Explore the height of Edwardian opulence, mingle with legendary passengers, and experience what happened on that fateful April night when the “Ship of Dreams” turned into a real-life nightmare.

Play the game here: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/titanic/adventure-on-the-titanic/

Read more here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/titanic/cameron-text

Photograph by Mark Thiessen, NGM Staff

A gentleman’s pocket watch in a sterling silver case may have been set to New York time in anticipation of a safe arrival.

ALL ARTIFACTS COURTESY RMS TITANIC, INC.

Dupont Kalorama Museum Walk Weekend is the perfect excuse to explore D.C.’s “off-the-mall” museums. In addition to a wide variety of exhibitions, many sites are offering special programs. Enjoy period music and bring a picnic to the gardens at Dumbarton House, stop by The Textile Museum’s Celebration of Textiles, take part in Jazz n’Family Fun Days at The Phillips Collection, come tell your stories about that special man in your family circle at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History or get your picture taken in a vintage automobile at Wilson House.

Photograph by Mark Thiessen, NGM Staff

This porthole is among more than 5,500 objects retrieved from the ocean floor around the wreck of the Titanic. Steel hull plates flexed on impact with the seabed, popping out the rigid portholes.

ALL ARTIFACTS COURTESY RMS TITANIC, INC.

It had been five hours since my intrepid robot Gilligan left its garage on the front of the submersible Mir 1 and disappeared inside the cavernous shipwreck. Our sub was parked on the upper deck of the most famous wreck in history, surrounded by eternal blackness and over 5,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, both thanks to a two-and-a-half-mile column of water over our heads.

Safe inside the Mir, I flew the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with gentle nudges of the joystick, its thrusters maneuvering it into the ship’s treacherous interior. The “bot” had penetrated to F Deck, paying out a thin fiber-optic cable like Theseus in the labyrinth, with only Ariadne’s twine to guide him back. Though the tiny vehicle was now seven decks below me, I felt as if my consciousness were inside the bot, its cameras my eyes, staring down the corridors of the ship. Its jeopardy was also mine, and my pulse raced with each new hazard. Turning a corner, I barely escaped being pinned by a falling “rusticle,” one of the stalactite-like formations created by the bacteria that are slowly devouring the steel of the ship.

As I passed through an entrance, suddenly revealed in my lights were sparkling reflections off a wall of gleaming blue and green tiles. Teak chaise lounges lay upturned on the floor, incredibly well preserved, and above them was an arabesque dome covered in gold leaf. I had entered the elegant spa on the most luxurious ship of its time. “Tell them we’re in the Turkish baths,” I said to Mike Arbuthnot, the marine archaeologist sitting next to me. He keyed the microphone and relayed the message up to the surface.

Our interior archaeological survey of the ship had begun in 1995, as I was wrapping up shooting the wreck for the movie Titanic. Back then we had an unwieldy ROV called Snoop Dog, which was little more than a movie prop, but we flew it down inside the ship’s grand staircase nevertheless, all the way down to D Deck. Its lights revealed that much of the ornate wood paneling remained intact. Snoop reached the end of its tether and could go no farther, but I could not help wondering what lay in the shadows just beyond its lights. After the movie was released, I commissioned the building of two revolutionary new robotic vehicles so we could return and truly explore the interior. In 2001 and again in 2005 I made multiple dives to the Titanic wreck and flew our bots deep inside, exhaustively surveying her interior. Ultimately we imaged and documented 65 percent of Titanic’s surviving internal spaces, including the first-class cabins, first-class reception and dining rooms, steerage cabins and open space, cargo holds, and Marconi room.

Read more here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/titanic/cameron-text

Photograph © National Museums Northern Ireland, Collection Harland and Wolff, Ulster Folk & Transport Museum

The propellers of the Olympic—the nearly identical sister ship of the Titanic—dwarf workers at the Belfast shipyard where both ocean liners were built. Few photographs exist of the Titanic, but the Olympic gives a sense of its grand design.