Titanic

CHAPTER ONE

Under the sea

It was 1 September 1985. Under a ship in the North Atlantic, a camera moved through the dark water. Slowly, the camera went down - 1,000 metres, 2,000 metres, 3,000 metres under the sea. On the ship, some sailors waited and watched. Nobody spoke. Then, suddenly, they saw something.

'There it is!'

'Where?'

'There - look, I can see it!'

'Yes, you're right! It's the Titanic!'

With the camera, the sailors could see a ship 3,810 metres under the water. It was a very big, old ship, and it was in two halves. They could see the front half of the ship with their camera, but the back half of the ship was 800 metres away.

The sailors were all very happy. They took lots of photographs. The next year they came back with more cameras. The cameras went down under the sea and looked at the ship more carefully. They went all round the ship, and took hundreds of photos. Some of the cameras went into the ship too, through the windows. Later there was a film about the ship. People all over the world watched the film, and saw the photographs in newspapers.

But who built the Titanic? What happened to it? Why did it break in two halves, and sink to the bottom of the sea? And what about the people on this ship? What were they like, and what happened to them?

This is the story of the Titanic.