1956: TITANIC SURVIVORS Interviewed | First Hand | Voice of the People | BBC Archive

[@AdamEve-t4j]

Amazing, the interviewer asked great questions. What an amazing insight by these brave ladies.

[@isleofdixon255]

Brave? That word should be reserved for the men who sank along with the ship.

[@S_J_banana]

@@isleofdixon255 dying is cowardly

[@isleofdixon255]

@@S_J_banana so is trolling. 🤡

[@1201alarm]

Yes, a skilful interviewer indeed.

[@hilaryepstein6013]

A precious and moving film of these two "ordinary" ladies who inadvertently became part of history. You can see in their faces that the memory of that night has never left them.

[@stepheng8779]

Bit pointless interviewing em if it had.

[@wayinfront1]

So much for the revisionist theory that the band was NOt playing 'Nearer My God To Thee' right to the end. These two survivors are perfectly clear that it WAS.

[@cgray8267]

I can still hear her Irish ☘️ accent & the odd terminology from home creeping in ! What great ladies RIP

[@MbartM96]

And being so innocent that thinking everything would be okay and a ship would reach them. She must've been so young. Sounds like a county mayo accent.

[@donlcannon7602]

Kate Gilnagh was born in Co. Longford 1894. She never returned to Ireland.

[@vermilliongecko]

My Nan's best friend was a Titanic survivor. Her name was Eva Hart. Eva was onboard with her parents, aged about 10. She and her mother managed to get into a lifeboat, because it was 'women and children first'. Her father went down on the ship. Eva went on to become a magistrate, and lived in Ilford, Essex, where she met my Nan, and where I was born. There used to be a pub nearby called The Eva Hart in Chadwell Heath in her honour.

[@JulieWillard-v2y]

What a great story.

[@Iceageonmars]

Very sad for the Irish lady who never got to go back to Ireland. That was the way it was for so many Irish people in those days, they left and many never saw their parents or homeland again.

[@alanbeaumont4848]

This chimes exactly with what my grandmother passed on from a school friend who survived the sinking (born in 1896 so she would have been 15 or 16). Grandma's friend said there was no panic as everyone knew the ship was unsinkable and the men waved off their wives and everyone was saying "See you later." This explains why many lifeboats launched only partly full; the men stayed behind to mind the things left in the cabins and the men in the boats were the crew assigned to man them.

[@fburton8]

Extraordinary testimonies. Hard to keep a tear from the eye.

[@gavinmillar7519]

Crazy to think it was only some forty years before this film was made

[@4seeableTV]

At first, the lady's comment about not thinking it was that serious is bewildering. But she's obviously talking about the massive loss of life. A body count she wouldn't know until she returned to shore and saw the news reports.

[@MbartM96]

You have to remember she was an Irish girl from a small place that she had likely never left. She likely thought that the ship would stay afloat long enough to save everyone, and she wasn't to know there weren't enough lifeboats.

[@MrSimonmcc]

0:18 she says she thought it was part of the trip. Then later she says "I thought it was a pretty hard way to get here".

[@MbartM96]

@@MrSimonmcc like I said she was sheltered and innocent, she wasn't to know how unusual a ship getting into difficulty was.

[@relativenormality]

@@MrSimonmcc Right - she was 16. You don't need to have travelled the world to realise the ship filling with water and everyone on deck in the middle of the night is far from normal!

[@Bitingsherbertlemons]

@@relativenormalityWhatever has happened in your life that has caused you to be so angry and upset at a woman answering questions?-Who are you to judge her?-that anger and lack of empathy and compassion probably haunts those unfortunate people that know you.

[@meagain3876]

Amazing to hear the experiences of those two ladies. I really appreciate the BBC posting these clips from their archive. I would love to watch the whole programme, either on here or on the iPlayer. (not currently available on either platform)

[@dibble2005]

Incredible record. God rest the poor souls.

[@fidelcatsro6948]

Kate Manning lived another 15yrs after the interview and died on March 1, 1971 aged 76

[@chriswinwood6501]

Thank you

[@ralsharp6013]

😮Gosh! The 1st lady didn't comprehend they were in danger to begin with..Such incredible footage thanks! ... 🎶And the band played, "down amongst the dead men" Flash in the Pan song about the titanic 😢

[@louise_rose]

Yes, that was very odd - but I remember hearing in one or two other interviews that some of the people who got in the lifeboats did assume that of course everybody on board was going to be saved anyway - they still thought of the ship as practically unsinkable - and that it was only when they witnessed the final plunge and heard the many hundreds on board screaming that they realized, in a moment of horrror: all these people are going to perish! By that time it was 2.15 am in the morning - perhaps Kate had managed to fall asleep in the lifeboat?

[@ralsharp6013]

@louise_rose yes that makes sense about their belief in the unsinkable. And possibly thought there were enough life boats for everyone! 🚣‍♂️

[@jonathanberry8498]

Haunting.

[@claudermiller]

I'm assuming when Mrs Manning said she didn't think it was bad until she arrived in New York, she meant she didn't realize there weren't enough lifeboats and didn't know so many people had perished.

[@chriswinwood6501]

They both didn’t realise the situation til they were in the lifeboats. Amazing. She really wouldn’t have known anything more til she got to NY. What an incredible story.

[@cgray8267]

Wow 🤩 ! Amazing

[@Dathom1986]

Amazing story!!!.. to survive such a monumental Disaster 😮

[@hopebgood]

It's just bizarre how so few people know about the MV Wilhelm Gustloff which sank with the loss of nearly 10,000 lives, almost four times the loss of passengers on the Titanic.

[@zaftra]

Titanic was supposed to be insinkable.

[@hopebgood]

@@zaftra "Insinkable" I think you mean "unsinkable" and you also really missed the point of my comment.

[@zaftra]

@@hopebgood OMG did I put an i instead of u, well the world must be ending, and yes I did, but you was too busy being a grammar nasty to understand mine.

[@hopebgood]

@@zaftra 🙄

[@SpeccyHorace]

I suspect because it was a military vessel, but yeah that one is a shocker in terms of scale of loss of life.

[@SharonMcwilliams78]

My Grandfather told me his parents were to emigrate to America, they left the children in Ireland and set off for the promise land. Neither survived. He became the carer for his younger siblings. I never knew if it was true or not but I assume no one would make up a story like that.

[@BiddyBiccy]

If you know their names you should be able to find out as there are records of the full lists of the dead.

[@SharonMcwilliams78]

@@BiddyBiccy there surname was “ Shannon” I believe. They were farmers from county Monaghan. Thank you. It’s always been on my mind to research it.

[@clivec10]

Heroism in catastrophe . Human spirit is so underestimated

[@geoffsullivan4063]

I'm sorry but this has got to be where someone got the idea to call Mrs slocombe from are you being served' Mrs slocombe surely ! 😄

[@joemorgan636]

Great Footage off the Survivors

[@AnnDrogyne]

The Irish woman saying she thought that was the way you got to America, then saying saw the ship sink. Odd, very odd.

[@wayinfront1]

Not really. She was only a 16 year old Irish girl at the time probably not highly educated, and she took the whole experience in a matter-of-fact way. After all, she was put on another ship following on from the lifeboat experience, and ended up at her destination in America. Only later will it have dawned on her what a terrible disaster she had survived.

[@AnnDrogyne]

@wayinfront1 The most uneducated person on the planet would know that a ship sinking and people drowning was not the ideal way to travel to New York.

[@zaftra]

The first woman must have been a looker in her day.

[@octaviussludberry9016]

That's your first thought is it?

[@zaftra]

@@octaviussludberry9016 Well not really, my first thought was to listen to eyewitness accounts. I noted the first woman still had echos of her former beauty. You have a problem with this why?

[@dianewalker4633]

@@zaftra I had the same thought as you. She was still a pretty older lady and would have been quite a looker in her younger years. I don't think she was very smart though, as she thought the sinking was part of the trip!!

[@stepheng8779]

​@@zaftraShe was, little known fact, she won first prize in the Miss lovely legs contest on the way out of the harbour.

[@gazza1196]

@@stepheng8779also appeared in a adult film in Debbie does Dublin.

[@digitaldobbie]

Survive the sinking of the titanic to then have to go through the nightmare of WWI two years later.

[@chrisholt2474]

Absolutely, I had never thought of that, thanks for the information.

[@sn4rff]

a wonderful video, thanks for this.

[@James-ev6dk]

I'm only 2:13 in and am interested in what she has to say but the interviewer is terrible. He cuts her off with his bombardment of questions and he booms his questions out at her quite forcefully as if he were interrogating her

[@top40researcher31]

fascinating

[@charlesbailey7839]

Maude Slocombe was NOT a stewardess, she was one of 2 of the Turkish Bath masseuses

[@utterlee]

She didn't realise how bad it was until she arrived in America, despite being chaotically evacuated on a lifeboat and hearing the boilers explode and watching the ship sink???

[@chriswinwood6501]

She wouldn’t have known the death toll, and prob didn’t realise that there weren’t enough lifeboats. She knew it was bad, but didn’t know it all.

[@robertfindley921]

Unbelievable that the ship didn't have enough lifeboats. Unbelievable that they biased toward the first-class passengers boarding the lifeboats. But all anyone seems to be concerned about is what song was playing.

[@petejones879]

The first lady I could tell she originated from Ireland even tho she now has an American accent stii had twinges of Irish in her speech

[@tawandakingo]

Does anyone know where they are now? It'd be great to pay them a visit.

[@angellukeman7000]

They're all dead. Last Titanic survivor died in 2009.

[@nomore6939]

My Grandfather was a shipwright down in Southampton he told everyone who would listen to him, that the ship would sink. People told him to be quiet as he'd get in trouble, but he kept on telling people that the ship was definitely going to sink. Eventually the manager kicked him out of the Cinema.

[@JulieWillard-v2y]

It wouldn’t have sunk if it had no hit an iceberg surely?

[@dommidavros2211]

Ah so there ARE survivors still alive today!! That's a relief!

[@cynthiacronin2794]

I don't think so

[@aquacruisedb]

If you're a time traveler from 1956, then yes.

[@Budbrothers420]

Are you joking? It sank over 110 years ago

[@vermilliongecko]

No, the last survivor died some years ago.

[@SpeccyHorace]

Hilarious.

[@cratecruncher4974]

Everyone was so calm and civil. Yet everyone knew there was a shortage of lifeboats. Imagine if that happened in 2024.

[@CT-vm4gf]

We’d be watching shaky vertical video of it on KZbin.

[@1201alarm]

Does anyone know the name of the interviewer?

[@76ToneCrome]

The interviewer seems offended that a few men managed to get themselves into the lifeboats.

[@louise_rose]

Yes, for a long time Charles Lightoller was seen as a hero for having strictly upheld the rule "women and children first" even when it meant that some boats left at less than capacity. The guy on the other side of the ship was more flexible, and allowed men to "have a seat" if there were no more women around. Lightoller has been, shall we say, reconsidered by many recent writers.

[@phillipcarter8045]

Trans men would have been safe then .

[@pit_stop77]

​@phillipcarter8045 so would trans women, but I dunno what bigoted point you're trying to make 🤔

[@rensha8635]

@@phillipcarter8045no they wouldn’t because they pretend to be men so to uphold their identity they would have to go down with the ship. I guess these days all the men could declare they are women and jump on a lifeboat.

[@Budbrothers420]

Crazy to think if it didnt sink it wouldn't of become famous well not as famous as it became

[@bonnetdedouche437]

The interview style leaves a lot to be desired. Is it a historical reflection or a police interview?

[@Budbrothers420]

Don't think when they filmed it they thought it would blow up so big years later it seems like the world was completely different before the Internet it changed us

[@natmanprime4295]

That's the Cholmondley-Warner style!!

[@mickmackem1479]

Why it's only piece of metal what about luciana more died

[@sharpeipink123]

Yeah right The biggest ship in the world at the time is sinking right before your eyes and you didnt think it was a problem...or you were in danger...but you saw the ship sink....WOW!

[@chriswinwood6501]

Isn’t it incredible? They didn’t know how bad it was. All the crew remained polite and jolly. Amazing.

[@muckle8]

Olympic not Titanic.

[@mattsan70]

Great to hear this but come on. At 16yo you see a ship sink and think it's part of the docking procedure.

[@stephfoxwell4620]

Was it manmade climate change that melted the icebergs?

[@zaftra]

no

[@bid84]

Back then the population of earth was almost a quarter of what it is today, pre Industrial Age. I know you are being a smart arse, 19 Celsius in Ireland last week in November. Completely normal right? Second year running

[@zaftra]

@@bid84 Not sure who you are replying to, but, you do understand we are coming out of an ice age right? the planet has been vastly more hotter than it is now. If every single human vanish off the face of the earth, the planet will still get warmer. There will also have been warm novembers as well as cold ones, remember november 2010? how cold that was just 14 years ago.

[@bid84]

@ I’m replying to main comment to humour myself. Every year it’s getting warmer, we shouldn’t be able notice climate changing in a lifetime. It’s a gradual thing, not a 20 year thing

[@zaftra]

@@bid84 How do you know? there could have been many rapid coolings/ warmings? Periods of unusual warmth/cold. You can only go on 'since records began' which in the UK is 1853. I think the oldest recordings of temps is in the 1600, literally nothing on a geological scale. There, however, many historical accounts of unusually warm or cold weather.

[@davesimpson4314]

Such character and such fortitude ..so different to our Hollywood stars and youth of today who need councillling because a certain person won a vote in USA democracy...how sad we have become. elections..

[@terri6854]

@davesimpson4314 No, you can be sure these ladies, who went through WW1 and WW2, would be very depressed to hear the USA chose a would-be authoritarian who is enthralled by dictators as their leader.

[@terri6854]

No, you can be sure these ladies would be very depressed to hear the USA chose a would-be authoritarian as their leader.

[@terri6854]

No, you can be sure these ladies would be very depressed about chump.

[@jazzhands7771]

It wasn't the Titanic. It was the Olympic.