A Titanic achievement for a Guernsey firm

Friday 19 May 2023

The Guernsey based firm, Magellan is responsible for the first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic which has been revealed this week.

As the world’s most famous shipwreck, Titanic has been subject to numerous dives, as well as documentaries and films.

The 3D view of the entire ship, which has been produced by Magellan's team of experts, is said to show the infamous split in the boat's hull which was caused by the initial collision with the iceberg.

Images also show bottles of champagne, shoes, and other items left abandoned as the people aboard the stricken ship entered lifeboats or the icy waters. 

CNN has reported that "historians now believe that a new underwater scanning project may provide answers to some of the unanswered questions regarding the tragedy that killed more than 1,500 people".

The Daily Mail said the new images show the "barely recognisable remains of the luxury liner's grand staircase, where fictional soulmates Jack and Rose met in James Cameron's 1997 epic about the disaster".

Pictured: Magellan is based in Guernsey and its website explains how it has been working on the 3D scanning of the Titanic.

Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912. Of the estimated 2,224 people on board, only around 700 survived.

The wreck has lain on the bed of the Atlantic for 111 years but with Magellan's specialists in deep and ultra-deepwater site investigations, subsea interventions and seabed mapping, the clearest images yet of the famed liner have been published.

Magellan said it used the deep-sea mapping techniques which it has previously honed to scan the Atlantic bed, at a depth of 3,800m (12,500 ft).

The mapping created a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic for the first time, with a "unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away".

Magellan also said "the hope is that this will shed new light on exactly what happened to the liner".

Pictured: Magellan is based in Guernsey with an office in South Shields, England, too.

Explaining why a company focused on deep sea exploration is based in Guernsey, the Magellan website states that it wants to deliver "cost-effective subsea operations to the private and energy sectors" and that aim is "underpinned by our strategic positioning of the corporate and commercial entities on the island".

The work on Titanic was carried out last summer involving Magellan experts and documentary producer Atlantic Productions.

Together they took more than 700,000 images from every angle of the ship, which were used to create the 3D reconstruction.

The BBC has described the images as "haunting".  

Pictured top: Titanic, photographed by Magellan. (From the Magellan website).