World’s most famous shipwreck found 73 years after disaster
She lies 12,600 feet under the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland – the most famous wreck in the world.
In the decades since her dramatic sinking after hitting an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912, there had been numerous unsuccessful attempts to find the wreck of the Titanic.
It was not until September 1, 1985 that the wreck, in two parts and 13.2 miles from the inaccurate coordinates given by Titanic’s radio operators on the night of her sinking, was discovered by a French-American expedition.
The previous month, Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard’s expedition had set out on the US Navy research ship Knorr. The mission was partly intended to test the Argo, a 16ft submersible sled equipped with a remote-controlled camera that could transmit live images to a monitor.
After several weeks of searching, on September 1, the first underwater images of the Titanic were recorded as its giant boilers were discovered. The separated bow and stern sections were then found about a third of a mile apart in Titanic Canyon off the coast of Newfoundland – disproving the accepted idea that the ship had sunk in one piece.
The damage to the hull was also not what had been expected. 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, marine salvagers raised a large section of the hull and other artefacts. Examination of these parts along with as paperwork in the builder’s archives has led to speculation that low-quality steel or weak rivets may have contributed to the sinking.
The two sections are surrounded by a debris field of approximately 15 square miles. It contains hundreds of thousands of items, such as pieces of the ship, furniture, dinnerware and personal items, which fell from the ship as she sank or were ejected when the bow and stern struck the sea floor.
The debris field was also the last resting place of a number of victims. Most of the bodies and clothes were consumed by sea creatures and bacteria, leaving pairs of shoes and boots – which have proved to be inedible – as the only sign that bodies once lay there.
Many schemes have been proposed to raise the Titanic, including filling the wreck with ping-pong balls, injecting it with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to encase it in an iceberg that would float to the surface. However, the
wreck is too fragile to be raised and is now protected by a Unesco convention.
Since its discovery, the wreck of Titanic has been revisited on numerous occasions by explorers, scientists, filmmakers and tourists, and salvagers have recovered thousands of items from the debris field.
The ship’s condition has deteriorated significantly over the years, particularly from accidental damage by submersibles but mostly because of an accelerating rate of growth of iron-eating bacteria on the hull.
In 2006 it was estimated that within 50 years the hull and structure of Titanic would eventually collapse entirely, leaving only the more durable interior fittings in a pile of rust on the sea bed.