A ‘digital twin’ of the Titanic has been created using 700,000 images of the famous wreck, providing a never-before-seen haunting view of the ship in her final resting place.
The ‘unsinkable’ Titanic, which sank on April 14, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg, lies 12,500 feet below the waves in the North Atlantic. More than 1,500 people died, about 70% of the passengers and crew on board.
However, while survivor testimonies at the time provided evidence of the crash, there are still questions about what exactly happened on that fateful night, questions that Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson hopes he can answer with the help of 3D digital scanning. .
Speaking to the BBC, Stephenson said the model was “one of the first important steps in moving the Titanic story towards evidence-based research, not speculation.”
While numerous crews have explored the wreck since it was located, due to the murky gloom on the ocean floor, only small sections of the ship have been visible at any given time.
But last summer, deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd and Atlantic Productions, which is making a documentary on the project, teamed up to create the incredible 3D reconstruction.
The team spent more than 200 hours surveying and capturing the wreck using submersibles, taking hundreds of thousands of images and stitching them together.
“The depth, almost 4,000m, represents a challenge, and there are also currents on the site, and we are not allowed to touch anything so as not to damage the wreck,” Magellan’s Gerhard Seiffert told the BBC.
“And the other challenge is you have to map every square inch, even the uninteresting parts, like in the debris field, you have to map the mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects.”
Details discovered include unopened champagne bottles, shoes, and a serial number on one of the propellers.
The Titanic in figures
3 years to build
882.75ft long
92.5 feet broad
3 propellers
7 covers
twenty lifeboats – only enough for a third of the passengers
735 first class passenger capacity
674 second class passenger capacity
1,026 crew capacity
1,503 losses, 815 passengers and 688 crew
“It allows you to see the wreck like you could never see it from a submersible, and you can see it in its entirety, you can see it in context and perspective,” Mr Stephenson said. And what it shows you now is the true state of the wreck.
The Titanic lies on the seabed in two parts, separated by about 800 m (2,600 ft). The bow, or front part of the boat, remains in very good shape after diving from the surface, but the stern, or rear part, did not do so well.
Adding to the damage from the night, the Titanic is slowly disintegrating as ocean microbes break down the wreck.
However, the new scan will preserve the Titanic in its 2023 state and could answer the mysteries of the world’s most famous sinking once and for all.
Speaking to BBC Today on Radio 4, Stephenson added: “I’m suspicious of the narrative we’ve grown accustomed to over the last century, and basically wondering whether or not the iceberg hit the broadside when we all came over.” accept.
“I am seeing a growing amount of evidence in recent years that suggests that the Titanic actually stayed on the ground, passing over a submerged ice shelf of the iceberg. That was actually the first proposed scenario in 1912, but it was soon buried by this 300-foot cut torn from the bottom, and that became the bump along the broadside (theory) we’ve all seen today.
‘There is still much to learn from the wreck, which is essentially the last surviving witness to the disaster.
He has stories to tell.
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