A slight alteration in the Titanic’s direction could have saved it from sinking, experts have concluded after examining the most detailed digital scans of the shipwreck yet.
The largest deep-water mapping expedition in history has uncovered information about the disaster, including how hitting the iceberg straight on might not have been as catastrophic as the glancing blow it suffered.
The 3D scans are to be turned into a "location-based" experience in the UAE by early next year, said filmmaker Anthony Geffen, who initiated the expedition to map the shipwreck. “You’ll be able to dive into the Titanic using headsets in the future,” he said, without giving further details.
The findings are part of a new documentary, Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, produced by Geffen's Atlantic Studios, which starts on Friday on National Geographic and will stream on Disney+ and Hulu.
The ship, heading from England to New York in 1912, broke into two as it sank on April 14. More than 1,500 people were killed in the ice-cold waters of the North Atlantic.
Deep-sea mapping company Magellan took 715,000 digital images of the wreck at a depth of 3.8km, during a three-week expedition in 2022. The full-scale, 3D scan created the world’s most precise model of the shipwreck, which historians, engineers and forensic experts have analysed for two years.
Geffen, who followed Magellan on its expedition and first visited the site with deep-sea explorer Victor Viscovo in 2019, told The National that the new film “rewrites” the ship’s story, and will “give some resolution” to previously unsolved questions.
In the documentary, Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper and master mariner Chris Hearn walk through the 3D installation of the wreck.
Punctures the size of an A4 piece of paper in the ship’s hull were responsible for the ship’s demise, said Geffen, who heads the Atlantic Productions company.
Scattered fragments across the wreck sites reveal that the ship was cut along a narrow section of the hull. “If they had sailed it straight into the iceberg, it wouldn’t have sunk,” he told The National.
Experts also solved the mystery of how the lights remained on for several hours despite the Titanic's electrical systems being submerged.
Witnesses' accounts at the time said the engineers in the boiler room had worked right up to the last minute to keep the lights on. The team in 2022 discovered a steam valve in an open position near the boiler room, which is visible from the bottom outer edge of the wreck – corroborating that engineers had stayed behind to keep the lights on as survivors of the disaster had said.
About 35 engineers in one of the boiler rooms are believed to have remained at their posts for more than two hours after impact, keeping the electricity on and allowing wireless distress signals to be sent. “They saved hundreds of lives,” Geffen said.
Another unsung hero is First Officer William Murdoch, who was long accused of abandoning his post. One of the ship’s davits – the crane used to lift lifeboats - was found in an upright position, suggesting Mr Murdoch and his crew were preparing a launch moments before they were swept out to the sea.
This corroborates Second Officer Charles Lightoller’s evidence that Mr Murdoch was trying to launch one last boat two minutes before the ship went down. “This davit stands as new testimony that supports Lightoller’s version of events. It is exactly what Lightoller described,” said Mr Stephenson.
The images allowed for a new simulation of the collision at University College London which forensically reconstructs the ship’s final moments, showing how the ship was holed in the side, suffering small but fatal punctures.
"We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking," Jeom-Kee Paik, professor of Marine Technology, told the BBC.
