The
largest passenger steamship in the world, the
Olympic-class RMS Titanic was owned by the
White Star Line and constructed at the
Harland and Wolff shipyard in
Belfast,
Ireland. After setting sail for New York City on 10 April 1912 with
2,223 people on board, she hit the iceberg four days into the crossing,
at 11:40 pm on 14 April 1912, and sank at 2:20 am the following morning.
The high casualty rate resulting from the sinking was due in part to
the fact that, although complying with the regulations of the time, the
ship carried lifeboats for only 1,178 people. A disproportionate number
of men died due to the
"women and children first" protocol that was enforced by the ship's crew.
Titanic was designed by experienced engineers, using some of
the most advanced technologies and extensive safety features of the
time. The sinking of a passenger liner on her maiden voyage, the high
loss of life and media frenzy over
Titanic's famous victims, the legends about the sinking, the resulting changes in
maritime law, and the discovery of the
wreck have all contributed to the enduring interest in
Titanic.
(...)
The idea of finding the wreck of
Titanic, and even raising the
ship from the ocean floor, had been around since shortly after the ship
sank. No attempts were successful until
1 September 1985, when a joint
American-French expedition, led by
Jean-Louis Michel (
Ifremer) and Dr.
Robert Ballard (
WHOI), located the wreck using the side-scan sonar from the research vessels
Knorr and
Le Suroit. In June 1985, the French ship
Le Suroit began systematically crossing the 150-square-mile (390 km
2) target zone with her deep-search sonar.
Le Suroit covered 80 percent of the zone, leaving only 20 percent for the American ship
Knorr.
The wreck was found at a depth of 2.5 miles (4 km), slightly more than 370 miles (600 km) south-east of
Mistaken Point, Newfoundland at
41°43′55″N 49°56′45″WCoordinates: 41°43′55″N 49°56′45″W, 13 miles (21 km) from fourth officer
Joseph Boxhall's last position reading where
Titanic
was originally thought to rest. Ballard noted that his crew had paid
out 12,500 feet (3,810 m) of the sonar's tow cable at the time of the
discovery of the wreck,
giving an approximate depth of the seabed of 12,450 feet (3,795 m).
Ifremer, the French partner in the search, records a depth of 3,800 m (12,467 ft), an almost exact equivalent.
These are approximately 2.33 miles (3.75 km), and they are often
rounded upwards to 2.5 miles (4.0 km) or 4 km. Video cameras aboard the
unmanned submersible
Argo were the first to document
Titanic's visual state on the bottom of the ocean. The submersible was based on
Knorr and the images retrieved were featured in
National Geographic by December 1985.
In 1986, Ballard returned to the wreck site aboard
Atlantis II to conduct the first manned dives to the wreck in the submersible
Alvin.
Ballard had in 1982 requested funding for the project from the US
Navy, but this was provided only on the then secret condition that the
first priority was to examine the wreckage of the sunken US nuclear
submarines
Thresher and
Scorpion. Only when these had been photographed did the search for
Titanic begin.
The most notable discovery the team made was that the ship had split
apart, the stern section lying 1,970 feet (600 m) from the bow section
and facing opposite directions. There had been conflicting witness
accounts of whether the ship broke apart or not, and both the American
and British inquiries found that the ship sank intact. Up until the
discovery of the wreck, it was generally assumed that the ship did not
break apart.
The bow section had struck the ocean floor at a position just under
the forepeak, and embedded itself 60 feet (18 m) into the silt on the
ocean floor. Although parts of the hull had buckled, the bow was mostly
intact. The collision with the ocean floor forced water out of
Titanic
through the hull below the well deck. One of the steel covers
(reportedly weighing approximately ten tonnes) was blown off the side of
the hull. The bow is still under tension, in particular the heavily
damaged and partially collapsed decks.
The stern section was in much worse condition, and appeared to have
been torn apart during its descent. Unlike the bow section, which was
flooded with water before it sank, it is likely that the stern section
sank with a significant volume of air trapped inside it. As it sank, the
external water pressure increased but the pressure of the trapped air
could not follow suit due to the many air pockets in relatively sealed
sections. Therefore, some areas of the stern section's hull experienced a
large pressure differential between outside and inside which possibly
caused an implosion. Further damage was caused by the sudden impact of
hitting the seabed; with little structural integrity left, the decks
collapsed as the stern hit.
Surrounding the wreck is a large debris field with pieces of the
ship, furniture, dinnerware and personal items scattered over 2 square
miles (5.2 km
2).
Organic materials decompose in sea water although paper, cloth, and leather were later conserved from the
Titanic's debris field.
Dr. Ballard and his team did not bring up any artefacts from the site, considering this to be tantamount to grave robbing.
Under international maritime law, however, the recovery of artefacts is
necessary to establish salvage rights to a shipwreck. In the years
after the find,
Titanic has been the object of a number of court cases concerning ownership of artefacts and the wreck site itself. In 1994,
RMS Titanic Inc.
was awarded ownership and salvaging rights of the wreck, even though
RMS Titanic Inc. and other salvaging expeditions have been criticised
for taking items from the wreck. Among the items recovered by RMS
Titanic Inc. was the ship's whistle, which was brought to the surface in
1992 and placed in the company's travelling exhibition. It was operated
for the public in 1999 using compressed air rather than steam because
of its fragility.
Approximately 5,500 artefacts have been removed from the wreck. Many of these were put on display at the
National Maritime Museum in
Greenwich, England, and later as part of a travelling museum exhibit.
The
Merseyside Maritime Museum in the
Titanic's
home port of Liverpool also has an extensive collection of artefacts
from the wreck located within a permanent exhibition named 'Titanic,
Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress'.
