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Reports written by Susan
Wels
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Images produced by Matt Tulloch | |||
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Friday, August 14, 1998
"The [Titanic’s] first-class dining saloon...is an immense room, by far the largest afloat....The style adopted is Jacobean English...but instead of the sombre oak, which the sixteenth and seventeenth century builders would have adopted, the walls and ceilings have been painted white."
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 The
camera moves slowly over floors covered with debris, around bent Corinthian
columns, under crystal chandeliers suspended at weird angles, into a room
whose walls are still covered with pale carved paneling.For the first time, we are looking at the Titanic’s first-class dining room, through the eyes of Robin. A remote, robotic eye controlled on the ocean bottom by Nautile, Robin can explore places on the Titanic that are far too risky for the manned submersible to enter. A few days ago, the robot penetrated several areas of the Titanic that haven’t been explored before—the first-class dining room, the doors of the three first-class elevators and the private deck outside Mrs. Charlotte Drake Cardeza’s suite on B-Deck. Today, aboard the Nadir, Matt Tulloch and I are viewing two hours of videotapes that Robin’s cameras recorded. |
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 Watching
them, it’s often hard to tell exactly where Robin is, because
of the clouds of sediment and falling rusticles that frequently obscure
the picture. Sometimes it looks like the red robotic eye is hovering in
outer space, surrounded by what seem to be galaxies of swirling undersea
debris.But then the image clears, and we’re following Robin down hatches, farther down into the darkness of the Grand Stairway, through corridors, into the Marconi room and past windows of cabins that were once inhabited by the Titanic’s crew. It’s remarkable footage, and much of it explores familiar territory for Robin. The robot has spent about 100 hours on the Titanic since it was first designed in 1985. |
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 "Robin
is getting old, but it’s still performing very well," says Nadir’s
Yann Houard, who is responsible for maintaining the robot. Equipped with
four thrusters, three lights and three video cameras, Robin is carried
in Nautile’s front basket, and it’s powered and controlled
from the sub through a yellow umbilical cable."If Robin ever gets caught in a wreck, Nautile can free itself by cutting the umbilical cable. But I hope we never have to do that," Yann says, "because it is my baby." Back to the Expedition Calendar |
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