Discovery
Titanic
Within days of the Titanic’s sinking, talk began of finding the wreck. Given the limits of technology, however, serious attempts were not undertaken until the second half of the 20th century. In August 1985 Robert Ballard, working with the Institut Français de Recherche pour l’Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER; French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea), led an expedition from aboard the U.S. Navy research ship Knorr. The quest was partly a means for testing the Argo, a 16-foot (5-meter) submersible sled equipped with a remote-controlled camera that could transmit live images to a monitor. The submersible was sent some 12,500 feet (3,810 meters)—or 2.4 miles (3.9 km)—to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, sending video back to the Knorr.
News •
On September 1, 1985, the first underwater images of the Titanic were recorded as its giant boilers were discovered. Later video showed the ship lying upright in two pieces. While the bow was clearly recognizable, the stern section was severely damaged. Covering the wreckage were rust-colored stalactite-like formations. Scientists later determined that the rusticles, as they were named, were created by iron-eating microorganisms, which are consuming the wreck. By 2019 there was a “shocking” level of deterioration, and a number of notable features, such as the captain’s bathtub, were gone.
The Titanic—located at about 41°43′57′′ N, 49°56′49′′ W (bow section), some 13 nautical miles (24 km) from the position given in its distress signals—was explored numerous times by manned and unmanned submersibles. The expeditions found no sign of the long gash previously thought to have been ripped in the ship’s hull by the iceberg. Scientists instead discovered that the collision’s impact had produced a series of thin gashes as well as brittle fracturing and separation of seams in the adjacent hull plates, thus allowing water to flood in and sink the ship. In subsequent years examination of the wreckage—as well as paperwork in the builder’s archives—led to speculation that low-quality steel or weak rivets may have contributed to the Titanic’s sinking.