Making waves.(broadcast)

New England is notorious for its Nor'easters, nasty coastal storms that wreak havoc on land and at sea. The most infamous of these tempestuous weather systems is the Halloween Storm of 1991, also dubbed the Perfect Storm, whose 100-foot waves sank the fishing boat Andrea Gail.

Although memorialized in a Hollywood blockbuster film, that incident, sadly, was not the area's worst seafaring disaster. Nearly a century earlier, another fierce New England storm--the Portland Gale--sank the passenger ship Portland, killing everyone aboard. Recently, that incident also became the focus of filmmakers, only this time for The Discovery Science Channel's documentary.

"The Wreck of the Portland," which includes two minutes of 3D computer animation, depicts what researchers believe happened to the ship after it left Boston for Portland, Maine.

Known as the "Titanic of New England," the tragedy was one of the worst maritime disasters to occur off the Northeast coast of the US, with the death toll reaching nearly 200. With no survivors, very little debris, and only a few bodies ever recovered, the Portland's fate also became one of New England's greatest maritime mysteries.

Then, just two years before the Andrea Gail incident, a Massachusetts firm specializing in locating lost objects at sea, reported having discovered the wreckage in 460 feet of water just 20 miles north of Cape Cod, but the ocean depth made it difficult to verify the ship by name. During the summer of 2002, though, underwater sonar and the use of a remote-operated vehicle helped confirm that the submerged boat was indeed the Portland.

As part of Discovery's Science of the Deep series produced by David Clark Productions, researchers give television viewers a glimpse of Mother Nature's wrath and take them down to the watery grave. To augment the production, Home Run Pictures in Pittsburgh, along with Kaleidoscope Animations in Cleveland, created a 3D simulation of what experts believe occurred that fateful evening. Photographs of the wreck show no holes in the ship's hull and the top two decks missing, supporting the theory that a rogue wave, rather than a collision, was responsible for the sinking. Lending more credence to this speculation is the side-wheel paddleboat's design, whose long, narrow shape, combined with a shallow draft, made it unstable in high seas.

To bring this ...