Inside Titanic as never-before-seen footage of wreck taken 12,500 feet below sea level released
EERIE footage of the wreckage of the Titanic has been released in honor of the 25th anniversary of the blockbuster movie about the disaster.
The doomed ship sank on April 14, 1912, resulting in the deaths of over 1,500 passengers and crew onboard.
Director James Cameron has decided to release the Titanic movie this year for a 25th-anniversary re-release.
The film was re-released in 3D on February 10, 2023.
Despite the original release being in December 1997, Cameron wanted to honor the highest-grossing day for the anniversary, which was Valentine’s Day 1998.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) also decided to honor this and has revealed new real-life footage of the ship to mark the occasion.
The new footage was taken during the 1985-1986 expedition that finally found the wreckage.
The WHOI website explains: “On September 1, 1985, a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) led by Dr. Robert Ballard in partnership with Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (IFEMER) discovered the final resting place of the ship.
“In July 1986, nine months after the discovery, a team from WHOI returned to the wreck site, this time using three-person research submersible Alvin and the newly developed remotely operated vehicle Jason Jr.
“The trip marked the first time that humans laid eyes on the vessel since its ill-fated voyage in 1912.”
The RMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg while on its maiden voyage from Southampton in England to New York.
It took decades to find the wreckage due to technical limitations at the time.
Oceanographer Robert Ballard described the day he finally found the shipwreck to The Associated Press.
It was laying 12,400 feet beneath sea level in dark and icy waters in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Ballard said: “The first thing I saw coming out of the gloom at 30 feet was this wall, this giant wall of riveted steel that rose over 100 and some feet above us.”
That wall of steel can be seen in the footage along with some magnificent mast structures and the senior officer’s cabin.
No bodies were found within the wreckage but a graveyard of shoes was discovered on the seabed by the first expedition.
It’s thought that any human bones would have dissolved at those depths.