First manned Titanic expedition in 14 years reveals ‘shocking’ deterioration

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For the first time in 14 years, a manned dive has visited the RMS Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The world’s most famous sunken ship rests 12,500 feet down on the icy seafloor, some 370 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. This month, a deep-sea exploration team of experts and scientists completed five dives to the shipwreck over eight days, using a human-occupied submersible. They found the British passenger liner, the largest ship of its time, deteriorating rapidly.

The Titanic, which was 882 feet long and weighed over 53,000 tons, sunk in 1912 after slamming into an iceberg during its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. Of the 2,224 passengers and crew estimated to be on board at the time, more than 1,500 died. The underwater wreckage was discovered 73 years later.

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