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The Discovery - Early Attempts
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 A
plan to locate the wreck of the Titanic was discussed only
five days after the tragedy. Vincent Astor, John Jacob Astor's son,
declared that he wanted to find the wreck and blow up its hull in
order to retrieve his father's missing body. J.J. Astor's remains
were discovered the next day, however, and those initial plans were
dropped. Later that year, though, the Astors, Widener and Guggenheim
families looked into the feasibility of locating and raising the Titanic's
hull. They even contracted with the Merritt and Chapman Derrick and
Wrecking Company to perform the work, but the firm determined that
the task would be impossible. In 1913, Charles Smith, a Denver architect,
proposed a plan to use a submarine fitted with electromagnets to help
raise the Titanic's hull. A second would-be salvor proposed
using magnets attached to pontoons to float the ship's hull to the
surface. |
After those discussions, thoughts of locating and raising the Titanic
were forgotten while the nation grappled with World War I, the Depression
and World War II. In 1953, however, the hunt resumed when Risdon Beasley
Ltd., a British marine salvage firm, took a vessel out to the Titanic's
reported location and used explosives to create an echo image of the
sea bottom. Their efforts to find the ship, however, failed.  Then,
in 1955, Walter Lord reawakened public interest in the Titanic
when he published A Night to Remember. Three years later,
the film version was released. The next notable effort to find the
ship was a $5-million plan by an Englishman named Douglas Woolley.
In 1966, he proposed to locate the Titanic, surround it with
plastic containers filled with water and run electricity through them
to release gases that, he claimed, would raise the ship. Woolley also
considered raising the Titanic by rigging it with nylon balloons
filled with air. In the 1970s, Woolley created the Titanic Salvage
Company, declared that he had rights to the wreck, and announced plans
to find the ship, raise it and tow it to Liverpool, where he would
restore it as a floating museum. He never succeeded in raising funds
to carry out his plan.
Over the years, many others have come up with plans to find and raise
the Titanic. Arthur Hickey, an English haulage contractor,
proposed freezing the inside of the Titanic's hull to float
the ship up to the surface like an ice cube. Another theorist, John
Pierce, planned to freeze the Titanic by surrounding her
with a nitrogen-filled net. Other unusual schemes for raising the
ship included a plan to fill the Titanic with Ping-Pong balls
and another to fill her with 180,000 tons of molten wax. None of these
schemes were ever attempted. |
 The
first serious, scientific attempt to find the ship was initiated in
1980 by Jack Grimm, a Texas oil tycoon who had financed expeditions
to find the Loch Ness monster, Noah's Ark and Bigfoot. Grimm chartered
the vessel H. J. W. Fay and conducted sonar explorations
of a 600-square-mile area in the North Atlantic, working with filmmaker
Mike Harris, geologist Dr. William Ryan from the Lamont-Doherty Geological
Observatory at Columbia University, and Scripps Institution oceanographer
Dr. Fred Spiess. Although the team discovered 14 potential wreck sites,
the expedition was thwarted by bad weather. The next year, Grimm and
Harris launched a second expedition aboard the U.S. Navy vessel Gyre.
This time, the team refined their estimates of the Titanic's
possible location, but, despite numerous sonar searches, they again
failed to find the wreck. A third expedition financed by Grimm set
off in July 1983, but once again failed to discover the Titanic. |
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