The technology of submersibles equipped with cameras and keen judgment has enabled a marine scientist to discover the wreck of the Titanic more than 70 years after the ship’s tragic sinking.
Almost immediately after the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, authorities made efforts to find the wreck and recover the bodies of those who perished with the ship. However, the limited diving technology of the time hindered search efforts for more than seven decades. On September 1, 1985, nearly 39 years ago, the wreck of the Titanic was discovered during an expedition with the research vessel Knorr led by American oceanographer and naval officer Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, according to Business Insider.
Robert Ballard is the discoverer of the Titanic wreck. (Photo: CTPost).
However, the initial dive was not aimed at locating the Titanic but was a classified mission to locate the wrecks of two nuclear submarines, USS Scorpion and USS Thresher. This information was not made public until 2008 when Ballard shared the truth about the mission with National Geographic.
Initially, Ballard approached the U.S. Navy in 1982 to request funding for the development of Argo, an unmanned camera vehicle that could be towed behind a ship on the surface, capable of operating at depths of up to 6,096 meters. The U.S. Navy agreed to fund the project on the condition that the technology would be used to find the submarines that sank in the 1960s. The USS Thresher sank in April 1963, and the USS Scorpion sank five years later, in May 1968. These were the only lost nuclear submarines of the U.S. Navy. The Navy agreed to let Ballard search for the Titanic if time permitted during the mission.
At that time, the U.S. was caught up in the Cold War, making the mission a top secret. Ballard received special training and served in the military as a naval officer. He began the top-secret expedition by photographing the Thresher wreck in the summer of 1984. The following year, he and a team of experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution returned to the Atlantic Ocean to search for the Scorpion wreck off the coast of the Azores. Knowing that his naval mission would leave him with very little time to search for the Titanic, Ballard collaborated with the French Institute for Exploration of the Sea, IFREMER.
In July 1985, the French research vessel Le Suroit began exploring the area believed to be where the Titanic sank. Using a technique called “mowing the lawn,” expedition leader Jean-Louis Michel towed a sonar system across the search area to detect large metal objects on the seabed. Despite scanning the Atlantic for five weeks, the sonar system yielded no results. The search for the Titanic was handed over to Ballard and his team, who had just completed the survey of the Scorpion.
The submersible Alvin visits the Titanic wreck in 1986. (Video: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution).
Ballard’s military mission left him with only 12 days to search for the Titanic, but it also inspired him with a new search technique. While photographing the Thresher and Scorpion wrecks, he noticed that the ocean currents carried small pieces of wreckage away as they sank to the seabed, creating a long trail of debris. Therefore, Ballard decided not to search for the hull of the Titanic. Instead, he used Argo to explore the much larger debris field underneath the sea, which could extend up to 1.6 kilometers. After locating the debris field, he could then trace the wreck.
This new method allowed Ballard to expand the search area and navigate through it in a much wider pattern. Rather than “mowing the lawn” with sonar, he towed Argo along the seabed and monitored live video from the camera on the vehicle. A team of seven coordinated operations between the research vessel Knorr and the submersible, analyzing all data. They worked in shifts to maintain continuous monitoring throughout the day. After a few days, they spotted a riveted plate on the hull and a boiler. Argo continued to trace the debris trail, and the next morning, the bow of the Titanic emerged before them in the pitch-black waters.
As suspected, the Titanic had broken in two as it sank to the seabed. The bow stood upright and remained intact, while the stern was more severely damaged and lay 400 meters away.
Ballard and his team quickly filmed the wreck using both Argo and Angus, another unmanned submersible designed for still photography. The images revealed large parts of the hull and mast, including the crow’s nest, where the iceberg was first spotted. Some portholes had popped open, and the lighting fixtures on the deck had disappeared, allowing them to observe the grand staircase inside the ship. The large debris field included nameplates, furniture, and even an unopened bottle of champagne. The only remaining traces of the victims were numerous pairs of leather shoes still resting on the sand at the seabed.
Just four days after Ballard’s team discovered the Titanic wreck, stormy weather forced the entire team to pack up their supplies and sail the Knorr back to shore. Dozens of scientists, including Ballard, meticulously studied the wreck area. He returned the following summer to observe the wreck for the first time from inside the manned submersible Alvin. Ballard later became one of the staunchest opponents of salvaging artifacts from the Titanic.
In February 2023, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution released an 80-minute underwater video previously unreleased about the discovery. The footage was filmed by a camera on the research submersible in July 1986.
