'Best images yet' of Titanic surface as court views 3D footage of wreck

SCIENTISTS have revealed some never-before-seen images of the Titanic, showing the rusting hulk of the ship on the sea floor where she sank almost a century ago.

The Titanic struck ice while making its maiden voyage on 12 April, 1912, about 400 miles off Newfoundland, Canada. More than 1,500 of the 2,228 passengers and crew perished as the liner plunged into the deep.

The images taken from a remote-controlled submersible vehicle were shown to a judge in a Virginia courtroom amid an ongoing salvage claim involving the world's most famous shipwreck.

Scientists who took part in a 2010 expedition to the North Atlantic wreck site said the images were the most extensive and highest quality yet seen. The expedition fully mapped the three-mile-by-five-mile wreck site, which is located two and a half miles below the ocean's surface.

The experts said the entire debris field has now been documented for the first time.

The new images will ultimately be assembled for public viewing, scientists said, and to help oceanographers and archaeologists explain the ship's violent descent to the ocean bottom. It is also intended to provide answers on the state of the wreck, which scientists say is showing increasing signs of deterioration.

The findings were presented in a federal courtroom in Norfolk, Virginia, where a salvage claim is still being decided 26 years after the Titanic was discovered by oceanographer Robert Ballard.

The most striking images were of the Titanic's stern, which lies 2,000ft from the bow.

Attorneys and court visitors donned 3D glasses to view footage from a remote-controlled submersible vehicle that skimmed over the stern, seemingly transporting viewers through scenes of jagged "rusticles" sprouting from deck, a length of chain, the captain's bathtub, and wooden elements that scientists had previously believed had disappeared in the harsh, deep ocean environment.

"We have an image of everything. That's what's important," said William N Lange of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "This has never been done before in the deep sea."

The 2010 expedition was organised by RMS Titanic Inc. The company has exclusive rights to salvage the Titanic, and has gathered nearly 6,000 objects from the once-opulent cruise ship.They are valued at more than $110 million (68m).

US district judge Rebecca Beach Smith ruled last year that RMS Titanic was entitled to full compensation for the Titanic trove it has collected, but has not determined how it will be paid. The hearing was intended, in part, to demonstrate the extraordinary costs to RMS Titanic of organising the risky expeditions and salvage operations.

Chris Davino, chief executive of Premier Exhibitions, RMS Titanic's parent company, estimated the cost of the 2010 expedition at $4m to $5m.

He said the firm has not decided whether to launch another salvage expedition.