Stunning new photos from the wreck of the Titanic show the effects of time – and the North Atlantic – on the famed ship, with a big section of the deck railing having broken off and sunken to the seafloor.
The railing around the ship’s iconic bow – made famous by James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster film – was rediscovered during several dives by underwater robots this summer, according to CBS News.
“Titanic’s Bow is iconic,” RMS Titanic, Inc., the Georgia-based company that owns the 112-year-old wreckage, said on its website.
“It is a haunting image rising from the sea floor as a testament to her strength and defiance,” the statement continued. “The once miraculously intact railing surrounding the Bow’s forecastle deck was missing a 15-foot-long section on the port side.”
The company just finished its first trip down to the watery tomb in about 14 years, CBS reported. And on Monday, it released new images from a stockpile of more than 2 million high-resolution pictures taken during the 20-day expedition – which ended in Providence, Rhode Island, on Aug. 9.
The discovery of the fractured railing is a “reminder of the deterioration that’s happening every day” at the underwater site, according to Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic, Inc.
“People ask all the time: ‘How long is Titanic going to be there?’” he said. “We just don’t know. But we’re watching it in real time.”
The team also mapped the wreck in its entirety, and plans to share the data with the rest of the scientific community, CBS reported.
But the news wasn’t all bad.
The team found a two-foot-tall bronze statue laying in a debris field that was once on display for first-class passengers – but was since thought to be lost forever.
The statue – named “Diana of Versailles” – was last seen and photographed by Robert Ballard in 1986, or just a year after he discovered the famous wreck, CBS said.
“It was like finding a needle in a haystack, and to rediscover it this year was momentous,” James Penca, a Titanic researcher, told the BBC.
During the ship’s heyday, the statue was the centerpiece of the first-class lounge, Penca said.
But the ship split in two as it sunk – a spine-tingling scene captured by Cameron’s momentous film – and the lounge opened up as a result.
“In the chaos and the destruction, Diana got ripped off her mantle and she landed in the darkness of the debris field,” Penca said.
The company, which has pulled thousands of items from the site, plans to return next year to pick up more relics. And the team would like to salvage the statue as well.
“This was a piece of art that was meant to be viewed and appreciated,” Penca said. “And now that beautiful piece of art is on the ocean floor … in pitch black darkness, where she has been for 112 years.”
“To bring Diana back so people can see her with their own eyes – the value in that, to spark a love of history, of diving, of conservation, of shipwrecks, of sculpture, I could never leave that on the ocean floor.”
