3:40 "[The bell] was most likely the last man-made sound anyone heard before the sea swallowed her." Right before the final plunge, the captain blew the ship's whistle twice to give the signal to abandon ship.
Yeah, that doesn't really make sense, does he think there was just a guy sitting on the crow's nest hammering away at the bell through the whole sinking? White Star ships take hours to sink, not minutes, that last man made sound thing is more appropriate for warships like Hood which go down violently.
Hood's final sound was firing a final last defiant salvo from her big guns. That being while her bow was pointing straight up in the air. Powerful stuff
Health and safety related laws make by the local authorities, IIRC. Titanic can be explored with tiny ROVs - no life can be threatened - whereas some divers have perished attempting to explore Britannic.
Titanic is also far more notorious, most people don’t even know Titanic had sister ships let alone the fact that titanic wasn’t the first ship of the three
It is very hard to get even near the wreck in the first place. The government just does not trust you and most of the time you can't explore the interior except the open areas in the bow. Their is only one clip of the staircase and a crew bathroom besides the bow. I'm not sure how they even got permission to go inside(other video) its just a war grave and that name prevents people from exploring
i feel Britannic is like the most underrated sister in the Olympic class (personally I like the Olympic the most out of the three) it would be amazing if they raised the wreck as it’s the closest thing to Titanic and Olympic nowadays
She wouldn't survive a raising attempt. Despite not having suffered the same level of deterioration as Titanic she's still been on the bottom of the Mediterranean for 100+ years.
Congrads on the find..! Now to go back and find the others - Bridge, Stearn, and maybe a midships one. All reasons that you all need to go back, just wish I was not too old for that deep now.
@@funnyyoutubeman4814 your not the one im correcting mind your own buisness im correcting them so they wont spell it wrong soon o nobody make fun of him
Becomes trillionare, Raises Britannic, has face on every magazine, falls to every vice known to man, ends up on 60 minutes for a scandal involving something very bizzare, and ends up in court wearing a kimono, chain and rose gold shades and a diamond encrusted hat.
There seems to be some confusion about two points: 1.) why so little of the bell is visible and 2.) whether the bell has been raised. The bell is buried in the sea floor. At the end of the video, you can see the gooseneck shape of the top of the bell sticking out. Greek law prevents anyone from disturbing artifacts, so our team could not dig the bell out. That brings up the second point. We did not raise the bell. It is illegal to remove artifacts from a shipwreck without approval from the Greek government. We hope to one day return to retrieve the bell and put it in a museum for all to enjoy, but it will take years of negotiations between the ship’s owner and the Greek and British government. Until then, the bell will remain where it is, partially buried beneath Britannic.
@@DeathValleyLumberCompany Depends on the wrecks location. Cold/ deep underwater environments tend to slow down degradation of wrecks . An example would be the great lakes (Erie, lake Michigan etc..) which are too cold to sustain marine organisms like Shipworm. Another location I can give as an example would be the Black sea which not only has wrecks at deep depths but also has an anoxic layer where there is no soluble oxygen in the water as well as high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide which kills most living things.
@@DeathValleyLumberCompany yes and no. If you remove an artifact from an environment which had conditions which preserved it , you risk damage once its on the surface. One an object hits the air, it will begin to degrade. Wood for example would have the saturated water begin to evaporate on the surface causing shrinkage, warping , and cracks. Metal and wood( if they were in salt water ) would begin to accumulate salt crystals as the water evaporates causing further damage. Not to mention any chemical reactions cause by the reintroduction of oxygen.
Is it just me or is it kind of ironic that of the Olympic class ships only the one that didn't sink is now the one impossible to get to see. They should of made the Olympic a museum...
@@DetTigerFan The only reason the Olympic class of ships is even remotely famous today is because of Titanic. Back then the Olympic was just another old, tired ship that reminded people of a tragedy still well within living memory. She did her duty and was scrapped to make way for more modern vessels. If we made a museum of every class of ship we'd have no room left for working ships. What's important to us now wasn't so back then, they had no cause to make it a museum.
except in the great lakes. due to the coldness, the bodies dont rot. you have to pass through corpses and act like theyre not there, knowing that the corpse you passed most likely had a wife and kids. it's horrifying.
@Tim The Britannic (finished 1914) was around 46,000 GRT at 269 meters length. The SS Imperator (finished 1913) was 52,000 GRT at 276 meters in length. And then there were also the sisterships SS Vaterland with 54,000 GRT at 290 meters and the SS Bismarck with 56,000 GRT at 291 meters in length. The Bismarck never flew the German flag, because she was given to the British as reparation.
“Cleared the name of “Jacques Cousteau” lol Although I am a Divemaster and I own Cousteau the fact that I can use a diving regulator today, we need to remember that this man was a modern pirate and he salvaged and robed countless ancient and modern shipwrecks during his prime. The Britannic’s depth and needed bottom time to find that bell was simply beyond the limits of their equipment and gas used at that time...
@@jennifers.7912 if you check the reports on the retrieved items that “supposedly” were donated to museums you will see that those objects never left Cousteau’s and his team’s possession. One bell on the crow was in its place and the other, on the foremast, missing. Closing, what I meant by ‘bottom time’ is that Trimix was quite a novelty back then and they didn’t had the background to stay longer at those depths, otherwise they would have “cleaned” the area. As I said, a modern “pirate”... being Greek, we’ve heard numerous stories on how he vandalized different archeological sites in the Aegean Sea 🌊
On the first Smoke funnel, like on the Titanic too but not sure how many - maybe 2 or 3 - and the Bell was maybe on the mast just like in Titanic too, not sure about that but I think more like that-
@@videochannel5707 The Olympic class had 4 funnels, the 4th one was a decoy. The Olympic class also had 4 whistles. 2 only worked, the rest were decoys.
@Cheese Smoke There has been a tradition of using Ships Bells as Founts. So the bell becomes a religious artifact, it is also the Ships Voice, she announces her presence to the world. Take away the voice, the soul of the ship will come and get it back. Same reason than in Mining communitys, if a coal fire spits a Miner is said to have died. It just is.
Awesome video! I hope someday that people will pool enough resources to raise her from the depths as a museum. She's the only one left that is a viable option for preservation. I still don't understand why the Greek government thinks it has any jurisdiction over a British hospital ship. Their waters or not...
I hear you dude, but think of it this way; would half of Britannic still be there if they did not impose such stringent control? Let alone the Bell? A huge thank you to the Greeks for their efforts that have resulted in this beautiful ship remaining in tact today. I mean look at how deep Titanic is and they still stripped so much from her.
He found the bell. It’s there in the video. He’s screaming because he’s excited. The bell is buried in the sea floor. The top part of the bell is visible in the video.
it is the portion of the bell that holds the bell onto the mast and just a small section of the cannons and crown are protruding out of the debris field.
They CAN'T. The Greeks are VERY, VERY strict about diving in their waters. NO salvage is allowed without the Government's permission. It's hard enough even getting permission to DIVE there. One of the divers wrote a book on his and other BRITANNIC Expeditions - he told how a Greek official, when they laid a memorial plaque on the wreck, actually mistakenly thought they had LIFTED something from it, and immediately not only stopped the expedition, but forced them to turn over all their footage of their exploration (they only got around it by secretly making copies of it all before the officials boarded and seized the tapes). If the Greek government ever caught wind that something was salvaged (and believe me, they WOULD - they are always watching), whatever they brought up would immediately be seized, the expedition would be over, and the parties responsible probably banned from any diving in Greek waters forever (or they would at LEAST be arrested).
@@Ez_Brzy It doesn't actually matter. I vaguely remember that even Simon Mills (the owner of the wreck) had to deal with the same restrictions from the Greek authorities. They didn't care that he owned the wreck - it was still in their waters, and they had say on what happens in their waters, owner or not. As I recall, Mills was forced to comply with their demands.
True , after the war both White Star Line and Cunard demanded that they be given ships from the Hamburg American line as reparations . They envied the competition. as an example , SS Bismarck (1914) was renamed the RMS Majestic and SS Imperator was renamed RMS Berengaria .
@@justinworld9 Worst Naval disaster in history was the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945. 9,500 people died in the disaster most of whom were civilians. The Gustloff was originally designed to be a cruise ship but was converted for the war effort in ww2.
@@gruppenfuhrer45 with it being a protected wreck people are not allowed to take artifacts off of the wreck unless authorized by the government. That being said it is nearly impossible to have a government sign off on taking artifacts because it would cost them too much money and legal processes involved. It is best to let the artifacts lay in their final resting spot. Trust me there have been some awesome finds that I have been a part of and unfortunately they were protected by the government and I couldn't take it even to donate to a museum.
Greek law prohibits removing items from a wreck without government permission. It is up to Britannic's owner, Simon Mills, and the government to determine what becomes of the bell.
5:05 The foremast. The 'mainmast' means the aft mast of the ship - the foremast might have been functionally the more important of the two ('the main mast', I guess), but on most two-masted vessels the thing *called* the mainmast is the aft one. (On a three-master it would be the middle one.)
Just noting that Britannic was never the largest ship of her day. That title belonged to the imperator class, which took the title of worlds largest ship in 1913.
É impressionante ver outro gigante do mesmo tamanho do Tinatic. E é muito misterioso e intrigante o fato deles dois terem afundado. Deveriam ser navios que hoje serviriam de monumento historico, já que foram dois dois 3 maiores navios de cruzeiro da época.
@@richardsimon3727 I knew as soon as I heard that muffled profanity that those guys had found something pretty damn significant! Thanks for sharing this with us, very cool seeing the difference in condition between britanic and her famous sister! 😊
people guarding Britannic's wreck? THAT AINT STOPPIN ME FROM GOING DOWN THERE! if any of you are wondering: no I don't want those worthless artifacts, I just want to explore the ship
for most wrecks, there is no one guarding them. Its been an issue off the cost of Asia (especially of the coast of Malaysia) because salvagers have been salvaging whole ships for steel. Most of the ships salvaged are war graves. Salvagers have focused on the steel from these ships because pre 1945 steel doesn't contain any radioactive particles. Lets just hope some idiot doesn't try and destroy Britannic
I don't know how much of this is true a lot of Britannic was stripped, this doesn't mean that she wasn't exactly fitted out. From what I know a large portion of RMS Britannic's first class was already fitted out before World War 1, and it was stripped out when Britain entered the war so Britannic could actually inter-services hospital ship. Portions of Britannic's grand staircase from C deck up still remained after she entered Service as HMHS Britannic, but Britannic's Honour and Glory clock a signature of the White Star Line in Olympic class ships ( which yes the Britannic had the same clock as the Olympic and the Titanic on her grand staircase not a portrait ). There's only a few things we know today that still exist from the Britannic first class grand staircase, one in which is Britannic first class oregon. It's in Switzerland at Museum für Musikautomaten: www.musikautomaten.ch/mma/en/home/britannic-orgel/history-of-the-organ.html#:~:text=The%20organ%20was%20intended%20for,been%20considered%20lost%20until%20recently.&text=The%20organ%20was%20never%20installed,First%20World%20War%20in%201916.
It is true, as an example the organ that was part of the Britannic's forward grand stair case currently resides in the Museum für Musikautomaten in Seewen, Switzerland. most of the paneling and furnishings from Britannic were striped and later auctioned off after the war.
At depths like these, divers breathe a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and helium. The helium makes it sound as though they have just sucked air from a balloon!
RMS Olympic not Olympia. Britannic was the biggest in the white star line fleet until RMS Majestic. RMS Titanic was technically larger than Olympic because she had more enclosed space .White star line enclosed one of Titanic's promenade decks to expand 1st class. Other than that they were built almost identical.
No one can own a mass grave or claim to any ship that has the dead aboard still or rights to steal from a ship that a other nation owns or be to stealing from the Dead.
First of, Britannic is not a mass grave. Few perished in her sinking. There aren't bodies inside; it's been over 100 years. And 2nd, a country owns a maritime portion, alongside everything that either is disposed there or sunk. So, Greece owns the shipwreck, alongside with UK, since it was a British ship.
Apart from the 30 lives that were killed by her port propeller and one of those people that was killed was a 15 year old boy and then not forgetting that she was on a mission of mercy to bring back the sick a wounded from the front and then sinking baring in mind she could fit over 3 thousand sick and wounded so loosing the ship was a massive loss to the medical field in the WW1 so I think it’s a very sad thing to happen and that she was a big loss to the white star line
