Today in History: The wreck of the Titanic was found
The wreck was found at a depth of about 3900m, some 643km off the coast of Newfoundland.
Seventy-three years after it sank to the North Atlantic ocean floor, a joint US–French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
American Robert D Ballard headed the expedition, which used an experimental, unmanned submersible developed by the US Navy to search for the ocean liner. This consisted of a remotely controlled deep-sea vehicle called Argo, equipped with sonar and cameras and towed behind a ship, with a robot called Jason tethered to it that could roam the sea floor, take close-up images and gather specimens.
The images from the system would be transmitted back to a control room on the towing research vessel, Knorr, where they could be assessed immediately.
The search required round-the-clock towing of the Argo, back and forth above the sea bed, with shifts of watchers aboard the Knorr looking at the camera pictures for any sign of debris. After a week of fruitless searching, at 12.48am on Sunday, 1 September 1985, pieces of debris began to appear on the Knorr’s screens. One of them was identified as a boiler, identical to those shown in pictures from 1911.
The following day, the main part of the wreck was found and the Argo sent back the first pictures of Titanic since her sinking 73 years before.
You can have a look at some footage of the wreck here:
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