Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces

Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces

On The History Channel(R)

World Premiere February 26, 2006 at 9:00 p.m. ET

'...the most significant piece of evidence since the wreck was located in 1985.'

NEW YORK, Feb. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- In August 2005, a History Channel expedition team made a shocking discovery more than two miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean: large missing pieces of Titanic's bottom, more than 1,500 feet from the rest of the ship, so well preserved that even the original red paint is still clearly visible. These pieces were little known and never examined for their role in the sinking, and they tell a new and potentially more terrifying story of Titanic's final moments, rewriting the script that had previously been taken as fact. Relive the disaster, the history, and the deep-sea search for new clues in high-definition in TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES, premiering Sunday, February 26th at 9:00 p.m. on The History Channel.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051031/HISTORYLOGO )

Veteran shipwreck divers and hosts of The History Channel hit series Deep Sea Detectives, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, along with a highly experienced team of experts, set off last summer in the Russian research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, to follow a hunch, unsure if they'd find anything that hadn't been found before. Using high-definition photographic equipment furnished by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the team aspired to think "outside the box", trying to locate, document, and analyze missing pieces of the ship whose existence had only been suspected. Hope waned after several fruitless excursions to the wreck in Mir submersible vessels, but a dramatic discovery on the final mission may have changed history: the entire missing double bottom of the ship, and a world of new possibilities about what really happened when Titanic plunged beneath the ocean toward its watery grave.

The group cataloged its findings and studied them for months, then huddled together at Woods Hole last December to analyze what it all meant. Titanic historian and author Simon Mills has referred to it as: "...possibly the most significant pieces of evidence that have been uncovered since the wreck was located in 1985."

In TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES, noted naval architect Roger Long says the evidence points to Titanic's hull breaking in half earlier in the sinking process than previously believed. This theory creates a significantly different sinking experience than what has previously been described, most notably in James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic. "The breakup was not just something that happened as the ship made her final plunge, but the breakup began the final plunge," says Long. Using animated renderings, Long challenges the dramatic upright angle of the ship before its final plunge, which has traditionally been portrayed. Through detailed explanation of the way the steel broke, where it lies in the ocean, and survivors' testimony that no significant waves rocked the lifeboats as Titanic went under, Long proposes a new scenario where the ship remained at a fairly low angle to the water, explaining why so many witnesses and passengers failed to realize that the ship had even broken apart as it continued to sink.

This scenario is played out in a CGI animation, which was presented to the Woods Hole group. The animation combines the newly uncovered details with pre-existing forensic analysis of the ship and survivors' recollections in order to paint a balanced picture using all of the available information. While we may never know the complete story for sure, the new findings are vitally important to anyone with even a passing interest in the Titanic disaster. "It is not so much a matter of saying that this IS what happened but that this is the story that the pieces documented by The History Channel 2005 Expedition tell when put together with the body of knowledge accumulated previously," said Long in his analysis of the findings of the working group.

In addition to going along with the deep-sea explorers on their journey to the wreck and sharing in the analysis of their findings, TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES also includes:

* Dramatic recreations of Titanic's one and only voyage, following
individual characters and living the wide range of human experience that
truly tells the tale: the new lives they expected in America, the
initial reactions to the iceberg strike, the race for lifeboats, the
heroism of the crew and passengers, and the horrible sights of bodies in
the frigid North Atlantic.

* Historical facts about the ship and the aftermath of the disaster,
giving a depth of understanding of how huge and important an event this
was in 1912.

* The theories on what these new findings mean to the human experience
aboard the ship. Was the sinking perhaps a sudden surprise that caught
people off guard? Did the passengers really think that the ship could
stay afloat long enough for help to arrive

* Survivors' recollections of the disaster and exploration of why the
memories of those who were there can seem so vastly different from one
another.

Executive Producer for The History Channel is Carl Lindahl. TITANIC'S LAST MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES is produced for The History Channel by Lone Wolf Documentary Group.

Now reaching more than 88 million Nielsen subscribers, The History Channel(R), "Where History Lives," brings history to life in a powerful manner and provides an inviting place where people experience history personally and connect their own lives to the great lives and events of the past. The History Channel has earned six News and Documentary Emmy(R) Awards and received the prestigious Governor's Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the network's "Save Our History(R)" campaign dedicated to historic preservation and history education. The History Channel web site is located at http://www.history.com/.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051031/HISTORYLOGO
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
Source: The History Channel

CONTACT: Jenna Farkas, +1-212-210-9184, Jenna.Farkas@aetn.com; or Lynn
Gardner, +1-212-850-9322, Lynn.Gardner@aetn.com

Web site: http://www.history.com/

NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information and photography please visit us on the web at http://www.historychannelpress.com.

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