As far as the name of the ship being visible, I can only tell you that the only time where it was said that you could see it was back in like 1987 when Ifremer was taking artifacts for the first time.

The TV program "Return to the Titanic" (hosted by Teli Savalis), stated that the submersible Nautile swept away some of the rust under the focsle deck (on the port bow I think) with a brush or something.

The program showed the letters "A" and "T" very vaguely, stating that it was barely visible, but the name of the ship was definately still there.

However, this was the same program that claimed to have had an unopened safe opened on air for the first time to reveal a leather satchel full of money and jewels (when in reality, they found the satchel in the debris field and just put it in the safe when it was opened earlier and was only found to have a few loose coins at the bottom). I guess they did not want to pull a Geraldo Rivera!

So, in short, whether it is a reliablel claim, or they were just wanting us to see letters, I think is still a relavent question.

(I have it taped from TV, and could get the images on the website if I could figure out how to do it.)

How can people not think its real arent there people who discovered it and have footage of the ship I mean how much more proof do people need???