Emily Chan
On April 10, 1912, the famed Titanic departed Southampton, England, and set sail for New York, only for the journey to end in total disaster four days later.
The “unsinkable” ship struck an iceberg while at sea and sank to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. The collision claimed the lives of over a thousand people.
Now, more than a century later, the first video ever captured of the Titanic is available for the public to view.
The rare footage of the shipwreck was released in honor of the 25th anniversary of James Cameron’s iconic film, Titanic (1997), starring actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) posted the nearly ninety-minute video on YouTube, which shows shots of the sunken ocean liner’s remains from a 1986 voyage conducted by the WHOI.
Although the ship sunk in 1912, it was not discovered until 1985. In 1986, a WHOI team led by Robert Ballard dived down to the site to film the wreckage.
They were able to actually land on the deck of the ship itself and observe how well the Titanic had been preserved.
Viewers can see the spooky camera footage of murky windows, rusted rails that have broken off the vessel, and how much the ship has decayed over the years it has spent underwater.
During their deep dive, Ballard and his team even discovered a mother’s shoes sitting next to a pair of her baby’s shoes, representing the lives lost too soon.
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