“Not for the first time, I reflected on the enormity of our mission: to locate a wreck two and a half miles down in the middle of nowhere. It was far worse than looking for a needle in a haystack and yet I’d often boasted that finding the Titanic would be easy.”– Robert Ballard on finding Titanic.
Dr Robert Ballard is most famously known for his discovery of the wreck of the ill-fated RMS Titanic, which sank on the night of April 14th 1912 at 2:30am. Titanic took over 1,500 souls with her to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. After the disaster the whereabouts of the Titanic had remained unknown. Technology wasn’t nearly on the scope it is today, and it wasn’t until 73 years later that one man and his team came across the sunken liner.
The mission to find Titanic had started in 1980 after a few unsuccessful attempts by Ballard, the first recorded attempt was in 1973. Ballard had been a member of a group called the Alvin. The Alvin was a wing of the Oceanographical Institute (the O.I was what Ballard referred to as the ‘Wet NASA’. Ballard’s group was compromised of oceanographers who spent their times photographing the deep sea and its inhabitants. Ballard’s initial proposal to find the Titanic had been turned down numerous times. Ballard had even tried to raise money for the dive himself. However, Ballard was soon about to go on a dive that would change his life forever.
The dive had originally taken a different course. N.O.A.A had instructed Ballard along with a team of other ocean researchers to find the sunken submarines: The U.S.S Scorpion and U.S.S Thresher. The discovery of Titanic was not part of the operation. Ballard, whilst planning the route for the expeditions had decided that if he and his team found the Scorpion and Thresher in a certain amount of days, he should have time to look for the Titanic. He’d estimated that Titanic was in the general direction of the Thresher and Scorpion. In Ballard’s book The Discovery Of The Titanic Ballard recalls “We had come up with a 100 nautical-square-mile primary search area and a secondary search area of 150 nautical-square-miles … mostly to the east. We were convinced that within this area the Titanic would be found.”
Meet the Crew
Who were the men who helped Ballard find the wreck of the Titanic?
Jack Grimm: Grimm was an oil man from Texas. Grimm was notoriously known for his
backing of eccentric quests such as the search for the Loch Ness Monster and Noah’s Ark. Both expeditions had failed.
Bill Ryan: Ryan worked for the Geological Observatory in New York. Ryan specialised in the understanding of Submarines.
Fred Spiess: He was a specialist in finding wrecks and had often assisted in helping the Military to find their lost vessels. Ballard had actually been turned down for the Spiess graduation programme in the 1960s
Jean Louis: Although, Louis wasn’t considered part of the original team his contributions to finding Titanic cannot be disputed. Louis had allowed Ballard to loan his submersibles and provided most of the technology which could guarantee the best results and surveying of the wreck site. This was a gamble as Louis had loaned all this to Ballard and spent a lot of money on the expedition for a ship which they may end up never finding.
Finding the Titanic
As previously mentioned, Ballard had concluded that Titanic was in the east so naturally, he would start looking there. Ballard had successfully found the Thresher and the Scorpion and it was the mapping of the two vessels taught him how to look for Titanic. In the 2017 documentary Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron. Ballard stated, “Instead of looking for the Titanic I looked for her debris.” but during the Cold War Ballard and his team had to be careful as they were fast approaching Soviet waters in hope of finding Titanic. But Ballard was going the wrong way. The team had been working on a wire as they only had 12 days left to find the Titanic.
It was the early morning of September 1st, 1985 when the ship’s cook had woken Ballard up. The oceanographer recalls “The cook stuck his head in the door and said the guys said you might want to – I didn’t even let him finish the sentence and I was past him… just as I got into the command centre we had a boiler.” Ballard’s tactic of looking for the debris rather than the wreck had proved successful. Ballard had found the Titanic and began photographing as much of It as he could. He had wanted to show the world what the world’s most famous ship looked like after 73 years on the ocean floor. A detail about the expedition I would like to include is that as the crew had started surveying the wreck someone had said “she sinks in 20 minutes.” Ballard recalls that this comment had affected him as they found the wreck just after 2:00 am. From this the crew went up to the stern of the research vessel and hoisted the Harland and Wolff flag on the mast and conducted a small service in which flowers where thrown over the grave of the Titanic.
Since then there have been numerous dives and expeditions to the Titanic, the most recent one taking place in August 2019. All these expeditions have shared the common purpose of finding answers to what really happened the night Titanic sank. The wreck still remains one of the infamous inhabitants of the sea. Unfortunately, over the decades Titanic’s wreck has shown serious signs of decay due to the rusticals eating away at Titanic’s steel work. Titanic’s last dive in 2006 had ended up in banning submarines from parking on top of the Titanic, as they weakened the roof of the officer’s quarters. However, thanks to Robert Ballard’s persistence and perseverance we’ve been allowed to see the Titanic’s final resting place and come to our own decisions about what happened on April 14th/15th 1912.
As always, I’ll leave a few external links about the discovery of the Titanic. Alongside this I’ll also leave a link to the book that I based a lot of this article off. It’s a super handy book for the main reason that it was written by Robert Ballard. Don’t fear for those who want to hear more about the wreck I’m planning on doing a piece all about exploring the Titanic at some stage next year. Feel free to ask any questions or add any additional information.
Have a titanic rest of your day, Millie.
Titanic: 20 Years Later With James Cameron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fGCKOg58ko
The Discovery Of The Titanic: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=the+discovery+of+the+titanic&_sacat=0
National Geographic: How The Titanic Was Lost And Found: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/topics/reference/titanic-lost-found/
The Titanic original footage : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHNFvtscjKA
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