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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Kelly-Ann Mills

Chilling 3D images shows what Titanic grand staircase looks like now on the seabed

Thousands of detailed 3D images of the Titanic which have been painstakingly pieced together now show how the famous Grand Staircase looks after more than 100 years in the ocean.

The beautiful ornate steps which many will remember from their recreation in the 1997 movie directed by James Cameron is now a shell of its former self.

The wooden stairs made with intricate detail, where protagonists Jack and Rose, played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, first met in the movie, are all but gone.

All that remains on the boat deck, where the staircase once stood, is a gaping hole.

In the Titanic movie, impoverished artist and third-class passenger Jack Dawson, meets Rose who is wearing a glittering ball gown at the bottom of the now famous stairs.

The Grand Staircase photographed on Titanic (Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

He takes her gloved hand and kisses it, telling her: "I saw that in a Nickelodeon once and always wanted to do it."

Rose then takes Jack over to meet her fiance Caledon Hockley, played by Billy Zane, who is suitably unimpressed with her new friend and scowls a backhanded compliment at him.

Experts believe the Titanic hit an iceberg at around 11.40pm local time and sank two hours and forty minutes later.

It featured in the 1997 movie (20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

With lifeboats for just 1,178 people on an over 3,000-capacity ship, only 706 passengers and crew survived.

The last living survivor of the Titanic died in 2009 at the age of 97 - he was just two months old at the time of the tragedy.

The first full-size 3D digital scan of the ship's wreckage has now been created, using more than 70,000 images from every angle.

The staircase became a focal point (20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock)

The ship is still lying 12,500ft beneath the Atlantic Ocean's surface, 400 miles from south of Canada, and now experts will be able to analyse the ship unobscured by water and hopefully find out exactly why the ship hit an iceberg between Southampton, UK and New York, US.

Titanic expert Parks Stephenson said he was "blown away" when he first saw the scans.

The image shows where the staircase once was (ATLANTIC PRODUCTIONS/MAGELLAN)

Mr Stephenson, who has studied the Titanic for many years, says there is a "growing amount of evidence that Titanic didn’t hit the iceberg along its side, as is shown in all the movies".

"She may actually have grounded on the submerged shelf of the ice.

"That was the first scenario put out by a London magazine in 1912. Maybe we haven’t heard the real story of Titanic yet.”

The project created a “Digital Twin” of the Titanic wreck (Atlantic Productions/Magellan)

About the new 3D images, he added: "It allows you to see the wreck as you can never see it from a submersible, and you can see the wreck in its entirety, you can see it in context and perspective.

"And what it's showing you now is the true state of the wreck."

He added: "We really don't understand the character of the collision with the iceberg.

An artist's impression of Titanic (The Print Collector via Getty Images)

"We don't even know if she hit it along the starboard side, as is shown in all the movies - she might have grounded on the iceberg."

The wreck is continuing to decay, with microbes taking their toll, but Mr Stephenson said the scan would offer an evergreen look into the "questions, basic questions, that need to be answered about the ship".

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