Titanic: Answers from the Abyss lets you tag along with a group of American, British, Canadian and French scientists as they conduct an extensive forensic examination of the wreck of the Titanic. Originally aired by the Discovery Channel in 1999, this is a documentary well worth seeking out. (I can't understand why it's apparently unavailable on DVD.)

The expedition's goal was to find answers to several mysteries surrounding the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. First, they wanted to learn the extent of the damage caused by the collision with the iceberg. Second, they wanted to know how and why the ship broke apart. Finally, they hoped to figure out why the bow of the ship remains largely intact while the stern section exhibits a great amount of damage. As part of the mission, they took extensive film of both sections, using that to generate a photomosaic that better reveals the look and condition of the ship today. It's interesting to watch these scientists and Titanic experts test their theories (some of which are proven wrong), but the real magic of this documentary comes in the form of the extensive video images of both sections of the ship and much of the debris field.

Narrator Jonathan Pryce informs us that the prevailing thought for decades was that the iceberg opened a long gash in the hull of the Titanic, and that the ship entered the water in one piece. I wouldn't necessarily agree with the second half of that statement, as numerous witnesses reported watching the ship break apart before sinking. These same accounts will again be ignored when this particular research team summarizes its conclusions. (Of course, these are the same experts who chose to conduct their investigation during hurricane season -- a decision that almost came back to bite them in the end.)

By this time, the rivets holding the hull together had already become the prime suspect for the beginning of Titanic's end. In this scenario, some of the rivets gave way during the collision with the iceberg, opening a number of seams in the hull through which the water poured in. Despite the layers of silt covering the bottommost layers of the sunken ship, the team did find visual evidence of one such open seam -- and the investigation of several rivets retrieved from the bottom corroborated the theory that some of the wrought iron rivets had too much slag in them, thereby weakening them.

As for the breakage of the ship, I cannot accept the team's conclusions wholeheartedly. They do confirm that the break occurred, and they zero in on where it happened, but they ignore all of the witness testimony that the ship was nearly perpendicular with the ocean when it broke apart, choosing to rely on a computer model that tells them the bow could not have risen more than 12 degrees before the fracture. Given so many complex variables affecting Titanic's death throes, I'm unsure how they can be so confident in their computer simulation. That being said, the team does make a good case for their theory that the bottom piece of the hull held the two halves of the ship together until it was underwater.

I'm not a huge fan of the research team's test to determine how the bow made its way to the bottom of the ocean, coming to rest in such a stately, upright fashion. Basically, they make a crude ship's model and drop it in a huge test tank to see what happens. Especially given the fact that the two halves of the ship were still attached -- barely -- when the whole thing went underwater, I don't think this test does a good job at all of mimicking the actual scenario under investigation. Still, it was nice to see the experts proven quite wrong, as their model -- time and time again -- sank in a seesaw fashion rather than the corkscrew motion they predicted. They also determined that it was clearly a low descent that ended with the nose of the bow striking the seafloor first.

As for the stern, I have to say it's good to see this section of the ship actually get some close attention. Unlike the bow, the stern suffered major damage during its descent. Indeed, several witnesses reported hearing a series of explosions underwater, and the team concludes that something of that fashion did occur. It was not the boilers, however -- the team finds plenty of evidence of that. Instead, the theory argues that air trapped in the hulls of the stern basically exploded outward due to the intense and increasing pressure applied by the ocean as the stern sank.

All in all, Titanic: Answers from the Abyss is one of the better Titanic documentaries I've seen over the years. As the rusticles continue to eat away at the Titanic's surviving structure, some of the best visual shots we will ever see of the proud wreckage can be found in this documentary. The research team's conclusions as to lingering questions over the ship's fate have also added a great deal to our understanding of the true extent of the tragedy that took place on that fateful night of April 15, 1912.