A rare and never-before-seen video of the first ever dive to the Titanic wreck after its discovery in 1985 will be released on Wednesday.
Created in 1986 and released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the footage will be released at 7:30 p.m. premiere and show the historic dive in unprecedented detail.
More than 80 minutes of footage on the WHOI YouTube channel will chronicle some of the remarkable performances of the dive led by Robert Ballard.
The footage is being shared to mark 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 collided with an iceberg and sank in the icy North Atlantic in April 1912.
About 1,500 people died on the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.
Rare and mostly unseen video of the first dive into the Titanic wreck after its 1985 discovery 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 carrying the famed three-person research submarine Alvin and remote-controlled underwater exploration vehicle Jason Jr. used, returned to the site and captured iconic images of the ship’s interior.
The footage will be released on February 10 to mark the 25th anniversary of the remastered version of Titanic.
“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 surprised when Alvin and Jason Jr. face the wreckage. By publishing these images, WHOI is helping to tell an important part of a story that will span generations and resonate around the world.”
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 25th anniversary of Titanic’s remastered version on February 10.
About 1,500 people died on 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 United States Navy.
The mission was to fool the Soviet Union that the US military was only looking for the doomed ocean liner, when in fact they were also searching for two missing nuclear submarines.
The Titanic was finally found on the seabed by the team led by Ballard, but it all started three years earlier when he, as a naval intelligence officer and oceanographer, tried to develop his own remote-controlled underwater vehicle.
But he ran out of money and needed funding, so he turned to Navy 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 it shocked me.
“I said, ‘Come on, this is a serious, top-secret operation. Find the Titanic? That’s great!'”
Thunman agreed to finance the Titanic expedition on one condition: that Ballard spend the money and time to also locate two nuclear submarines that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean in the 1960s.
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James is an author and travel journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a love for exploring new cultures and discovering unique destinations, James brings his readers on a journey with him through his articles.
