Titanic’s Last Hero

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories. More people have ventured into outer space than have been to where the Titanic rests two and a half miles down on the ocean floor. Lowell Litel has been one of the privileged few who has seen the Titanic firsthand. Lowell has played the part of Captain Smith at Titanic events all over the globe, and he has been entertaining guests at the Titanic Museum for more than fifteen years. Here’s Lowell Litel to tell his story and the story of the Titanic’s last hero.

00:00:49
Speaker 2: How do you do? This is Lowell Litel.

00:00:54
Speaker 3: I have an unusual story to tell you. I was home, minding my own business way back in nineteen eighty-seven. I heard about the Titanic. They’d discovered it, and what do you know? I got a phone call from the designer that was building an exhibit in Orlando on the Titanic.

00:01:21
Speaker 2: He called me. He said, “Lowell, we’ve gone…”

00:01:23
Speaker 3: “…through three hundred and fifty actors here in Orlando.”

00:01:27
Speaker 2: “Can’t find a captain,” he said.

00:01:30
Speaker 3: “I told these men, ‘I know someone that can play that part. He’s my next-door neighbor. He used to be a lead singer in one of my rock and roll bands.’”

00:01:41
Speaker 2: I had eight…

00:01:42
Speaker 3: …bands for twenty-two years, touring in the United States and Canada.

00:01:48
Speaker 2: And I went over there on a whim just to see what it was all about.

00:01:52
Speaker 3: And he opened the door, and there were six men sitting around the table, and he said, “Gentlemen, here’s Captain.” They took one look at me and they said, “Yep, you’re it.” I didn’t know what the captain looked like. But an hour later, I went through that souvenir shop, and I saw the front page of The New York Times, nineteen-twelve, a picture of Captain Smith looking right at me. And my first thought was, “My neighbor has taken my picture and pasted it on the front page of The New York Times!”

00:02:27
Speaker 2: “He shouldn’t do that! That’s wrong!” Well, I was there for…

00:02:32
Speaker 3: …about two years, and then I heard they were going to dive to the Titanic, and I thought, “Oh, that would be nice if I could do that.” So I called them, and they said, “No.” I waited two weeks and I called them again, and I said, “I’d like to go down to the Titanic again.” They said, “No, no, that’s for archaeologists and important people, wealthy people, people who have climbed Mount Everest, millionaires.” I waited two more weeks, and I – you know, I remember Winston Churchill made a famous speech during World War II. He said, “We won’t fight them in the air, we won’t fight them on land, we will fight them at sea, but we will never surrender.” I remember that. He was invited to speak at Harvard University after the war, and the professor said to the students, “Get your pads and pens ready, ’cause when this man speaks, it’s wisdom.” They flew him over from England. The old man hobbled up to the microphone and he said, “Never give up! Never, never, never, never give up!” And he turned around and sat down. I never forgot that. That was the best speech I ever heard. I called them again, and I said, “I’m the Captain of the Titanic. I’m in front of the camera, I’m in everyone’s home. I’m the one that’s talking about your exhibit. I believe if the media could say, ‘This man’s been down to see this ship,’ more people would be interested in what I have to say about it, and you’ll get more people there, and you’ll make more money.” It got quiet on the other end of the phone. Then the man said, “I think you’re right.”

00:04:29
Speaker 2: “Come along.”

00:04:32
Speaker 3: So I actually packed up, and I went to Saint John’s, Newfoundland. That’s where you leave from. And I got there, and they looked at me and they said, “You’re too tall!”

00:04:46
Speaker 2: “You won’t fit in there!”

00:04:46
Speaker 3: I said, “I’ll fit in there!” Now, I’m six foot four. I’m the tallest and the oldest who has ever been down to the Titanic. I was sixty-eight at the time. I said, “I’ll fit in there!” “Well, we don’t have a fire suit big enough for you.” “Fire suit? What’s this about a fire?” “You’ll be breathing one hundred percent oxygen. It could flash to a fire like Apollo 1 did.” “Well, if that’s the case, I’ll be burned to a crisp in ten seconds! What good is a suit?” They said, “Well, your name will be written on it.” “It’s for identification.” “Identification! I’m that tall guy down there!” Well, anyway, I got into the suit. That suit was a little too small, but I did get in one. Now, when I got on the Akademik Keldysh, that Russian dive vessel, I noticed on the back end of one of those subs, the protective shield that went around the propeller was held together with duct tape. Now, that doesn’t breed a lot of confidence, and I’m thinking to myself, “Do I really want to do this?” All I can think of is, “Well, I’ve lived a long life. I’m sixty-eight. If I die, I know where I’m going. That’s the important thing. And if I come back, I’ll have a story to tell.” And I came back, and I’ve been telling that story for twenty-one years all around the world. I told it in Shanghai, China, for two weeks. I told it in Singapore for two weeks. I’ve been to every state in the United States, every province in Canada where they’ve had these Titanic exhibits, sometimes two or three times in different cities. One day, I was eating dinner. Now, there are twice as many people out there that would like to go down, that would get a chance. So I knew I didn’t have any chance.

00:06:58
Speaker 2: But while I was eating, that…

00:07:01
Speaker 3: …fellow that I talked to on the phone came over to me, bent over, and said to me, “Lowell, you’re going down in the morning!”

00:07:10
Speaker 1: And what a unique and original voice we’re listening to. And that is, of course, the voice of Lowell Litel, who plays the part and has been playing the part of Captain Smith. When we come back, more of Lowell Litel’s story here on Our American Stories. Lihabib here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily, again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Lowell Litel’s story about being one of the privileged few who’s seen the Titanic firsthand and who also happens to play the part of Captain Smith at Titanic events all over the globe. Let’s return to Lowell Litel and his story.

00:08:30
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, my heart began to pound! I couldn’t believe it. They’re going to let me go down to the Titanic! Well, Fox Television followed me all around like I was an astronaut. Now, first of all, you’ve got to take your shoes off, because in the event that you pick up any oil from that mother ship… Walking on the deck and breathing one hundred percent oxygen, it could… If there’s a spark, that would be it! So I took my shoes off. I got inside, and with my long legs – what do you know – I kicked over the oxygen tank! Boy, it didn’t take long before that Russian pilot came alive and straightened that thing out!

00:09:15
Speaker 2: Now, I had no place to sit.

00:09:19
Speaker 3: I’m in a ball, and six and a half feet in diameter, nineteen inches thick, and there are three grown men in there, and it takes two and a half hours to get down two and a half miles to the wreck site. They turn off all the lights to conserve the batteries. Now, they turned that hatch down tight, and I knew then I couldn’t…

00:09:48
Speaker 2: …change my mind. I couldn’t see anything.

00:09:53
Speaker 3: All I could do was think about what I was about to see. I wasn’t going to see a movie. I was going to see the real thing! And when they turned on the lights, the Russian pilot says, “We’re almost there!” And I didn’t like what I saw. We were going too fast, and we bounced off the ocean floor! Oh my goodness! Oh, my goodness! Of course, it took five minutes for all that dust to settle down. And the first thing that I noticed was the sea life.

00:10:30
Speaker 2: It was so strange.

00:10:32
Speaker 3: There’s no light that far down on the ocean floor, no sun. So the crabs are white. The starfish were thirteen inches in diameter, five points, but none of them any larger than my little finger. Now, when they had turned on the lights moments later, I was right over the bow, the same spot where Jack in the movie held out his arms, saying, “I’m the King of the world!” We went right over that spot. I said, “Take me to the Captain’s cabin!” James Cameron said the side was already gone. They took me there. I was five feet from the Captain’s bath for ten minutes, while they were changing film.

00:11:17
Speaker 2: I found a wrench down there.

00:11:19
Speaker 3: The mouth on it was thirteen inches across, sticking straight up in the ocean floor like somebody throwing a javelin. And I noticed while I was picking items up off the ocean floor, there was a hat. It looked like a Derby hat, and it was in mint condition. There’s no current that far down, and I told the Russian pilot to go get that, and he did. There are two mechanical arms on the outside of that sub, and he picked it up, and they pushed a button, and a basket went out from underneath, and he let go of it to fall into the basket, and it disappeared like a cloud. The microorganisms, they’re eating up that ship at such a tremendous rate, it’s going to be an orange spot on the ocean floor within a hundred years now. I think that hat was probably made out of felt. Had it been made out of leather, it probably could make it because those microorganisms do not like the tanning process of leather. It repels them: their shoes and hats and bags. That’s why you see those things. I found enough items that I thought to myself, “I’m just going to stay focused on this and not get involved emotionally.” But after an hour and a half, all I could think of was: what really took place that night? Fifteen hundred souls slipped into eternity. All of them had plans to get to New York and start a new life.

00:13:02
Speaker 2: It never happened. Life can be short, folks.

00:13:05
Speaker 3: Make sure you tell your loved one every day how much you love them, and you better know where you’re going, because it’s going to happen to every one of us. We’re all going to die at one time or another. When it happens, it’ll be too soon. Just remember this: eternity is…

00:13:23
Speaker 2: …a long time to be wrong. Get it right!

00:13:30
Speaker 3: In fact, there’s a story about a second-class passenger whose name is Reverend John Harper. There’s a book entitled The Titanic’s Last Hero. It’s about Reverend Harper, and he was on his way to Chicago to preach. He had a revival service before he left, and he told the people in that service he said he was going to go to New York on that new ship called the Titanic. The next week, after the service, one of his parishioners came up to him and said, “Reverend, I have a bad feeling about that ship. I have an ominous feeling that something bad’s going to take place. I feel so strongly about it. I want you… I want you to go to New York, but I don’t want you to get on the ship. Please take the Lusitania. I’ll even pay for your ticket.” Reverend Harper thought about it. He says, “No, the Apostle Paul wouldn’t run away from danger. If anything happens, I’m ready.”

00:14:45
Speaker 2: And it happened.

00:14:46
Speaker 3: And when that Titanic started to go down, that Baptist minister ran around the deck shouting, “Women and children and unsaved people, get aboard the lifeboats!” You just can’t keep these Baptists quiet! He even gave his life vest to a man that was not a Christian. His daughter Anna was standing right next to him, and his sister-in-law was standing next to him. They both survived. His sister-in-law overheard the reverend when he gave that life vest to that man. He said, “Here, take this; I don’t need it. I’m not going down! I’m going out!” He’s in the water now—twenty-eight degrees. It feels like a thousand knives stabbing in, and a man drifted by on a piece of wood, and Reverend Harper shouted to the man…

00:15:48
Speaker 2: “Are you saved?”

00:15:52
Speaker 3: The man said, “No.” Reverend Harper shouted, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!” The man drifted off into the dark, and later the current drew him back, and Reverend Harper again shouted to the man, “Are you saved yet?”

00:16:09
Speaker 3: The man said, “I can honestly say that I am.” Reverend Harper’s last words were, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!” And with that, the Reverend slipped under the water and went to that frozen, watery grave. There were twelve people pulled from the water that night. Six of them lived.

00:16:36
Speaker 2: That man was one of them.

00:16:38
Speaker 3: And that story was told a few weeks later in Hamilton, Ontario, by that same man who said, “I listened to Reverend Harper’s last message and became a believer in Jesus Christ. With two miles of water beneath me… Titanic’s last hero: John Harper.”

00:17:02
Speaker 2: God bless you, folks.

00:17:05
Speaker 1: And what a piece of storytelling by Lowell Litel—not only his story, not only his passion for the Titanic, but telling the story of The Titanic’s Last Hero as well, as perhaps only he can do. We haven’t had many better storytellers on this show, and many better stories. A special thanks to Lowell Litel for sharing his story. He has been entertaining guests at the Titanic Museum for more than fifteen years. He is also the author of the inspiring read, Diving into the Deep. Lowell Litel’s story, the story of the Titanic, here on Our American Stories.