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Titanic scan reveals ground-breaking details of ship's final hours

Rebecca Morelle
Science Editor•@BBCMorelle
Alison Francis
Senior Science Journalist
Atlantic Productions/Magellan A digital replica of the bow section of the Titanic is sitting upright on the ocean floor. The back of the section, which is in the top left corner, is ragged while the front of the ship, at the bottom right of the image is instantly recognisable. The ship is a ghostly grey and the hull is damaged from where it slid into the mud and jackknifed as it became more embedded in the silt. There's a big gash where the flat deck at the front of the ship rises up to the higher decks and the bridge of the ship. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
The digital scan shows the bow sitting upright on the sea floor

A detailed analysis of a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner's final hours.

The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912 - 1,500 people lost their lives in the disaster.

The scan provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship's lights on.

And a computer simulation also suggests that punctures in the hull the size of A4 pieces of paper led to the ship's demise.

Atlantic Productions/Magellan A digital replica of the stern section of the Titanic. In the middle of the image there are what look like two large metal prongs sitting on a tangled mess of grey brown metal. These are the engines of the ship and are at the back of this rear section. When the ship broke into two almost equal halves, as the stern sank it went into a spiral and was very badly damaged. The " prongs" are surrounded by mangled pieces of metal including one large flat sheet to the right. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
The stern of the ship, which broke off from the bow, is heavily damaged

"Titanic is the last surviving eyewitness to the disaster, and she still has stories to tell," said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst.

The scan has been studied for a new documentary by National Geographic and Atlantic Productions called Titanic: The Digital Resurrection.

The wreck, which lies 3,800m down in the icy waters of the Atlantic, was mapped using underwater robots.

More than 700,000 images, taken from every angle, were used to create the "digital twin", which was revealed exclusively to the world by BBC News in 2023.

Because the wreck is so large and lies in the gloom of the deep, exploring it with submersibles only shows tantalising snapshots. The scan, however, provides the first full view of the Titanic.

The immense bow lies upright on the seafloor, almost as if the ship were continuing its voyage.

But sitting 600m away, the stern is a heap of mangled metal. The damage was caused as it slammed into the sea floor after the ship broke in half.

Atlantic Productions/Magellan A close up image of the digital replica of Titanic showing four portholes in the side of the bow section. The metal is brown with some yellow patches and has what looks like a rippled texture which is made up of rusticles created as the sea life that has colonised the ship slowly eats away the hull. Three of the portholes still contain glass but one of them has a large hole in it believed to have been made by the iceberg. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
The glass in a porthole may have been broken as it scraped past the iceberg

The new mapping technology is providing a different way to study the ship.

"It's like a crime scene: you need to see what the evidence is, in the context of where it is," said Parks Stephenson.

"And having a comprehensive view of the entirety of the wreck site is key to understanding what happened here."

The scan shows new close-up details, including a porthole that was most likely smashed by the iceberg. It tallies with the eye-witness reports of survivors that ice came into some people's cabins during the collision.

Atlantic Productions/Magellan Digital replica of Titanic showing the back of the bow where the ship has split in two, looking forward towards the front of the ship. In the middle of the image are four big brown circular structures which are the huge boilers used to create the steam to power the ship. Two of these are slightly concave. The boilers are surrounded by a tangled mess of brown metal made up of other parts of the ship. The image is set against a black background. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
A boiler room is at the back of the bow where the ship has split in two

Experts have been studying one of the Titanic's huge boiler rooms - it's easy to see on the scan because it sits at the rear of the bow section at the point where the ship broke in two.

Passengers said that the lights were still on as the ship plunged beneath the waves.

The digital replica shows that some of the boilers are concave, which suggests they were still operating as they were plunged into the water.

Lying on the deck of the stern, a valve has also been discovered in an open position, indicating that steam was still flowing into the electricity generating system.

This would have been thanks to a team of engineers led by Joseph Bell who stayed behind to shovel coal into the furnaces to keep the lights on.

All died in the disaster but their heroic actions saved many lives, said Parks Stephenson.

"They kept the lights and the power working to the end, to give the crew time to launch the lifeboats safely with some light instead of in absolute darkness," he told the BBC.

"They held the chaos at bay as long as possible, and all of that was kind of symbolised by this open steam valve just sitting there on the stern."

Atlantic Productions/Magellan Digital replica of Titanic showing a close up of the upper deck of the rear section of Titanic. There are flat pieces of metal that are brown and grey plus a large circular pipe running from the top of the image to the bottom on the left hand side. Beneath it is a smaller pipe running from left to right. In the centre of the image there is a a circular piece of equipment - a valve. In the middle of that is a smaller circle of metal that could be tilted to lie flat and close off the open valve but is clearly set straight at 90 degrees in the open position. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
A circular valve - in the centre of this image - is in an open position

A new simulation has also provided further insights into the sinking.

It takes a detailed structural model of the ship, created from Titanic's blueprints, and also information about its speed, direction and position, to predict the damage that was caused as it hit the iceberg.

"We used advanced numerical algorithms, computational modelling and supercomputing capabilities to reconstruct the Titanic sinking," said Prof Jeom-Kee Paik, from University College London, who led the research.

The simulation shows that as the ship made only a glancing blow against the iceberg it was left with a series of punctures running in a line along a narrow section of the hull.

Jeom Kee-Paik/ University College London A still from a computer simulation of the damage to the bow of the Titanic. The schematic representation shows the starboard side of the hull, coloured blue, with the front of the ship pointing to the right of the image. There are small yellow dots running in a straight line along a thin stretch of the hull representing the series of gashes made by the iceberg which resulted in Titanic's sinking. Jeom Kee-Paik/ University College London
A simulation calculated the iceberg caused a thin line of small gashes on the hull

Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable, designed to stay afloat even if four of its watertight compartments flooded.

But the simulation calculates the iceberg's damage was spread across six compartments.

"The difference between Titanic sinking and not sinking are down to the fine margins of holes about the size of a piece of paper," said Simon Benson, an associate lecturer in naval architecture at the University of Newcastle.

"But the problem is that those small holes are across a long length of the ship, so the flood water comes in slowly but surely into all of those holes, and then eventually the compartments are flooded over the top and the Titanic sinks."

Unfortunately the damage cannot be seen on the scan as the lower section of the bow is hidden beneath the sediment.

Atlantic Productions/Magellan Digital replica showing bow section of the Titanic from the port side. The front of the ship is on the left, pointing slightly downwards. Its hull is breaking open where the ship jackknifed as it ploughed into the thick silt of the ocean floor, which is grey and undulating. The wreck itself is a darker grey and brown. The ship's crane is clearly visible at the very front of the ship on the left of the image. There are rows of portholes on each of the decks running along the main section of the ship. Above these are the upper decks, including the promenade which was open to the air where people would walk. The large windows of this deck are clearly visible towards the top of the image. Above this, sitting on the top deck, are the bridge and crew quarters. At the rear of the bow section, where the ship split in two, the metal of the hull falls away. The image is set against a black background. Atlantic Productions/Magellan
It will take many years to fully scrutinise the 3D scan

The human tragedy of the Titanic is still very much visible.

Personal possessions from the ship's passengers are scattered across the sea floor.

The scan is providing new clues about that cold night in 1912, but it will take experts years to fully scrutinise every detail of the 3D replica.

"She's only giving her stories to us a little bit at a time," said Parks Stephenson.

"Every time, she leaves us wanting for more."