Offshore staff
ST. PETER PORT, GUERNSEY/LONDON – The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800 m (12,500 ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping.
The scan was carried out in summer 2022 by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, who are making a documentary about the project.
Deep sea experts at Magellan spent over 200 hours teaming up with Atlantic Productions, which is creating a documentary about the project, to take over 700,000 images of the ship from all angles in order to generate the model.
The expedition captured all of the imagery in summer 2022 while spending six weeks posted not far from the shipwreck site, more than 400 miles off the coast of Canada. A pair of submersibles nicknamed Romeo and Juliet mapped the entire debris field on the ocean bed, stretching three miles across.
From this data, a digital twin was created that shows the wreck to a level of detail and clarity never seen before. The two companies say that the digital twin provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away. The hope is that this will shed new light on exactly what happened to the liner, which sank in 1912.
The Titanic has been extensively explored since the wreck was discovered in 1985. But the shipwreck is so huge that in the gloom of the deep, cameras can only ever show portions of the decaying ship – never the whole thing.
The new scan captures the wreck in its entirety, revealing a complete view of the Titanic. It lies in two parts, with the bow and the stern separated by about 800m (2,600ft). A huge debris field surrounds the broken vessel.
The digital twin model is expected to enable new analysis of the mechanics of the Titanic’s last hours above water; how it sank; and the extent of the damage done by the iceberg. The model is especially valuable, scientists add, given that the shipwreck continues to disintegrate.
05.26.2023
