麻豆约拍

While news of the Titanic tragedy tapped along the wires, the iceberg that sank the ship floated on.

All that can be told from its appearance in a photograph taken the day following the disaster is that it would have been continually rolling and highly unstable, a berg that was in its own death throes.

Warmer gulf stream water was eating away at the iceberg, reducing the ancient leviathan to a shard of ice. Titanic had been expected to make many journeys through these waters, but the iceberg's maiden voyage was always to be its last.

Over a thousand miles from its birthplace, and about a fortnight after its collision with Titanic, the last piece of the iceberg disappeared into the Atlantic ocean. A scattering of soil on the sea bed from the iceberg's rocky sediments are all that remain, some way from the wreck of Titanic.