Meet the Titanic Experts
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Meet the Titanic Experts
What happened to Titanic after the last eyewitness saw her slip beneath the surface? Titanic is the perfect unsolved murder mystery. For the first time ever, James Cameron has gathered all the evidence and eight of the world's leading Titanic experts together in one place. Some have been to the wreck, some approach it through the testimony, some approach it through the physical forensics. They've decided that no one is leaving the room until they've pieced together—once and for all—what happened in Titanic’s final minutes. Get to know the experts.
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James Cameron
Cameron has been an avid scuba diver since 1969, logging over 3000 hours underwater. Seeking to combine his two great passions, diving and film-making, he directed THE ABYSS, which broke new ground in underwater cinematography and lighting. His attraction to the deep, and specifically to diving shipwrecks, ultimately drew him to the Everest of shipwrecks: Titanic. In 1995, Cameron made 12 manned-submersible dives to the Titanic in preparation for his feature film. For that expedition Cameron developed unprecedented filming, lighting and robotic equipment for use in the extreme pressures of the deep. The technical success of that expedition fueled his desire to bring that experience to audiences around the world. He turned to documentary filmmaking and formed Earthship Productions to develop films about ocean exploration and conservation.
In preparation for his 2001 expedition to the Titanic wreck, Cameron developed revolutionary fiber-spooling mini-ROV's as well as other deep ocean lighting and photographic technology. His team's historic exploration of the inside of Titanic was the subject of Cameron's 3-D Imax film, GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS. In May of 2002, Cameron guided his robotic cameras inside the wreck of Bismarck, which resulted in groundbreaking discoveries about the sinking of the legendary German battleship, and the Discovery Channel documentary, JAMES CAMERON'S EXPEDITION: BISMARCK. Cameron was lead author on what is considered the definitive marine forensic paper on the sinking of the DKM Bismarck, which was presented at the ASNE/SNAME annual meeting in 2009. Cameron's team also made 3 expeditions to deep hydrothermal vent sites along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the East Pacific Rise, and the Guaymas Basin in the Sea of Cortez, over a two-year period, which became the subject of ALIENS OF THE DEEP (also released in 3D Imax.) He was joined in his exploration of these extreme environments by a team of young scientists and marine biologists to study how life forms discovered there represent life we may one day find on other planets and moons in our solar system.
Most recently, Cameron returned again to the Titanic in 2005 to complete his interior exploration of the ship. Cameron has ultimately led seven deep ocean expeditions with 72 deep submersible dives, including 51 Mir dives to depths up to 16,000'. Cameron is currently leading a team building a unique manned submersible capable of diving to the ocean's greatest depths. In 2012 he will pilot the sub to a depth of 35,800' in the Challenger Deep, and work with scientists over a series of dives in the Mariana, Kermadec and Tonga trenches to explore the deepest places on our planet, discovering new species in the least understood ecosystems on Earth.
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Bill Sauder
A draftsman by trade, Bill’s first job was as a tour guide on the RMS Queen Mary. After a short time, he was promoted to the position of archives administrator for the ship, which he held for several years while studying the art, architecture, and mechanical workings of the liner. After the discovery of the Titanic wreck in 1985, Bill worked closely with maritime artist Ken Marschall to identify key pieces of wreckage, piecing together the final moments of history’s greatest ship. Bill has also served as technical advisor on Robert Ballard’s Lusitania expedition in 1993 and in August 2000 joined a month-long expedition to the Titanic. He was also a visual consultant on James Cameron’s feature film, Titanic. Bill has appeared in numerous documentaries on turn of the century liners and has contributed to several best-selling books on the subject.
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Titanic Experts at the Round Table
10 of the world's most renowned experts on the Titanic collaborate in order to uncover the precise sequence of events of the Titanic's sinking, beginning with the her collision with an iceberg and ending when she came, in pieces, to rest on the ocean floor.
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Brian Thomas, Assistant Team Leader and Senior Salvage Engineer for the US Coast Guard Marine Safety Center’s Salvage Engineering Response Team in Washington, D.C.
Brian Graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1999, earning a Bachelor of Science in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. After receiving his commission, he served in the engineering department aboard USCG Cutter Tampa. From 2001 to 2003 he was assigned to the Coast Guard Engineering Logistics Center in Baltimore where he led a team of engineers developing conceptual designs for a service life extension program for the Coast Guard’s polar class icebreakers. Brian then attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 2005 with Masters Degrees in both Naval Architecture and Mechanical Engineering. Since then, he has served at the Marine Safety Center where he works assessing the passenger vessels, barges, offshore supply vessels, tugboats, research vessels and floating offshore installations for compliance with domestic and international standards. In his current capacity as senior salvage engineer he has performed in-depth stability and structural assessments for hundreds of damaged, grounded, sunk or capsized vessels and led forensic engineering analyses to support Coast Guard marine casualty investigations.
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Titanic Model
Model to aid in the panelists in piecing together the story of what happened to the Titanic. At the time of her construction, Titanic was the largest ship ever built—882 feet, 9 inches long, and standing nearly 20 stories high. Her weight was over 46,000 tons. Her hull spanned four city blocks. She had nine decks encompassing 370 first-class cabins, 168 second-class cabins, and 297 third-class cabins. Accommodations for up to 3,547 people.
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David Gallo
David earned bachelors and masters degrees in geological science from the State University of New York at Albany and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island. In 1987 he was invited to join Robert Ballard’s team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as the assistant director of the Center for Marine Exploration. He has lectured extensively nationally and internationally and has participated in numerous expeditions to the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, and to the Mediterranean Sea. He was one of the first oceanographers to use a combination of submarines and robots to map the ocean.
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Model of the Wreckage
100 years later, this is a model of what is left of the Titanic. A tangled wreck on the ocean floor. Thousands of broken pieces. But, from her rust-covered remains, we may still be able to figure out what happened in her last moments.
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Don Lynch
Don Lynch was born and raised in the Northwest where he began researching the Titanic while still in high school. In the decades since, he has traveled to museums and archives throughout the United States, Canada, England and Ireland in service of his Titanic research. He has also met and interviewed twenty survivors of the disaster, as well as numerous relatives of survivors and victims. In 1992, Lynch wrote the text for Titanic: An Illustrated History, which was illustrated by Ken Marschall and spent twelve weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list. Filmmaker James Cameron has credited the book with inspiring his blockbuster movie Titanic. Lynch served as the film’s historian. In the summer of 2001, Lynch worked as a consultant to James Cameron’s Ghosts of the Abyss project, which involved dives to the wreck site for the 3-D, large format documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss. Lynch’s current book, also entitled Ghosts of the Abyss, is a companion to the film.
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JamesCameron_4
James Cameron demonstrates the sinking of the Titanic with a rolled up sheet of paper.
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Jeff Stettler
Dr. Stettler is an experienced engineer and teacher, with experience across a range of academic environments and technical and operational leadership positions in the U.S. Navy. He is a recognized expert in the field of naval architecture and marine engineering with special expertise and experience in applied engineering for marine salvage and casualty response. He has taught a breadth of courses in naval architecture, marine engineering and mechanical engineering and has conducted and supervised applied research in ship flooding and damaged stability, ship structures and hydrodynamics. He has also served as the Associate Chairman of the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering Department. In addition to his recent experiences in academia, Dr. Stettler served as a career naval officer in the Navy’s Engineering Duty community. His experience includes submarine operations, shipyard construction, repair, and dry-docking operations, ship and submarine design and acquisition, and deep-sea diving marine salvage operations. He has supervised more than thirty complex marine salvage operations, including ship salvage and deep ocean search and recovery involving military and commercial ships, aircraft, and spacecraft.
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Close Up of Titanic Prop
Titanic is not rusting in the way that we would think of rusting. It’s actually being eaten by bacteria and the bodies of these bacteria form these amazing structures called rusticles. Once the panelists apply their forensic process, Titanic’s remains in the debris field begin to tell the story of what happened on the night of April 14, 1912.
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Ken Marschall
A self-taught artist with little formal training, Ken has been painting Titanic since he was 16 years old. To satisfy his penchant for accuracy and detail, he has amassed an extensive collection of Titanic archives and is one of the foremost experts on the looks and layout of the ship. Ken collaborated with Don Lynch on the book Titanic: An Illustrated History and has participated in numerous documentaries, exhibitions and other projects. Ken served as the Visual Historian on the set of James Cameron’s blockbuster film, Titanic. In 2001 Ken accompanied James Cameron to the North Atlantic to explore Titanic in greater detail than ever before for the large-format 3-D film Ghosts of the Abyss. He has made a total of six dives to the wreck site, including another Cameron expedition in 2005.
See some of Ken Marschall's beautiful Titanic illustrations »
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Parks Stevenson
A retired naval officer and 1979 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Naval Science. His final years on active duty were spent commanding a deployed tactical air control squadron detachment during amphibious operations in the Western Pacific and Arabian Gulf operating areas. After his retirement from active duty, Commander Stephenson joined Hughes Aircraft as a naval systems engineer. He has spent the past sixteen years—first with Hughes, then Raytheon, now Lockheed Martin—building combat systems for naval ships and, more recently, integrated command-and-control systems for national defense. Parks has been a contributing member of the Marine Forensic Panel (SD-7), chartered by the Society Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) to evaluate the forensic evidence from shipwrecks like Titanic. Parks was employed by James Cameron as a technical advisor for his documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss. Parks has also contributed text and computer-generated 3-D models to the film’s companion book. On Cameron’s Last Mysteries of the Titanic expedition, Parks fine-tuned the use of CG models as forensic tools in the continuing exploration of the wreck’s interior. He has served as an expert and advisor on numerous Titanic and Titanic-related documentaries, including the Titanic episode of National Geographic Channel's series Seconds from Disaster. Parks dove to the Titanic in 2005 and participated in dives to the Britannic in 2006 and 2009. He was featured as the lead investigator in the 2009 PBS/NOVA documentary Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor and in the 2010 RMST/WHOI expedition, which was the first to survey the wreck as an archeological site. Parks has a special interest in historical research and forensic re-construction, specializing in military and maritime areas. In addition to his bachelor’s degree from the Naval Academy he holds a Masters in Political Science from Auburn University.
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James Cameron on the White Board
James Cameron sketches as the panelists discuss how the stern could have fallen differently than as previously depicted.
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PH Nargeolet
Born in Chamonix, France, Paul Henry Nargeolet served 22 years in the French Navy and retired as a Commander. He served at the diving school as Director of Underwater Operations and Helmet Diving Suit Training. In his naval career he completed hundreds of dives working on wrecks, commanding expeditions involving research and recovery on wrecks of warships, trawlers and merchant ships. He also served as the captain of the Deep Submersible Team of the Navy (GISMER).
After leaving the Navy, P.H. joined the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea. He participated in numerous deep dives and biological, geological, and discovery expeditions. He eventually became the director of deep diving. He later joined Aqua+, where he led exploratory expeditions as well as dives to various wrecks where numerous historical artifacts were recovered. In his years with IFREMER and later at Aqua+, Nargeolet led 5 expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic recovering over 5,000 artifacts. He also supervised the recovery of a 20 ton section of the Titanic hull. He currently works as a freelance expert and consultant in deep-water expeditions. His experience includes the discovery of a dozen Roman wrecks, archaeological dive and recovery expeditions to various wrecks dating from the 16th to 19th centuries. In 2007 he led an expedition to the wreck of the S.S. Carpathia, the ship famous for rescuing the Titanic survivors. PH was the co-founder and operation manager at the International Maritime Heritage Foundation (IMHF) and is a research associate for the Center for Maritime and Underwater Resource Management. He is a member of the International Explorers Club, the Forensic Maritime Committee of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, the Titanic International Society, and the French Association for the Titanic. He is a co-founder of GRAN and International Archaeological Society. He has received the chevalier du l’Ordre du Mérite maritime and the chevalier du l’Ordre National du Mérite as well as medals of valor from the French Navy.
