Titanic: Case Closed - Review

There isn't likely to be a single person out there who isn't atleast aware of the Titanic disaster, and there are certainly many who have been touched in some way by the story of the ill-fated liner, whether it be through a personal connection to the sinking or simply by embracing the scale of the tragedy.

2:30am this morning marked the centenary of the sinking, and enthusiasm towards the ship and its story doesn't seem to have dwindled one bit, even after 100 years. Various documentaries and dramatisations are being broadcast across various TV channels - some with lavish production values and others being less adventurous rehashes of previously seen material.

But out of all of these programmes, the one that's impressed me the most is the National Geographic documentary Titanic: Case Closed. Rather than simply regurgitate old ideas or provide a dramatic insight into what 'might' have happened, Titanic investigator and published author Tim Maltin has gathered years of meticulous research and presented his well studied theories to the viewing public. His aim is to establish exactly what happened that fateful night - why did such a marvel of technical shipbuilding with such an experienced crew meet such an unexpected fate? And I have to say, his findings are fascinating.

Tim Maltin examines the Titanic deck plans

Maltin poses a number of questions as the programme opens. Why did the Titanic lookouts fail to see the iceberg until it was so close to the ship, particularly since the conditions that night were apparently so clear, and why did the nearby steamer Californian fail to respond to the Titanic's visual Morse code distress signals across the open ocean? These are questions that have remained unanswered for a hundred years due to insufficient scientific knowledge.

After the sinking of the liner, many supposedly 'incompetent' crewmen were blamed for their failure to avert the disaster, becoming the scapegoats for White Star Line's mistakes as the shipping company faced financial disaster. Captain Stanley Lord of the Leyland Line steamship Californian, for example, had his name disgraced and his career ruined for apparently 'ignoring' the call for aid from the sinking ship. The lookouts on the Titanic, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, were disbelieved when they claimed a certain 'haze' had hung over the horizon that night, therefore making the iceberg near impossible to spot until it was nearly within striking distance. They were even accused of not paying proper attention to the sea, and blame was pointed at the officers for failing to equip them with a needed pair of binoculars.
Maltin's documentary boldly suggests that it wasn't human error responsible for the sinking of the ship, as previously believed. He effectively tries to clear the names of all those who've gone down in history as failing to perform their duties. Perhaps this is too late for those particular individuals, but as far as setting the record straight goes, it's a huge achievement.

Maltin visits the famous piece of Titanic's hull looking for clues

Maltin's theory suggests that atmospheric conditions on the night of April 14th/15th 1912 were infact imperceptibly dangerous, despite the calm appearance of things.

"It was very much a killing zone of nature due to atmospheric conditions - extreme high pressure and no moon, calm waters, and most importantly, this thing called a thermal inversion. A mirage, high pressure and darkness just came together."

Trying to illustrate Maltin's theory

Maltin's 'thermal inversion' occurred when the warm air of the Gulf Stream was suddenly cooled when coming into contact with the icy water of the Labrador current flowing south with the ice field, creating a layer of extremely cold air beneath a layer of warm air. Maltin explains that a 'cold water mirage' caused by this meeting of air temperatures would have effectively contorted the view of the horizon by refracting light. These conditions would have caused an array of atmospheric anomalies, many having been described in detail by survivors of the sinking but ignored due to lack of relevant knowledge in years past. It certainly matches up with Fleet and Lee's description of a 'haze' on the horizon. The effect of this mirage would have prevented the lookouts from seeing the iceberg against the night sky, perhaps even with a pair of binoculars, and almost certainly would have caused great confusion for Captain Stanley Lord in trying to identify the profile of the distant Titanic.
Another side effect of the refraction would have been the impression of vividly twinkling stars due to the bending of light in the air as it passed through the two temperate layers - something else which eyewitnesses reported seeing that night. It's no stretch of the imagination to suppose that Captain Lord would have had immense difficulty recognising the flashing of Titanic's morse code signal with both an unclear horizon and the distraction of so many blinking stars.

Cold water mirage effect caught on camera

There are many other theories and scientific explanations presented, including the idea that the heart of the 'killing zone' where Titanic foundered could have been a pocket of atmospheric pressure higher than anywhere else in the northern hemisphere at the time, with dramatically lower temperatures than normal. Weather records from ships travelling the Atlantic shipping lanes during 1912 seem to support this theory, with temperatures abruptly dropping from around 13 degrees Celsius to as low as minus 1 while crossing the Titanic disaster site - the same drastic drop in temperature that Titanic passengers themselves experienced not long before the ship struck the iceberg. The clash of warm and cold fronts at that particular time and location had created the perfect conditions for the disaster to occur, and it's possible than any number of bizarre atmospheric phenomenon could have been witnessed that night.

It is important to remember that these are all just theories, but what Maltin gets crucially right is showing evidence of these 'phenomenon' in action, aswell as lots of supporting texts including historical documents and overlooked statements from the survivors themselves. The findings are incredible, and by the time the credits rolled, I had no doubt they were as accurate as they could be considering the years that have passed. My immediate reaction to all the information presented was, how on Earth hasn't this come to light before? It will entirely change popular perception of what happened that night in 1912. No more blame to be laid upon crew members or apparent flawed shipbuilding. The Titanic was purely unlucky that night, meeting an entirely unforeseen side effect of the unpredictable environment, and sinking in possibly the worst icy conditions imaginable.

I highly recommend disregarding my overly simplistic explanation of these theories and checking the documentary out yourself, especially if you're remotely interested in Titanic. It's the first piece of television in many years - or any entertainment format for that matter - that's deeply affected my opinion of what happened that night. And unlike the barrage of overly familiar material that hits our screens on important occasions like this, it does what a good documentary should do. It teaches us new things.