For 111 years, the Titanic has sat silently on the seafloor of the Atlantic ocean. Images of the famous ship are always fascinating. Haunting in the aura of its tragedy. The sheer size of the ship often restricts images to bits and pieces of the wreck. Deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd. has produced a full 3D scan of the ship in its entirety.
For Magellan Ltd., it’s the biggest scanning project they’ve ever undertaken. Remote controlled submersibles spent more than 200 hours traveling the length of the ship. The crafts took a total of 700,000 images from every angle. They’ve been put together into a highly detailed, full-scale representation of the ship. To see the wreck in its entirety is amazing. As we know, before capsizing, the Titanic broke in half.
That damage is fully visible in this scan, the bow and stern roughly 2,600 feet apart from one another.
Preserving A Disintegrating History
This means a great deal to historians who have studied the craft. It’s the first time it can be viewed in such detail. We all know the ship struck an iceberg. But how it came in contact with it is still disputed. Now the damage to the ship can be fully studied. Parks Stephenson, a long-time studier of the Titanic, is “blown away” by the images.
“It allows you to see the wreck as you can never see it from a submersible, and you can see the wreck in its entirety, you can see it in context and perspective,” Stephenson said. “And what it’s showing you now is the true state of the wreck.” But this is also just in time. The currents and high pressure have been taking their toll on the vessel. It has been gradually disintegrating since Robert Ballard and his team first discovered the site in 1985.
Obviously these new scans offer fantastic insight into further study of the vessel. Possibly even answering additional questions about how exactly the notorious iceberg strike impacted the ship, before the sea claims the wreckage completely.
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