Titanic’s iconic bow has lost part of its metal railings – with a 15ft section now lying on the sea floor.
The bow featured in the scene from the 1997 film where Jack had his “king of the world” moment and held Rose over the front of the ship.
However, an expedition to the wreck on 29 July found the silhouette had dramatically changed.
3D imaging shows the railings on the ocean floor. Pic: RMS Titanic Inc
An image from 2010 showed the railings still intact. Pic: RMS Titanic Inc
The port side railing now has a gap of about 15ft (4.6m), said RMS Titanic Inc, the company which has sole rights to recover items from the ship.
A 3D scan revealed it had fallen in one piece to the sea floor.
Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people, but the ship is inevitably deteriorating.
“Although Titanic’s collapse is inevitable, this evidence strengthens our mission to preserve and document what we can before it is too late,” said the company.
A 2ft-tall bronze statue of Roman goddess Diana was also rediscovered on the seabed during the latest expedition.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic: Pic: 20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
It sat on the mantlepiece in the first-class lounge and was one of a number of artworks that adorned areas used by the ship’s richest passengers.
RMS Titanic Inc said the statue had been seen briefly in 1986, but subsequent missions had failed to locate it – until now.
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The wreck is about 12,500 feet down in the Atlantic and covered in “rusticles” – stalactite-like structures formed when microbes feed on the iron in sunken ships.
Interest in items from the ship remains high.
In April, a gold pocket watch from the body of the richest man on the Titanic sold for a record-breaking £1.175m.
