At age eight, Paul Matthias glued household containers and plastics together to form contraptions resembling old diving bells, which he used to lower himself into a nearby quarry to explore its depths.
Thirty years later, Matthias found himself in a multi-million dollar, computer-driven submarine staring at what sparked his childhood, deep-sea dreams: Titanic.
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“All the books, studies, research, and so forth that I read on the surface did not come close to describing how massive, majestic and eerie Titanic really is,” said the 38-year-old Narragansett resident.
As the owner of an ocean floor imaging company, Matthias has gone on two expeditions to the Titanic wreck — both featured on the Discovery Channel — and has searched for mysteries like Amelia Earhart’s plane and the treasure of England’s King Charles I.
His company Polaris Imaging, Inc. uses sound wave-based sensors, high-resolution digital cameras and software to map out whatever individuals, companies or governments want to find on the ocean floor.
What Matthias is often looking for is not always as exciting as a shipwreck. The technology is also employed to find mineral sources, to lay pipe and cable, and find obstacles in maritime navigation.
His business, located in an office at his home, has four employees and relies on a team of part-time help used on expeditions. Polaris also has agents throughout the world selling the company’s software.
It’s obvious that Matthias’ passion and what steered him along his career path remains Titanic, which ultimately made it a journey well worth taking.
By the time he graduated from high school Matthias, a native of Pennsylvania, was a certified diver. He went on to Penn State University to receive a degree in marine science and to Texas A & M for a graduate degree in marine geology.
His first job was processing satellite imaging as a consultant to the Navy. He created two-dimensional and three-dimensional images by combining information provided by multiple satellites’ sensors.
“I then decided I wanted to bring my technology and know-how to the ocean floor so I started Polaris and moved to Rhode Island.”
Matthias set up shop eight years ago in Rhode Island, where his family summered when he was a child. It wasn’t long before he was awarded his first shipwreck assignment in 1992 with the National Geographic expedition to the Lusitania.
Matthias helped document the deterioration of the 800-foot ship that sank south of Ireland after being hit by a German U-boat’s torpedo in 1915. More than 1,195 lives were lost.
In 1995, he was summoned to Scotland to search for the treasure of King Charles I, an expedition featured in a Discovery Channel program that still airs.
“We found a lot of potential targets, but unfortunately the summer ended and we didn’t have a chance to explore. That’s one that I see going back to,” he said.
The following year Titanic called.
Again with the Discovery Channel’s cameras rolling, Polaris surveyed the remains of the ill-fated ship with his equipment and made a groundbreaking discovery.
“Before 1996 the popular myth was that there was a 300-foot gash in the Titanic that sank it. We found that there were six small openings, totaling just 15 feet that in fact caused it to sink,” he said.
The revelation sent a buzz through Titanic experts and helped them better understand the demise of the mammoth ship.
Matthias said the holes were found by sending out pulses of sound waves that bounced of objects and then reported their findings back to a computer.
“The sound traveled through the mud covering the hull and reflected off the hull. That’s how we found something that would be impossible to see otherwise,” Matthias said.
The findings were documented in the Discovery Channel special “Titanic: Anatomy of Disaster.”
The expedition was a chance for Matthias to get a personal view of Titanic through a six-inch Plexiglas window in a little, yellow submarine.
“When you reach the bow you look out the porthole, craning your head as far as you canpressing your face against the porthole, and you still can’t see the top of Titanic. It’s absolutely huge,” he said.
“After descending two and a half miles into darknessyou start to see signs of life, a past life,” he explained. “You see cups, saucers and crystal lying on the bottom as though someone set them there to be picked up.”
Soon after that trip, the word ‘Titanic’ became synonymous with Hollywood, as filmmaker James Cameron brought the maritime tragedy to the big screen.
Matthias said the film “while being a love story” was a great way to tell a story many young people knew very little about. He said the movie intrigued people and led to further research for many beyond the four hours spent in a theater.
“
I sent Cameron a telegraph of congratulations after I saw the movie. I thought he did a good job,” he said.
Riding the wave of the hoopla surrounding the movie, Discovery Channel aired “Titanic Live” on Aug. 16. Matthias took part in the production, which gave more than 200 million people a unique look at the wreck.
This trip back to Titanic was also a chance for Matthias to work on another technological challenge.
During an eight-day span, Matthias used his customized digital cameras mounted on a submarine to take more than 100,000 high-resolution pictures of every inch of Titanic’s exterior. He is now working on piecing those images together to create a comprehensive map of the wreck site.
“It will be like removing the water from the North Atlantic,” he said. “Also, objects as small as a pen can be zoomed on (and) the resolution will be preserved. It will be a complete picture.
“In the past, people have simply gone down and taken single photographs. This is the first time someone has done a systematic approach of collecting images with their exact positions,” he said.
He said experts can use the map to piece together how the ship broke apart and to get a better look at every detail of the wreck site.
Matthias said the work is being funded by Discovery and R.M.S. Titanic, the company that has the property rights to Titanic. Discovery plans another Titanic special featuring the map in April, he said.
He said it is critical to get as much documentation of the wreck while it is still intact. “This is timely because Titanic is disappearing. She will be gone in our lifetime,” he said. “Microbiologists believe that the bacteria on the ship will turn it into a rust pile within 40 years.”
Matthias said beyond Titanic there are numerous tales of interesting and historic ships lost at sea that he would like a shot at finding. He also has his eye on finding Liberty Bell-7, the American space capsule lost in the Atlantic Ocean in 1961.
“To me what I do is about making a living and making discoveries. For me each shipwreck is a puzzle, a mystery,” he said.
He doubts that there are any wrecks as challenging as Titanic, a fascination that will never die for Matthias.
“Being beside her, she looked like she was still sailing. The bow was upright with the mud coming off her,” he said. “It looked like she continued to sail, right through the mud.”
