FALMOUTH, Massachusetts (6 Dec 2005) -- Undersea explorers said Monday that the discovery of more wreckage from the Titanic suggests that the luxury liner broke into three sections -- not two, as commonly thought -- and thus sank faster than previously believed. "The breakup and sinking of the Titanic has never been accurately depicted," Parks Stephenson, a Titanic historian, said at a conference at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The ocean liner that was billed as "unsinkable" by its owner struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. About 1,500 people were killed. Undersea explorer Robert Ballard located the bulk of the wreck in 1985, at a depth of about 4,000 metres and about 610 kilometres southeast of Newfoundland. He declared that the ship had broken into two major sections, and that is the way the sinking was portrayed in the 1997 movie about the catastrophe. However, the latest expedition, sponsored by the History Channel, found two hull pieces, each roughly 12 metres by 27 metres and lying about 500 metres from the rest of the wreck. The explorers said the location of the wreckage indicates that the ship's bottom came off the ship intact -- constituting a third major piece -- and later broke in two. | | The ocean liner that was billed as "unsinkable" by its owner struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and went down in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912. About 1,500 people were killed. Ballard played down the importance of the find. "They found a fragment. Big deal," Ballard said. "Am I surprised? No. When you go down there, there's stuff all over the place. It hit an iceberg and it sank. Get over it." SOURCE - ATN |
