Discovery of the Titanic

Ballard completed the navy’s assignment in late August and had just twelve days left to find the Titanic. He had a new search strategy—rather than looking just for the ship, he and his crew would look for a debris trail. A sinking ship leaves a path of debris, since parts of the ship break off and fragments scatter as it sinks. The Titanic, which sank two and a half miles below the surface of the Atlantic, would be somewhere within a huge debris field. Argo, an underwater robot fitted with cameras, glided back and forth across a 100-square-mile search area—a procedure that they called “mowing the lawn”—looking for any signs of the enormous sunken ocean liner.

Around 1 AM, Bill Lange and Stu Harris, the two crew members watching the underwater video feed, noticed something unusual on the ocean floor. Instead of mud, they began to glimpse man-made objects, wreckage, and, finally, a gigantic boiler. This evidence was unmistakable; the Titanic was somewhere nearby. News spread around the ship and the rest of the crew gathered excitedly around them, watching the images on screen grow more vivid. They saw the Titanic’s portholes, railings, and deck.

The expedition explained a lot about the ship’s sinking. Before the wreck was discovered, no one knew where the Titanic lay or whether she sank in one piece. For the first time in 73 years, it was evident that the ship cracked in half and her boilers could be seen embedded in the ocean’s floor. After lots of cheering and clapping, the crew grew silent as the time drew nearer to 2 AM, (the hour of the ship’s sinking) in remembrance of the approximately 1,500 people who died during the disaster.

One year later, in 1986, Ballard returned to make a detailed study of the wreck from a deep-sea submarine called Alvin, which he had helped design. Alvin was small, only fitting three people, and was equipped with a titanium hull that gave her the stability to withstand the water pressure 13,000 feet below the surface. Ballard explored the ship’s remains and collected photographs of her once-majestic interior—the Grand Staircase, the chandeliers, and the intricate ironwork were still in place.

It has been estimated that, in 50 years, the hull of the Titanic may collapse entirely. This is partly due to damage from the many exploratory trips since Ballard’s missions and partly due to iron-eating bacteria on the ship’s hull. To protect the delicate remains, the R.M.S. Titanic Maritime Memorial Act was passed in 1986, which designates the wreckage an international memorial to those who lost their lives in the disaster. The act ensures that the wreckage will be used respectfully for exploration and research and will not be plundered for memorabilia.