Unseen footage of first dive to wreck of the Titanic will be released today

Rare and never-before seen video of the first ever dive to the wreckage of the Titanic after its discovery in 1985 is being released on Wednesday.

The footage, which was shot in 1986, is being published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will premiere at 7.30pm and show the historic dive in unprecedented detail.

More than 80 minutes of footage on the WHOI’s YouTube channel will chronicle some of the remarkable achievements of the dive, led by Robert Ballard.

The footage is being shared to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of James Cameron’s classic disaster movie about the ill-fated ship.  

It marked the first time human eyes had seen the giant ocean liner since it struck an iceberg and sank in the frigid North Atlantic in April 1912.

Around 1,500 people died during the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City.

Rare and generally unseen video of the first dive to the wreck of the Titanic after its 1985 discovery will be published on Wednesday

This image from the video shows the bow of the Titanic 12,500 feet below the surface of the ocean, 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in 1986

A team from Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in partnership with the French oceanographic exploration organization IFREMER, discovered the final resting place of the ship in 12,400 feet of water on September 1, 1985, using a towed underwater camera.

Nine months later, a WHOI team returned to the site in the famous three-person research submersible Alvin and the remotely-operated underwater exploration vehicle Jason Jr., which took iconic images of the ship’s interior.

The footage is being released in conjunction with the 25th anniversary release of the remastered version of Titanic on February 10.

‘More than a century after the loss of Titanic, the human stories embodied in the great ship continue to resonate,’ ocean explorer and filmmaker James Cameron said in a statement.

‘Like many, I was transfixed when Alvin and Jason Jr. ventured down to and inside the wreck. By releasing this footage, WHOI is helping tell an important part of a story that spans generations and circles the globe.’

Explorer Robert Ballard (seen above in 2015) led the team which found the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1985

The footage is being released in conjunction with the 25th anniversary release of the remastered version of Titanic on February 10 

Around 1,500 people died during the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City

The story behind the discovery of the Titanic wreck in 1985 involved the US Navy. 

The mission involved tricking the Soviet Union into thinking that the US military was only searching for the doomed ocean liner when in reality it was also looking for two missing nuclear submarines.

The Titanic was eventually found on the ocean floor by the team led by Ballard but it all began three years prior when he was a naval intelligence officer and oceanographer trying to develop his own remote-control underwater vehicle.

But he was running out of money and needed funding, so appealed to the Navy’s Deputy Chief of Operations Ronald Thunman, according to CBS News.

‘He said, “All my life I’ve wanted to go find the Titanic”,’ Thunman said. ‘And I was taken aback by that.

‘I said, “Come on, this is a serious, top secret operation. Find the Titanic? That’s crazy!”‘

Thunman agreed to fund the Titanic expedition on one condition – that Ballard use the money and the time to also locate two nuclear submarines that went missing in the Atlantic in the 1960s.