New Photos Reveal Titanic’s Slow Decay After 140 Years

Recent images of the Titanic have unveiled the ship’s ongoing decay and the rediscovery of a striking bronze statue. The photos, taken by robotic dives this summer, reveal that a section of the bow railing has collapsed since the last images were captured in 2022.

In an exciting development, the bronze statue of Diana of Versailles, once located in the first-class lounge, was found lying face-up on the seabed. The statue was last photographed in 1986 by Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic wreck a year earlier.

The ship’s bow, made famous by Jack and Rose in James Cameron’s 1997 film during the iconic “I’m King of the World” and “Flying” scenes, has undergone significant deterioration.

Tomasina Ray, director of collections at RMS Titanic Inc., the company behind the expedition, told the BBC, “The bow of Titanic is just iconic-you think of all these moments in pop culture- and that’s what comes to mind when you think of the shipwreck. And it doesn’t look like that anymore. It’s a stark reminder of the daily deterioration. People often ask, ‘How long will Titanic be there?’ We simply don’t know, but we’re witnessing it in real-time.”

Fine art decorated the halls and rooms throughout #TITANIC, but beauty is a delicate thing. Much of TITANIC’s fine art was made of organic materials, breaking down into the earth after many decades submerged in the hostile environment of the #NorthAtlantic. pic.twitter.com/zVauzPWDTq

— RMS Titanic, Inc. (@RMSTitanic_Inc) September 1, 2024

In 2022, deep-sea mapping company Magellan and documentary makers Atlantic Productions took photos and digital scans of the bow, which showed the railing still intact but beginning to buckle. However, it’s not just the bow that’s deteriorating entire metal structure is being slowly consumed by microbes, creating rust stalactites known as rusticles.

A previous dive in 2019 revealed that the starboard side of the officer’s quarters was collapsing, destroying staterooms and exposing the captain’s bathtub.

This year’s dives, conducted in July and August, involved two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that captured over two million images and 24 hours of high-definition footage of the wreck, which lies 3,800 meters below the surface.

When the Titanic sank in 1912, it split in two, leaving the bow and stern sections lying about 800 meters apart, surrounded by debris.

Among the debris was the 60cm Diana of Versailles statue. James Penca, a Titanic researcher and presenter of the Witness Titanic podcast, described the rediscovery as “like finding a needle in a haystack” and called it a momentous occasion.

Penca explained that when the Titanic split, the first-class lounge, where the statue was housed, was torn open, sending Diana into “the darkness of the debris field.” He described the first-class lounge as “the most beautiful and unbelievably detailed room on the ship,” with the Diana of Versailles as its centrepiece.

RMS Titanic Inc., the only company with rights to recover parts of the ship, has retrieved thousands of items over the years and displayed them around the world. The company plans to return to the site next year to recover more artefacts, including, they hope, the Diana statue.

However, some have criticized the company’s ongoing removal of objects from the wreck site.