The search for the Bismarck

Argo and Jason (Ballard's Bismarck search) · 1989 CE · Earth

Find a battleship sunk in 1941 on an abyssal plain west of Brest and settle how she went down.

Historical context

The Bismarck sank in 1941 in water deeper than the Titanic's, over a plain of volcanic seamounts 600 nautical miles west of Brest, and the surviving position reports disagreed by miles. Ballard brought back the towed camera sled that had found the Titanic and mowed the search box until the sonar caught a scar of debris. What the cameras showed, an upright hull with its guns fallen out but its plating whole, favoured the German survivors' account that the ship was scuttled.

The voyage, step by step

1. Star Hercules leaves the Azores

   May 1989

   In May 1989 a chartered support ship sails north-east with the camera sled that found the Titanic lashed to her deck.

2. Mowing a box of ocean

   1989 CE

   For weeks the ship tows the sled along parallel lines above an abyssal plain, watching grey sediment scroll across a video wall.

3. A scar down a seamount

   1989 CE

   The cameras pick up a kilometre-long trail of wreckage running down the flank of an extinct volcano, with a great hull-shaped gouge at the top.

4. Upright on the plain

   8 June 1989

   On 8 June 1989 the sled passes over a hull sitting upright in the sediment, 250 metres long, its wooden deck almost intact.

5. Reading the plating

   1989 CE

   The robot flies the length of the wreck photographing shell holes, torpedo scars and the swastika still visible on the deck.

6. Nothing taken, nothing touched

   1989 CE

   The expedition leaves the wreck exactly as it found it, and comes home with pictures and a position it does not publish.

Outcome

The Bismarck found on 8 June 1989 at about 4,700 metres, upright, her hull unbroken, which supported the account of a scuttling.

Argo and Jason (Ballard's Bismarck search)

A towed camera sled and the robot that followed it, which found the Titanic in 1985 and the battleship Bismarck four years later.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Argo (ROV) — Wikipedia
• The Discovery of the BismarckRobert D. Ballard · Warner Books · 1990

Continue exploring

• The 1987 Titanic recovery divesNautile · 1987 CE
• Finding and diving the TitanicRobert Ballard · 1985 CE – 1986 CE
• The JIM walk off OahuSylvia Earle · 1979 CE
• The Galápagos Rift hydrothermal expeditionJack Corliss and the Alvin team · 1977 CE