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The Titanic had a total of 840 staterooms. There were 416 first class rooms, 162 second class rooms and 262 third class rooms, plus another 40 open berthing areas.

The Titanic had a total capacity of 3,547 passengers and crew members, but on its maiden voyage, only 2,340 people were on board. The ship's 840 staterooms were located on nine decks. Each deck was given a letter designation. The more extravagant the room, the higher it was on the ship. The boiler rooms were located below the "G" deck. Besides holding the first class staterooms, the upper decks also contained restaurants and the finest of the promenades.

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The Titanic had a total of 840 staterooms. There were 416 first class rooms, 162 second class rooms and 262 third class rooms, plus another 40 open berthing areas. The Titanic had a total capacity of 3,547 passengers and crew members, but on its maiden voyage, only 2,340 people were on board.

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The Number of People Who Were on the Titanic

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The Number of People Who Were on the Titanic

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This is an article about the number of people who were on the Titanic.

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Passengers of the RMS Titanic - Wikipedia

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On the night of 14 April 1912, around 11:40 pm, while the RMS Titanic was sailing about 400 mi (640 km) south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the ship struck an iceberg and began to sink. Shortly before midnight, Captain Edward Smith ordered the ship's lifeboats to be readied and a distress call was sent out.

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This is an article based on the year of finding the Titanic.

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After the sinking of the on April 15, 1912, the great ship slumbered on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean for over 70 years before its wreckage was discovered. On September 1, 1985, a joint American-French expedition, headed by famous American oceanographer Dr. Robert Ballard, found the Titanic over two miles below the ocean's surface by using an unmanned submersible called Argo. This discovery gave new meaning to the Titanic's sinking and gave birth to new dreams in ocean exploration.

The Titanic's Journey

Built in Ireland from 1909 to 1912 on behalf of the British-owned White Star Line, the Titanic officially left the European port of Queenstown, Ireland, on April 11, 1912. Carrying over 2,200 passengers and crew, the great ship began its maiden voyage across the Atlantic, headed for New York.

The Titanic carried passengers from all walks of life. Tickets were sold to first-, second-, and third-class passengers-the latter group largely consisting of immigrants seeking a better life in the United States. Famous first-class passengers included J. Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line; business magnate Benjamin Guggenheim; and members of the Astor and Strauss families.

The Sinking of the Titanic

Only three days after setting sail, the Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, somewhere in the North Atlantic. Although it took the ship over two and a half hours to sink, the vast majority of the crew and passengers perished due to a significant lack of lifeboats and improper use of those that did exist. The lifeboats could have held over 1,100 people, but only 705 passengers were saved; nearly 1,500 perished the night the Titanic sank.

People around the world were shocked when they heard that the "unsinkable" Titanic had sunk. They wanted to know the details of the disaster. Yet, however much the survivors could share, theories about how and why the Titanic sank would remain unsubstantiated until the wreckage of the great ship could be found. There was just one problem-no one was sure exactly where the Titanic had sunk.

An Oceanographer's Pursuit

For as long as he could remember, Robert Ballard had wanted to find the wreckage of the Titanic. His childhood in San Diego, California, near the water sparked his life-long fascination with the ocean, and he learned to scuba dive as soon as he was able. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1965 with degrees in both chemistry and geology, Ballard signed up for the Army. Two years later, in 1967, Ballard transferred to the Navy, where he was assigned to the Deep Submergence Group at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Institution in Massachusetts, thus beginning his illustrious career with submersibles.

By 1974, Ballard had received two doctoral degrees (marine geology and geophysics) from the University of Rhode Island and had spent a lot of time conducting deep-water dives in Alvin, a manned submersible he helped design. During subsequent dives in 1977 and 1979 near the Galapagos Rift, Ballard helped discover hydrothermal vents, which led in turn to the discovery of the amazing plants that grew around these vents. Scientific analysis of these plants led to the discovery of chemosynthesis, a process in which plants use chemical reactions rather than sunlight to get energy.

However many shipwrecks Ballard explored and however much of the ocean floor he mapped, Ballard never forgot about the Titanic. "I always wanted to find the Titanic," Ballard has said. "That was a Mt. Everest in my world-one of those mountains that had never been climbed."*

Planning the Mission

Ballard wasn't the first to try to find the Titanic. Over the years, there had been several teams that had set out to find the wreckage of the famous ship; three of them had been funded by millionaire oilman Jack Grimm. On his last expedition in 1982, Grimm had taken an underwater picture of what he believed to be a propeller from the Titanic; others believed it was only a rock. The hunt for the Titanic was to continue, this time with Ballard. But first, he needed funding.

Given Ballard's history with the U.S. Navy, he decided to ask them to fund his expedition. They agreed, but not because they had a vested interest in finding the long-lost ship. Instead, the Navy wanted to use the technology Ballard would create to also help them find and investigate the wreckage of two nuclear submarines (the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion) that had been mysteriously lost in the 1960s.

Ballard's search for the Titanic provided a nice cover story for the Navy, who wanted to keep their search for their lost submarines a secret from the Soviet Union. Amazingly, Ballard maintained the secrecy of his mission even as he built the technology and used it to find and explore the remains of the USS Thresher and the remains of the USS Scorpion. While Ballard was investigating these wreckages, he learned more about debris fields, which would prove crucial in finding the Titanic.

Once his secret mission was complete, Ballard was able to focus on searching for the Titanic. However, he now had only two weeks in which to do it.

Locating the Titanic

It was late August 1985 when Ballard finally began his search. He had invited a French research team, led by Jean-Louis Michel, to join this expedition. Aboard the Navy's oceanographic survey ship, the Knorr, Ballard and his team headed to the likely location of the Titanic's resting place-1,000 miles due east of Boston, Massachusetts.

While previous expeditions had used close sweeps of the ocean floor to search for the Titanic, Ballard decided to conduct mile-wide sweeps in order to cover more area. He was able to do this for two reasons. First, after examining the wreckage of the two submarines, he discovered that ocean currents often swept lighter pieces of the wreck downstream, thus leaving a long debris trail. Secondly, Ballard had engineered a new unmanned submersible ( Argo) that could explore wider areas, dive deeper, stay underwater for many weeks, and deliver crisp and clear pictures of what it found. This meant that Ballard and his team could stay on board the Knorr and monitor the images taken from Argo, with the hopes that those images would capture small, man-made pieces of debris.

The Knorr arrived in the area on August 22, 1985, and began sweeps of the area using Argo. In the early morning hours of September 1, 1985, the first glimpse of the Titanic in 73 years appeared on Ballard's screen. Exploring 12,000 feet below the ocean's surface, the Argo relayed the image of one of the Titanic's boilers embedded within the sandy surface of the ocean's floor. The team on the Knorr was ecstatic about the discovery, although the realization that they were floating atop the graves of nearly 1,500 individuals lent a somber tone to their celebration.

The expedition proved to be instrumental in shedding light on the Titanic's sinking. Prior to the discovery of the wreckage, there was some belief that the Titanic had sunk in one piece. The 1985 images did not give researchers definitive information on the ship's sinking; however, it did establish some basic foundations that countered early myths.

Subsequent Expeditions

Ballard returned to the Titanic in 1986 with new technology that allowed him to further explore the interior of the majestic ship. Images were collected that showed the remains of the beauty that so captivated those who had seen the Titanic at its height. The Grand Staircase, still-hanging chandeliers, and intricate iron-work were all photographed during Ballard's second successful expedition.

Since 1985, there have been several dozen expeditions to the Titanic. Many of these expeditions have been controversial since salvagers brought up several thousand artifacts from the ship's remains. Ballard has been widely outspoken against these efforts, claiming that he felt the ship deserved to rest in peace. During his two initial expeditions, he decided not to bring any discovered artifacts to the surface. He felt that others should honor the sanctity of the wreckage in a similar fashion.

The most proliferate salvager of Titanic artifacts has been RMS Titanic Inc. The company has brought many notable artifacts to the surface, including a large piece of the ship's hull, passenger luggage, dinnerware, and even documents preserved in oxygen-starved compartments of steamer trunks. Due to negotiations between its predecessor company and the French government, the RMS Titanic group initially could not sell the artifacts, only put them on display and charge admission to recoup expenses and generate profit. The largest exhibition of these artifacts, over 5,500 pieces, is located in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the Luxor Hotel, under the direction of the RMS Titanic Group's new name, Premier Exhibitions Inc.

Titanic Returns to the Silver Screen

Although the Titanic has been featured in numerous films through the years, it was James Cameron's 1997 film, Titanic, that stimulated massive, worldwide interest in the ship's fate. The movie became one of the most popular films ever made.

The 100th Anniversary

The 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic in 2012 also fueled renewed interest in the tragedy, 15 years after Cameron's film. The wreckage site is now eligible to be named a protected area as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and Ballard is also working to preserve what remains.

An expedition in August 2012 revealed that increased human activity has caused the ship to break down at a faster rate than previously expected. Ballard came up with a plan to slow the process of degradation-painting the Titanic while it remains 12,000 feet below the ocean's surface-but the plan was never implemented.

The discovery of the Titanic was a momentous accomplishment, but not only is the world conflicted about how to care for this historical wreck, but its existing artifacts could also now be in jeopardy. Premier Exhibitions Inc. filed for bankruptcy in 2016, asking permission from the bankruptcy court to sell the Titanic's artifacts. As of this publication, the court has not made a ruling on the request.

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How Did Robert Ballard Find the Sunken Titanic?

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After the Titanic sunk in 1912, it remained lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for 73 years. Robert Ballard found it in 1985.

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This is an article on how and why the Titanic sank.

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Why and How the Titanic Sank (Infographic)

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A remarkable variety of elements came together to sink the famed steamship Titanic.

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More Information on the Titanic Being Found

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More Information on the Titanic Being Found

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This is more info. on the Titanic disintegrating in 2030.

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First it was an iceberg, now it's bacteria: Rust-eating species 'will destroy wreck of Titanic within 20 years'

The wreck of the Titanic will be nothing more than a rust stain on the bed of the Atlantic within 15 to 20 years, scientists warned today.

A newly-discovered species of rust-eating bacteria is slowly consuming the 50,000 tons of iron that makes up the sunken liner.

Experts now believe the invasive group of micro-organisms will eventually cause the shipwreck to completely decompose.

Identified using DNA technology, the bacteria and has been found on clumps of rust - known as rusticles - that have covered Titanic's iron hull in the century since it sunk in 1912.

The bacteria - Halomonas titanicae - is said to be fast consuming the rust and the iron.

Consequently, scientists believe the wreck - that is in two separate sections - will be nothing more that a huge 'rust stain' on the seabed within 20 years.

The discovery is the result of two decades' worth of research on the micro-organisms on Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage.

It was made by Dr Henrietta Mann and Bhavleen Kaur from Dalhousie University, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in conjunction with researchers from the University of Sevilla, Spain.

Dr Mann, adjunct professor with the department of civil engineering, said: 'I think Titanic has maybe 15 or 20 years left. I don't think it will have too much longer than that.

'It has already lasted for 100 years, but eventually there will be nothing left but a rust stain on the bottom of the Atlantic.'

The bacteria was discovered in rusticles collected from the wreck of by a team of scientists in 1991.

Dr Mann and her team began studying them in 1995, but it is only within the last few years that DNA technology has progressed enough for the bacteria to be isolated and studied fully.

The rusticles - porous, dark orange, icicle-like structures that form on rusting iron - covered the metal surface of Titanic and are home to a host of micro-organisms.

This includes 27 strains of bacteria, from which Halomonas titanicae was isolated and found to be particularly partial to iron.

Its destructive tendencies mean the delicate rusticles will eventually disintegrate into a fine powder in the salt water.

Dr Mann said: 'The rusticles on Titanic are made from a composition of different micro-organisms. It's not just one species of bacteria munching on it.

'But we have now identified one which particularly likes eating iron.

'To explain it in human terms, not every type of bacteria has the same taste. So if you present different people with a plate of chocolate and cheese, some may prefer one and some the other.

'This is a type of bacteria which particularly likes eating iron.

'Nature is very clever, and everything is recalled eventually. Nature makes it, and nature claims it back.

'In this case, the bacteria helps to decompose the ship.'

While the preservation of Titanic is now thought to be impossible, it is hoped the discovery could lead to scientists being able to prevent the destruction of other iron structures.

Dr Mann said: 'Unfortunately, because Titanic is 2.3miles down, it is very difficult or impossible to preserve. It is film which will preserve it for history now.

'I hope that we are able to do more research into the bacteria. There are oil rigs, iron pipes and other iron structures in the ocean which may deteriorate in the same way as Titanic.

'To come up with certain things to prevent micro-organisms taking hold of them, or slowing down the process would be a useful thing.'

Ed Coghlan, chairman of the Irish Titanic Historical Society, said: 'This research backs up what divers who have been down to the wreck have seen; that the ship is falling apart.

'Fortunately it has been photographed extensively and there are wonderful videos to show us what it looked like underwater.

'In the future, people might think it is a shame we didn't do more to preserve it, but the reality is that to preserve it would cost an absolute fortune and is probably almost impossible.

'It may be that as the structure of the wreck disappears, more of the interior becomes accessible.

'We may be able to learn even more about Titanic once things like the mail bags, for example, become visible.

'Titanic is a very human story and it will be fascinating to see what happens to the wreck in the coming years.'

It is not yet known if the new species of bacteria was present on the RMS Titanic before or after it sank, or whether it is a unique strand to that particular wreck.

Dr Mann and her team have published their findings in the latest issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology.

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First it was an iceberg, now it's bacteria: Rust-eating species 'will destroy wreck of Titanic within 20 years'

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The wreck of the Titanic will be nothing more than a rust stain on the bed of the Atlantic within 15 to 20 years, scientists warned today. A newly-discovered species of rust-eating bacteria is slowly consuming the 50,000 tons of iron that makes up the sunken liner.

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The Titanic was found at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists say it will disintegrate by 2030.

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This is more information about the man who found the Titanic

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Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks. He is most known for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998. He discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's in 2002 and visited Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who saved its crew. He leads ocean exploration on E/V Nautilus.

Ballard grew up in Pacific Beach, San Diego, California to a mother of German heritage and a father of British heritage. He has attributed his early interest in underwater exploration to watching (Ballard is dyslexic) the Disney adaptation of the 1870 Jules Verne novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, living by the ocean in San Diego, and his fascination with the groundbreaking expeditions of the bathyscaphe Trieste.

Ballard began working for Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation in 1962 when his father, Chet, the chief engineer at North American Aviation's Minuteman missile program, helped him get a part-time job. At North American, he worked on North American's failed proposal to build the submersible Alvin for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

In 1965, Ballard graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning undergraduate degrees in chemistry and geology. While a student in Santa Barbara, California, he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and also completed the US Army's ROTC program, giving him an Army officer's commission in Army Intelligence. His first graduate degree ( MS, 1966) was in geophysics from the University of Hawaii's Institute of Geophysics where he trained porpoises and whales. Subsequently, he returned to Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation.

Ballard was working towards a Ph.D. in marine geology at the University of Southern California in 1967 when he was called to active duty. Upon his request, he was transferred from the Army into the US Navy as an oceanographer. The Navy assigned him as a liaison between the Office of Naval Research and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

After leaving active duty and entering into the Naval Reserve in 1970, Ballard continued working at Woods Hole persuading organizations and people, mostly scientists, to fund and use Alvin for undersea research. Four years later he received a Ph.D. in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island.

Military career

Ballard joined the United States Army in 1965 through the Army's Reserve Officers Training program. He was designated as an intelligence officer and initially received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve. When called to active duty in 1967, he asked to fulfill his obligation in the United States Navy. His request was approved, and he was transferred to the Navy Reserve on the reserve active duty list. After completing his active duty obligation in 1970, he was returned to reserve status, where he remained for much of his military career, being called up only for mandatory training and special assignments. He retired from the Navy as a commander in 1995 after reaching the statutory service limit.

Marine geology

Ballard's first dive in a submersible was in the Ben Franklin (PX-15) in 1969 off the coast of Florida during a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution expedition. In summer 1970, he began a field mapping project of the Gulf of Maine for his doctoral dissertation. It used an air gun that sent sound waves underwater to determine the underlying structure of the ocean floor and the submersible Alvin, which was used to find and recover a sample from the bedrock.

Ballard was geologist diver in Alvin during Project FAMOUS, which explored the median rift valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1974.

During the summer of 1975, Ballard participated in a joint French-American expedition called Phere searching for hydrothermal vents over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but the expedition did not find any active vents.

On the Galapagos spreading center east of the islands a 1977 exploration by Alvin found deep-sea hydrothermal vents and surrounding biology communities based on chemosynthesis. Ballard was a participating diver.

The 1979 RISE project expedition on the East Pacific Rise west of Mexico at 21°N was aided by deep-towed still camera sleds that were able to take pictures of the ocean floor, making it easier to find hydrothermal vent locations. When Alvin inspected one of the sites the deep-tow located, the scientists observed black "smoke" billowing out of the vents, something not observed at the Galápagos Rift. Ballard and geophysicist Jean Francheteau went down in Alvin the day after the black smokers were first observed. They were able to take an accurate temperature reading of the active vent (the previous dive's thermometer had melted), and recorded 350 °C (662 °F). They continued searching for more vents along the East Pacific Rise between 1980 and 1982.

Marine archaeology

While Ballard had been interested in the sea since an early age, his work at Woods Hole and his scuba diving experiences off Massachusetts spurred his interest in shipwrecks and their exploration. His work in the Navy had involved assisting in the development of small, unmanned submersibles that could be tethered to and controlled from a surface ship, and were outfitted with lighting, cameras, and manipulator arms. As early as 1973, he saw this as way of searching for the wreck of the Titanic. In 1977, he led his first expedition, which was unsuccessful.

In summer 1985, Ballard was aboard the French research ship , which was using the side scan sonar SAR to search for the Titanic's wreck. When the French ship was recalled, he transferred onto a ship from Woods Hole, the R/V Knorr. Unbeknownst to some, this trip was financed by the U.S. Navy for secret reconnaissance of the wreckage of two Navy nuclear powered attack submarines, the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, which sank in the 1960s, and not for the Titanic. Back in 1982, he approached the Navy about his new deep sea underwater robot craft, the Argo, and his search for the Titanic. The Navy was not interested in financing it. However, they were interested in finding out what happened to their missing submarines and ultimately concluded that Argo was their best chance to do so. The Navy agreed it would finance his Titanic search only if he first searched for and investigated the two sunken submarines, and found out the state of their nuclear reactors after being submerged for such a long time, and whether their radioactivity was impacting the environment. He was placed on temporary active duty in the Navy, in charge of finding and investigating the wrecks. After the two missions were completed, time and funding permitting, he was free to use resources to hunt for the Titanic.

After their missions for the Navy, Knorr arrived on site on August 22, 1985, and deployed Argo. When they searched for the two submarines, Ballard and his team discovered that they had imploded from the immense pressure at depth. It littered thousands of pieces of debris all over the ocean floor. Following the large trail of debris led them directly to both and made it significantly easier for them to locate them than if they were to search for the hulls directly. He already knew that the Titanic imploded from pressure as well, much the same way the two submarines did, and concluded that it too must have also left a scattered debris trail. Using that lesson, they had Argo sweep back and forth across the ocean floor looking for the Titanic's debris trail. They took shifts monitoring the video feed from Argo as it searched the ocean floor two miles below.

In the early morning hours of September 1, 1985, observers noted anomalies on the otherwise smooth ocean floor. At first, it was pockmarks, like small craters from impacts. Eventually, debris was sighted as the rest of the team was awakened. Finally, a boiler was sighted, and soon after that, the hull was found.

Ballard's team made a general search of the Titanic's exterior, noting its condition. Most significantly, they confirmed that it had split in two, and that the stern was in far worse shape than the bow. They did not have much time to explore, as others were waiting to take Knorr on other scientific pursuits, but his fame was now assured. He originally planned to keep the exact location a secret to prevent anyone from claiming prizes from it. He considered the site a cemetery, and refused to desecrate it by removing artifacts.

On July 12, 1986, Ballard and his team returned on board Atlantis II to make the first detailed study of the wreck. This time, he brought Alvin. It was accompanied by Jason Junior, a small remotely operated vehicle that could fit through small openings to see into the ship's interior. Although the first dive (taking over two hours) encountered technical problems, subsequent ones were far more successful, and produced a detailed photographic record of the wreck's condition.

In 1988, Ballard published a book, Discovery Of The Titanic: Exploring The Greatest Of All Lost Ships, ISBN 0446513857 and he later recounted the specifics of the expedition for National Geographic in a video.

The vast majority of the relics retrieved by various groups, not including Ballard, from RMS Titanic were owned by Premier Exhibitions which filed for bankruptcy in 2016. In late August 2018, the groups vying for ownership of the 5,500 relics included one by museums in England and Northern Ireland with assistance from film maker James Cameron and some financial support from National Geographic. Ballard told the news media that he favored this bid since it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast and in Greenwich. A decision as to the outcome was to be made by a United States district court judge.

Other wrecks

Ballard undertook an even more daunting task when he and his team searched off the coast of France for the German Battleship in 1989, using an ocean-crawling robot. The 15,000 foot deep water in which it sank is 4,000 feet deeper than that where the Titanic sank. He attempted to determine whether it had been sunk by the British or was scuttled by its own crew. Three weeks after the expedition however, personal tragedy struck him when his 21-year-old son, Todd, who had aided him in the search, was killed in a car accident.

Ballard later published a book about the quest, The Discovery of the Bismarck (1990). The discovery was also documented for National Geographic in a 1989 James Cameron video Search for the Battleship Bismarck which indicated that the ship had been damaged by torpedoes and shells from British ships. The actual cause of the sinking, however, was sabotage of the underwater valves by the onboard crew, according to Ballard, who said, "we found a hull that appears whole and relatively undamaged by the descent and impact". Film maker Cameron, however, said that his crew's examination of the wreckage indicated that the Bismarck would have sunk eventually even if it had not been scuttled.

In 1993, Ballard investigated the wreck of RMS Lusitania off the Irish coast. It had been struck by a torpedo, whose explosion was followed by a second, much larger one. The wreck had been depth charged by the Royal Navy several years after the sinking, and had also been damaged by other explorers, making a forensic analysis difficult. He found no evidence of boiler explosion and he speculated the ignition of coal dust inside the ship, caused a "massive, uncontrollable [second] explosion".

Others have questioned this hypothesis, some suggesting that the ship had been sabotaged by the British. Ballard found no evidence to support this claim. Some experts have indicated that it was, in fact, boiler explosions that caused the ship to sink so quickly, in a mere 18 minutes.

Ballard published a book about the discovery, Exploring the Lusitania: Probing the Mysteries of the Sinking that Changed History, also titled Robert Ballard's Lusitania in some markets, with co-author Spencer Dunmore ( ISBN 0785822070).

Battle of Guadalcanal

In 1992, Ballard and his team visited the sites of many wrecks of World War II in the Pacific. Doing so, he discovered the wreck of the IJN Kirishima. His book Lost Ships of Guadalcanal locates and photographs many of the vessels sunk in the infamous Ironbottom Sound, the strait between Guadalcanal Island and the Floridas in the Solomon Islands.

On May 19, 1998 Ballard found the wreck of , sunk at the Battle of Midway. Found 3 miles (5 km) beneath the surface, it was photographed.

In 2002, the National Geographic Society and Ballard fielded a ship with remote vehicles to the Solomon Islands. They succeeded in finding a torpedo tube and the forward section from the shipwreck of John F. Kennedy's which was rammed in 1943 by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri off Ghizo Island. The visit also brought to light the identity of islanders Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana who had received little recognition for finding the shipwrecked crew after searching for days in their dugout canoe. A TV special and a book were produced, and Ballard spoke at the John F. Kennedy Library in 2005.

Institute for Exploration

In the 1990s Ballard founded the Institute for Exploration, which specializes in deep-sea archaeology and deep-sea geology. It joined forces in 1999 with the Mystic Aquarium located in Mystic, Connecticut. They are a part of the non-profit Sea Research Foundation, Inc.

Center for Ocean Exploration and Archaeological Oceanography

In 2003, Ballard started the Center for Ocean Exploration and Archaeological Oceanography, a research program at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography.

In 1976, Willard Bascom suggested that the deep, anoxic waters of the Black Sea might have preserved ships from antiquity because typical wood-devouring organisms could not survive there. At a depth of 150 m, it contains insufficient oxygen to support most familiar biological life forms.

Originally a land-locked fresh water lake, the Black Sea was flooded with salt water from the Mediterranean Sea during the Holocene. The influx of salt water essentially smothered the fresh water below it because a lack of internal motion and mixing meant that no fresh oxygen reached the deep waters, creating a meromictic body of water. The anoxic environment, which is hostile to many biological organisms that destroy wood in the oxygenated waters, provides an excellent testing site for deep water archaeological survey.

In a series of expeditions, a team of marine archaeologists led by Ballard identified what appeared to be ancient shorelines, freshwater snail shells, and drowned river valleys in roughly 300 feet (100 m) of water off the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey. Radiocarbon dating of freshwater mollusk remains indicated an age of about 7,000 years.

To the east of Sinop, the team discovered a remarkably well-preserved wreck at a 320 m depth, in the Black Sea's deep anoxic waters. The vessel's entire hull and cargo are intact, buried in sediments. Its deck structures are also intact, including a mast rising some 11 m into the water column. Radiocarbon dating of wood from the wreck provides a date of 410-520 A.D. It has been named "Sinop D" by the Ballard team.

The wreck found provided the team with vast information about both the technological changes and trade that occurred in the Black Sea during a period of political, social and economic transition through their study of the ship's construction techniques. Studies show that in Sinop during the Byzantine era, they had developed long-distance trading as early as 4500 BC. Sea-trading on the Black Sea was most intense during the period of late antiquity, between the 2nd and 7th centuries AD. The examination of the four shipwrecks found by Ballard and his team provide the direct evidence for Black Sea maritime trade so well attested by the distribution of ceramics on land.

Shipwreck B also consisted of a large pile of amphorae but several types are visible, as are multiple timbers protruding from within the mound and on it. In addition to the Sinop-styles jars, several amphorae similar to examples excavated on the Yassiada Byzantine shipwreck and dating from the 5th to late 6th century AD are present.

Two discrete and mostly buried piles of carrot-shaped shipping jars comprise shipwreck C. The team's visit to the site was short and was intended primarily to test survey methodology for deep-water procedures.

Shipwreck D provided the team with an unprecedented opportunity to document hull construction during a time of transition. When observing the sonar signature of Shipwreck D, a long, slender upright feature on the seabed, transformed itself into a wooden mast. Elements rarely present on shallower shipwreck sites are beautifully preserved 200 m below the surface. Disappointingly for ship scholars and historians of technology, there are few indications of how the planks of Sinop D are held together. There are no mortise and tenon fastenings, and no sewing. Shipwreck D may be one of the earliest lateen-rigged ships to be studied by archaeologists. The angle of the mast and the lack of fittings on it suggest that a lateen sail is the most likely configuration for such a small vessel.

The Institute for Exploration Black Sea expeditions relied on remote sensing with side-scan sonar in shallow and deep water to identify potential archaeological sites examined by ROVs. The hypothesis that the anoxic waters of the Black Sea would allow extraordinary organic preservation is borne out by the discovery of Sinop D, the 1,500-year-old shipwreck with excellent preservation of features above the sediment layer.

According to a report in New Scientist magazine (May 4, 2002, p. 13), the researchers found an underwater delta south of the Bosporus. There was evidence for a strong flow of fresh water out of the Black Sea in the 8th millennium BC. Ballard's research has contributed to the debate over the Black Sea deluge theory.

Awards and honors

Other works

In 2004, Ballard was appointed professor of oceanography, and currently serves as Director of the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography, at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography. He was the first speaker to give the Charles and Marie Fish Lecture in Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island in 2002.

Television

Ballard served as the technical consultant on the science fiction series seaQuest DSV during its first season from September 1993 until May 1994. During the closing credits, he would speak about the scientific elements that were present in any given episode and place them in a contemporary context. Although he exited the series in the second season, he was referenced in the third season, with the "Ballard Institute" being named after him.

In 1989, Ballard founded the JASON Project, a distance education program designed to excite and engage middle school students in science and technology. He began the JASON Project in response to the thousands of letters he received from students following his discovery of the wreck of the Titanic.

Ballard has three sons, Todd Allan (1968-1989), Doug and Ben (b. 1994).

Ballard married Marjorie Jacobsen in 1966 and divorced in 1990. He remarried in 1991.

References

1. ^ https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/robert-ballard-man-who-found-the-titanic-cmd/index.html

2. ^ "An Interview with Dr. Robert Ballard". Homeschool.com. Archived from the original on January 12, 2006.

3. ^ Ballard, R. D.; Bryan, W. B.; Heirtzler, J. R.; Keller, G.; Moore, J. G.; Andel, Tj. van (1975). "Manned Submersible Observations in the FAMOUS Area: Mid-Atlantic Ridge". Science. 190 (4210): 103-108. Bibcode:1975Sci...190..103B. doi:10.1126/science.190.4210.103. ISSN 0036-8075. JSTOR 1740930. S2CID 128755348.

4. ^ Corliss, John B.; Dymond, Jack; Gordon, Louis I.; Edmond, John M.; von Herzen, Richard P.; Ballard, Robert D.; Green, Kenneth; Williams, David; Bainbridge, Arnold (March 16, 1979). "Submarine Thermal Springs on the Galápagos Rift". Science. 203 (4385): 1073-1083. Bibcode:1979Sci...203.1073C. doi:10.1126/science.203.4385.1073. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17776033. S2CID 39869961.

5. ^ Spiess, F. N.; Macdonald, K. C.; Atwater, T.; Ballard, R.; Carranza, A.; Cordoba, D.; Cox, C.; Garcia, V. M. D.; Francheteau, J. (March 28, 1980). "East Pacific Rise: Hot Springs and Geophysical Experiments". Science. 207 (4438): 1421-1433. Bibcode:1980Sci...207.1421S. doi:10.1126/science.207.4438.1421. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17779602. S2CID 28363398.

6. ^ Levenson, Eric (December 14, 2018). "Inside the secret US military mission that located the Titanic".

7. ^ Dawn McCarty, Jef Feeley, Chris Dixon (July 24, 2018). "James Cameron: Getting Titanic Artifacts to U.K. Would Be 'a Dream'". National Geographic.

8. ^ Dawn McCarty, Jef Feeley, Chris Dixon (August 31, 2018). "Bankrupt Titanic exhibitor sets biggest sale of ship relics". Bloomberg.

9. ^ "Text excerpted from Lost Liners, courtesy of Madison Press Books". PBS. PBS. previous visitors had already tampered with the evidence...we found nothing to suggest the ship was sabotaged.

10. ^ http://www.navweaps.com/index_lundgren/Kirishima_Damage_Analysis.pdf

11. ^ "Institute for Archaeological Oceanography". University of Rhode Island. June 1, 2004. Archived from the original on June 26, 2012.

12. Oğuz, T., Latun, V.S., Latif, M.A., Vladimirov, V. L., Sur, H. I., Markov, A. A., Ozsoy, E. Kotovschichkov, B. B., Eremeev, V.N., and Unluata, U., 1993, Circulation in the surface and intermediate layers, ^ Deep-Sea Research 1.40: 1597-612.

13. Hiebert, F., 2001, Black Sea coastal cultures: trade and interaction, ^ Expedition 43: 11-20

14. van Doorninck, F. H. Jr., 2002, Byzantine shipwrecks, in A. Laiou (ed.), ^ The Economic History of Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century I, 899-905. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 30, Washington, DC.

15. Ballard, Robert D., and Ward, Cheryl, 2004, Deep-water Archaeological Survey in the Black Sea; 2000 Season, ^ The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 33.1: 2-13, (online Archived May 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine).

16. ^ "Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D. Biography and Interview". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.

Further reading

R. D. Ballard, F, T. Hiebert, D. F. Coleman, C. Ward, J. Smith, K. Willis, B. Foley, K. Croff, C. Major, and F. Torre, "Deepwater Archaeology of the Black Sea: The 2000 Season at Sinop, Turkey" American Journal of Archaeology Vol. 105 No. 4 (October 2001).

External links

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Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks.

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This article is about the man who found the Titanic

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A hundred years ago tonight, the Titanic sank, taking more than 1,500 souls with it. Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck, tells Andrew Carter about the secret expedition to find it.

Robert Ballard's life's dream was to find the most famous shipwreck in the world, but if not for the Cold War and two missing submarines, the Titanic might never have been found.

Ballard, who also discovered the wreck of the Bismarck and the USS Yorktown, became interested in ocean exploration as a child while reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. "From a very early age, I wanted to be Captain Nemo and I wanted to explore the ocean floor," he says. With his parents' encouragement, he joined the Navy, worked at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and became an oceanographer. After 53 years and more than 130 expeditions, the 69-year-old adventurer is "still at it and hoping for a new discovery."

Ballard had long been fascinated by Titanic, and always dreamed of finding it. Back in the 1970s, he led a failed expedition to do just that. But it wasn't until 1985, while serving as a naval intelligence officer, that he was able to secure the technology and funding that helped him finally discover it 1,000 miles due east of Boston. Having helped the U.S. Navy develop unmanned submarines, Ballard thought the technology might be useful in finding the lost ship. The Navy had little interest in funding the search, but it was very interested in finding the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, two nuclear submarines that were lost in the 1960s on either side of where the Titanic went down. With the Cold War still in its final throes, the Navy had to keep the true nature of the submarine search a secret. They told Ballard that if he could find the subs, then afterward he could use their technology to search for the ship-but the world would think the expedition was about finding the Titanic from the beginning.

"The Navy didn't want to disclose the location of those submarines, so we needed a cover story and Titanic was the cover story," says Ballard. "I wanted to find the Titanic. The Navy just wanted our expedition to deflect from the true mission."

Of course, history would show that the expedition was successful on all fronts. Ballard was able to do reconnaissance on the missing submarines, and in the early-morning hours of Sept. 1, the image of a boiler in the sand 12,000 feet beneath the surface signaled the discovery of the Titanic.

"There were two reactions almost simultaneously," says Ballard. "The first reaction was celebration, we all jumped up shouting because we were near the end of the expedition and we thought we were going to fail. But that was followed quickly by a realization of where we were, that we were on a gravesite. We started seeing where the bodies had landed, that this was a cemetery, and it changed our emotional wall. It went from pure joy to thoughtful reflection."

Rumors have surfaced over the years that Ballard wanted to keep the location of the wreck a secret to protect it from salvagers. Not entirely true, he says. The expedition was a joint U.S.-French effort, which meant, "There was no hope of protecting it from the French; the French were aboard. Although initially they said they wouldn't salvage it, they reversed their decision and they knew the location because they were aboard and could write it down. So there was no secret among them, and they're the ones that actually founded the salvage operation." Since then more than 5,500 artifacts have been taken from the wreck site.

Ballard, who has long been outspoken against the recovery of objects from the Titanic, is disturbed by the salvage operations, not only because they are disturbing a gravesite, but because human exploration is damaging the ship. "We went back in 2004 and did it all over again, and we can show you exactly where the submarines had landed, where they had crushed the deck, where they had knocked off the crow's nest, where they pulled fixtures off the ship, and where they tried to break off the telemotor, all the debris, all the garbage that they left behind."

Further, Ballard sees "no point" in salvaging items from the sunken ship. "The artifacts on the Titanic are identical to the artifacts on her sister ship, so there wasn't anything to be gained." He adds that when he initially discovered the ship, he went to the 24 remaining survivors and various museums around the world, and "there wasn't a single person or organization who supported recovering artifacts."

Whether because of humans or because of bacteria consuming the ship, there is a good chance Titanic will collapse completely within the next few decades. In the meantime, Ballard is determined to do his part to preserve the ship and prolong her life for as long as possible. He is currently applying for a permit to clean the rust off the hull and give the ship a fresh coat of paint. While the prospect of refurbishing a 100-year-old vessel lying 12,000 feet beneath the sea might seem daunting to anyone else, Ballard isn't fazed. It's the same technology they use to repair supertankers that are too big to go into dry dock. "They've actually developed underwater robots that are very simple, they have magnets, they attach to the hull and they can travel the length of the hull and clean the rust off. And then they actually have paint that can be applied underwater," he says.

Still, Ballard does not want to give the impression that he is obsessed with the Titanic, or even that it is his favorite find. "I've done 135 expeditions. I've discovered things far more important than the Titanic, " he says. "The discovery of new life-forms in the Galapagos, the discovery of black smoke and mineral deposits that explain the chemistry of the world's oceans. I've recently discovered ancient shipwrecks from 500 B.C. that are perfectly preserved in the bottom waters of the Black Sea. All of them have lessons to learn, they're all important."

But he certainly understands the enduring fascination. "Every generation has discovered the Titanic, whether it was the one that was alive when it sank, Walter Lord's book, or my discovery, or Cameron's movie, and now the 100th anniversary." He also feels that the disaster has "all sorts of stories with heroes and villains, and I think everyone wonders what they would do if they were on the Titanic. "

The explorer shows no signs of slowing. This summer he plans to explore the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, before heading to America's Territorial Trust Islands in the western Pacific.

Asked what his most important discovery is, he responds, "The one I'm about to make."

Robert Ballard's life's dream was to find the most famous shipwreck in the world, but if not for the Cold War and two missing submarines, the Titanic might never have been found.

Ballard, who also discovered the wreck of the Bismarck and the USS Yorktown, became interested in ocean exploration as a child while reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. "From a very early age, I wanted to be Captain Nemo and I wanted to explore the ocean floor," he says. With his parents' encouragement, he joined the Navy, worked at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and became an oceanographer. After 53 years and more than 130 expeditions, the 69-year-old adventurer is "still at it and hoping for a new discovery."

Ballard had long been fascinated by Titanic, and always dreamed of finding it. Back in the 1970s, he led a failed expedition to do just that. But it wasn't until 1985, while serving as a naval intelligence officer, that he was able to secure the technology and funding that helped him finally discover it 1,000 miles due east of Boston. Having helped the U.S. Navy develop unmanned submarines, Ballard thought the technology might be useful in finding the lost ship. The Navy had little interest in funding the search, but it was very interested in finding the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, two nuclear submarines that were lost in the 1960s on either side of where the Titanic went down. With the Cold War still in its final throes, the Navy had to keep the true nature of the submarine search a secret. They told Ballard that if he could find the subs, then afterward he could use their technology to search for the ship-but the world would think the expedition was about finding the Titanic from the beginning.

"The Navy didn't want to disclose the location of those submarines, so we needed a cover story and Titanic was the cover story," says Ballard. "I wanted to find the Titanic. The Navy just wanted our expedition to deflect from the true mission."

Of course, history would show that the expedition was successful on all fronts. Ballard was able to do reconnaissance on the missing submarines, and in the early-morning hours of Sept. 1, the image of a boiler in the sand 12,000 feet beneath the surface signaled the discovery of the Titanic.

"There were two reactions almost simultaneously," says Ballard. "The first reaction was celebration, we all jumped up shouting because we were near the end of the expedition and we thought we were going to fail. But that was followed quickly by a realization of where we were, that we were on a gravesite. We started seeing where the bodies had landed, that this was a cemetery, and it changed our emotional wall. It went from pure joy to thoughtful reflection."

Rumors have surfaced over the years that Ballard wanted to keep the location of the wreck a secret to protect it from salvagers. Not entirely true, he says. The expedition was a joint U.S.-French effort, which meant, "There was no hope of protecting it from the French; the French were aboard. Although initially they said they wouldn't salvage it, they reversed their decision and they knew the location because they were aboard and could write it down. So there was no secret among them, and they're the ones that actually founded the salvage operation." Since then more than 5,500 artifacts have been taken from the wreck site.

Ballard, who has long been outspoken against the recovery of objects from the Titanic, is disturbed by the salvage operations, not only because they are disturbing a gravesite, but because human exploration is damaging the ship. "We went back in 2004 and did it all over again, and we can show you exactly where the submarines had landed, where they had crushed the deck, where they had knocked off the crow's nest, where they pulled fixtures off the ship, and where they tried to break off the telemotor, all the debris, all the garbage that they left behind."

Further, Ballard sees "no point" in salvaging items from the sunken ship. "The artifacts on the Titanic are identical to the artifacts on her sister ship, so there wasn't anything to be gained." He adds that when he initially discovered the ship, he went to the 24 remaining survivors and various museums around the world, and "there wasn't a single person or organization who supported recovering artifacts."

Whether because of humans or because of bacteria consuming the ship, there is a good chance Titanic will collapse completely within the next few decades. In the meantime, Ballard is determined to do his part to preserve the ship and prolong her life for as long as possible. He is currently applying for a permit to clean the rust off the hull and give the ship a fresh coat of paint. While the prospect of refurbishing a 100-year-old vessel lying 12,000 feet beneath the sea might seem daunting to anyone else, Ballard isn't fazed. It's the same technology they use to repair supertankers that are too big to go into dry dock. "They've actually developed underwater robots that are very simple, they have magnets, they attach to the hull and they can travel the length of the hull and clean the rust off. And then they actually have paint that can be applied underwater," he says.

Still, Ballard does not want to give the impression that he is obsessed with the Titanic, or even that it is his favorite find. "I've done 135 expeditions. I've discovered things far more important than the Titanic, " he says. "The discovery of new life-forms in the Galapagos, the discovery of black smoke and mineral deposits that explain the chemistry of the world's oceans. I've recently discovered ancient shipwrecks from 500 B.C. that are perfectly preserved in the bottom waters of the Black Sea. All of them have lessons to learn, they're all important."

But he certainly understands the enduring fascination. "Every generation has discovered the Titanic, whether it was the one that was alive when it sank, Walter Lord's book, or my discovery, or Cameron's movie, and now the 100th anniversary." He also feels that the disaster has "all sorts of stories with heroes and villains, and I think everyone wonders what they would do if they were on the Titanic. "

The explorer shows no signs of slowing. This summer he plans to explore the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, before heading to America's Territorial Trust Islands in the western Pacific.

Asked what his most important discovery is, he responds, "The one I'm about to make."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Man Who Found the Titanic: A Tale of a Secret Expedition

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A hundred years ago tonight, the Titanic sank, taking more than 1,500 souls with it. Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck, tells Andrew Carter about the secret expedition to find it.