Titanic departing from Southampton, April 10, 1912

Like a lot of people, I’m morbidly fascinated with the Titanic. I’m not sure if it’s the tragically ruined promise of an “unsinkable” ship, the media hoopla that surrounded the bravado of such a thing, or the fact that her demise was such a huge and shocking disaster; I admit that I’m a dork for images and information about the behemoth at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

(I even made my mother visit the Halifax graveyard where 150 of her dead are laid to rest.)

Today, news of the possibility of raising the Titanic via 3D images peaked my curiosity. I’m a new student of digital history, yes, but I think I’d be pretty excited about the idea of such a project regardless.

Once the project is complete, I can imagine a mash-up of the 3D images with some of the old footage and photography of the Titanic as she was in life. I know very little about 3D technology, but I imagine you can’t do a true overlay of new images over historic ones. However, I would love to see some sort of side by side comparison of  the original images and the 3D model. I fancy some fx mastermind from ILM or Weta Workshop could even take both sets of images and craft some slick time-lapse to show the deterioration over time. That would be amazing.

Even if you take the 3D images alone, imagine the scholarship potential of such an outlay of information. Projects of this nature are ripe with educational possibilities beyond the original scope of the project. I’m just an enthusiast; I can only imagine how excited I’d be if I were a Titanic historian, material culture expert or maritime historian. I’d be all over it.