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The Discovery - Titanic Found
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 For
two weeks, the French and American team surveyed the target area,
using the Americans' video search capabilities. Then, on September
1, 1985, at 1:05 a.m., IFREMER's Jean-Louis Michel was on duty, watching
the video monitor on the Knorr, when images of huge metal
boilers, steel plating, railings and portholes began to appear on
the screen. Michel knew that they had at last found the Titanic,
and, shortly before 2:00 a.m., he sent a crew member to awaken Robert
Ballard, who was sleeping in his cabin. The crew of the Knorr
then spontaneously gathered on the vessel's stern and raised the Harland
and Wolff flag in memory of the Titanic and the disaster's
victims.
The following day, the team's video cameras mounted on Argo
again descended to the Titanic and revealed that the wreck
was resting upright on the sea bed, her bow still relatively intact.
The team also sent down a 2-ton towed device called ANGUS (Acoustically
Navigated Geophysical Underwater Survey), equipped with 35mm color
cameras. It was only when crew members examined the film on the way
home from the site that they realized that the Titanic was not in
one piece, as they had reported to the world press, but was lying
on the bottom in two pieces, with her four funnels gone. |
 Almost
immediately after the discovery, a dispute developed between IFREMER
and Robert Ballard's private company, DOSS. IFREMER had expected to
recover its expenses for the expedition from the sale of photographs
and videotapes and their simultaneous release in the U.S. and France,
according to the contract it had signed with Ballard. Instead, Ballard
made the film available to the world media before the planned simultaneous
release, depriving the French of their expected income.
As a result of the ensuing legal dispute, the French refused to return
to the Titanic with Ballard the next summer as he had hoped.
According to Ballard's original plans, this second expedition would
have tested French and American deep-sea robotic technology and recovered
artifacts from the Titanic's debris field, using the French
manned submersible Nautile. Ballard, in fact, was a b supporter
of artifact recovery. In 1985, he testified to the U.S. Congress that
"I am in favor of the recovery of that material probably with
manned submarines, to ensure that they are protected and the public
and the world have the ability to touch...so to speak, and feel the
ship." |
 Instead,
however, working without the French and their artifact-recovery technology,
Ballard returned to the Titanic in July 1986 with the U.S.
Navy vessel Atlantis II and the robotic vehicle, Jason
Jr. (J.J.). A tethered device equipped with high-resolution
cameras and powerful lights, the 28-inch-long J.J. explored
previously inaccessible areas of the wreck, including the ship's grand
staircase. A three-man submersible, Alvin, also made 11 dives
to the wreck. Although the American team investigated the starboard
bow, where the iceberg hit the ship, all evidence of damage was buried
beneath ocean-bottom mud.
That same year, the U.S. Congress passed the Titanic Maritime Memorial
Act. The act encouraged a consortium of nations to set international
guidelines "for conducting research on, exploration of, and,
if appropriate, salvage of the RMS Titanic." |
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