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On The History Channel®
Was shown on February 26, 2006 at 9:00 p.m. ET
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New York, NY, Feb 21, 2006 — In August 2005, a History Channel expedition team made a shocking discovery more than two miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean: large missing pieces of Titanic's bottom, more than 1,500 feet from the rest of the ship, so well preserved that even the original red paint is still clearly visible. These pieces were little known and never examined for their role in the sinking, and they tell a new and potentially more terrifying story of Titanic's final moments, rewriting the script that had previously been taken as fact. Relive the disaster, the history, and the deep-sea search for new clues in high-definition in TITANIC’S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES, premiering Sunday, February 26th at 9:00 p.m. on The History Channel.
Veteran shipwreck divers and hosts of The History Channel hit series Deep Sea Detectives, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, along with a highly experienced team of experts, set off last summer in the Russian research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, to follow a hunch, unsure if they’d find anything that hadn’t been found before. Using high-definition photographic equipment furnished by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the team aspired to think “outside the box”, trying to locate, document, and analyze missing pieces of the ship whose existence had only been suspected. Hope waned after several fruitless excursions to the wreck in Mir submersible vessels, but a dramatic discovery on the final mission may have changed history: the entire missing double bottom of the ship, and a world of new possibilities about what really happened when Titanic plunged beneath the ocean toward its watery grave.
The group cataloged its findings and studied them for months, then huddled together at Woods Hole last December to analyze what it all meant. Titanic historian and author Simon Mills has referred to it as: “…possibly the most significant pieces of evidence that have been uncovered since the wreck was located in 1985.”
In TITANIC’S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES, noted naval architect Roger Long says the evidence points to Titanic’s hull breaking in half earlier in the sinking process than previously believed. This theory creates a significantly different sinking experience than what has previously been described, most notably in James Cameron’s 1997 film, Titanic. “The breakup was not just something that happened as the ship made her final plunge, but the breakup began the final plunge,” says Long. Using animated renderings, Long challenges the dramatic upright angle of the ship before its final plunge, which has traditionally been portrayed. Through detailed explanation of the way the steel broke, where it lies in the ocean, and survivors’ testimony that no significant waves rocked the lifeboats as Titanic went under, Long proposes a new scenario where the ship remained at a fairly low angle to the water, explaining why so many witnesses and passengers failed to realize that the ship had even broken apart as it continued to sink.
This scenario is played out in a CGI animation, which was presented to the Woods Hole group. The animation combines the newly uncovered details with pre-existing forensic analysis of the ship and survivors’ recollections in order to paint a balanced picture using all of the available information. While we may never know the complete story for sure, the new findings are vitally important to anyone with even a passing interest in the Titanic disaster. “It is not so much a matter of saying that this IS what happened but that this is the story that the pieces documented by The History Channel 2005 Expedition tell when put together with the body of knowledge accumulated previously,” said Long in his analysis of the findings of the working group.
In addition to going along with the deep-sea explorers on their journey to the wreck and sharing in the analysis of their findings, TITANIC’S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES also includes:
- Dramatic recreations of Titanic’s one and only voyage, following individual characters and living the wide range of human experience that truly tells the tale: the new lives they expected in America, the initial reactions to the iceberg strike, the race for lifeboats, the heroism of the crew and passengers, and the horrible sights of bodies in the frigid North Atlantic.
- Historical facts about the ship and the aftermath of the disaster, giving a depth of understanding of how huge and important an event this was in 1912.
- The theories on what these new findings mean to the human experience aboard the ship. Was the sinking perhaps a sudden surprise that caught people off guard? Did the passengers really think that the ship could stay afloat long enough for help to arrive.
- Survivors’ recollections of the disaster and exploration of why the memories of those who were there can seem so vastly different from one another.
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