New Irish footage shows Titanic rusting away

AMAZING new footage of the sunken Titanic taken during an Irishman's poignant dive to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, has uncovered how the ship is rusting away.

Pictures of the boat, which sank in 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives, reveal how the luxury liner is disintegrating under the pressures of the freezing seas. The main mast is collapsing in on itself and the decks are crumbling away.

Professional diver Rory Golden, who brought a plaque from Harland and Wolff shipyard to the wreck, said the Belfast-built ship is rusting at a dramatic rate.

"She is falling apart, she really is. There is an awful lot of decay. The main mast is collapsing and the decks are falling in. She is disintegrating before your eyes. She is in a bad way," he said.

Mr Golden, from Dublin, was charged with diving to the bottom of the ocean in a special Russian-built submarine to place the plaque on the Titanic's bridge earlier this year.

Footage taken during his dive, two-and-a-half miles below the surface of the ocean, will be screened in a special BBC documentary. It shows how a lot of windows on the ship are still intact despite the horrendous damage caused when she hit an iceberg 350 miles off the Canadian coast.

But it also shows how rust is growing so rapidly that it is enveloping the old portholes and threatening to to crumble what is left of the wreck.

The Titanic's huge anchor still lies on the deck of the liner, and the foot of the huge mast is still visible where it fell backwards as the ship sank.

An endless veil of rust is gradually overwhelming the port holes near where the grand staircase once stood.

The Titanic's collapsing structure also reveals another amazing detail - the white enamel of the captain's bath which is still intact.

The ship which, broke in two as she sank, lies in two pieces on the ocean floor with the stern and the bow hundreds of yards apart.

Mr Golden said that seeing the Titanic is the best dive in the world: "As a diver it is the ultimate dive. If you ask what is the world's most dangerous shipwreck - it is the Titanic."

Source: home.eircom.net