LONDON: New Discoveries from Titanic’s Digital Scan
A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner’s final hours.
The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 — 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster.
The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship’s lights on.
And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship’s demise.
The Digital Resurrection of Titanic
“Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell,” said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.
The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.
The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.
More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the “digital twin”, which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.
A New Perspective on Titanic’s Tragedy
Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalizing snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.
The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.
But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.
Unveiling Secrets of the Titanic
The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.
The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people’s cabins during the collision.
Experts have been studying one of the Titanic’s huge boiler rooms — it’s easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.
The Heroic Engineers of Titanic
This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.
All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.
“They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness,” he told the BBC.
Insights from Simulation
A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.
It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic’s blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.
The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.
The Ongoing Mystery of Titanic
Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.
The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.
The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinize every detail of the 3D replica.
“She’s only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time,” said Parks Stephenson.
“Every time, she leaves us wanting for more.” — BBC
