Newly Released Video Shows Wreckage of Titanic on Ocean Floor Transcript

Well, tonight, a rare glimpse, 12,000 feet down in the frigid North Atlantic. This is never-before-scene video of the wreckage of the Titanic. The institute in Woods Hole that discovered the wreck released this new video today,

And WBZ’s Ken McLeod spoke to the explorer who first laid eyes on the ship’s final resting place.

We’re flying, Jack.

It’s been a quarter-century now since Leo and Kate flew on the bow of the Hollywood Titanic, in the movie that rekindled world fascination with the 1912 tragedy, when the real ship hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, killing 1,500 people.

Most people wonder, if they were aboard the Titanic, what would they have done?

That’s Bob Ballard, and here he is in 1986, the chief scientist of a small band of underwater explorers who first brought the world these images.

But the idea that we were on the front page of every newspaper in the world, that that was a shock to us.

Tonight, the folks at Woods Hole released 80 minutes of never-before-seen footage depicting the wreck, which has since been combed over by several other video and salvage crews.

So I think that’s our contribution to history, is we’ll show you the Titanic before the salvagers came and destroyed it.

Tonight’s footage is not meant as a big reveal, but instead a salute to the technology and the pioneering human spirit that made it possible.

This was a way to bring people all over the world from all walks of life into the deep ocean.

It was the three-person submersible Alvin, and the remotely-operated Jason Jr. that took us all to a depth of 12,500 feet, some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, for a look at the proud ship that never completed its maiden voyage. It was a scene the mission leader deeply respects.

All throughout the debris field are pairs of shoes, and that is just such a powerful signature.

If Titanic fascination continues to inspire new generations of scientists, the folks at Woods Hole are fine with that because they still marvel over the mission.

It was life-changing for all of us who were there.

Most of Bob Ballard’s Titanic mission was funded by the US military. You see, he spent a big chunk of that trip secretly surveying the wreckage of two American nuclear subs that sank in the North Atlantic during the 1960s. But the Pentagon figured if the Russians bought into all the hoopla about Ballard looking only for the Titanic, they wouldn’t tag along. David and Lisa.

Sounds like they were right, and the rest of us benefit.

Some good trickery there. All right.

Fascinating.

Thank you for your…