About : macy furniture night stands
Title : macy furniture night stands
macy furniture night stands
narrator: a spoonproves mightier than the bars at supposedlyescape-proof alcatraz prison. hoes: it's one of these mythsthat go around for decades already... that everyone wants to be solved. narrator: it's the most iconic prison escape in american history. on the night of june 11, 1962, 3 alcatraz inmates set outin a raft made of raincoats into the treacherous watersof san francisco bay. they were never seen again.
babyak: they disappeared, so you couldn't askfor a better ending, right? keep it going forever. narrator: now dutch scientists olivier hoes, rolf hut, and fedor baart want to determine what happened to the escaped convicts. man: new scienceon an old mystery. woman: they claim they solved the mystery of alcatraz. narrator: they've come to san francisco...
hut:you don't want to have to, like, paddle for your life in a last bidwhile you're dragged out there. narrator: ...to test their theory. and ride their own raincoat raft to freedom. humphreys: they have one shotat it, and it's gotta work. most people want them to make it. people want people to be a hero. and so you havea very difficult challenge. you make it...
that's a hero story. announcer: "secrets of the dead"was made possible in part by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbsstation from viewers like you. thank you. narrator: in holland, 10 millionpeople live below sea level, a precarious setting that's made the dutch world leaders in flood management. so when coastal engineer olivier hoes
was called to san franciscoto predict how rising sea levels will impact that city in years to come, it was just another job. the actual bay is, what,a shallow, just 4-5 meters deep. but in the center, it gets much deeper, it's about 20-30 meters deep. every time when thatwhen the tides go in or out, there's one big valley of waterflowing in and out every time. narrator: using state-of-the-art hydraulic software,
olivier created one of themost sophisticated flow modelsof san francisco bay ever built. hut: so i saw his screenwith all the little arrowsfor the water movement, and then alcatraz, bang, in the middle, and i thought, this is a story and a research waiting to happen. narrator:colleague rolf hut realized if you could use 3-d computer modeling to forecast future bay conditions, you could also use it to look into the past.
hut: science is about finding stuff out. so this is a historical study. normally we study future scenarios-- what could happen if-- and that's where we build all our models for. science is about using expertise in research that's actually relevant forpolicy-makers and the future, but it helps us understand something as cool as the escape from alcatraz.
narrator: alcatraz, "the rock." this civil war fort turnedmaximum security prison was said to be unbreakable. the men sent here, men likewhitey bulger and al capone, were just as tough. babyak:you're talking about 25,000 men in those days in federal prisons and 250 on alcatraz. so they were the mostaggressive, most assaultive, sometimes the most mentally ill 1%.
narrator: jolene babyak was just15 the night of the escape. her dad was acting warden. in 1962, she called alcatraz island home. [siren] babyak: the siren woke me up. i was late for school, and you know, my first thought obviously was, "that can't be an escape attempt." but of course i knew that in my heart that it was.
i met my mother on the stairs, and she was all kind of pumped up, and she said, "get dressed,there's been an escape." narrator: at sunrise the next morning, it became clear that "the rock" had been broken. convicts frank morrisand john and clarence anglin had used sharpened spoonsto dig through their cells. they left false grillsand dummy heads behind as cover. climbed upa 3-story utility corridor,
punched througha ceiling ventilation shaft, and ran across the cellblock roof. then they scrambled down a 4-story stove pipe, evaded guard towers, made their way down an embankment, and slid into the frigid waters of san francisco bay... leaving behind a handful of artifacts and one of america's most enduring mysteries. mahoney: if they made it, why,one hell of an achievement,
i'll tell you that. babyak: everybody was rootingfor morris and the anglins, and they still are. narrator: unlike many at alcatraz, morris and the anglinsweren't violent offenders. they were low-end bank robbers sent to "the rock" after repeated escape attempts at other prisons. babyak: morris was an interesting character.
he'd been in prisons almostevery day since he was 13. dyke: he also hadwhat was listed on the test as the highest i.q. narrator: john and clarenceanglin grew up sharecropping alongside 14 brothers and sisters. they'd robber their bank using a toy gun. babyak: morris kept the anglins in line because i think they were boisterous and cocky and wanted everybody to know that they were cool.
baart: it's the best way to escape, but the question is the best place isstill to go here because... narrator: to tackle the mystery of what happened to morris and the anglins, the dutchmen used old tidal charts to build a 3-d model that re-creates the currentsfrom the night of the escape. baart: the tide is taking all the water out and...
narrator: they then called in friend and colleague fedor baart, an expert in particle tracking. hut: particle sounds really technical, but in this case, that would just be a raft with 3 people in it and what would happen given the tides, where would it go? baart: i took the computer modelfrom olivier here and put a-- asked the computer modelthat simulates human behavior. and actually adds battling behavior.
that's the thing that i created. narrator: the resulting model enabled them to track the paths of 50 virtual rafts launching from alcatrazon the night of the escape. what they discovered isthe first scientific proof the men could have survived. hoes: our study revealedthat the timing was crucial to get to the shore on the other side. that is actually dependentenormously on when they left.
narrator: to escape and survive, the inmates would have had tolaunch during a narrow window between 11:30 p.m. and 12:00 midnight. if they did, the findingssuggest the inmates could haveridden the outgoing tide to an unexpected place. for decades, common wisdom said that the escapees headed for the landmass nearest alcatraz-- angel island. but the dutchmen think thiswould have been a fatal mistake.
based on the currents, that trajectory would haveswept the men out to sea. hoes: the actual finding isthat they could use the tides to leave alcatraz just on time so that they didn't have to paddle that far. so horseshoe bay wasthe most likely destination according to our research and not angel island. narrator: the first morningof their investigation. the team is headed to horseshoe bay,
near the foot of the golden gate bridge. 5 days from now, the tidesand currents will match what the inmates faced back in 1962. fedor, rolf, and olivier plan tolaunch their own homemade raft and put their theory to the ultimate test. hut: so they launched over there, near the chimney, right? and the tide would have taken them here into horseshoe bay. baart: yeah, the currentswould take you
right into this bay. yeah, but if youtime it wrong, you got this funnel... baart: being sucked out. you're being pulled out and you just die ofhypothermia over there. or sharks. hoes: i'm actually moreconcerned about these boats. hut: oh, you meanthe big cargo boats.
exactly. because if we are in the middle of the shipping lane... then we havethe right of way because wedon't have power. that's how it works,right? uh-huh. i'm more concernedabout the boat, actually putting the boatinto the water and having it stay afloatfor an hour. baart: if you look at the san francisco bay, it's actually a quite interesting bay
because it sucks in all this water and spits it outthrough this narrow channel just below the golden gate bridge. narrator: a deep underwater canyon cuts right in front of horseshoe bay. it creates a narrow,300-foot-wide wall of water flowing in and out through the golden gate. this intense band of current poses the biggest risk to the team.
hoes: it looks more or less like a highway of water that's going in and out every time. and one of the thingsthat we have to take care of is that we have to pass thathighway as soon as possible when we leave alcatraz. otherwise we will be taken out to the ocean. narrator: fedor believes that even if they hit the wall of water, the human urge to survivewill generate the power needed to paddle through it.
baart: we knew that it would be the hardest part of the survival. i estimated that peoplewould make a leap of faith. and so the last 100 meters, paddle really fast. but i'm wondering now if it's even possible if you have that urge to surviveto make that last 100 meters. narrator: if morrisand the anglins did hit the bay in the dutch team's timeline, would their raft have stayed afloat
for the hour the computer model says it would have taken to reach horseshoe bay? the only way to find out is to build the most historically accurate raft possible and launch in the same tidal conditions. hut: and at that time,the raft needs to be done. so that creates a limited timeframe to actually build it and let it dry. it puts some tension on the team,
which may have not been representative of what the inmates had because they had 6 weeks, but it puts some tension onthe team to get it done on time. narrator: to build their raft, the team has called on eric humphreys. a longtime nantucket boat builder, he's now chief of animatronics for the shop that creates macy's magical christmas window displays in new york city.
i made this the other day. look at that, huh? sparks. narrator: still,eric's first love is the sea. humphreys: my day job currently is, i, uh... i make glittery elves. but i've always loved boats. i've always been a sailor since i was a little kid. narrator: the raft needs to be more than just buoyant.
they want to build a raft as close to the original as possible. hoes: it would be nice to seehow they made their raft, whether theystitched it or not. what kind of glue they used. exactly. narrator: so beforethey launch into construction, eric and olivier need to see the artifacts the escapees left behind. so here is photographic documentation
from the escape. humphreys:"various tools made or stolen for escape." this is a whole treasure trove of things. narrator: after the escape, the fbi recovered more than 80 homemade tools and other items the inmatesspent months constructing. female guard: including files, spoons to chisel things away.
humphreys:hey, look, and drill bits. man, these guys likedbuilding stuff. have you ever madeyour own wrench? i have nev--i've madeso many things in my life, i've never made my own wrench. humphreys: the thing that struck me about those artifacts was the attention to odd details. maybe if i was sitting in prison all day contemplating this,they would seem normal to me.
what is that,a periscope? the thought was they stick the periscope out the little holes in the ventilator to see if anyone's looking. hoes:the periscope is not something that you really need if you tried to escape, and they put a lot of effortin making this periscope. and the same counts for the other tools. guard: this is one of two paddles.
one was found on the cellblock top roof, the other one was found floating in the bay. hoes: the thing that strike me most was that the paddles hadlarge bolts on the backside. i can imagine that in the darkif you did not pay attention and you have these boltssticking out to your raft, then you might make a leak in your raft without even having left alcatraz. well, what could be usedas a cutting board?
humphreys: i bet you they cutthe raft pieces on that. look, those are knife marks. narrator: above all, ericand olivier want to confirm what the raft was made of and gather cluesabout how it was constructed. they've already found a vintage raincoat based on archival photos. the question is,will it match the real thing? humphreys: oh, here it comes. here it comes.
oh, yeah. yeah, i thinkwe nailed it on the raincoat. the buttons are the same, the sleeves are the same. what was that label? yeah, there should be a label right there. yep, that's it. hoes: ours is the 18561. humphreys: our labelseems to match. look at that. this is where he goescrying now.
look at that,there's your brother, baby. narrator: raincoats like thesewere common on "the rock," even on sunny days. ha ha! the joke on alcatraz wasthat the birds were better shots than the guards. so guys would sometimes weartheir raincoats out to the yard, and it would be a simple matterof wearing your raincoat out and then taking it offand somebody else picking it up. oh, and the inflator. that's what i was curious about.
a straw. a straw. look at that. you can actually see their teeth marks on it. narrator: incredibly, the inmates crafted more than just the raft. they also made life vests. humphreys: i'm thinking about getting out of prison. i'm just gonna build that raft and go. i'm not gonna screw around with a life jacket. so this is a pontoon from the raft that wasn't actually used, correct?
correct. the pontoon remnant hadwhat was clearly hand stitching. i don't know. i get the feeling like this was, like, some kind of test. so i'm wonderingif they just wanted to see what was the best construction technique given the materials they had. the ingenuity kind of goes counter to what you hear about a lot of these guys. some of these guys are claimed not to be,
you know, the sharpest pencils in the box, and here they are,they're making their own tools, they're making periscopes, they're making, you know, rafts in prison attics and somehow not getting caught. and i don't know if that speaks to these guys being really clever or everyone watching them being really, you know, not so clever.
babyak: it became so elaborate, right? a raft and then life jackets and, you know, paddles and masks. it just got bigger and bigger, right? there's safety in that sophistication. and that's often the case. the exciting fun part is the inside the prison, the bragging rights, the ego, the fun, the hope.
but once they hit land, not so fun. narrator: the visit hasoffered up interesting clues. the inmates may have stitchedthe raft and used strawsor hoses to inflate it. but how they glued the raincoatstogether remains a mystery. i'm interested in this glue. it's liquid plastic for book repair. humphreys: i don't knowwhat that means, but somebody knowswhat that means. narrator: day two of constructing the raft.
eric and olivier have askedadhesives chemist bill leach to come by and help them figure out what kind of glue might havebeen on alcatraz in 1962. leach: what they used and would the prisoners have something similar to it. you're gonna be dealing with materials that don't absorb water or solvent, so it's gonna have to be a surface bond. it's going to have to bond materials
that are likely to stretch a little bit. narrator: glue that stretches normally serves an industrial purpose. it makes sense they'd have access to it because "the rock" wasn't just a prison; it housed alcatraz industries, cranking out furniture, shoes, and gloves for the u.s. army. humphreys: my understandingis they had carpentry,
they had some sort of boot shop for rubber boots, and some sort of furniture shop. so they may have been fairly bright guys who had connections, and somebody would have told them, "don't go to the furniture department for your adhesive; go to the shoe department." narrator: there they would have found a waterproof glue perfect for the job.
leach: yes, here we go, here we go. poly-- [indistinct] polychloropene. bingo. narrator:[indistinct] polychloropene, otherwise known as contact cement. humphreys: and the contact cement, which seems the most likelythat they would have, because not only do they needlots of it to make a raft, there needs to be so much of it they can steal this large quantity of it
without people going, "where's all the glue?" narrator: but according toat least one alcatraz guard, stealing glue on "the rock"might have been easier than it seems. mahoney: they really didn't keep track. the other penitentiaries i was at we kept track of the contact cement. but at alcatraz, we really didn't. my recollection was one-gallon cans, and they might have gottensome of that old used glue, too,
in those cans. narrator: with stolen contact cement, the inmates would have needed more than 50 raincoats to build their raft. but for eric and olivier, vintage raincoats aren't an option. humphreys:we've looked at making the raft out of the actual jackets that the prisoners used, but one, they're kind of, youknow, very difficult to find,
and two, the material seemed tobe after, what is it, 50 years? it seems to be rotting. i think this is the closest we can possibly find for modern equipment. it's the same thickness. it says it's pvc. leach: pvc. that's important because that's what it would have been
in 1962. you gonna come with us? oh, i'm busy that day. we'll get youa little drink umbrella. narrator: with glue and materials set, they have 3 days left to crafta historically accurate design and get the job done. humphreys:i think some people are slightlynervous about the timing of it. i'm not. in my job,there's always a deadline,
and it's always something that no one's done before and there's always problems,but in the end, it gets done. it's kind of likean all or nothing, you know? if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly. well, raincoats? humphreys: raincoats. that this is the actual raincoat that they used. i've got some documentation. humphreys:yeah, right here. oh, here. ok. "the conspirators realized
"that once they had reached the water's edge, "it would be no mean feat inflating a 14x6 foot life raft by mouth." that's a really big raft. 5 jackets. 5 jackets. two jackets. and 10 jackets for the floor. so that's 22 jackets at least. i'm gonna usethe sleeve herefor our test.
we're gonna make a tiny,miniature pontoon out of this. ugh, this is fumes some. i don't know about you,buddy, but i am feeling them. how do you wantto seal it after the strawsare in there? hoes: so i keptfolding backwards and put it under,for example. humphreys: pretty clever.
wow.and it's holding air. briefly. uh. yeah, right here. this is what i was worried about. narrator:making the pontoons airtight is turning out to be a challenge. there's your leak. this seam's no problem.
this is filled up... it had nothing to do with the straw. it was leaking through all the seams. that is, um... disappointing. baart: and so if you look at howolivier and eric built a raft, there's a lot of choices you can make to make it better. and all these choices that you can make try to stick to the historical accurate side of them,
and that makes the raft less floatable. but it makes it much more realistic. we're gonna have to figure a better way of sealing that. narrator: althoughthe actual raft was never found, the stitched life vestsrecovered after the escape were surprisingly well built. humphreys: after the escape,they found these life vests. they wanted to test them,so they put weights on them, inflated the life vests
until it lifted the weights off the floor, and they held air for hours,which is kind of amazing. narrator: eric now thinksthe stitching on the life vests was probably critical to theevolution of the raft itself. who knows how many life vests they made? that could have been the,you know, 400th life vest, and the first one didn't work. it looked like our bags that we tried, and i assume once they've got that worked out,
they transfer that knowledge and use it to build a large, ocean-going raft. and at first everyone just kind of ignored it because, you know, stitching'skind of a pain in the butt, and we're hoping it was, like, a mistake, but it's becoming clearthat the stitching is necessary to keep the air in. narrator: as eric pushes ahead with building the raft, the others are meeting someonedeeply interested in their work.
that thing gets sucked into this current. it's really strong. narrator: more than 50 years after the escape, the u.s. marshals service is still hunting morris and the anglins. mike dyke has been on the case for the past 13 years. dyke: every piece of evidence that comes up, every lead that comes up is evaluated, even if something coming upthis long after the escape could determine whether we needto continue to focus efforts
on looking for live people or try to find remains of peoplewho might have washed ashore, you know, 50 years ago. narrator: they're excitedto share their own findings, but they really want to gatherdetails from marshal dyke about the time the raft hit the water. dyke: there's no way to know for sure. that's a big variable, when they left. there was a noise at 10:30,so that's assuming...
that's what time we assumethat they finally were able go get out the top. yeah, and then they had to go over the roof and down that pipe. humphreys:over a fence. over the fence. over the fence. and they would have had to get the raft over the fence without puncturing it on the barbed wire. and then inflating it. so you're at least looking at an hour.
dyke: it could have been.it could have been that long. yeah, so thenthe 11:30 window. hoes: if the escape is this time, then it actually ends up here. this is our current scenario to go with. dyke: the 3-d model was really useful because previously there wasa couple cartoon-type drawings of it. other than that, you don't see an actual live view of what the currents were doing that night.
so this is helpful in understanding what happened that night and hopefully come up with a more viable answer to what i've been doing for the last 13 years. hut:so at 10:30 a noise was heard. that's what the marshal told us. that gives us an anchor point. so it's really important that we know what happened step by step so we can determinewhen they entered the water.
narrator: to accurately re-create the timing of the escape, the dutch team is heading back to "the rock" for expert insight. hut: our research really focused on re-creating the tidal situation that these escapees experienced, but to know that, we need inputfrom the historians at alcatraz to know what happened step by step so we can determine when possibly they could have entered the water.
narrator: rolf and olivierare meeting alcatraz historian john martini... martini: that's where clint eastwood and the others come down in the movie "escape from alcatraz." narrator: ...who will help themretrace the path of the escape. martini: this is the access to the cell house. so this was the cell of alan west, who some people consider to have been the fellow who came up with the whole concept. narrator: of all the characters involved,
alan west is the least knownbut arguably the most important. babyak: west didn't getmentioned in the newspapers because he dididn't go. you know, he got stuck behind. narrator: unable to punch through his cell in time to join morris and the anglins, it was west who told the fbithe details of the plan, including the fact that the men intendedto paddle to angel island.
dyke: there was a misconception that morris was the mastermind of the whole plan. more than likely,west at least initiated it. he was the most dangerous. i mean, a prisoner had told me west didn't walk, he slithered. that's the holethat they excavatedto get out. they drilled a great bigrectangular perforation in the wall,
and then once they hadweakened the wall, then they were ableto break out large and relatively rapidly. narrator: chiseling through a foot of concrete was a toughand potentially noisy job. but thanks to the prison reformmovement of the early '60s, alcatraz was now offeringart classes and music hour. [music playing] babyak: the music hour then justbecame a cacophony of sound...
and probably when they did a lot of their digging. oh, lonely in there. the concrete up here is really bad. narrator: despite "the rock"'s fearsome reputation for being inescapable, by spring 1962, the aging prison was falling apart. babyak: the toilets in the cell house were plumbed with saltwater. so saltwater was coursing through those pipes for over 50 years.
plumbers would go in there to fix them, and they would disintegrate. martini: so you were constantly having flooding saltwater. and that would destroyyour concrete and your rebar. martini: want to go into the... corridor? corridor? sure, let's do it. baart: [whistles] wow. the actual weakest spot in the concrete is close to the vents where they got through.
narrator: saltwater erosionand shoddy constructionalong the base of the wall meant that convicts were digging through the weakest spot of their cells. martini: once they got out hereinto the utility corridor, basically it's like a jungle gym of pipes and supports straight up 3 stories plus to a flat, open areaat the top of the cell block. narrator: every night for 6 weeks, the inmates climbed 3 storiesthrough this web of pipes to a hidden walk.
martini: we're standingon the roof of thetop tier of cells, and then above usis the roof of theactual cell house. this is just a void. this is where they set uptheir workshop. narrator: here they would build the raincoat raft, periscope, drills, life vests, and tools that would make theirs the most sophisticated escape in american history. west had convinced the guards
to let him work unsupervised in the loft during daytime hours. part of alan west'swhole cover story for being up here was that he was painting,and he indeed was. if you look right hereat the ceiling, this is where alan westleft off painting. you can actually seethe brush strokes. narrator: west wasn't just looking for a place to build a raft.
he was looking for a wayto get out of the cell block and onto the roof. mahoney: they volunteered to do this cleanup up on top of the cells. well, because they knewthat if they could get up there, maybe look at those holes in the ceiling that they could maybe go out of there, and they were certainly--couldfigure it was old and rusty, and it was. it was right on target, mm-hmm.
narrator: the holes in the ceiling were old ventilation shafts. and the one above the loftworkspace wasn't just rusty, it was the only one not cemented in place. martini: and they hiton the idea of... convincing the guards thatthey needed to put blankets to close this area off. babyak: that was one ofthe things about alcatraz, was it was spotlessly clean. i mean, they polished those floors.
if you look at pictures of it, they were shiny. one day west goes up to the top of the block, and with a little broom he,you know, moved some dust down, you know. and it didn't take long for thelieutenant to walk over there or for a guard or for a prisoner to complain-- "hey, there's dust in my cell!what's going on up there?" and so west just doubles back and he says, "you know, i got to work upthere and it's really dusty. maybe we could hang some blankets."
mahoney: normally we put a guard with 'em at all times, but he said, "oh, just goand check on them now and then." not a good idea, not with an alcatraz convict. everyone was under the gun 24 hours a day. hut: but then there was no guard here watching him. martini: no. the feelingseems to have been once he was let up hereand he was locked in, you know, what couldhe possibly do?
where could he possibly go? hut:i mean, they're on alcatraz. what could possibly happen? what could possiblygo wrong? narrator: on the night of june 11, 1962, it was go time. by 9:30, west was having troublebreaking through the last bits of his cell when frank morris appeared, asking for water. dyke: he was thirsty, wanted a glass of water.
so he handed him a glass of water through that little hole in the back of his cell that he was still working on,and that was about 9:34. narrator: it was the last time anyone would see frank morris alive. martini: there was a giant crash sometime around 10:30, which is apparently when theventilator cap was pushed off. so at 10:30, a noise was heard, and everybody goes with the story
that that is the vent coverthat falls onto the roof. martini: and this isthe footprint of the pipe. this is the route down, and the fbi photographs showlittle black footprints running around down here as they were waiting forthe other guys to come down. it's almost like a bugs bunny or something. except this was deathly for real. hut: yeah. essentially what they were doing
is they were followingtheir nose towards the water. hoes: what's your best guess for them leaving alcatraz? 11:15, 11:30? and that'sjust a guess. that would fit really nice with our model result. so then--because that is really in the time frame, that if they went into the water, they had the best chance to reach horseshoe bay.
narrator: back at the shop, time is running out, and they haven't even successfully inflated their first pontoon. humphreys: i went shopping. black tape like they had. hoes: all right. i got hoses and tubes. it's gonna be like a raft hookah. narrator: they know the inmates used stitching. whoa.
you can hardly tell i've never sewn before in my life. all right, first pontoon. think it's gonna hold air? let's inflate. let's do it. narrator: the moment of truth. if it doesn't hold air, they'll never make their tidal window. if i pass out, leave without me, man. save yourself. narrator: the stitching, itseems, was the missing element.
hoes: i don't seebubbles for air. humphreys: all right, i think we've built a raft... i think it's gonna leak like a freaking sieve, and we're gonna spend the entire time pumping it up. hell, you can probably even blow into it fast enough. i have more respect for them after attempting the work myself in, you know, relatively ideal conditions.
if i need more glue, i can go get more glue. i don't have to sneak it in from the cafeteria, and no one's gonna shoot me...probably, so...and i'm having trouble. i don't think we're fitting 3 people in this thing. if they were my size,it will fit. what are you saying? saying too much pizza? all right.
narrator:with the pontoon design set, it's a scramble to get the rest of the raft built, leaving just one dayfor the contact cement to dry. across town, rolf and fedorhave one last place to test their theory before facing the bay itself. this swimming pool is representing the entire pacific. kendall: yeah, yeah. so this is a large physical model
of the san francisco bay and delta system. hut: the tidal cycleover there is only 15 minutes. so what if i go out one hour after low tide? and then 15 minutes later, you can test what if i go out two hours after low tide. kendall:it's used in missing person cases in particular. when a body washes up on shore somewhere, the question is often asked, "well, where did this person enter the water?"
and so the ability to go through a 12-hour tidal cycle in 15 minutes and watch where things go is oneof the beauties of this tool. hey, guys,look what i built. a little boat,a little release mechanism. kendall: uh-huh. some tape, some super glue,some office supplies. but i think the tideis going out right now, which would bewhen we said that they went. i'm just gonna put it in.
this is my kindof science. [whistles] kendall: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. hut: we just had our floaty going with the tides. so this would be without paddling. if they just let the rafttake them where itwould take them. yeah. so this is the tidal slack point. it should be. slowing down narrator: slack tide is thebrief window of slowing current
that happens betweenthe incoming and outgoing tides. kendall: you've got to really time it around the slack water. if it's not slack water, everybody goes out the gate. yeah, i think if they went out the golden gate, it was probably history for them. narrator: on the first attempt, without paddle power, the raft is swept out to sea. hut: and you see exactlythe same thing as in the model.
you go straight into the middleof the golden gate bridge, out into the pacific and die. what we did in our computer model is we looked at the difference between what if you just go with the flow versus what if you paddle. but then of course,i cannot put paddling mice or i think even ants at that scale on it. so we did a final attempt,and in the final attempt,
fedor was holding an office fan that mimicked the northwards effect that paddling could have. kendall: yeah, so this iswhen i think they had a chance because the currents are not that strong. hut: it's notthat strong. narrator: the second time,fedor uses an office fan to simulate the forward motionof men paddling the raft. so i'm just going to give a bit of northern movement.
baart: in the last hundred meters, i had to turn up the knobs to full speed. narrator: when the raftapproaches the strong band of current blocking it from horseshoe bay, fedor cranks up the fan. hut: as if that last rush of adrenaline and, "oh, my god, we're gonnadie" rush of adrenaline gave them enough energy to doa final paddle and make it. baart: oh, nice!
kendall: oh! hut: nice! hey, there you go. there we go! that's how you do it. baart: it was interesting to see that this float actually ends up exactly where we predicted. hut: yeah, i want to seeyou do that in two days. for real.
if you've got any kind of speed and the vessel doesn't sink, looks very doable to me. would you be ableto make it? given that the boat holdsand that there's no freight, whatever going in between. but from just a flowand water movement perspective, doable. we might live.ha ha!
narrator: what they've seen here suggests their computer model is right. if the escapees were able to get past the invisible current of water blocking horseshoe bay, they could have survived. it also may have solved another mystery. after the escape, searchersfound paddles and other debris near angel island, which gave rise to the theorythe men made landfall there.
but the dutch model showsthat when the tide's reversed, items dropped in the surf off horseshoe bay are pushed right back to angel island. hut: oh, here,yeah, look. this is, uh...this is... narrator: as they wrap up, the team gets a text from olivier over at the tech shop. hoes: so these arethe pontoons.
so the final thingis that the floor has got to be gluedon top like that, and it's got toall be inflated, and it holds 3 men. there's gonna be 3 chambers: a stern, aft chamber,and two large chambers in front, and they'll have their own inflator hose. so this way, each individual paddler can have their own hose, and you blow into it to keep ahead of any leaks that may occur.
narrator: with the raft finally done, they've asked marshal dyketo come by and take a look. hut: that seemssmallish. dyke: wow. it gets bigger. wow. that's pretty big. hoes: that would fitthe 3 of us. i have 100% confidence there will be zero leaks. dyke: you know, they used a similar-type glue. the dimensions we believe were accurate.
i believe it wasa very realistic portrayal of, you know,how things would've ended up. so you think you'd get in this thing? i don't believe i would. oh, come on. given the trailing boat and... if i was desperate,i would get in it. humphreys: i think if anything's gonna fail on the raft, it's gonna be a seam or it's gonna get ripped
on some unforeseen piece of metal someplace. hoes: i don't think that's gonna happen. humphreys: there's gonna besome huffing and puffing into those tubes, but i really do think it's gonna make it. narrator: by 7 p.m. the next evening, they're headed to alcatraz. the window to launch is between 8:00 and 8:30, a rare interval when the bay'scomplex tidal conditions
will match those from the night of the escape. dines:usually around sundown whenthe inland valley pulls off, this strong onshore breeze, you know, fades, and it gets nice. this year is an el nino year and the weather is a little bit unusual, so the prevailing conditions may not prevail. as a result of what we're noting is that the wind is a little bit more south than usual,
from the south, with an earlybit of the ebb kicking in, the chop is getting a lot rougher. narrator: the water is rough. winds are blowing at 25 knots. the team worries their raftwon't stand a chance. hut: those are pretty big waves, like some 60 centimeters to a meter waves with foam caps on, and it's pretty scaryfor a little boat like us.
so we're gonna wait as long as we can within that tidal window. hope that the sun going down, temperature differencebetween the sea and the land going down a bit that the wind would easeso that we have conditions that are as near as we can achieve today to what happened back in the day, '62. i think it's a fair test of the concept. you know, the guys that made the escape originally,
you know, maybe they were able to pick a night where it was calm. i don't really know. but i think that if they're able to pull this off today with all the challenges that are present, it really is a strong affirmation that, yeah, absolutely this could be done. narrator: san francisco bayisn't known for calm waters. with winds now hitting 30 knots, this will be the most realistic attempt ever.
dines: i think that that's the problem with a lot of re-creations is they kind of pick a perfect day. this is a very typical day,and the challenges are real. hut: well, it's now 10 to 8:00, but it's still pretty rough out here. yeah, like 8:15 we'll probably go into the water. we got to start filling up the raft then. when you guys first get into the boat,
just give us an ok, so international ok. any type of major medical emergency, fist up in the air. fist up in the air for memeans end of this mission, it failed,get back into the boat. hut: when i saw the raft coming together and being inflated for the first time, i grew more confident. but just before we launched our little raft,
all that confidence went awaywhen i saw these big waves. how are we gonna do this, guys? it's not that we can change anything now, so let's just do this, see where we end up. go. careful. don't let go. we're going! go, go, go! narrator: like morris and the anglins,
their raft has never been tested. hut: can i go in? narrator: will it hold up or disintegrate under the weight of 3 grown men? ok, guys. all right, it's 10 past 8:00. all clear!we're in the boat! let go! let got! humphreys: and they're off!
good luck, guys! see you in an hour! looks like it's holding air. i mean, they're huffing and puffing, but they're going the right direction and they ain't sinking. their hair's dry. what more could they want? narrator: according to their model,
they will have to hithorseshoe bay around 9 p.m. that's when the tidal slackwill slow the outgoing current and give them the best chance to paddle through the underwatertorrent blocking their way. baart: when we were floating in the bay, i really felt this isa great thing we're doing, putting science into reality. humphreys: we're about, what,15 minutes in, 10 minutes in? they're a good long ways from alcatraz,
probably 20% there. there's a little bit of water in the boat, they said, and that's only from when they got in. i think the thing's holding up. it looks like getting out of alcatraz is easy. hut: yeah, everything is leaking, but we are holding up fine. humphreys: they only got one guy paddling, though. the other two people areinflating the raft constantly to keep up with the leaks that are in it.
narrator: as darkness sets in, the seas don't calm, they get rougher. humphreys: they're about to hitsome pretty good swells, the biggest we've seen so far. i'm not sure if it's wake from a ship or it's just current going through this part of the channel, but i think they're gonna geta little bit wetter now. narrator: at 50 minutes in,they're hitting the wall of current they feared. tidal slack hasn't slowed itnearly as much as they'd hoped.
the dutchmen are at riskof being drawn out to sea. humphreys: 6-0 minutes. waves are getting a little stronger, and i believe they are starting to get sucked towards the golden gate, so if they want to make land, they have to, uh, they have to paddle like crazy right now. according to the captain, if you're gonna make it, y'all got to paddle that way
because we're starting to drift towards the bridge. narrator: if they do get pulled under the bridge, this experiment could turn deadly. humphreys: i think they're getting tired. olivier had a cramp in his leg or his arm, had to rest a little bit. and you know, it's not over yet, but these guys-- these guys got to paddle. you guys see this boat overthere, they got their light on?
aim for that light over there, that bright one! narrator: horseshoe bay now liesless than 200 yards ahead. humphreys: so we're about an hour and 5 minutes in. according to gps, we're making about 2.5 knots mostly from the current. unfortunatelyit's all towards the bridge and not towards land. it looks they're still tryingto keep up the inflation. they just have one guy, olivier, paddling.
i can see their destination, very, very close. and they have stopped paddlingand have just gone to inflating. i don't know if that meansthey're just getting tired or the leak is getting more serious. you are losing ground. if everybody can't paddle,i think-- humphreys: we're aboutan hour and 10 minutes in. we just had a chat with them and told them they all need to paddle.
we just don't want them too close to the bridge. and if they get too close to the bridge, it's kind of game over. narrator: exhausted and accelerating toward the golden gate, an upheld fist signals it's time to turn back. humphreys: we're gonna go overand pick 'em up now, i think. we're coming! hut: pick us up! humphreys: we're coming for you guys!
pull yourself in. fedor's in! it's stuck in the raft. hold the rim! i'm holding it, ok? there you go. all right. hoes: get the raft in! jesus!
hut: look, i'm calling it, we are dead! dines: we got 'em all aboard. everyone's safe. we got the raft. the raft'sfeeling light. hut: they could have done it. it's just that one guy paddling, two guys blowing is not enough to get the speed to the north. and you can see that in our model. it's like a big calm going in,
and then--and we should havebeen maybe to the north of that current before it went so narrow. like if you, uh,if you just get south of it, then, uh, then basicallyyou are basically doomed. humphreys: and that's whatscience is all about, you just learn more. if you just have one data point, one story, that's not really science. you need to have multiple data points
so that you can see what the influence of different factors is, so what we just did is given the exact tidal circumstances, our data point says they wouldhave drifted to the gate. baart: we tried to believethis would take over an hour, so that was correct, but i thought we, uh, we would have a bit more time to get in here. so the things we computed actually happened, but i think we are mainlymissing this leap of faith
and the spirit to survive, and i think if you are really escaping, you have much more adrenaline. so now this comes to this experience, i still think they wouldhave been able to make it. ah, so, um, a bit unfortunate. but, uh, look what we did. we managed to do it for 95%. we were approximately 50 meters from the golden gate.
hut: 95% is usually scientifically significant, right? humphreys:these guys were very capable. i think the raft could havetheoretically made it, but i don't think it did. i think they're dead. i think they're floatingout there or on the bottom... for the same reason everyoneelse says, "where are they?" narrator: for the team, it's been a disappointing but insightful night.
for former prison guards, the results reinforcea gut instinct they've had for over half a century now. based on the smallest ofevidence pulled from the bay just days after the escape. mahoney: i was given authorityto go out and start looking for them. you're going around and around and around. they'd see these items floating, and then they would retrieve it and bring it in
and try to dry it out. and we got surprisingly enoughquite a few correspondence that they had maybe withtheir parents or loved ones, things that were very dear to them. it could be a photograph of their father or mother or a loved one, maybe their girlfriend. it's items that they wouldreally want to keep with them, but i think they had to give it up. narrator: more than 50 years ago3 men took a desperate gamble.
mahoney: and i've talked to many, many people, and they really hope they made it. interviewer:how do you feel? oh, hell, i... well, i wouldn't mind. it would be all right. i'd like to know what happened to them. narrator: but tonight the bayis holding its secrets close, and the mystery of alcatraz continues.
announcer: this program is available on dvd. to order, visit shoppbs.org or call 1-800-play-pbs.