Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces

On The History Channel(R)

World Premiere February 26, 2006 at 9:00 p.m. ET

'...the most significant piece of evidence since the wreck was located in

1985.'

NEW YORK, Feb. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- In August 2005, a History Channel
expedition team made a shocking discovery more than two miles beneath
the Atlantic Ocean: large missing pieces of Titanic's bottom, more
than 1,500 feet from the rest of the ship, so well preserved that even
the original red paint is still clearly visible. These pieces were
little known and never examined for their role in the sinking, and
they tell a new and potentially more terrifying story of Titanic's
final moments, rewriting the script that had previously been taken as
fact. Relive the disaster, the history, and the deep-sea search for
new clues in high-definition in TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING
PIECES, premiering Sunday, February 26th at 9:00 p.m. on The History
Channel.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20051031/HISTORYLOGO )

Veteran shipwreck divers and hosts of The History Channel hit series
Deep Sea Detectives, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, along with a
highly experienced team of experts, set off last summer in the Russian
research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, to follow a hunch, unsure
if they'd find anything that hadn't been found before. Using
high-definition photographic equipment furnished by the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, the team aspired to think "outside the
box", trying to locate, document, and analyze missing pieces of the
ship whose existence had only been suspected. Hope waned after several
fruitless excursions to the wreck in Mir submersible vessels, but a
dramatic discovery on the final mission may have changed history: the
entire missing double bottom of the ship, and a world of new
possibilities about what really happened when Titanic plunged beneath
the ocean toward its watery grave.

The group cataloged its findings and studied them for months, then
huddled together at Woods Hole last December to analyze what it all
meant. Titanic historian and author Simon Mills has referred to it as:
"...possibly the most significant pieces of evidence that have been
uncovered since the wreck was located in 1985."

In TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES, noted naval architect
Roger Long says the evidence points to Titanic's hull breaking in half
earlier in the sinking process than previously believed. This theory
creates a significantly different sinking experience than what has
previously been described, most notably in James Cameron's 1997 film,
Titanic. "The breakup was not just something that happened as the ship
made her final plunge, but the breakup began the final plunge," says
Long. Using animated renderings, Long challenges the dramatic upright
angle of the ship before its final plunge, which has traditionally
been portrayed. Through detailed explanation of the way the steel
broke, where it lies in the ocean, and survivors' testimony that no
significant waves rocked the lifeboats as Titanic went under, Long
proposes a new scenario where the ship remained at a fairly low angle
to the water, explaining why so many witnesses and passengers failed
to realize that the ship had even broken apart as it continued to
sink.

This scenario is played out in a CGI animation, which was presented to
the Woods Hole group. The animation combines the newly uncovered
details with pre-existing forensic analysis of the ship and survivors'
recollections in order to paint a balanced picture using all of the
available information. While we may never know the complete story for
sure, the new findings are vitally important to anyone with even a
passing interest in the Titanic disaster. "It is not so much a matter
of saying that this IS what happened but that this is the story that
the pieces documented by The History Channel 2005 Expedition tell when
put together with the body of knowledge accumulated previously," said
Long in his analysis of the findings of the working group.

In addition to going along with the deep-sea explorers on their
journey to the wreck and sharing in the analysis of their findings,
TITANIC'S FINAL MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES also includes:

* Dramatic recreations of Titanic's one and only voyage, following

individual characters and living the wide range of human experience that

truly tells the tale: the new lives they expected in America, the

initial reactions to the iceberg strike, the race for lifeboats, the

heroism of the crew and passengers, and the horrible sights of bodies in

the frigid North Atlantic.

* Historical facts about the ship and the aftermath of the disaster,

giving a depth of understanding of how huge and important an event this

was in 1912.

* The theories on what these new findings mean to the human experience

aboard the ship. Was the sinking perhaps a sudden surprise that caught

people off guard? Did the passengers really think that the ship could

stay afloat long enough for help to arrive

* Survivors' recollections of the disaster and exploration of why the

memories of those who were there can seem so vastly different from one

another.

Executive Producer for The History Channel is Carl Lindahl. TITANIC'S
LAST MOMENTS: MISSING PIECES is produced for The History Channel by
Lone Wolf Documentary Group.

Now reaching more than 88 million Nielsen subscribers, The History
Channel(R), "Where History Lives," brings history to life in a
powerful manner and provides an inviting place where people experience
history personally and connect their own lives to the great lives and
events of the past. The History Channel has earned six News and
Documentary Emmy(R) Awards and received the prestigious Governor's
Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for the network's
"Save Our History(R)" campaign dedicated to historic preservation and
history education. The History Channel web site is located at
http://www.History.com. SOURCE The History Channel