I saw a special recently on the History Channel that was talking about “new evidence” about the sinking of the Titanic. The expedition was looking for evidence of damage to the double bottom of the ship, and sure enough they found a big piece of the bottom a ways away from the other pieces. This was supposedly earth-shattering news, that her bottom was damaged, and they were down there looking because a previous expedition had seen something odd down there.

I’m reading Walter Lord’s book “The Night Lives On,” which talks a bit about theories about the sinking. On page 65 I found this:

Rather, [the flooding of Boiler Room 4] came from a separate injury to the ship, probably to the double bottom, entirely apart from the familiar gash along the starboard side. In short, the ice did even more mischief than generally thought.

This surprised me - the book was written in 1987! The original sighting of the torn portion didn’t happen until 2000, and then they went down again in 2005 and confirmed it was a piece of the double bottom. But they were talking about it as if it was totally new, utterly changed what we know about the sinking, etc - and yet Walter Lord mentioned it in 1987! I just found that odd.