Divers make breathtaking new discovery in Titanic wreck
By Harriet Brewis,
2024-09-09
Countless secrets lie buried in the wreck of the Titanic , with divers continuing to unearth treasures more than 112 years since the iconic ship sank.
The latest discovery is a reminder of the one-time grandeur of the luxury liner whose destruction on 14 April, 1912, claimed the lives of some 1,500 people on board.
Researchers have now uncovered the centrepiece of the doomed ship’s first class lounge: a bronze statuette of the Roman goddess Diana.
The artwork, named ‘Diana of Versailles’, which is now cloaked in oceanic grime, hasn’t been seen in the murky depths of the north Atlantic since it was first spotted in the 1980s.
The statue has become a symbol not only of the former splendour of the Titanic, but of its ongoing decay.
Earlier this year, experts from RMS Titanic, Inc., led a 20-day-long expedition to the site of the wreck – their first since 2010 – during which they fully mapped the ship’s remains and debris field, taking more than two million photos of the area, Popular Mechanics reports.
Among the principal aims of the mission was to uncover the two-foot-tall Diana statue, which “embodied [the] Titanic’s palatial design,” the researchers wrote in a statement .
They explained: “She was photographed once in 1986 but a tradition of secrecy around the Titanic wreck ensured her location would remain unknown.”
That was, they said, until eagle-eyed experts thought they spied the “unique artefact” in footage from a previous dive and put together a rough search area.
With only a few hours left on the final day of their 2024 expedition, the team was losing hope of finding the statue.
However, she was located just in the nick of time, and photographed for the world to see.
Nevertheless, this moment of excitement was dampened by other discoveries during the mission.
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