Finding the Titanic: How Images from the Ocean Depths Fueled Interest in the Doomed Ship
The sinking of the Titanic was one of the world’s worst disasters at sea Ballard knew that time was running out to find the Titanic on this trip The U S Navy had paid for him to find and investigate two of its submarines that had sunk during the 1960s After Ballard finished that search he could use whatever time was left on his three-week assignment to hunt for the Titanic Now on the night of August 31 1985 Ballard had only a few days left to find the wreck And a storm was approaching Ballard had once said that with the proper equipment and crew finding the Titanic would be easy But now he began to wonder The equipment for his expedition included sophisticated sonar on board the French research ship Le Suroit Sonar uses sound waves to locate objects underwater A device called a transducer sends out the waves When a
wave hits an object it bounces back to the transducer as an echo that can be seen on a screen Le Suroit towed an advanced side-scan sonar which can locate objects on the ocean floor Fan-shaped sound waves radiate out from what is called a towfish The waves echoes appear on a screen as areas of light and dark depending on their strength Light patches indicate the sonar has found something sticking out from the bottom After several weeks of searching however Le Suroit had not found the Titanic in the area where Ballard thought it would be He had then turned to the next piece of underwater technology a sledlike submersible called Argo Also known as a remotely operated vehicle ROV Argo let Ballard safely study the ocean floor for long periods in the dangerously strong water pressure Ballard an oceanographer who specialized in geology had just built Argo with a team of engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts The Titanic project gave him a chance to test it Argo was equipped with video cameras that used technology developed by the U S military The cameras could detect natural light and magnify it 10,000 times With the cameras Ballard later wrote he could literally see in the dark 1 That capability was crucial at 12,500 feet 3,810 meters since at that great depth only faint traces of sunlight reach the ocean’s bottom Argo was attached to the Knorr by a cable called a tether Inside the cable were wires that carried information back and forth between the submersible and the ship’s crew The crew members controlled Argo’s movement and reviewed the images from its cameras
The submersible Argo was named for the vessel that carried Jason in the Greek myth about Jason’s quest for the golden fleece Along with Argo Ballard and his crew were also using a device called ANGUS short for Acoustically Navigated Geological Underwater Survey Towed by the Knorr ANGUS carried cameras it could use while hovering above the ocean floor Unlike with Argo however Ballard and others on the surface ship could not see the images right away First they had to retrieve ANGUS from the ocean and then develop its film But the pictures it took provided information about large areas of the ocean’s bottom If Argo could find the Titanic ANGUS’s cameras would provide detailed photos of the wreckage
The research ship Knorr logged more than 1 4 million miles 2 2 million km during the 44 years it carried scientists around the world The U S Navy ship was retired from service in 2014 Ballard and his team had first searched a rectangular area near where the Titanic’s radio operator reported the ship’s position after hitting the iceberg Another key marker was the place where the passenger ship Carpathia found the Titanic’s lifeboats Ballard had to take into account the speed of the ocean current on the night of April 14 1912 since the current had carried the lifeboats away from the spot where the Titanic sank After the first search with the sonar on Le Suroit Ballard decided to shift the search field to the east
