National Geographic: The Search For the Battleship Bismark (1989) Movie Script
On February 14, 1939,
the massive hull of au
unfinished German warship
slid into the water at Hamburg.
For the Nazi party,
it was a day to celebrate the
country's resurgent military power...
a moment to be savored
by the Fuhrer himself.
Two years later, the ship was
finally ready for action.
When she left port in the
spring of 1941,
She was widely regarded as
the most elegant
and the most dangerous
battleship ever built.
She would never return.
Her name was the Bismarck,
and she was about to become a legend.
Summer, 1988.
A converted trawler named
Starella leaves Spain,
bound for the North Atlantic...
where the Bismarck sank nearly
half a century ago.
The story of what happened to
the battleship during her brief moment
on the world's stage
has captured the imagination of almost
everyone who's heard it
including Bob Ballard,
the man who found the Titanic.
Now he's looking for the Bismarck.
Come around... one, five, three.
One, five, three.
I knew the story of the Bismarck,
as a child.
It was an elegant ship, a warship.
It was very much like the Titanic,
in the sense it was on a maiden voyage.
It had such a short life and a very
exciting and violent life.
I mean, it was alive for less
than two weeks at sea.
It's an exciting story.
To find it gives you the opportunity
to retell it to
a new generation of people.
Even before the search begins,
Ballard is feeling the pressure.
Well, if I don't find it,
I'll be disappointed, obviously.
So will a lot of other people.
But, it was sort of
interesting on this one.
When I did the Titanic,
on one believed I would find it.
Now, on one believes
I won't find the Bismarck.
And I don't... I think I preferred
when they didn't think I would find it.
If the Bismarck is as elusive today
as she was half a century ago,
Ballard has his work cut out for him.
Nineteen forty one. Monday, May 19th.
The Bismarck leaves German waters
on her first mission
What her commanders hope will be a
three-month reign of terror
on British shipping in
the North Atlantic.
She is a monumental weapon
a sixth of a-mile long,
displacing 53,000 tons.
Her 15-inch guns are aimed with the
help of stereoscopic range finders
and can hurl a one-ton shell
Her crew of over 2,000 men
has been hand-picked
for duty on a ship rumored
to be unsinkable.
Many are 18 or 19 years old,
about to see combat for the first time.
The Bismarck is like a huge cat
waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey.
But first she must prowl into enemy
territory without being seen.
Two days out of port the Starella
approaches the Bismarck's
last known position,
Because no one knows exactly
where she sank,
the search could cover nearly a
hundred square miles.
As far as the location of
where the Bismarck was lost,
we have four separate positions.
One was by the Dorsetshire,
which was the ship
that dogged the Bismarck
and then actually dealt the final blow
when it torpedoed it from both sides.
It gives its position over here
in the eastern search area.
Then there's the position of one of
the destroyers
which was over in the western area.
A published report also puts
it in the same area.
Then we have a secret document
that puts it even yet in a fourth area.
Ballard is a pioneer
in the use of sophisticated technology
to explore the deep sea.
Over. This is bridge... three,
four, zero, now.
All right. Let's put it in.
take over the control.
Okay, bridge... one, eight, five, three
These transponders will sink to the
seabed and begin to emit
powerful acoustic signals,
allowing Ballard to pinpoint his
position on the surface.
Sonar provides his first glimpse
of the terrain lying
three miles beneath the ship.
I should pick up bottom right here.
Got a helluva long ways to go.
Looks pretty gruesome... real gruesome.
I don't know.
The worst is looking like it's with us.
It's horrible topography.
Huge mountains. Solid rock.
Hand to hand combat.
Where we dropped the first
transponder it was nice and flat,
but the second transponder went in
near a mountain and trying to get
go the third we're in solid mountains,
which is just, you know, horrible.
Ballard is worried
that the rugged topography
below will make it
dangerous to maneuver Argo,
an underwater sled carrying
video cameras,
lights, and sonar equipment.
Argo is designed to photograph the
bottom while skimming
just above the pitch dark seabed...
at the end of miles of cable.
Our biggest fear is losing the vehicle
because that's the
biggest fear you've got.
Hanging up on a cliff and cutting
your cable and then losing it.
I've come close before.
I don't want to do that again.
Ballard decides to avoid
the mountains and focus his search
on the flat mud plains to the west.
For the men who operate Argo
like Ballard's son,
Todd the long watch is just beginning.
Nineteen forty one. Tuesday, May 20th.
The Bismarck steams north
and west through Danish waters.
With her is a heavy cruiser,
the Prinz Eugen.
For the men aboard the Bismarck,
the times couldn't be better.
The war is Europe is
nearly two years old,
and Germany still hasn't suffered a
significant military defeat.
Hitler's troops occupy most of Europe.
The German Luftwaffe is carrying out
bombing raids against Britain,
which stands alone against
the Nazi advance.
Only England and her legendary sea
power stand between Germany and victory.
But even the Royal Navy
has never done battle
with a ship quite like the Bismarck.
And the idea was that the Bismarck
would break out into the Atlantic
with the cruiser Prince Eugen.
And she would spend a three-months
cruise going up and down
the Atlantic sinking all the ships
bringing from America the food,
the petrol, the ammunition,
that was keeping us going,
keeping the war going.
Although the United States won't
enter the war for another six months,
supply convoys from America
are already being
hit hard by the German navy.
If the Bismarck had cut out onto the
Atlantic sea routes,
she could have done an
enormous amount of damage.
I think that if she had done that,
she could've altered
the course of the war.
So it was very, very critical.
She had to be sunk.
But first, she has to be found.
As far as British intelligence knows,
the Bismarck is still safely
in German waters,
finishing her sea trials.
In fact,
she is already making her escape
from the confined waters of the Baltic.
The German plan is simple,
bold... and risky.
First they hope to slip through the
narrow waters off Sweden and Norway
and break through to the North sea.
If the Bismarck hasn't been detected,
it should be no problem
to sail into the Atlantic-perhaps
through the Denmark Strait.
But the Bismarck is detected.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon,
a British Spitfire
snaps this photograph,
showing the Bismarck nestled
in a Norwegian Fjord.
The report that Bismarck is trying
to break out is confirmed.
Now all the Royal Navy
has to do is catch her.
Summer, 1988. Aboard the Starella,
only two days have passed since the
hunt for Bismarck began,
and already Ballard believes
he's picked up the scent.
Argo is sending back images of a
debris trail left by a sinking ship.
That trail should lead
Ballard to the wreck.
Coming in.
Come up, Todd...
Something was buried here.
There's something right there.
Going down, down...
Keep going...
Down...
On the down swing, on the down.
Now. Bang!
The sinking should
have been up in here.
I mean that's the best guess.
And that's where we're headed.
So we're gonna head up there,
but stay visual and try to stay
in debris... sort of smell our way up.
For the next three days,
Ballard follows the meandering
trail of wood and metal.
On the fourth day,
Argo finds something larger.
Got a good object coming.
Look at the brightness of that sucker.
Wow, it's awesome.
Whatever it is, it's a big thing.
Hold on this altitude.
Woah, what's this? Look at this!
This is what we've come for.
Look at that strike.
There's some hull section right here.
All right, down, down,
to about seven meters.
Yeah. Kuhboom.
What Ballard has found
is an impact crater where some large
object appears to lie buried.
But what kind of object?
You can see the debris trail.
Very light stuff getting
bigger, bigger,
bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
bigger, bigger, splat.
So I think it went down to the bottom
and went right in.
I'm pretty confident
that it's the Bismarck.
We have total coverage of the area
and I think as we produce our data
and process it our case will get
stronger, not weaker.
Believing that he
has found the Bismarck,
Ballard has Argo hoisted from the
water and the Starella turns for home.
What we gotta do now is to go home and
take a closer look at the photographs
and see if we can spot
something that says:
"Yes, this is the Bismarck,"
or "No, it's not".
The photographs give
Ballard the definitive answer
he's been looking for
but not the one he wanted.
And then there was a teak rudder.
I mean, a brand new, beautifully
preserved teak rudder.
Now, I know that Bismarck
was hit in the rudder.
Maybe that's teak rudder.
But obviously it wasn't the Bismarck.
And that image was sort of like
a stake in your heart.
I mean I just looked at that
and there was no way
I could rationalize around that.
It was clearly,
belonged to a sailing ship.
Instead of the Bismarck,
Ballard has stumbled upon the wreck
of a 19th century schooner.
Round one to the Bismarck.
Fifty years ago,
the Bismarck was proving to be just
as elusive to the Royal Navy.
On Friday, May 23rd, the battleship
is spotted by a patrolling
British cruiser as she prepares to
pass through the narrow strait
between Greenland and Iceland.
Two hundred and fifty miles away,
the British warships Prince of
Wales and Hood are alerted.
They begin steering a course to
intercept Bismarck
before she reaches open water.
Leading the attack will be the
largest ship in the British fleet.
Now the hold was the epitome of
everything that was marvelous
about the Royal Navy before the war.
She was a wonderful ship.
She was built during the
First World War & unfortunately,
she had very poor armor,
very lightly covered armor
on her decks.
And she shouldn't have been
there unarmored as she was.
Now the Hood was a name all of
us knew and hated.
Our commanders tried to scare us with
the name when we were on maneuvers.
In every exercise, they'd say:
"Our ship is in a battle with
the battleship Hood".
Saturday morning, May 24th.
The two titans spot each other.
At a distance of about 14 miles,
the Hood opens fire.
Bismarck responds
with a series of salvos.
One of Bismarck's shells penetrates
the Hood's thinly armored decks
and ignites her aft powder magazines.
The resulting firestorm rips
the Hood in half.
All I saw was a gigantic sheet of
flame which shot around the
front of the compass platform.
And the ship started
to list to starboard.
We were all thrown off our feet.
There was no order given
to abandon ship.
It wasn't necessary.
And the news spread immediately.
It was passed on to every body
in the ship, However deep.
Somewhere posted inside the ship.
It was jubilation,
but almost indescribable.
And it was difficult to get the men
really back to their stations
because of all that elation...
I managed to get on one of these
ropes and I turned and looked
round again and she'd gone.
And there was a fire on
the water where she'd been.
And I'd say the water was about
five inches thick with oil.
And again, I panicked.
I turned and swam away again
as fast as I could.
And when I looked round again
the fire had gone out.
And over on the other side
were the other two.
There was no one else that came up.
Just the three of us.
In less than ten minutes of battle,
the Hood is gone.
Only three men from a crew of
When this news was received in England
it was received
with the greatest shock.
It was as much of a shock to us in
England as Pearl Harbor was to America.
We couldn't believe that a ship
which epitomized the Royal Navy
in all our successes
in the past could end,
within a few minutes,
could end her life.
And people said, well, what next?
I mean if the Bismarck can sink the
Hood in six minutes,
what else can she do?
Summer, 1989. A year after
coming up empty-handed,
Ballard prepares to renew his
search aboard the Star Hercules.
Well, we learned a lot last year,
mostly where the Bismarck wasn't.
We've got a better ship,
a better winch system
and we can finally
take on the mountains.
It was just too dangerous last year.
I'm not too excited about going
into the mountains even now,
But I've run out of choices.
This is the one of the
reported positions here,
Another one here, and then here.
So the new search area for this year
is roughly six miles east-west
by five miles.
Now the transponders, Kathy,
are where right now?
We've got A here...
A there.
B out here...
Yeah.
And C up here.
So running throughout this area
is a tremendous wall
that we have to worry about.
In fact, this shows the wall
and it's fairly dramatic.
It rises a thousand feet from here
all the way up to the top.
So we have to worry about coming in
and crashing into that wall.
The winch we have is very powerful
and it's capable of breaking the cable.
If you get it up and you get it
trapped think of it as a
Do not try to reel it in
because the trout will just break
that five-pound test line
and the winch will
just break the cable.
So pay it out give it line.
It takes Argo over two hours to reach
the ocean floor, three miles down.
Its only connection to the surface
ship is a length of cable,
less than an inch thick.
Once in position,
Argo can search the bottom for days
But first it must drop through realms
of unimaginable darkness
under the full weight of the sea.
Although the sled performs flawlessly,
the first week ends without
Ballard finding any trace
of the Bismarck.
Well, the good news is the area we
were o terrified of last year
to the east isn't so bad.
The bad news is we haven't found it.
We've covered over 40 miles
now along the bottom
in an area of 30 square miles
and we haven't picked up any other
than mud and rocks.
I mean it's an interesting
geologic feature,
but that's not why I'm here.
You guys are really
milking this one, huh?
Why don't you guys find this thing?
Nothing yet.
Todd? See anything?
Naw. Nothing...
You almost want to throw a trash over
just to have something to look at.
Anything that's more
fruitful than this.
This is boring.
A little mud watching.
I don't think the world realizes
that most of the planet is mud.
And I think I've looked at more
mud than anyone else.
Yeah, I think that's the worst part
of any search is just the boredom.
And hours and hours and hours of mud.
And that's what I'm worried about is
fatigue setting in and people
just going right by it
and not seeing it.
The watch is maintained day and night
by shifts that change every four hours.
So far, there's been nothing
of interest to report.
Ready for some mud crawling?
Good. Well, we saw nothing?
Right.
You want to be 200 meters south...
...South of that position.
Program 12?
Program 12.
I'll relieve you.
I'm relieved. Thank you. Have fun.
The area we're searching is quickly
exceeding the size of the
area we searched for the Titanic.
So they were really evidently
very busy shooting at one another
and not very busy at being navigators.
Because the positions
that have been issued so far,
there's nothing there.
Saturday, May 24th, 1941.
One hour after sinking the Hood,
the Bismarck's commanders decide to
return the ship to occupied France to
repair damage suffered in the battle.
But Bismarck is being shadowed by
three British warships,
while another battle group moves
into position for an ambush.
Aboard the Bismarck the
officers decide the time
is ripe to lose their pursuers.
And then came this dramatic event
in the middle of the night
when the captain of the Bismarck
put the wheel hard to starboard
and did a tremendous loop right out
to the west and right back,
crossed his own track,
crossed the track of the Prince of
Whales and the cruisers
that were following him
and disappeared.
Bismarck's maneuver takes the
British completely by surprise.
While they search a hundred miles
to the north,
the Bismarck sails closer
and closer to safety.
Thirty one hours pass as the
distance between Bismarck
and the ships frantically
looking for her widens.
Then, on Monday morning,
there is a sudden change
in the fortunes of war.
A Catalina flying boat,
cruising just below the
low-hanging clouds,
spots a dull black shape
on the choppy seas.
It is the Bismarck.
She is less than a day's sail
from the protection of
Luftwaffe bombers stationed in France.
Most of the British ships are well
to the northwest,
while others lie south all too far
away to catch up.
Only one ship has a chance to slow
the Bismarck down before
she reaches port the aircraft
carrier Ark Royal.
But the Ark Royal
is less than an ideal weapon
to pit against the Bismarck.
Her aging Swordfish torpedo planes
have wings made of fabric,
an attack speed of less than
a hundred miles an hour,
and carry only one torpedo apiece.
Yet they are the only weapon
the British have left.
If the Swordfish can't
slow the Bismarck down,
she'll be in friendly
waters by morning.
With night closing in,
the tiny Swordfish race
across the darkening skies.
At 8:53 PM they spot
the Bismarck, and attack.
They came in the evening,
in the twilight.
The sea was rough when we opened fire.
We shot and shot,
but what good did it do?
We fired so much our gun barrels
had to be cooled down.
One of the Swordfish torpedoes hits
Bismarck amidships,
causing minor damage.
But another strikes the battleship in
the only place she is
vulnerable her rudders.
Bismarck's steering gear jams.
Now she can only move in one direction
northwest directly toward the
onrushing British fleet.
We couldn't understand it
when we got a signal from
the Ark Royal and the
chef who was saying:
"Course of Bismarck is due north",
when up to that point it had been
due south, or at least southeast.
And we thought: "They made a mistake".
It's very easy when you see a
ship in the distance,
in the haze awfully uncertain
whether it's going from
left to right or right to left.
And we thought:
"Oh, they made a mistake.
Silly ol' thing.
They should know better than that".
And when it was repeated two or
three times,
we suddenly realize that the Bismarck
had been delivered into our hands.
Summer, 1989.
the Star Hercules has been
criss-crossing the seabed
for over 200 hours without
finding a trace of wreckage.
On the ninth day of the hunt,
that begins to change.
This whole area is like someone
really disrupted it
We're just getting little snippets.
There's some little stuff.
Forward, Oops, look at that.
Look at that right there. Forward.
That's obviously man-made.
No doubt about that.
Light stuff. What did that one off
to the right look like, on the?
It wasn't...
Yeah, but it could be an impact crater
Could be.
We came in on the
debris about 17 hours ago
and we found a big section of wreckage
And we got burnt last year
and we don't want to repeat that.
We want a definitive,
you know, Bismarck, okay?
We're not getting that
and it's frustrating.
It takes hours and hours and hours.
And I haven't slept for 17 hours
and I'm getting tired.
The trail of clues on the
ocean floor is tantalizingly human...
A boot... a lantern... torn
from a sinking ship.
But was it the Bismarck?
G' morning.
G' morning.
Just junk... ready? Fire.
Each hour brings new discoveries,
and a renewed sense that they're
closing in on the quarry.
There's a circles.
Go down.
Yet nothing they have found can
positively be linked to the Bismarck
until just before midnight,
when Argo passes over what appears to
be part of a turret
that once housed
Bismarck's 15 inch guns.
There, back up. No, no... reverse it.
Back, back, back. Right there!
All right. Now!
that's it. You got it... No,
they did not have those
on 18th century sailing ships...
it's decisive.
Ballard knows he's getting closer.
But he's not there yet.
We haven't found the ship.
I don't think it was buried.
I don't think it slid down that hill.
I don't think it's there.
I think it's somewhere else,
but nearby.
Here's more debris coming up.
And it's that debris the debris trail
is going to lead us to the ship.
We just have to pick up
the scent again.
Tuesday, May 27th,
between midnight and dawn.
Over a dozen British warships close on
the crippled Bismarck,
waiting for first light to
deliver the final blow.
They know their quarry is wounded,
but no one can guess how badly.
At about midnight, or shortly after,
the conclusion had to be drawn:
It was impossible to do useful repair.
And was just giving up at next morning
after we waited.
We ate our meals at our guns.
There was no more warm food just
bread with something on it,
And once we had boiled potatoes.
And we stayed at our guns
the whole time.
And this was perhaps
the most difficult,
the most dreadful part of the entire
operation, as far as I remember:
The certainty you could
not escape anymore.
You couldn't do anything.
And you could probably not do anything
equal up to the battle
that would be shaping up next morning.
It was like sentence of death.
Tuesday, May 27th.
Two hors after sunrise,
the Rodney and King George
finally spot the Bismarck emerging
from a rain squall.
Battle stations are called.
At 8:47 AM the British
warships open fire.
The only thing that struck me
when the battle started
was all the color contrasts.
The Bismarck was black.
The British ships were grey.
The seas were green with the wind
creaming the tops, creamy tops.
There was the brown of the cordite
when the guns fired on both sides;
there was the brown puffs
of cordite smoke.
Then there was the flash,
the orange flash of the guns.
And then these enormous shells
splashes-high as houses,
white as shrouds.
And it was majestic.
It was a majestic scene.
It was an awesome scene.
And I can see it today
as clearly as I saw it then.
For one full hour the relentless
British salvos continue.
She'd had a lot of damage on the
forecastle forward the right side.
And every time she plunged in the
sea the plates on her port bow,
extending over a large area,
were red hot as she came out.
And then when she went into the sea
there was a cloud of steam.
What I saw made me sick.
There were mountains of dead
people in pieces.
There was one crazy man still at
his gun still firing.
Ammunition was exploding.
The entire upper deck was on fire.
It looked like a heap of rubble.
The beauty of the ship was gone.
Then eventually we saw men
trickling down,
running down the quarter deck
and then jumping into the sea
because it was all over.
It was finished.
It was a dreadful light, you know.
No sailor likes to see another ship
sunk even if it's an enemy.
This piece of film,
showing the Bismarck burning
on the far horizon,
is the last view of the battleship
before she began to sink.
I thought about what to do.
I was no longer needed.
What good is antiaircraft
in a sea battle?
And we were almost out of ammunition.
So I left with some others and we
drifted away from
the Bismarck on a life boat.
The admiral decided the only way
to sink her was to torpedo.
So we went in close and
fired our torpedoes.
And then we watched her sink.
Thursday, June 8th, 1989.
A rainy, overcast morning very much
like Bismarck's last hours at sea.
And once we've established that,
we're gonna turn around,
come back west of that line...
Looks like we have a big target
coming up on the port side,
about 45 meters out.
Closing on the target it's
about 30 meters ahead.
All right!
Still closing.
Staying strong... lot of debris
port starboard.
This is a strong one guys.
This could be it.
This is incredible.
Gun decks right across the bridge.
Look at that baby!
Our ship was at the very spot
that the Bismarck must have been.
With all of the rounds coming,
the total chaos, confusion,
splashes, the impacting, rounds,
explosions going off,
A fire burning just the tremendous
carnage that took place.
And then to realize that the ship sank
and then there were all these people
in the water around you.
You can almost see them
swimming in this churning sea
full of oil and relate to that.
How awful that would be.
We swam for a little while,
just to keep moving
so we wouldn't freeze.
The water was about 10 degrees Celsius.
And it was so difficult to swim in
the oil that had assembled on the
surface of the ocean
from the sunken ship.
It penetrated our faces and ears.
It was terrible.
It made everything most difficult.
We were ordered to go and rescue
them in the ship I was in.
So we came up slowly to them
and tried to pull them up
the ship's side on ropes.
I remember a story that spread
right away on the Dorsetshire.
A British seaman saw a German sailor
who had no arms trying to swim.
So he climbed down into the sea
and fastened a rope around
the man's body.
I reached one of the ropes to help
them pull this survivor up
and then we noticed that he had both
his arms shot off
and was holding the rope
with his teeth.
And he fell off just as we got
him to the upper deck.
And I went over the side to tie
a bowline around him.
So I did that. Then I lost him.
For those of us on the Dorsetshire,
the name Joe Brooks means something.
Our government should give that man
a medal for humaneness.
In the days following the
discovery of the Bismarck,
Argo maneuvers slowly around
the half-buried hull,
trying to determine the
extent of the damage.
Well, I think any time
you retell a story,
particularly World War II
people aren't from it.
I mean, the futileness of it,
the stupidity of it.
The wastefulness of it.
I think we need to be reminded of that.
And I think one needs to be
reminded of all that happened
during World War II.
I think it's very critical
that people reflect back
so we don't repeat these things.
All right.
All right, Martin, sequence through.
Okay... stop. What's that?
It's a swastika. Look at it.
Is it a swastika? A cross.
No, that's not a cross...
It's a swastika.
Part of it is covered up
by the sediment and the
other part is chopped off.
All right, down look.
Now the ship that Hitler called
"this majestic giant of the sea"
can only be glimpsed in fragments.
A ghostly section of the bow
with decks of polished teak.
Bismarck's 15-inch guns,
once held in place by their own weight
fell free when she rolled underwater.
Only empty holes remain.
Across one of the four turret holes,
a crane lies toppled.
Much of the forward superstructure
was destroyed.
But the open bridge and conning tower
still remain.
A moment's glory...
then 50 years of darkness.
We've got it all. I mean,
the whole ship is here.
We're missing, it looks like,
all the big turrets.
But almost all the other armament
is present on the ship.
We're only missing the big guns...
Although the four main
turrets are gone,
Bismarck's smaller guns
remain in place,
as if still menacing the sea.
That's gone. I'm sure the stack's gone
this gun is lost...
little anti-aircraft guns... zoom down.
There's an anti-aircraft gun.
See him?
That guy's pointed...
The fact that the ship is in one
piece seems to confirm
German reports that it was scuttled,
though the issue
is still being debated.
I'm sure that it was a combination of
scuttling and all the damage it took.
I just find it difficult to understand
why they're so concerned about it
and I guess it boils down to pride:
Germans wanting to be proud
that the British couldn't sink it,
and the British wanting to be proud
that they could.
I'm just shocked that there's hardly
that much apparent damage other
than the loss of those four turrets,
the loss of some of the superstructure.
I thought it was going to be
an awful sight and it's strangely...
sitting upright and proud.
The Bismarck survivors have been
in the water over an hour
when the British cruiser Dorsetshire
arrives to pull them from the sea.
The rescue effort has hardly begun
when the Dorsetshire's captain
gets a report that a German U-boat
has been spotted.
In an action that remains
controversial to this day,
he orders a retreat.
The question runs through
my head all the time:
Why did Captain Martin stop the
rescuer while so many hundreds
of men were still in the water?
I can only interpret it as an act of
revenge for what happened to the Hood,
which sank with all her crew except
for the three men who were rescued.
Hardly had I been taken underneath on
board the Dorsetshire that I felt,
by the vibrations of the ship,
that she had gone with utmost speed.
And I had been one of the last to be
rescued without ever having a notion
of it so far. It was a terrible thing.
The water around Dorsetshire's stern
foamed and bubbled with the
sudden exertion of the screws.
Slowly, then faster,
the ship moved ahead.
Bismarck survivors
who were almost on board
were bundled over the guard
rails onto the deck.
Those halfway up the ropes found
themselves trailing the stern,
hung on as long as they could against
the forward movement of the ship,
dropped off one by one.
Others in the water clawed
frantically at the paintwork
as the sides slipped by.
In Dorsetshire they heard the thin
cries of hundreds of Germans
who had come within an inch of rescue,
had believed that their long ordeal
was at last over;
cries that the British sailors no less
than survivors already
on board would always remember.
From the water Bismarck's men
watched appalled
as the cruiser's grey side
swept past them,
believed then the tales they'd heard
about the British not caring much
about survivors were true after all,
presently found themselves alone in
the sunshine on the empty tossing sea.
And during the day as they
floated about the Atlantic
with only lifebelts between
them and eternity,
the cold came to their testicles
and hands and feet and heads.
And one by one they lost consciousness
And one by one they died.
One of the German sailors rescued by
the Dorsetshire died the following day,
and is buried at sea.
The chaplain was there with some
British crew members
and we stood across
from them face to face,
just staring at each other
not sure what was happening.
Then we heard a military signal,
and then I realized
it was a funeral for my friend.
One of us borrowed h harmonica
and played: "I once had a Camarade".
The British had tears in their eyes,
just like us.
He had stood next to me,
he had marched by my side.
It is sometimes difficult
to be reminded all the time.
It's hard to explain.
On one hand you're glad you survived,
but then you are pulled back
into the past again.
It's inevitable that all great ships
in the sea will be found some day.
I think the key thing is
how do we treat it.
I mean, what's our reaction to it?
Do we treat it respectfully?
Do we not touch it, not disturb it?
Do it with respect?
To me the Bismarck's the war grave.
The chase and sinking of the Bismarck
was without doubt one of the
great sea epics of all time.
And it was because of the changing
fortunes of either side.
It was this great, vast,
huge monster come out of its lair.
And then in a flash it sinks the big
British monster, disappears.
We look for it, we can't find it.
A little tiny airplane suddenly
finds it, reports where it is.
Another little, tiny airplane sends
a torpedo which cripples it.
And then the big British ships
can come up and sink it.
It's an extraordinary story.
And it's full of heroism.
And it's full of heroism.
And it's full of pride on both sides.
I mean, these were wonderful ships
and the impersonality of it all.
You see, we all fired at each other
without seeing the enemy.
We never saw the enemy at all.
The only time I ever saw the enemy
was when this little trickle of men
ran down in the Bismarck's quarter
deck and jumped into the sea.
Apart from that I could've been firing
or we could've been
we weren't firing ourselves,
but the British could've been
firing at castles.
A sea battle is a very
impersonal thing.
It won't happen again.
Not like that.
the massive hull of au
unfinished German warship
slid into the water at Hamburg.
For the Nazi party,
it was a day to celebrate the
country's resurgent military power...
a moment to be savored
by the Fuhrer himself.
Two years later, the ship was
finally ready for action.
When she left port in the
spring of 1941,
She was widely regarded as
the most elegant
and the most dangerous
battleship ever built.
She would never return.
Her name was the Bismarck,
and she was about to become a legend.
Summer, 1988.
A converted trawler named
Starella leaves Spain,
bound for the North Atlantic...
where the Bismarck sank nearly
half a century ago.
The story of what happened to
the battleship during her brief moment
on the world's stage
has captured the imagination of almost
everyone who's heard it
including Bob Ballard,
the man who found the Titanic.
Now he's looking for the Bismarck.
Come around... one, five, three.
One, five, three.
I knew the story of the Bismarck,
as a child.
It was an elegant ship, a warship.
It was very much like the Titanic,
in the sense it was on a maiden voyage.
It had such a short life and a very
exciting and violent life.
I mean, it was alive for less
than two weeks at sea.
It's an exciting story.
To find it gives you the opportunity
to retell it to
a new generation of people.
Even before the search begins,
Ballard is feeling the pressure.
Well, if I don't find it,
I'll be disappointed, obviously.
So will a lot of other people.
But, it was sort of
interesting on this one.
When I did the Titanic,
on one believed I would find it.
Now, on one believes
I won't find the Bismarck.
And I don't... I think I preferred
when they didn't think I would find it.
If the Bismarck is as elusive today
as she was half a century ago,
Ballard has his work cut out for him.
Nineteen forty one. Monday, May 19th.
The Bismarck leaves German waters
on her first mission
What her commanders hope will be a
three-month reign of terror
on British shipping in
the North Atlantic.
She is a monumental weapon
a sixth of a-mile long,
displacing 53,000 tons.
Her 15-inch guns are aimed with the
help of stereoscopic range finders
and can hurl a one-ton shell
Her crew of over 2,000 men
has been hand-picked
for duty on a ship rumored
to be unsinkable.
Many are 18 or 19 years old,
about to see combat for the first time.
The Bismarck is like a huge cat
waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey.
But first she must prowl into enemy
territory without being seen.
Two days out of port the Starella
approaches the Bismarck's
last known position,
Because no one knows exactly
where she sank,
the search could cover nearly a
hundred square miles.
As far as the location of
where the Bismarck was lost,
we have four separate positions.
One was by the Dorsetshire,
which was the ship
that dogged the Bismarck
and then actually dealt the final blow
when it torpedoed it from both sides.
It gives its position over here
in the eastern search area.
Then there's the position of one of
the destroyers
which was over in the western area.
A published report also puts
it in the same area.
Then we have a secret document
that puts it even yet in a fourth area.
Ballard is a pioneer
in the use of sophisticated technology
to explore the deep sea.
Over. This is bridge... three,
four, zero, now.
All right. Let's put it in.
take over the control.
Okay, bridge... one, eight, five, three
These transponders will sink to the
seabed and begin to emit
powerful acoustic signals,
allowing Ballard to pinpoint his
position on the surface.
Sonar provides his first glimpse
of the terrain lying
three miles beneath the ship.
I should pick up bottom right here.
Got a helluva long ways to go.
Looks pretty gruesome... real gruesome.
I don't know.
The worst is looking like it's with us.
It's horrible topography.
Huge mountains. Solid rock.
Hand to hand combat.
Where we dropped the first
transponder it was nice and flat,
but the second transponder went in
near a mountain and trying to get
go the third we're in solid mountains,
which is just, you know, horrible.
Ballard is worried
that the rugged topography
below will make it
dangerous to maneuver Argo,
an underwater sled carrying
video cameras,
lights, and sonar equipment.
Argo is designed to photograph the
bottom while skimming
just above the pitch dark seabed...
at the end of miles of cable.
Our biggest fear is losing the vehicle
because that's the
biggest fear you've got.
Hanging up on a cliff and cutting
your cable and then losing it.
I've come close before.
I don't want to do that again.
Ballard decides to avoid
the mountains and focus his search
on the flat mud plains to the west.
For the men who operate Argo
like Ballard's son,
Todd the long watch is just beginning.
Nineteen forty one. Tuesday, May 20th.
The Bismarck steams north
and west through Danish waters.
With her is a heavy cruiser,
the Prinz Eugen.
For the men aboard the Bismarck,
the times couldn't be better.
The war is Europe is
nearly two years old,
and Germany still hasn't suffered a
significant military defeat.
Hitler's troops occupy most of Europe.
The German Luftwaffe is carrying out
bombing raids against Britain,
which stands alone against
the Nazi advance.
Only England and her legendary sea
power stand between Germany and victory.
But even the Royal Navy
has never done battle
with a ship quite like the Bismarck.
And the idea was that the Bismarck
would break out into the Atlantic
with the cruiser Prince Eugen.
And she would spend a three-months
cruise going up and down
the Atlantic sinking all the ships
bringing from America the food,
the petrol, the ammunition,
that was keeping us going,
keeping the war going.
Although the United States won't
enter the war for another six months,
supply convoys from America
are already being
hit hard by the German navy.
If the Bismarck had cut out onto the
Atlantic sea routes,
she could have done an
enormous amount of damage.
I think that if she had done that,
she could've altered
the course of the war.
So it was very, very critical.
She had to be sunk.
But first, she has to be found.
As far as British intelligence knows,
the Bismarck is still safely
in German waters,
finishing her sea trials.
In fact,
she is already making her escape
from the confined waters of the Baltic.
The German plan is simple,
bold... and risky.
First they hope to slip through the
narrow waters off Sweden and Norway
and break through to the North sea.
If the Bismarck hasn't been detected,
it should be no problem
to sail into the Atlantic-perhaps
through the Denmark Strait.
But the Bismarck is detected.
On a sunny Wednesday afternoon,
a British Spitfire
snaps this photograph,
showing the Bismarck nestled
in a Norwegian Fjord.
The report that Bismarck is trying
to break out is confirmed.
Now all the Royal Navy
has to do is catch her.
Summer, 1988. Aboard the Starella,
only two days have passed since the
hunt for Bismarck began,
and already Ballard believes
he's picked up the scent.
Argo is sending back images of a
debris trail left by a sinking ship.
That trail should lead
Ballard to the wreck.
Coming in.
Come up, Todd...
Something was buried here.
There's something right there.
Going down, down...
Keep going...
Down...
On the down swing, on the down.
Now. Bang!
The sinking should
have been up in here.
I mean that's the best guess.
And that's where we're headed.
So we're gonna head up there,
but stay visual and try to stay
in debris... sort of smell our way up.
For the next three days,
Ballard follows the meandering
trail of wood and metal.
On the fourth day,
Argo finds something larger.
Got a good object coming.
Look at the brightness of that sucker.
Wow, it's awesome.
Whatever it is, it's a big thing.
Hold on this altitude.
Woah, what's this? Look at this!
This is what we've come for.
Look at that strike.
There's some hull section right here.
All right, down, down,
to about seven meters.
Yeah. Kuhboom.
What Ballard has found
is an impact crater where some large
object appears to lie buried.
But what kind of object?
You can see the debris trail.
Very light stuff getting
bigger, bigger,
bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,
bigger, bigger, splat.
So I think it went down to the bottom
and went right in.
I'm pretty confident
that it's the Bismarck.
We have total coverage of the area
and I think as we produce our data
and process it our case will get
stronger, not weaker.
Believing that he
has found the Bismarck,
Ballard has Argo hoisted from the
water and the Starella turns for home.
What we gotta do now is to go home and
take a closer look at the photographs
and see if we can spot
something that says:
"Yes, this is the Bismarck,"
or "No, it's not".
The photographs give
Ballard the definitive answer
he's been looking for
but not the one he wanted.
And then there was a teak rudder.
I mean, a brand new, beautifully
preserved teak rudder.
Now, I know that Bismarck
was hit in the rudder.
Maybe that's teak rudder.
But obviously it wasn't the Bismarck.
And that image was sort of like
a stake in your heart.
I mean I just looked at that
and there was no way
I could rationalize around that.
It was clearly,
belonged to a sailing ship.
Instead of the Bismarck,
Ballard has stumbled upon the wreck
of a 19th century schooner.
Round one to the Bismarck.
Fifty years ago,
the Bismarck was proving to be just
as elusive to the Royal Navy.
On Friday, May 23rd, the battleship
is spotted by a patrolling
British cruiser as she prepares to
pass through the narrow strait
between Greenland and Iceland.
Two hundred and fifty miles away,
the British warships Prince of
Wales and Hood are alerted.
They begin steering a course to
intercept Bismarck
before she reaches open water.
Leading the attack will be the
largest ship in the British fleet.
Now the hold was the epitome of
everything that was marvelous
about the Royal Navy before the war.
She was a wonderful ship.
She was built during the
First World War & unfortunately,
she had very poor armor,
very lightly covered armor
on her decks.
And she shouldn't have been
there unarmored as she was.
Now the Hood was a name all of
us knew and hated.
Our commanders tried to scare us with
the name when we were on maneuvers.
In every exercise, they'd say:
"Our ship is in a battle with
the battleship Hood".
Saturday morning, May 24th.
The two titans spot each other.
At a distance of about 14 miles,
the Hood opens fire.
Bismarck responds
with a series of salvos.
One of Bismarck's shells penetrates
the Hood's thinly armored decks
and ignites her aft powder magazines.
The resulting firestorm rips
the Hood in half.
All I saw was a gigantic sheet of
flame which shot around the
front of the compass platform.
And the ship started
to list to starboard.
We were all thrown off our feet.
There was no order given
to abandon ship.
It wasn't necessary.
And the news spread immediately.
It was passed on to every body
in the ship, However deep.
Somewhere posted inside the ship.
It was jubilation,
but almost indescribable.
And it was difficult to get the men
really back to their stations
because of all that elation...
I managed to get on one of these
ropes and I turned and looked
round again and she'd gone.
And there was a fire on
the water where she'd been.
And I'd say the water was about
five inches thick with oil.
And again, I panicked.
I turned and swam away again
as fast as I could.
And when I looked round again
the fire had gone out.
And over on the other side
were the other two.
There was no one else that came up.
Just the three of us.
In less than ten minutes of battle,
the Hood is gone.
Only three men from a crew of
When this news was received in England
it was received
with the greatest shock.
It was as much of a shock to us in
England as Pearl Harbor was to America.
We couldn't believe that a ship
which epitomized the Royal Navy
in all our successes
in the past could end,
within a few minutes,
could end her life.
And people said, well, what next?
I mean if the Bismarck can sink the
Hood in six minutes,
what else can she do?
Summer, 1989. A year after
coming up empty-handed,
Ballard prepares to renew his
search aboard the Star Hercules.
Well, we learned a lot last year,
mostly where the Bismarck wasn't.
We've got a better ship,
a better winch system
and we can finally
take on the mountains.
It was just too dangerous last year.
I'm not too excited about going
into the mountains even now,
But I've run out of choices.
This is the one of the
reported positions here,
Another one here, and then here.
So the new search area for this year
is roughly six miles east-west
by five miles.
Now the transponders, Kathy,
are where right now?
We've got A here...
A there.
B out here...
Yeah.
And C up here.
So running throughout this area
is a tremendous wall
that we have to worry about.
In fact, this shows the wall
and it's fairly dramatic.
It rises a thousand feet from here
all the way up to the top.
So we have to worry about coming in
and crashing into that wall.
The winch we have is very powerful
and it's capable of breaking the cable.
If you get it up and you get it
trapped think of it as a
Do not try to reel it in
because the trout will just break
that five-pound test line
and the winch will
just break the cable.
So pay it out give it line.
It takes Argo over two hours to reach
the ocean floor, three miles down.
Its only connection to the surface
ship is a length of cable,
less than an inch thick.
Once in position,
Argo can search the bottom for days
But first it must drop through realms
of unimaginable darkness
under the full weight of the sea.
Although the sled performs flawlessly,
the first week ends without
Ballard finding any trace
of the Bismarck.
Well, the good news is the area we
were o terrified of last year
to the east isn't so bad.
The bad news is we haven't found it.
We've covered over 40 miles
now along the bottom
in an area of 30 square miles
and we haven't picked up any other
than mud and rocks.
I mean it's an interesting
geologic feature,
but that's not why I'm here.
You guys are really
milking this one, huh?
Why don't you guys find this thing?
Nothing yet.
Todd? See anything?
Naw. Nothing...
You almost want to throw a trash over
just to have something to look at.
Anything that's more
fruitful than this.
This is boring.
A little mud watching.
I don't think the world realizes
that most of the planet is mud.
And I think I've looked at more
mud than anyone else.
Yeah, I think that's the worst part
of any search is just the boredom.
And hours and hours and hours of mud.
And that's what I'm worried about is
fatigue setting in and people
just going right by it
and not seeing it.
The watch is maintained day and night
by shifts that change every four hours.
So far, there's been nothing
of interest to report.
Ready for some mud crawling?
Good. Well, we saw nothing?
Right.
You want to be 200 meters south...
...South of that position.
Program 12?
Program 12.
I'll relieve you.
I'm relieved. Thank you. Have fun.
The area we're searching is quickly
exceeding the size of the
area we searched for the Titanic.
So they were really evidently
very busy shooting at one another
and not very busy at being navigators.
Because the positions
that have been issued so far,
there's nothing there.
Saturday, May 24th, 1941.
One hour after sinking the Hood,
the Bismarck's commanders decide to
return the ship to occupied France to
repair damage suffered in the battle.
But Bismarck is being shadowed by
three British warships,
while another battle group moves
into position for an ambush.
Aboard the Bismarck the
officers decide the time
is ripe to lose their pursuers.
And then came this dramatic event
in the middle of the night
when the captain of the Bismarck
put the wheel hard to starboard
and did a tremendous loop right out
to the west and right back,
crossed his own track,
crossed the track of the Prince of
Whales and the cruisers
that were following him
and disappeared.
Bismarck's maneuver takes the
British completely by surprise.
While they search a hundred miles
to the north,
the Bismarck sails closer
and closer to safety.
Thirty one hours pass as the
distance between Bismarck
and the ships frantically
looking for her widens.
Then, on Monday morning,
there is a sudden change
in the fortunes of war.
A Catalina flying boat,
cruising just below the
low-hanging clouds,
spots a dull black shape
on the choppy seas.
It is the Bismarck.
She is less than a day's sail
from the protection of
Luftwaffe bombers stationed in France.
Most of the British ships are well
to the northwest,
while others lie south all too far
away to catch up.
Only one ship has a chance to slow
the Bismarck down before
she reaches port the aircraft
carrier Ark Royal.
But the Ark Royal
is less than an ideal weapon
to pit against the Bismarck.
Her aging Swordfish torpedo planes
have wings made of fabric,
an attack speed of less than
a hundred miles an hour,
and carry only one torpedo apiece.
Yet they are the only weapon
the British have left.
If the Swordfish can't
slow the Bismarck down,
she'll be in friendly
waters by morning.
With night closing in,
the tiny Swordfish race
across the darkening skies.
At 8:53 PM they spot
the Bismarck, and attack.
They came in the evening,
in the twilight.
The sea was rough when we opened fire.
We shot and shot,
but what good did it do?
We fired so much our gun barrels
had to be cooled down.
One of the Swordfish torpedoes hits
Bismarck amidships,
causing minor damage.
But another strikes the battleship in
the only place she is
vulnerable her rudders.
Bismarck's steering gear jams.
Now she can only move in one direction
northwest directly toward the
onrushing British fleet.
We couldn't understand it
when we got a signal from
the Ark Royal and the
chef who was saying:
"Course of Bismarck is due north",
when up to that point it had been
due south, or at least southeast.
And we thought: "They made a mistake".
It's very easy when you see a
ship in the distance,
in the haze awfully uncertain
whether it's going from
left to right or right to left.
And we thought:
"Oh, they made a mistake.
Silly ol' thing.
They should know better than that".
And when it was repeated two or
three times,
we suddenly realize that the Bismarck
had been delivered into our hands.
Summer, 1989.
the Star Hercules has been
criss-crossing the seabed
for over 200 hours without
finding a trace of wreckage.
On the ninth day of the hunt,
that begins to change.
This whole area is like someone
really disrupted it
We're just getting little snippets.
There's some little stuff.
Forward, Oops, look at that.
Look at that right there. Forward.
That's obviously man-made.
No doubt about that.
Light stuff. What did that one off
to the right look like, on the?
It wasn't...
Yeah, but it could be an impact crater
Could be.
We came in on the
debris about 17 hours ago
and we found a big section of wreckage
And we got burnt last year
and we don't want to repeat that.
We want a definitive,
you know, Bismarck, okay?
We're not getting that
and it's frustrating.
It takes hours and hours and hours.
And I haven't slept for 17 hours
and I'm getting tired.
The trail of clues on the
ocean floor is tantalizingly human...
A boot... a lantern... torn
from a sinking ship.
But was it the Bismarck?
G' morning.
G' morning.
Just junk... ready? Fire.
Each hour brings new discoveries,
and a renewed sense that they're
closing in on the quarry.
There's a circles.
Go down.
Yet nothing they have found can
positively be linked to the Bismarck
until just before midnight,
when Argo passes over what appears to
be part of a turret
that once housed
Bismarck's 15 inch guns.
There, back up. No, no... reverse it.
Back, back, back. Right there!
All right. Now!
that's it. You got it... No,
they did not have those
on 18th century sailing ships...
it's decisive.
Ballard knows he's getting closer.
But he's not there yet.
We haven't found the ship.
I don't think it was buried.
I don't think it slid down that hill.
I don't think it's there.
I think it's somewhere else,
but nearby.
Here's more debris coming up.
And it's that debris the debris trail
is going to lead us to the ship.
We just have to pick up
the scent again.
Tuesday, May 27th,
between midnight and dawn.
Over a dozen British warships close on
the crippled Bismarck,
waiting for first light to
deliver the final blow.
They know their quarry is wounded,
but no one can guess how badly.
At about midnight, or shortly after,
the conclusion had to be drawn:
It was impossible to do useful repair.
And was just giving up at next morning
after we waited.
We ate our meals at our guns.
There was no more warm food just
bread with something on it,
And once we had boiled potatoes.
And we stayed at our guns
the whole time.
And this was perhaps
the most difficult,
the most dreadful part of the entire
operation, as far as I remember:
The certainty you could
not escape anymore.
You couldn't do anything.
And you could probably not do anything
equal up to the battle
that would be shaping up next morning.
It was like sentence of death.
Tuesday, May 27th.
Two hors after sunrise,
the Rodney and King George
finally spot the Bismarck emerging
from a rain squall.
Battle stations are called.
At 8:47 AM the British
warships open fire.
The only thing that struck me
when the battle started
was all the color contrasts.
The Bismarck was black.
The British ships were grey.
The seas were green with the wind
creaming the tops, creamy tops.
There was the brown of the cordite
when the guns fired on both sides;
there was the brown puffs
of cordite smoke.
Then there was the flash,
the orange flash of the guns.
And then these enormous shells
splashes-high as houses,
white as shrouds.
And it was majestic.
It was a majestic scene.
It was an awesome scene.
And I can see it today
as clearly as I saw it then.
For one full hour the relentless
British salvos continue.
She'd had a lot of damage on the
forecastle forward the right side.
And every time she plunged in the
sea the plates on her port bow,
extending over a large area,
were red hot as she came out.
And then when she went into the sea
there was a cloud of steam.
What I saw made me sick.
There were mountains of dead
people in pieces.
There was one crazy man still at
his gun still firing.
Ammunition was exploding.
The entire upper deck was on fire.
It looked like a heap of rubble.
The beauty of the ship was gone.
Then eventually we saw men
trickling down,
running down the quarter deck
and then jumping into the sea
because it was all over.
It was finished.
It was a dreadful light, you know.
No sailor likes to see another ship
sunk even if it's an enemy.
This piece of film,
showing the Bismarck burning
on the far horizon,
is the last view of the battleship
before she began to sink.
I thought about what to do.
I was no longer needed.
What good is antiaircraft
in a sea battle?
And we were almost out of ammunition.
So I left with some others and we
drifted away from
the Bismarck on a life boat.
The admiral decided the only way
to sink her was to torpedo.
So we went in close and
fired our torpedoes.
And then we watched her sink.
Thursday, June 8th, 1989.
A rainy, overcast morning very much
like Bismarck's last hours at sea.
And once we've established that,
we're gonna turn around,
come back west of that line...
Looks like we have a big target
coming up on the port side,
about 45 meters out.
Closing on the target it's
about 30 meters ahead.
All right!
Still closing.
Staying strong... lot of debris
port starboard.
This is a strong one guys.
This could be it.
This is incredible.
Gun decks right across the bridge.
Look at that baby!
Our ship was at the very spot
that the Bismarck must have been.
With all of the rounds coming,
the total chaos, confusion,
splashes, the impacting, rounds,
explosions going off,
A fire burning just the tremendous
carnage that took place.
And then to realize that the ship sank
and then there were all these people
in the water around you.
You can almost see them
swimming in this churning sea
full of oil and relate to that.
How awful that would be.
We swam for a little while,
just to keep moving
so we wouldn't freeze.
The water was about 10 degrees Celsius.
And it was so difficult to swim in
the oil that had assembled on the
surface of the ocean
from the sunken ship.
It penetrated our faces and ears.
It was terrible.
It made everything most difficult.
We were ordered to go and rescue
them in the ship I was in.
So we came up slowly to them
and tried to pull them up
the ship's side on ropes.
I remember a story that spread
right away on the Dorsetshire.
A British seaman saw a German sailor
who had no arms trying to swim.
So he climbed down into the sea
and fastened a rope around
the man's body.
I reached one of the ropes to help
them pull this survivor up
and then we noticed that he had both
his arms shot off
and was holding the rope
with his teeth.
And he fell off just as we got
him to the upper deck.
And I went over the side to tie
a bowline around him.
So I did that. Then I lost him.
For those of us on the Dorsetshire,
the name Joe Brooks means something.
Our government should give that man
a medal for humaneness.
In the days following the
discovery of the Bismarck,
Argo maneuvers slowly around
the half-buried hull,
trying to determine the
extent of the damage.
Well, I think any time
you retell a story,
particularly World War II
people aren't from it.
I mean, the futileness of it,
the stupidity of it.
The wastefulness of it.
I think we need to be reminded of that.
And I think one needs to be
reminded of all that happened
during World War II.
I think it's very critical
that people reflect back
so we don't repeat these things.
All right.
All right, Martin, sequence through.
Okay... stop. What's that?
It's a swastika. Look at it.
Is it a swastika? A cross.
No, that's not a cross...
It's a swastika.
Part of it is covered up
by the sediment and the
other part is chopped off.
All right, down look.
Now the ship that Hitler called
"this majestic giant of the sea"
can only be glimpsed in fragments.
A ghostly section of the bow
with decks of polished teak.
Bismarck's 15-inch guns,
once held in place by their own weight
fell free when she rolled underwater.
Only empty holes remain.
Across one of the four turret holes,
a crane lies toppled.
Much of the forward superstructure
was destroyed.
But the open bridge and conning tower
still remain.
A moment's glory...
then 50 years of darkness.
We've got it all. I mean,
the whole ship is here.
We're missing, it looks like,
all the big turrets.
But almost all the other armament
is present on the ship.
We're only missing the big guns...
Although the four main
turrets are gone,
Bismarck's smaller guns
remain in place,
as if still menacing the sea.
That's gone. I'm sure the stack's gone
this gun is lost...
little anti-aircraft guns... zoom down.
There's an anti-aircraft gun.
See him?
That guy's pointed...
The fact that the ship is in one
piece seems to confirm
German reports that it was scuttled,
though the issue
is still being debated.
I'm sure that it was a combination of
scuttling and all the damage it took.
I just find it difficult to understand
why they're so concerned about it
and I guess it boils down to pride:
Germans wanting to be proud
that the British couldn't sink it,
and the British wanting to be proud
that they could.
I'm just shocked that there's hardly
that much apparent damage other
than the loss of those four turrets,
the loss of some of the superstructure.
I thought it was going to be
an awful sight and it's strangely...
sitting upright and proud.
The Bismarck survivors have been
in the water over an hour
when the British cruiser Dorsetshire
arrives to pull them from the sea.
The rescue effort has hardly begun
when the Dorsetshire's captain
gets a report that a German U-boat
has been spotted.
In an action that remains
controversial to this day,
he orders a retreat.
The question runs through
my head all the time:
Why did Captain Martin stop the
rescuer while so many hundreds
of men were still in the water?
I can only interpret it as an act of
revenge for what happened to the Hood,
which sank with all her crew except
for the three men who were rescued.
Hardly had I been taken underneath on
board the Dorsetshire that I felt,
by the vibrations of the ship,
that she had gone with utmost speed.
And I had been one of the last to be
rescued without ever having a notion
of it so far. It was a terrible thing.
The water around Dorsetshire's stern
foamed and bubbled with the
sudden exertion of the screws.
Slowly, then faster,
the ship moved ahead.
Bismarck survivors
who were almost on board
were bundled over the guard
rails onto the deck.
Those halfway up the ropes found
themselves trailing the stern,
hung on as long as they could against
the forward movement of the ship,
dropped off one by one.
Others in the water clawed
frantically at the paintwork
as the sides slipped by.
In Dorsetshire they heard the thin
cries of hundreds of Germans
who had come within an inch of rescue,
had believed that their long ordeal
was at last over;
cries that the British sailors no less
than survivors already
on board would always remember.
From the water Bismarck's men
watched appalled
as the cruiser's grey side
swept past them,
believed then the tales they'd heard
about the British not caring much
about survivors were true after all,
presently found themselves alone in
the sunshine on the empty tossing sea.
And during the day as they
floated about the Atlantic
with only lifebelts between
them and eternity,
the cold came to their testicles
and hands and feet and heads.
And one by one they lost consciousness
And one by one they died.
One of the German sailors rescued by
the Dorsetshire died the following day,
and is buried at sea.
The chaplain was there with some
British crew members
and we stood across
from them face to face,
just staring at each other
not sure what was happening.
Then we heard a military signal,
and then I realized
it was a funeral for my friend.
One of us borrowed h harmonica
and played: "I once had a Camarade".
The British had tears in their eyes,
just like us.
He had stood next to me,
he had marched by my side.
It is sometimes difficult
to be reminded all the time.
It's hard to explain.
On one hand you're glad you survived,
but then you are pulled back
into the past again.
It's inevitable that all great ships
in the sea will be found some day.
I think the key thing is
how do we treat it.
I mean, what's our reaction to it?
Do we treat it respectfully?
Do we not touch it, not disturb it?
Do it with respect?
To me the Bismarck's the war grave.
The chase and sinking of the Bismarck
was without doubt one of the
great sea epics of all time.
And it was because of the changing
fortunes of either side.
It was this great, vast,
huge monster come out of its lair.
And then in a flash it sinks the big
British monster, disappears.
We look for it, we can't find it.
A little tiny airplane suddenly
finds it, reports where it is.
Another little, tiny airplane sends
a torpedo which cripples it.
And then the big British ships
can come up and sink it.
It's an extraordinary story.
And it's full of heroism.
And it's full of heroism.
And it's full of pride on both sides.
I mean, these were wonderful ships
and the impersonality of it all.
You see, we all fired at each other
without seeing the enemy.
We never saw the enemy at all.
The only time I ever saw the enemy
was when this little trickle of men
ran down in the Bismarck's quarter
deck and jumped into the sea.
Apart from that I could've been firing
or we could've been
we weren't firing ourselves,
but the British could've been
firing at castles.
A sea battle is a very
impersonal thing.
It won't happen again.
Not like that.