Never-before-seen footage from the first dive to the wreck of the Titanic after its discovery in 1985 is released TODAY to celebrate the 25th anniversary of James Cameron’s disaster film
- Unseen footage of the historic 1986 dive to the wreck of the Titanic is released
- The new video is published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- It will coincide with the release of a 25th anniversary issue of the film of the same name
A rare and never-before-seen video of the first-ever dive to the wreck of the Titanic after its discovery in 1985 will be released on Wednesday.
The footage, which was shot in 1986 and is being released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will premiere at 7:30 p.m. and show the historic dive in unprecedented detail.
More than 80 minutes of footage on the WHOI YouTube channel will chronicle some of the notable achievements of the Robert Ballard-led dive.
The footage is being shared to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of James Cameron’s classic disaster film about the ill-fated ship.
It was the first time human eyes had seen the giant ocean liner since it struck an iceberg and sank in the frigid North Atlantic in April 1912.
Around 1,500 people died during the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.
A rare and generally unseen video of the first dive to the Titanic wreck after its discovery in 1985 is released Wednesday
This image from video shows the bow of Titanic 12,500 feet below sea level, 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in 1986
A team from the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in collaboration with the French oceanographic research organization IFREMER, discovered the ship’s final resting place in 12,400 feet of water on September 1, 1985, using a towed underwater camera.
Nine months later, a WHOI team returned to the site with the famous three-person research submersible Alvin and the remote-controlled underwater reconnaissance vehicle Jason Jr., taking iconic pictures of the ship’s interior.
The footage will be released in conjunction with the release of the 25th anniversary remastered version of The Titanic on February 10th.
“More than a century after the Titanic sank, the human stories embodied in the great ship still resonate,” oceanographer and filmmaker James Cameron said in a statement.
“Like many others, I was spellbound when Alvin and Jason Jr. ventured up and into the wreck. By releasing this footage, WHOI is helping to tell an important part of a story that spans generations and circles the globe.”
Explorer Robert Ballard (see above in 2015) led the team that found the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic in 1985
The footage will be released in conjunction with the release of the 25th anniversary remastered version of The Titanic on February 10th
Around 1,500 people died during the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City
The story behind the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 involved the US Navy.
The mission involved leading the Soviet Union to believe that the US military was only looking for the doomed ocean liner, when in reality it was also looking for two missing nuclear submarines.
The Titanic was eventually found on the seabed by the team led by Ballard, but it all started three years earlier when, as a naval intelligence officer and oceanographer, he was attempting to develop his own remote-controlled underwater vehicle.
But he ran out of money and needed funding, so he appealed to the Navy’s deputy chief of operations, Ronald Thunman, according to CBS News.
“He said, ‘All my life I’ve wanted to find the Titanic,'” Thunman said. “And that amazed me.
“I said, ‘Come on, this is a serious top-secret operation. Find the Titanic? That’s crazy!”
Thunman agreed to fund the Titanic expedition on one condition – that Ballard use the money and time to also locate two nuclear submarines that went missing in the Atlantic in the 1960s.