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Reports written by Susan
Wels
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Images produced by Matt Tulloch | |||
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Saturday, August 29, 1998
"The night of April 14, 1912...was a beautiful starlight night, no wind, and the sea was as calm as a lake....Everybody was in good spirits and everything throughout the ship was going smoothly."
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It’s been a perfect day of warm sun and sparkling seas—despite the unsettling news that Hurricane Bonnie may be heading directly for us. The forecasts, in fact, are looking pretty grim, with high winds and seas expected as early as tomorrow afternoon. But today, with nothing on the horizon but blue skies, it’s almost impossible to imagine that the weather could turn so dangerous so fast. The ocean bottom has its weather patterns, too, and today, according to the Nautile crew, it was as glorious on the seabed as it was for those of us up here on the surface. The water 2.5 miles down was crystal clear, and there were no currents to stir the sediments or complicate Nautile’s artifact recovery mission.  At
6:30 this evening, when the sub returned to the Nadir, it brought
up with it some delicate artifacts from the Titanic’s debris
field. The most remarkable was a golden chandelier from one of the Titanic’s
first-class public rooms—its ornamentation and gilding virtually unmarred
by more than eight decades on the ocean floor.
The chandelier is just one of many ordinary and extraordinary objects
that Nautile has recovered during this summer’s expedition.
A number of the artifacts, according to Titanic historians Jack
Eaton and Charles Haas, may be especially helpful in filling in some architectural
and historical details about the ship. |
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