Titanic At 100: Mystery Solved

Titanic At 100: Mystery Solved was a very interesting documentary if you're interested in the technical side of the ship.  This is from the 2010 expedition in which a number of top researchers and oceanographers go the wreck site.  Unlike most of the previous expeditions, this wasn't one in which they visit the popular sites on the Bow and retell the stories.  This expedition instead had a mission to do something that needed to be done, but had never been done before.  The Titanic had broken up, but the researchers didn't know what exactly happened during the final moments.  So, they sent machines down there that mapped out a 15 mile area around the wreck.  Only some of the wreck had been found and they were treating this like an airplane crash site.  Basically they wanted to map out the entire wreck and determine where everything was so that they could determine how the pieces got there and ultimately what exactly happened during those final dark moments when the Titanic disappeared for many years.  The expedition did what they set out to do and produced images of the wreck.  Then, they sent a robot that could be controlled from the surface and got close images of what they couldn't identify.  Then, the researchers used that information and were able to find out what happened and in the mean time, some of them finally debunked that confounded theory that the rivets being weak sank the Titanic.  The conclusions were very interesting to see and watch as they brought to life the final moments that had been a mystery for nearly 100 years.

I found it to be a different and in some ways emotional documentary that held my interest to the end.  I  did find however that the narrator's voice was robot-like and very annoying.  I also felt that while the debunking of the weak rivet theory was interesting, it seemed like it was added to stir up controversy and drama.  That actually could've been a documentary on it's own.  Another thing I noticed even though they didn't say so was that they debunked Robert Lang's (who by the way was a member of the expedition) theory that the expansion joint (a part of the ship used for stabilizing the ship during rough weather) contributed to the break up.

I give this movie 4 stars out of 5.

For more information, here is a visual interpretation done by Parks Stephenson (one of the leading experts on the expedition) of the results:

http://marconigraph.com/titanic/breakup/mgy_breakup2.html