The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The ship was one of the largest luxury ocean liners ever built and had been proclaimed “unsinkable” — making the disaster all the more shocking.
As it lay in its final resting place on the ocean floor, the ship and its tragic story captivated both members of the public and oceanographers. Interested parties immediately began proposing ways of finding the enormous vessel, but the underwater technology needed to locate it wouldn’t be in play for another 73 years.
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Finally, on Sept. 1, 1985, after around a week of searching, an international team of scientists located the Titanic 12,500 feet beneath the ocean surface about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It was mostly intact (besides having split in two), upright, and in “superb condition,” expedition lead Robert Ballard told ABC News at the time, having been preserved by the ice-cold water and lack of light.
The first evidence that researchers had found the Titanic came on Sept. 1, 1985, from the distinct rivet pattern of one of its boilers.
A collaboration between Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, and the French oceanographic institution IFREMER, the team used a remotely operated underwater imaging system called ARGO to scan and map the seafloor, then followed a trail of debris first to one of the ship’s boilers, and then to the Titanic itself. They also deployed a separate camera system, ANGUS, to capture high-quality images and videos of the famous wreck without disturbing it.
As The New York Times put it that September, “The Titanic’s discovery awaited the creation of sophisticated new robots to explore the inky depths of the ocean bottom, in particular, the ARGO … an advanced robot craft equipped with searchlights and television and still cameras that can survive the crushing pressure of the ocean’s weight and pierce the darkness miles under water.”
©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Though the find was considered a major achievement in the realm of ocean research, the gravity of what they were looking at wasn’t lost on the scientists involved.
“Finding the Titanic was extraordinarily exciting, but simultaneously a bit gut-wrenching,” Stewart Harris, a WHOI engineer who worked on the project, explained in a news release published earlier this month. “Over 1,500 people lost their lives in the accident, and with all the hoopla surrounding the discovery, it was important for us to be mindful of that. Nonetheless, the technology demonstration was an eye-opener for the oceanographic community.”
Institution
The Titanic was 883 feet long from stern to bow, 92 feet wide. It was 175 feet tall from the keel to the top of the four stacks or funnels.
And while that technology has evolved a great deal in the 40 years since, the discovery “set the stage for decades of scientific breakthroughs that followed,” per the release. Those include things like autonomous underwater vehicles and remotely operated vehicles that allow for deeper dives and more advanced research, as well as ultra-high-def underwater cameras, high-res sonar and 3D-mapping systems, and more.
Ballard said in a statement: “The discovery of the Titanic opened a new chapter in deep-sea exploration, since the deep sea is the largest museum in the world with an estimated 3 million chapters of human history in its depths, most of which are waiting to be discovered by the next generation of underwater explorers.”
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