Featured Image Credit: Ralph White/Getty Images
Topics: Titanic, James Cameron, History, Film and TV
Ellie Kemp
Topics: Titanic, James Cameron, History, Film and TV
The Titanic continues to captivate both history buffs and deep-sea explorers to this day, despite tragically crashing some 113 years ago.
Many have tried and many have failed to visit the wreckage since it was first discovered in 1985.
Less than 250 people have made the plunge deep in the North Atlantic Ocean - with Titanic director James Cameron having completed 33 successful trips throughout the years.
The infamous OceanGate company, however, made headlines when its Titan submersible imploded on the way to the wreckage on June 18 2023.
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All five people on board were killed after the vessel - operated by a Logitech F710 video game controller - collapsed in on itself due to the immense pressure of the water.
Alongside OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, there were four other passengers onboard the submersible - the youngest of which was 19-year-old Suleman Dawood, and he was joined by his dad Shahzada, a 48-year-old British-Pakistani businessman.
British businessman Hamish Harding, aged 58, and 77-year-old former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, also lost their lives in the tragedy.
Now, Netflix has dropped a new documentary, featuring exclusive interviews with key figures behind the Titan submersible, covering its development, the tragic final expedition and its aftermath.
Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster soared to the top of the platform's movie charts after releasing on Wednesday, June 11.
While deep-sea mapping companies continue to monitor the Titanic's remains, in all this time, human remains have never been found.
And to say more than 1,500 people lost their lives in the tragedy, that seems quite surprising.
James Cameron put it bluntly: “I’ve seen zero human remains… we’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point, but never the body itself," he told the New York Times.
The Titanic lies 3,800 metres deep in the Atlantic Ocean, with deep-sea bacteria helping to break down the bodies - but even bones don’t last forever here.
Deep sea explorer Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic wreck in 1985, explained why: “The water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of.”
He added: “For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve."
However, back in 2012, Ballard also told the New York Times: “I would not be surprised if highly preserved bodies were found in the engine room. That was deep inside the ship.”
When asked how many bodies might still remain inside the broken hull, he answered: “Dozens. Hundreds starts to feel uncomfortable. I know that lots landed on the bottom, because there are so many shoes.”
Who else but Zack D Films touched on this engine room theory through one of his legendary simulations.
The Titanic's engine room appears sealed due to how the ship broke apart. The stern section, which housed the engine room, collapsed as it descended to the ocean floor, making it difficult to access to this day.
Over time, the wreck has been further buried under layers of sediment and debris.
Additionally, the Titanic was constructed with watertight bulkheads and doors designed to contain flooding; some of these doors may have closed during the disaster, isolating sections like the engine room.
These factors combined have made exploration of the engine room challenging, and it remains largely inaccessible to this day.
Since Ballard’s comment, though, higher-resolution mapping still showed no skeletal remains - only haunting artifacts, including shoes, watches and a child's doll head.