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.'

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    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