Finding and diving the Titanic

Robert Ballard · 1985 CE – 1986 CE · Earth

Finding and diving the Titanic — Robert Ballard · 1985 CE – 1986 CE · Earth — Recorded expedition route · schematic map

Find the wreck of the Titanic, which earlier sonar searches had missed, in a search area of about 100 square miles south of Newfoundland, by Woods Hole's figure, and return the next year to explore it with a crewed submersible and a robot.

Historical context

Three expeditions financed by the Texan oilman Jack Grimm had searched for the Titanic with sonar between 1980 and 1983, and failed. In 1985 Woods Hole and the French institute Ifremer joined forces under Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel: from July the French ship Le Suroît swept the search area with a new towed sonar, then Woods Hole's Knorr towed the camera sled Argo, looking not for the hull but for the trail of debris the ship had shed. The Navy had paid for Argo, and Ballard said in 2008 that it had sent him first to the wrecks of two lost nuclear submarines, Thresher and Scorpion. In the early hours of 1 September 1985 Argo's cameras showed a boiler.

The voyage, step by step

  1. Knorr sails from the Azores

    August 1985

    On 15 August 1985, by Woods Hole's account, three French scientists from Ifremer join the Woods Hole research ship Knorr at Ponta Delgada for the passage west to the search area, with the towed camera sled Argo aboard and twelve days of ship time for the search.

  2. Mowing the lawn

    1985 CE

    From 22 August, by Woods Hole's account, Knorr tows Argo back and forth over the part of the search area the French had not covered, its watches reading the sea floor live on video, day and night.

  3. A boiler on the screen

    1 September 1985

    In the early hours of 1 September 1985, after less than a week of searching for debris, Argo's cameras show wreckage on the bottom, then the riveted shape of one of the Titanic's boilers.

  4. Twenty past two

    1985 CE

    The Titanic had gone under at 2:20 in the morning, ship's time, on 15 April 1912, and Woods Hole notes that the wreck was found at almost the same hour, 73 years later. After the elation, some of those aboard Knorr hold a brief memorial service on the fantail.

  5. Back with Alvin

    9 July 1986

    On 9 July 1986, by Woods Hole's account, the research ship Atlantis II leaves Woods Hole with the three-person submersible Alvin and a new robot, Jason Junior, for nearly three weeks at sea.

  6. On the deck of the Titanic

    13 July 1986

    On 13 July 1986 Alvin takes Ralph Hollis, Dudley Foster and Ballard down to the wreck, by Woods Hole's account the first people to see the Titanic since 1912. A flooded battery cuts the dive short; on the third dive Alvin settles on the boat deck.

  7. Jason Junior goes inside

    1986 CE

    Through the opening where a skylight once covered the grand staircase, the robot descends four decks into the ship and finds a chandelier still hanging, crusted with coral.

  8. A plaque and nothing taken

    21 July 1986

    On 21 July 1986, on the eighth dive, Ballard, Ralph Hollis and Ken Stewart leave a memorial plaque on the stern. The team goes home with film and videotape from eleven dives, and not a single object from the wreck.

Outcome

The Titanic found on 1 September 1985 by a joint team of Woods Hole and Ifremer, and explored the next July in eleven dives of Alvin and Jason Junior, from which no object was brought up.

Robert Ballard

Marine geologist who built towed camera robots and used them to find the Titanic in 1985 and to change how the deep sea is searched.

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Sources

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