The largest ocean liner built at the time, the RMS Titanic was dubbed a “floating city” with over 2,200 passengers and crew on-board. The ship embarked on what was its doomed maiden voyage from Southampton, U.K., on April 10, 1912. Less than a week into the journey, the vessel grazed past an iceberg in the North Atlantic, which resulted in the ship sinking on April 15.
On Sept. 1, 1985, scientists and explorers located the wreckage of the vessel two miles below the surface of the frigid North Atlantic. However, it was only after the found the boiler of the ship that they identified it as the Titanic. They combed the site using undersea robots and sonar to pinpoint the exact location of the wreckage. Their first look at the ship lasted six minutes.
Pictured: Published first in the Illustrated London News magazine, the image shows survivors watching on from lifeboats as the ship is seen sinking.
After three teams failed to locate the ship's wreckage, it was marine geologist Dr. Robert D. Ballard (pictured L) of the U.S.-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Jean-Louis Michel (R) of the French Institute of Oceanography who found the boiler of the ship on the ocean floor. The American side of the expedition, who were financed by the National Geographic Society, was aboard the survey ship Knorr.
As it turns out, the U.S. Navy, in a secret mission was trying to locate the wreckage of two nuclear submarines – the U.S.S. Thresher and the U.S.S. Scorpion (pictured). At the height of the Cold War, they did not want the technology to fall into the wrong hands and had given Ballard access to the Argo, a high-resolution sonar device. Ballard found the Titanic, located between the wrecks the submarines.
The Argo/Jason concept (pictured) – named after Greek mythological hero Jason and the Argonauts – was the groundbreaking technology that aided the search of the wreckage. Argo was an unmanned submarine with a high-resolution sonar device and Jason was a submersible photographic system. It was the first object to see the Titanic after 1912.
Argo was scouring the seafloor, some 350 miles (563.27 km) southeast of Newfoundland, when it discovered the wreck – after 1 a.m. on Sept. 1, 1985. One of Titanic’s boilers was identified and further sonar surveys revealed the rest of the wreck.
Pictured: Visitors look at a projection image of the wreckage of the Titanic on the seabed at the Titanic Belfast visitor attraction on March 27, 2012, in Northern Ireland.
The following day, the Acoustically Navigated Geological Underwater Survey or (ANGUS, pictured), equipped with three large-capacity 35-mm color cameras was lowered in the water to photograph the vessel for four days. In 1986, the deep-sea submersible camera sled returned to film the entire wreck.
The team found the bow and stern of the ship about 2,000 feet (600 meters) apart. This proved that the ship had split into two on the surface and proceeded to crash into the ocean floor at considerable speed.
Pictured: The deck of the ship between the number two and number three stack where the deck hinges downward towards the tear, at which point the stern separated from the rest of the ship.
Icicle-like structures of rust were seen across the decaying metal. Ballard described them as “frozen rivers of rust covering the ship's side and spread out over the ocean floor."
(Pictured) Portholes of the ship almost covered in rust.
A cargo crane extending beyond the starboard-side hull of the Titanic's stern was discovered during the 1986 dive.
wo bollards used to secure mooring lines and a railing seen on the starboard side of Titanic's bow.
An electric meter used for the compass light of the Titanic was recovered from the shipwreck during the 1985 dive.
An officer's cabin window on the starboard side Titanic's boat deck.
Debris on the hull of Titanic's stern, which was peeled outward by the force of the ship's destruction.
Large icicle-like structures hang from the side of the Titanic, seen in one of the 12 color slides released by officials of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Before leaving the wreck in 1985, Ballard placed a plaque of the “Explorer’s Club” on the ship’s capstan, in recognition of the team that discovered the wreck and in memory of over 1,500 passengers who lost their lives when the ship sank
The ship’s discovery kick-started a new era in underwater exploration and an interest in shipwrecks. James Cameron (L), who directed the 1997-epic "Titanic," helmed a documentary titled “Ghost of the Abyss” (2003), which followed a group of scientists who dived in Russian deep-submersibles and used state-of-the-art 3D technology to explore the wreckage.
Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) were used to explore the entire ship and monitored every nook and cranny they could fit in. The submersibles, Mir 1 and Mir 2, went on 12 dives over six weeks to explore the entire ship.
The team used an ROV called Medusa to light the ocean floor, which helped in filming of the wreckage. The system comprised 10 high-powered lights
While shooting the documentary, Cameron said, "Seeing it (the wreckage) this way, there's no way to think of this but as a human tragedy. It's a very large canvas, but there's an amazing human connection.”
The director and the team found artifacts, glasses, cutlery and an intact chandelier (pictured) dangling from wires, near the grand staircase.
