By Tim Binnall
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has released over 80 minutes of rare footage from the 1986 expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic wherein the downed vessel was observed by humans for the first time. According to a press release, the breathtaking video, which is previewed above and can be seen in full here, was captured around a year after the remains of the ship were discovered in September of 1985. During the expedition, a three-person crew aboard the human-operated submarine dubbed 'Alvin' dispatched a smaller remote-controlled vehicle, known as 'Jason Jr,' which was able to venture inside the remnants of infamous ocean liner.
The discovery of the Titanic wreckage in 1985 put an end to a decades-long unsolved mystery as to where the doomed vessel, upon which approximately 1,500 unfortunate passengers lost their lives, came to rest. Oceanographer Robert Ballard and French explorer Jean-Louis Michelin are credited with finding the downed ship after countless searches had come up short for nearly 75 years. During the 1986 expedition, Ballard was aboard the Alvin as it approached the wreckage and, recalling the moment in a recent interview, mused that "the first thing I saw coming out of the gloom at 30 feet was this wall, this giant wall of riveted steel that rose over 100 and some feet above us."
While the remains of the people who perished in the tragedy had long been lost to the proverbial sands of time, Ballard recounted peering into the portholes of the ship from the Alvin and recalled that "it was like people looking back at us. It was pretty haunting actually." The newly shared footage, which Woods Hole says has "never been released for public viewing," features an array of amazing scenes from the wreckage, including a glimpse of the inside of a crew member's cabin and even a still-hanging chandelier. The 1986 is particularly precious as a recent expedition in 2019 found that the ship's remains had deteriorated significantly and experts believe that it will ultimately vanish completely in around a decade.