How was the Titanic wreck discovered after 73 years?
RMS Titanic sank in April 1912 after striking an iceberg, but fast forward 73 years later, and the Titanic wreck was discovered by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard.
But the Franco-American expedition to the seafloor wasn’t initially intended to find the Titanic. The main goal of the trip was to find out what had happened to two other ships which belonged to the US Navy – U.S.S. Thresher and U.S.S. Scorpion.
But why did the US Navy care about the two ships? Well, both ships had nuclear reactors on them, and they needed to ensure neither ship would harm the environment. Ballard and his team managed to locate both ships, and confirmed they were ‘safe’.
However, Ballard had requested permission from the US Navy to search for the Titanic, which was located between both Thresher and Scorpion. Whilst not being given formal permission, he went ahead and did it anyway.
In 1985, Ballard and his team discovered debris strewn over the ocean floor when the unmanned submersible called Argo “suddenly passed over one of the Titanic’s massive boilers”, with the body of the Titanic being discovered the next day, nearby.
It’s unlikely that the Titanic will ever be raised from its graveyard on the ocean floor. Due to the “high-pressure environment of the deep ocean”, it left the “Titanic’s steel structure extremely fragile” which could cause the ship to “disintegrate” if it was brought up.
It is highly probable that the Titanic will remain on the ocean floor for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, thanks to Jean-Louis Michel, Robert Ballard, and the rest of the team, we at least know where it is resting.