by Thinus Ferreira
For the 113th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic on 14 April 2025, National Geographic (DStv 181) on Sunday 13 April 2025 at 21:00 is going full-on "holodeck" to showcase the sunken ship like it looks now on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
"Must-watch" is completely overused in a world where everything on television is slapped as a "must-watch" but the 90-minute Titanic: The Digital Resurrection on Monday 14 April on National Geographic is truly a must-watch TV special.
Using underwater scanning technology, including 715 000 digitally captured images, Titanic: The Digital Resurrection brings the Titanic as it looks now, at the bottom of the sea, to "dry land" so to speak, so experts can stand next to its sunken, rusted, life-sized remains.
According to National Geographic, in 2022, filmmaker Anthony Geffen and his team followed deep-sea mapping company Magellan as they undertook the largest underwater 3D scanning project of its kind: Mapping the Titanic wreck on the seafloor of the North Atlantic.
Over three weeks they captured 16 terabytes of data - including 715 000 still images and 4K footage as they scanned the Titanic in detail.
In Titanic: The Digital Resurrection, a team of leading historians, engineers, and forensic experts, including Titanic analyst Parks Stephenson, metallurgist Jennifer Hooper, and master mariner Captain Chris Hearn, look at, and discuss the Titanic's final moments in 1912.
According to National Geographic, "Stephenson, Hooper and Hearn dissect the wreckage up close on a full-scale, colossal LED volume stage, walking around the ship in its final resting place".
"From the boiler room where engineers worked valiantly to keep the lights on until the bitter end to the first-class cabins where the ship ripped in two, the scan brings them face-to-face with where the tragedy unfolded."
Viewers of the TV special will see the team discovering a steam valve in the open position, validating eyewitness accounts that the ship's engineers remained at their posts in boiler room two for over two hours after impact, keeping the electricity on and allowing wireless distress signals to be sent.
Sifting through the hull fragments scattered across the wreck site, the team reconstructs them like a puzzle, providing a startling glimpse into the Titanic's final moments.
Further analysis of the digital scans adds to the evidence exonerating First Officer Murdoch, long accused of abandoning his post.
The position of a lifeboat davit, seen in new hi-res detail, suggests his crew was preparing a launch moments before the starboard side was engulfed, corroborating Second Officer Charles Lightoller's testimony that Murdoch was swept away by the sea.
Titanic: The Digital Resurrection examines the massive debris field in detail, rich with hundreds of personal artifacts, including pocket watches, purses, gold coins, hair combs, shoes and a shark's tooth charm.
Scans also reveal the wreck's alarming deterioration, with iconic areas of the wreck already collapsing.
Titanic: The Digital Resurrection is produced by Atlantic Productions with Anthony Geffen as producer, Lina Zilinskaite as senior producer and Fergus Colville as director. Simon Raikes and Chad Cohen are the executive producers for National Geographic.
