After being found in 1985, the Titanic has been the subject of numerous excursions to the wreck site. ROV dives have made exploring, discovering, and documenting the wreck possible. They’ve also helped document the gradual deterioration of the ship. As the BBC reports, the last expedition brought good news and bad news. Researchers found one treasure, but came back with news that we had lost another.
The latest expedition. RMS Titanic, Inc., which holds the legal rights to salvage the Titanic’s wreck, conducted two uncrewed dives a few weeks ago. The company used a vehicle equipped with high-resolution cameras and scanning equipment. This is the first time RMS Titanic, Inc. has made such a dive since 2010.
One of the mission’s goals was to find and photograph artifacts that other expeditions could recover. In the background, the idea was to also search for the most coveted treasure: Diana of Versailles. The bronze statue occupied the Titanic’s first-class lounge, but the last time a team of explorers photographed it was in 1986. According to NPR, researchers explained that the chances of locating it again were like “finding a needle in a haystack.”
The good news. They found the needle. Among the discoveries during the mission, researchers found the bronze statue that no one had seen in decades and that experts feared was lost forever. The voyage’s findings “reveal a bittersweet mix of preservation and loss,” RMS Titanic said in a statement.
“After many trials and errors, we did manage to find Diana and take her first photos in 38 years, and we found her with just hours remaining in the expedition. This rediscovery of the statue is the perfect argument against any idea of leaving the Titanic alone,” the company said.
And the bad news. The expedition also confirmed that a large section of the railing around the ship’s forecastle deck had fallen off. It was still standing in 2022. In other words, the most iconic scene in James Cameron’s movie, when Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) lifts Rose (Kate Winslet) into the air as they stand at the front of the liner’s bow, is now impossible.
RMS Titanic, Inc. investigator James Penca explains, “When we arrived at the wreck last month, we discovered that the railing on the port side had fallen off. This is a very natural thing, different parts of the railing weaken. But to have such a prominent, much photographed and iconic railing now resting on the ocean floor is a significant change. Titanic will literally never look the same again.”
Millions of photos of the wreck. During the dive, the researchers also took about 2 million photos of the Titanic and 24 hours of high-definition footage. As they say, time is of the essence to get as much of the wreck on camera as possible, as scientists have predicted that bacteria could consume enough of the metal framework to make the ruins disappear in a handful of years.
In addition to the missing railing, they found that bacteria had devoured nearly the entire metal structure, creating rust stalactites called rusticles.
Next step. The mission fully mapped the wreck and its debris field with equipment that should improve understanding of the site. According to the company behind the expedition, the next step will be to process the data so that researchers can share it with the scientific community and “historically significant and at-risk artifacts can be identified for safe recovery in future expeditions.”
In fact, according to the BBC, the company wants to bring back the Diana of Versailles. “This was a piece of art that was meant to be viewed and appreciated. And now that beautiful piece of art is on the ocean floor in pitch-black darkness where she has been for 112 years. To bring Diana back so people can see her with their own eyes - the value in that, to spark a love of history, of diving, of conservation, of shipwrecks, of sculpture, I could never leave that on the ocean floor,” RMS Titanic concludes.
Image | Kushagra Srivastava
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