Return to the Titanic

A woman's leather boot lies poignantly next to a child's shoe. Piles of china plates lie where they fell, while nearby are champagne bottles, their corks still intact as if waiting to be popped in celebration.

These are the latest images from the wreck of the Titanic, ghostly spectres of another time relayed to television viewers by means of the latest technology.

Blockbuster films and underwater expeditions have lent a familiarity to the hulk of one of the world's greatest liners, lost in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. But these images still have the power to move, a reminder of a disaster which claimed more than 1,500 lives.

The footage was beamed live onto US TV's National Geographic channel by Dr Robert Ballard - the man who discovered the wreck in 1985. Since then the liner has deteriorated significantly, partly due to the number of unauthorised visits and salvage dives. An underwater wedding has even been staged on the ship. Dr Ballard sent down submersible robots, Hercules and Argus, which examined the Titanic without touching the boat and found several areas untouched by salvagers.

The footage even showed a fully intact porcelain bath-tub, believed to have been used by captain Edward John Smith, who drowned, a passenger's unopened travelling chest and a magnifying glass. As

he directs Hercules, Dr Ballard gives a running commentary: "Look in that hatch. He left his shaving kit. That's a bath tub full of stuff. You can see the faucet handles.

"And that's a trunk. You think about Lady Astor and all the trunks she brought aboard. Clearly this was a wealthy person with those precious stones there.

"And the lid is still closed and you have to wonder what is under the lid. But again our policy is to look but not touch."

As he spots a woman's high-heeled boot, he adds: "All over the debris field are these personal statements. You can almost imagine her in them. It's the treatment of the shoes, the tannic acid, the animals won't eat it. They will eat the people and the bones will dissolve but not the shoes."

In 1985, Dr Ballard laid a plaque among the artifacts, dedicated to the survivors and pleading with other divers to leave the wreckage intact. But when he returned he discovered salvagers had left their mark on the ship and his plaque was missing.