For 73 years, the final resting place of the RMS Titanic was unknown. Its discovery addressed one of many unanswered questions for the families of the victims lost during the 1912 disaster.
But it also vindicated survivors whose testimony went ignored or disbelieved for decades, according to historian Katie Charlwood.
Author, presenter, and host of the Who Did What Now podcast, Katie explained: "The initial discovery of the Titanic shipwreck was so important because it proved that survivors were telling the truth.
"As we know, the majority of the survivors were women and children. And until the electricity gave out, the women on the lifeboats were able to see a lot of what was happening.
"They reported that they saw the stern go up, they heard a loud cracking noise, and then the stern went down again. As we know now that was the Titanic splitting in two. But up until this point, when ships sunk they went down all in one.
"But the men investigating the disaster, they thought the women were suffering some kind of mass hysteria, and the survivors' testimonies were simply dismissed. But upon the discovery of the wreckage, it proved that they were in fact correct."
Her summary of events - shared to her popular TikTok account @whodidwhatnowpod - is just one of several similar stories to be shared online this week discussing the significance of the historic search for the wreckage, following the tragic loss of those on board the Titan.
Elsewhere, Biography.com reported: "It wasn't until the Titanic's wreckage was discovered in 1985 that it was definitively proven that the ship had indeed split.
"Until that time, the survivors were told they misunderstood or incorrectly remembered what they had seen, largely thanks to testimony from employees of the White Star Line shipping company in the immediate months after the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912."
As the publisher reports, a senior surviving officer testified: "It is utterly untrue. The ship did not and could not have broken in two."
In recent days while the search and rescue mission continued for the doomed Titanic submarine, interview footage of Eva Hart, one of the Titanic's survivors, has also been circulated widely on social media.
Eva was just seven years old when she boarded the Titanic with her parents, and her father tragically died in the disaster.
When the wreck was discovered, she told press: "For 70 years, people have argued with me about that, but now at last it has been proven beyond all doubt that she did break in half."
Both the recirculated archive footage, available on YouTube, and newer content, like the video shared by Katie Charlwood, have been met with outcry.
Responding to the TikTok, one viewer wrote: "Can you imagine surviving something like this and then being gaslit for almost 75 years by being told your eye witness account was wrong?"
A second wrote: "I wonder how many more things we would have known sooner had women been believed and listened to."
