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The RMS Titanic - Discovery
 ALMOST
IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING THE SINKNG of the Titanic,
plans were underway to find the wreck. Vincent Astor, son
of John Jacob Astor planned to immediately find the wreck
and blow it up in the hopes that his father's body would
float to the surface. This plan was discarded the next
day when the Mackay-Bennett recovered the
remains of Vincent's father. Even though Vincent Astor
gave up his plan to find the Titanic, the public
continued to be interested in her, her resting place, and
her discovery. Part of the public's interest was the fact
that she had sunk in a relatively unknown part of the
Atlantic, 450 miles of the coast of Newfoundland. Even
the unreachable depth of the wreck, 12,460 feet below the
surface, didn't faze the public's interest. Ever since
the Titanic sank, there has always been a steady
stream of plans, usually farfetched an impossible, to
find and even raise the Titanic. Most of these
dreamers were fueled by the belief that the Titanic
carried a load of gold and precious gems, even though the
cargo manifest and
insurance claims stated otherwise. Every plan to find the
Titanic was limited by one major factor: water
pressure. The pressure at the depth of the Titanic,
nearly two and a half miles down, is 6,000 pounds per
square inch, enough to turn almost any vessel and her
crew into powder.
Even
that limitation didn't stop some people. The Astor,
Guggenheim, and Widener families jointly contracted the
Merrit and Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to find
and raise the Titanic. The company correctly
decided that the raising of the Titanic was
impossible with 1912 technology. In 1913, Charles Smith
planned to take a submersible down and attach
electromagnets to the hull. These electromagnets would be
attached to a cable which would in turn be attached to a
winch on a barge. Smith believed that the barge would
raise the ship. This plan and another plan involving
magnets were turned down.
 The
Titanic was almost forgotten in the hard years
of the Great Depression, and remained so until the
publishing of Walter Lord's A Night to Remember
in 1955. With this book and a British movie based on his
book, the public's obsession with the Titanic
was back in full swing. Many other plans were produced;
several of which came from the fertile mind of Douglas
Woolley, an English hosiery worker. Lacking scientific
training but with a flair for publicity. He was never
able to raise sufficient funds for his wild schemes. In
the 80s, Jack Grimm, Mike Harris, and a scientific team
from Columbia University planned to search for the Titanic.
The Columbia University team included two of the best
oceanographers in the world. They chartered the H.J.W.
Fay, packed their expensive, advanced equipment and
set out to the spot where they thought the Titanic
lay. Bad weather, which is common in the North Atlantic,
disrupted their plans and sent them home early. Grimm
funded a grand total of three expeditions to find the Titanic,
eventually ending up out $2 million.
The expedition that would ultimately find the Titanic
started out as a joint French - American venture. The
crews used new, sophisticated side-scan sonaar developed
by the French and deployed on the Le Suroit.
After twenty-one days spent covering eighty percent of
the search area in horribly rough seas, the Le Suroit
headed back to France while the French and American teams
transferred to the U.S. Navy ship Knorr.
Employing the American's advanced video camera system,
capable of operating in near darkness. Concentrating on
the twenty percent not covered by the Le Suroit,
the Knorr employed a search grid known as
"mowing the lawn", the same plan used by the
French. "Mowing the lawn" consisted of moving
back and forth along the search grid, turning 180� upon
reaching the end of the search grid, clearing out the 400
square mile grid in three fifths of a mile strips for the
side-scanning sonar, a smaller area for the cameras. Team
leader Robert D. Ballard, a geologist, knew that if they
could find the debris field, they would almost certainly
find the hulk of the Titanic. Argo, a
deep-sea submersible carrying strobe lights along with
the ultrasensitive cameras was lowered into the sea and
began the search. After 14 thouroghly boring days of
searching, on September 1, 1985 at 5:01AM,
one of Titanic's huge boilers came into view.
Moments later, port holes, bits of hull, and steel
railing were seen. The next day, Argo was sent
down again, where it found the Titanic in her
final resting place.
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