“The amount of data we’ve got is enormous,” Magellan chief executive Richard Parkinson said in a statement, and “the results are amazing.”
Parkinson called the effort an “unprecedented mapping and digitization operation on the Titanic … It took place over six weeks in 2022 and faced adverse weather and technical complications. But the -scan follows means the ship can be mapped in “exceptional detail,” according to the company.
Its scientists observed the gaping hole where the grand staircase once stood – the staircase made famous in the 1997 blockbuster movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. They even found champagne bottles and the serial number of a propeller.
The images released did not show any evidence of the more than 1,500 lives lost in the disaster.
Previous images of the ship – which struck an iceberg while en route to New York City and were discovered by American oceanographer Robert Ballard and others in 1985 – have been limited by low light levels and poor water quality.
Magellan’s process generated more than 715,000 images that provided the data that allowed its team to create a digital model of surprising clarity. It shows the bow and stern of the ship, which separates the wreck, as well as the three-mile junkyard in the landscape.
A specialist vessel was positioned in the Atlantic about 430 miles off the coast of Canada, with two submersibles – named Romeo and Juliet – deployed for several hours under the surface to map every millimeter of the wreckage.
The wreckage was not touched or disturbed in the process, the company said, and ended with a flower-laying ceremony in memory of the dead. Magellan is currently working with media company Atlantic Productions to produce a documentary about the project.
“I’ve been studying the Titanic for 20 years, but this is a real game changer,” Titanic explorer and researcher Parks Stephenson said in a statement. “What we saw for the first time was an accurate and true depiction of the entire destruction and debris site. I saw details that we had never seen before.”
He hailed the work as “the beginning of a new chapter” for the next generation of Titanic studies.
The scans will also give scientists and archaeologists a new level of access, says Helen Farr, maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton. They will allow Researchers to study the ship’s condition, document decay and better monitor the marine environment, Farr told The Washington Post.
“These 3D scans and images also tell the story of human disappearance,” he added, with personal items such as shoes and tools recovered from the bottom of the sea. “Living in Southampton, the port city where the RMS Titanic sailed in 1912, I know that these losses are not forgotten. More than 720 of the 900 crew are from the city. A generation was lost in this disaster. “
Even before the maiden’s ill-fated voyage, the ship was world-famous for its opulence and extravaganzas such as the gymnasium and swimming pool on board. Its passengers included members of the richest or most famous families in America and Britain, as well as immigrants on their way to a new life.
The ruins became a UNESCO protected heritage site in 2012, part of an effort to protect and preserve the remains. The ship’s steel continues to corrode and rust, said Titanic expert Leon Litvack, a researcher at Queen’s University Belfast — the city where the luxury liner was built.
“These scans are very encouraging. … He’s a terrible vessel,” he said.
Low oxygen levels in the deep sea helped keep the Titanic relatively preserved, Litvack said, and now advanced technology is helping to unravel many of its secrets. “This seemingly unsinkable ship died in a matter of hours,” he told The Post.
The new images may cause another surge of interest.
Part of the Titanic’s enduring appeal is the magnitude of the disaster and the mystery of what went so wrong. Is it the iceberg, the speed of the ship, the lack of lifeboats, the failure of SOS messages to get out – or all the factors? The “what ifs,” Litvack said, will continue to be debated for decades to come.
“It was more than a shipwreck,” he added. “It lingers in the public mind.”