The crew of human-occupied vehicle (HOV) Alvin drank in the spectacle of a shipwreck’s haunting bow, recording the historic moment with their vehicle’s underwater video camera. The three researchers were the first humans to lay eyes on the “unsinkable” passenger liner, RMS Titanic, since her ill-fated voyage in 1912.
Their 1986 expedition captured video near the bottom of the North Atlantic, some 400 miles south of the coast of Newfoundland, where the vessel sank nearly 75 years earlier. Much of that footage remained unreleased—until now.
In September 1985, Dr. Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) led the team that first discovered the ship’s final resting place nearly 12,500 feet below the surface of the ocean. Nine months later, Ballard and his team returned to the wreck site with the three-person HOV Alvin and the newly-developed, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason Jr….