In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett and his team has reached the most famous shipwreck of all - the RMS "Titanic". Emerging with a safe believed to contain a famous diamond called the "Heart of the Ocean", he discovers that the safe does not hold the diamond, but a drawing of a beautiful young woman wearing it. When Lovett is later interviewed on television, he shows the drawing to the cameras, and Rose Dawson Calvert, now 101, recognizes the young woman in the drawing - herself. She and her granddaughter Lizzy visit Lovett on his research ship over the wrecksite, and tells her story of the "Titanic" and its ill-fated maiden voyage.