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      SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Researchers have pieced together
what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire
3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field and hope it will provide new clues
about what exactly happened the night 100 years ago when the
superliner hit an iceberg, plunged to the bottom of the North
Atlantic and became a legend.


      Marks on the muddy ocean bottom suggest, for instance, that the
stern rotated like a helicopter blade as the ship sank, rather than
plunging straight down, researchers told The Associated Press this
week.

      An expedition team used sonar imaging and more than 100,000
photos taken from underwater robots to create the map, which shows
where hundreds of objects and pieces of the presumed-unsinkable
vessel landed after striking an iceberg, killing more than 1,500
people.


      Explorers of the Titanic - which sank on its maiden voyage from
Southampton, England, to New York City - have known for more than
25 years where the bow and stern landed after the vessel struck an
iceberg. But previous maps of the floor around the wreckage were
incomplete, said Parks Stephenson, a Titanic historian who
consulted on the 2010 expedition. Studying the site with old maps
was like trying to navigate a dark room with a weak flashlight.


      "With the sonar map, it's like suddenly the entire room lit up
and you can go from room to room with a magnifying glass and
document it," he said. "Nothing like this has ever been done for
the Titanic site."


      The mapping took place in the summer of 2010 during an
expedition to the Titanic led by RMS Titanic Inc., the legal
custodian of the wreck, along with Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution in Falmouth, Mass., and the Waitt Institute of La
Jolla, Calif.


      They were joined by the cable History channel and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Park
Service is involved in the mapping. Details on the new findings at
the bottom of the ocean are not being revealed yet, but the network
will air them in a two-hour documentary on April 15, exactly 100
years after the Titanic sank.

      The expedition team ran two independently self-controlled robots
known as autonomous underwater vehicles along the ocean bottom day
and night. The torpedo-shaped AUVs surveyed the site with side-scan
sonar, moving at a little more than 3 miles per hour as they
traversed back and forth in a grid along the bottom, said
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, the expedition's co-leader with RMS Titanic
Inc. Dave Gallo from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was
the other co-leader.


      The AUVs also took high-resolution photos - 130,000 of them in
all - of a smaller 2-by-3-mile area where most of the debris was
concentrated. The photos were stitched together on a computer to
provide a detailed photo mosaic of the debris.


      The result is a map that looks something like the moon's surface
showing debris scattered across the ocean floor well beyond the
large bow and stern sections that rest about half a mile apart.


      The map provides a forensic tool with which scientists can
examine the wreck site much the way an airplane wreck would be
investigated on land, Nargeolet said.


      For instance, the evidence that the stern rotated is based on
the marks on the ocean floor to its west and the fact that
virtually all the debris is found to the east.


      "When you look at the sonar map, you can see exactly what
happened," said Nargeolet, who has been on six Titanic
expeditions, the first in 1987.


      The first mapping of the Titanic wreck site began after it was
discovered in 1985, using photos taken with cameras aboard a
remotely controlled vehicle that didn't venture far from the bow
and stern.


      The mapping over the years has improved as explorers have built
upon previous efforts in piecemeal fashion, said Charlie
Pellegrino, a Titanic explorer who was not involved in the 2010
expedition. But this is the first time a map of the entire debris
field has looked at every square inch in an orderly approach, he
said.


      "This is quite a significant map," he said. "It's quite a
significant advance in the technology and the way it's done."


      At Lone Wolf Documentary Group in South Portland, producers are
putting the final touches on the History documentary. Rushmore
DeNooyer, the co-producer and writer of the show, points out the
different items on the map, displayed on a screen.


      They include a huge tangle of the remains of a deckhouse; a
large chunk of the side of the ship measuring more than 60 feet
long and weighing more than 40 tons; pieces of the ship's bottom;
and a hatch cover that blew off of the bow section as it crashed to
the bottom. Other items include five of the ship's huge boilers, a
revolving door and even a lightning rod from a mast.


      By examining the debris, investigators can now answer questions
like how the ship broke apart, how it went down and whether there
was a fatal flaw in the design, he said.


      The layout of the wreck site and where the pieces landed provide
new clues on exactly what happened. Computer simulations will
re-enact the sinking in reverse, bringing the wreckage debris back
to the surface and reassembled.


      Some of those questions will be answered on the show, said Dirk
Hoogstra, a senior vice president at History. He declined to say
ahead of the show what new theories are being put forth on the
sinking.


      "We've got this vision of the entire wreck that no one has ever
seen before," he said. "Because we have, we're going to be able
to reconstruct exactly how the wreck happened. It's groundbreaking,
jaw-dropping stuff."

Gallery

Preserving history: A new look at the Titanic

Titanic exhibition at Science Museum of Minnesota

Titanic exhibit docking at Science Museum of Minnesota

Disasters

Researchers have pieced together what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the 3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field and hope it will provide new clues about what exactly happened when it sank.

Full Titanic wreck site is mapped for 1st time

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