The scan, by deep-sea mapping company Magellan, challenges long-held theories regarding the ship’s final moments and presents fresh insights into the sinking.
Cutting-edge underwater scanning technology allowed Magellan to capture 715,000 digital images and create the most precise model of the Titanic yet – a full-scale, 1:1 digital twin, accurate down to the rivet.
The scan is at the centre of a new National Geographic documentary titled Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.
In 2022, award-winning filmmaker Anthony Geffen and his team followed Magellan as they undertook the largest underwater 3D scanning project of its kind, mapping the wreck 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic.
Over three weeks, they worked around the clock, producing 16 terabytes of data, 715,000 still images, and 4K footage, capturing the Titanic in unparalleled detail.
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After nearly two years of analysis, a team of leading historians, engineers and forensic experts, including Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper, and master mariner Captain Chris Hearn, come together in Titanic: The Digital Resurrection to reconstruct the ship’s final moments.
Stephenson, Hooper and Hearn dissect the wreckage up close on a full-scale colossal LED volume stage, walking around the ship in its final resting place.
From the boiler room where engineers worked valiantly to keep the lights on until the bitter end to the first-class cabins where the ship ripped in two, the scan brings them face-to-face with where the tragedy unfolded.
Among the insights gleaned from the digital twin are a steam valve in an open position, indicating the ship’s engineers remained at their posts in boiler room two for over two hours after impact; hull fragments that show the Titanic didn’t split cleanly in two, rather it was violently torn apart; and evidence exonerating First Officer Murdoch, long accused of abandoning his post.
The 90-minute documentary also examines the 15-square-mile debris field containing hundreds of personal artifacts such as pocket watches, purses, gold coins, hair combs, shoes and a shark’s tooth charm. Historian Yasmin Khan and the team connect these items to their original owners.
Titanic: The Digital Resurrection premieres on 11 April on National Geographic, and will be available to stream the following day on Disney+ and Hulu.
It comes ahead of the 113th anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic’s sinking on 14 April, 1912.
