It was the image that made the Titanic’s wreck instantly recognisable – the ship’s bow looming out of the darkness of the Atlantic depths.
But a new expedition has revealed the effects of slow decay, with a large section of railing now on the sea floor.
The loss of the railing – immortalised by Jack and Rose in the famous movie scene – was discovered during a series of dives by underwater robots this summer. The images they captured show how the wreck is changing after more than 100 years beneath the waves.
The ship sank in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, resulting in the loss of 1,500 lives.
“The bow of Titanic is just iconic – you have all these moments in pop culture – and that’s what you think of when you think of the shipwreck. And it doesn’t look like that anymore,” said Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic Inc, the company that carried out the expedition.
“It’s just another reminder of the deterioration that’s happening every day. People ask all the time: ‘How long is Titanic going to be there?’ We just don’t know but we’re watching it in real time.”
The team believes the section of railing, which is about 4.5m (14.7ft) long, fell off at some point in the last two years.
Images and a digital scan from an 2022 expedition carried out by deep-sea mapping company Magellan and documentary makers Atlantic Productions show that the railing was still attached – though it was starting to buckle.
“At some point the metal gave way and it fell away,” said Tomasina Ray.
It is not the only part of the ship, which lies 3,800m down, that is being lost to the sea. The metal structure is being eaten away by microbes, creating stalactites of rust called rusticles.
Previous expeditions have found that parts of the Titanic are collapsing. Dives led by explorer Victor Vescovo in 2019 showed that the starboard side of the officer’s quarters were collapsing, destroying state rooms and obliterating features like the captain’s bath from view.
This summer’s RMS Titanic Inc expedition took place over July and August.
Two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) captured more than two million images and 24 hours of high definition footage of both the wreck, which split apart as it sank with the bow and stern lying about 800m apart, and the debris field surrounding it.
The company is now carefully reviewing the footage to catalogue the finds and will eventually create a highly detailed digital 3D scan of the entire wreck site.
More images from the dives will be revealed over the coming months.
BBC
