It was the sheer size of the boat and the shoes that impressed Robert Ballard when he descended on the wreck of the RMS Titanic in 1986, a year after he and his crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution helped find the ocean liner that hit a iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic in 1912.
“The first thing I saw coming out of the gloom at 30 feet was this wall, this giant wall of riveted steel that rose over 100 and a few feet above us,” he said in an interview from Connecticut on Wednesday, the same day. than the WHOI released in 80 minutes of never before publicly seen underwater video of the expedition to the wreck.
“I never looked down on the Titanic. I looked towards the Titanic. Nothing was small,” she said.
The crew of Alvin, the three-person submersible he was in, was making its way to the surface when its batteries began to fill with water, and as he ascended, Ballard saw the portholes of the Titanic.
“It was like people were looking at us. It was actually quite disturbing,” she said.
No skeletal bones were left, but he did see shoes, including the footwear of what appeared to be a mother and baby, resembling tombstones marking the spot where some of the estimated 1,500 people who perished went to rest on the ocean floor.
“After the Titanic sank, those who went into the water without life jackets died of hypothermia and their bodies fell like rain,” he said.
The ocean liner sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City after hitting an iceberg in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912.
The WHOI team, in partnership with the French oceanographic exploration organization Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer, discovered the ship’s final resting place at a depth of 12,400 feet on September 1, 1985, using an underwater camera. towed.
The newly released footage was from a return expedition the following year.
There were previous efforts to find the wreck. But the 1985 discovery and the 1986 voyage were made possible by sophisticated underwater vehicles that could withstand harsh conditions, said WHOI engineer Andy Bowen, who helped develop them.
“The water is close to freezing temperatures and probably the biggest challenge is the remoteness of the location and in particular the harsh environment with regards to the pressure our equipment is exposed to,” he said.
Ballard said he ran the gamut of emotions during the 1985 mission.
He worried that the public would realize he was a naval intelligence officer who was on a top-secret Navy-funded Cold War mission to study the wreckage of two nuclear submarines that had also sunk in the North Atlantic. The search for the Titanic was an afterthought.
“I was not a Titanic fan,” he said. “I was very involved in my military program. So I didn’t expect to be affected by the discovery.”
The ship sank around 2:20 a.m. The 1985 discovery using the underwater camera occurred around 2 a.m.
Mr. Ballard recalled that one of the crew members looked at his watch and said, “It sinks in 20 minutes.”
“We actually stopped the operation and raised the vehicle to collect my thoughts and I said, ‘I’m going to go out and recover’ and everyone else followed suit,” he said. “We had a small memorial service for everyone who had died. But we were there, we were in this place.”
It was hallowed ground, like the Gettysburg battlefield, he said.
The video, much of it containing haunting and grainy interiors of the ship taken by the remotely operated underwater exploration vehicle Jason Jr., will be released in conjunction with the 25th anniversary release on February 10 of the remastered version of the award-winning film. Academy Award. “Titanic.”
“More than a century after the loss of the Titanic, the human stories embodied on the great ship continue to resonate,” James Cameron, the film’s director, said in a statement. “Like many, I was transfixed when Alvin and Jason Jr. ventured down and into the wreck. By posting this video, WHOI is helping to tell an important part of a story that spans generations and spans the globe.”
The Titanic story fascinates people to this day for many reasons, Ballard said. At the time, she was the world’s largest ocean liner and was supposed to be virtually unsinkable. Among her passengers were some of the richest and most famous in the world. And afterwards, the world heard remarkable stories of heroism and bravery from the crew and passengers.
He said: “I think everyone wonders in their own mind, ‘If I were there, what would I have done?’”
This story was reported by The Associated Press. AP writer Mark Pratt reported from Boston.