife and I.

Ballroom dancing. I've got to say, the place hasn't changed at all.

And I'm sure the place hasn't changed

since dear old John Woodward was here, back in the early 1900s.

John Woodward played next door to the ballroom, in the Great Hall.

Today, that job is done by the Palm Court Strings Orchestra.

Do you think this environment would have been one that would have sort of helped him along?

Absolutely. If he played here, which I know he did,

he couldn't have had a better learning curve

for going on the Titanic.

It would have been a fantastic grounding for playing while people are talking, and having tea.

Was there great camaraderie, do you think, between the musicians?

I don't think they could have gone off on these long trips,

you know, and not be close.

-It would have been a nightmare for them if they had.

-Yeah.

I think they probably were really good friends.

In search of adventure, John left Eastbourne

and signed up with the White Star Line.

He got a job playing on Titanic and it cost him his young life.

There's a memorial to John at the bandstand on the seafront at Eastbourne.

"John Wesley Woodward, a member of the Eastbourne Municipal Orchestra

"and the Grand Hotel Eastbourne Orchestra."

It goes on to say how he died on the Titanic in 1912.

"Faithful unto death."

When you see a thing like this

it makes you appreciate the bravery of these guys.

These guys weren't big tough soldiers or sailors,

they were musicians.

Yet they stayed with the ship until it went down.

John's story is tragic, but there is another story just as sad -

about another musician, one of his closest friends,

somebody that he played beside and died beside.

Jock Hume was from Dumfries.

He was in love with a girl, but his father didn't approve

and an angry feud erupted.

Jock turned his back on his dad

and took a job at White Star to build a life for himself and Mary.

Then, the week before Jock was to commence his work on the Titanic,

Mary discovered she was pregnant.

Jock was delighted and promised

that when he returned they would be married.

Every night,

Jock and the band entertained the first-class passengers,

in the luxurious restaurant, and that's where they were when Titanic struck the iceberg.

As the diners went up onto deck,

the band followed them into the cold night air

and continued to play as commotion turned into chaos.

In the midst of it all the band struck up.

The story goes that the last tune they played was Nearer My God To Thee.

There were over 2,200 people on Titanic

and lifeboat places for just 1,180.

It was certain hundreds would die.

As they played, it must have become clear to the band how it would all end.

But rather than fight for a place in the lifeboat,

Jock and his friends played on to their deaths.

Titanic left Mary grief stricken.

Worse, it left her unmarried and pregnant with a child, with no father -

a desperate position for a woman in 1912.

So she turned to Jock's father, Andrew.

He couldn't have given her a colder reception.

Yvonne Hume is Andrew's great-granddaughter.

He just couldn't bear the thought of Mary and her unborn child.

It was as simple as that. He did not accept her existence.

His son was his and no-one else's and he slammed the door in her face.

A special fund was set up to compensate the families of Titanic victims

so Mary applied for help, but Jock's father was determined to deny her.

Andrew also applied to the relief fund

because as far as he was concerned,

Mary was not entitled to that money. It was for him to have,

to stop her from getting it.

The dispute was settled in court,

and Mary received the money she was entitled to

but the family rift never healed

and for 100 years, one side of the family was entirely lost to the other.

Yvonne had no idea what happened to the daughter of her great-uncle Jock

until she looked into her family history.

The letter came through the door and it was from a long-lost cousin.

"I'm Jock Hume's grandson.

"I wondered if you'd like to meet up and compare notes."

Well, we met and this is how I found everything out.

The Titanic disaster broke up the family for 100 years

and only now is Yvonne getting to know the cousins she never knew she had.

The tale of Jock Hume, his father, his fiancee and his child

shows us that 100 years later, tales from the Titanic can still surprise us

and the sinking wasn't the end of the story,

it was just the beginning of hundreds more.

Join me next time, when I discover the stories of the men who are remembered with pride.

He was a wonderful draughtsman but by Jove he was a great papa

and that's what matters.

The hero who was forgotten.

It was ridiculous that Barmouth had nothing to commemorate a man

who lived here and learnt to sail here.

And the man who wished he was.

I simply don't know how I would have behaved, and with respect, I don't think you do either.

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