![]() The Titanic surfacing on a poster publicising the film Raise the Titanic. Salvage proposals in the 1960s and 1970s Again, the idea got no further than the drawing board. Once enough balloons had been attached, the ship would float gently to the surface. Another proposal involved raising the Titanic by means of attaching balloons to her hull using electromagnets. An estimated cost of US$1.5 million ($35.5 million today) and its impracticality meant that the idea was not put into practice. Having found its exact position, more electromagnets would be sent down from a fleet of barges which would winch the Titanic to the surface. Charles Smith, a Denver architect, proposed in March 1914 to attach electromagnets to a submarine which would be irresistibly drawn to the wreck's steel hull. However, all fell afoul of practical and technological difficulties, a lack of funding and, in many cases, a lack of understanding of the physical conditions at the wreck site. In later years, numerous proposals were put forward to salvage the Titanic. The high pressure and low temperature of the water would have prevented significant quantities of gas forming during decomposition, preventing the bodies of Titanic victims from rising back to the surface. ![]() Whale falls, a phenomenon not discovered until 1987-coincidentally, by the same submersible used for the first crewed expedition to the Titanic the year before -demonstrate that water-filled corpses, in this case cetaceans, can sink to the bottom essentially intact. The company considered dropping dynamite on the wreck to dislodge bodies which would float to the surface, but finally gave up after oceanographers suggested that the extreme pressure would have compressed the bodies into gelatinous lumps. The lack of submarine technology at the time as well as the outbreak of World War I also put off such a project. The project was soon abandoned as impractical as the divers could not even reach a significant fraction of the necessary depth, where the pressure is over 6,000 pounds per square inch (40 megapascals). The families of several wealthy victims of the disaster – the Guggenheims, Astors, and Wideners – formed a consortium and contracted the Merritt and Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to raise the Titanic. However, the wreck is too fragile to be raised and is now protected by a UNESCO convention.Ĭlass=notpageimage| Location of the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.Īlmost immediately after the Titanic sank on 15 April 1912, proposals were advanced to salvage it from its resting place in the North Atlantic Ocean, despite her exact location and condition being unknown. Many schemes have been proposed to raise the Titanic, including filling the wreck with ping-pong balls, injecting it with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to encase it in an iceberg that would float to the surface. Controversial salvage operations have recovered thousands of items, which have been conserved and put on public display. The wreck has been the focus of intense interest and has been visited by numerous expeditions. In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Numerous expeditions tried using sonar to map the sea bed in the hope of finding it, but were unsuccessful. The Titanic sank in 1912, when it collided with an iceberg during its maiden voyage. The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the sea bed, but have since been consumed by other organisms. A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank. In contrast, the stern is completely ruined. The bow is still recognisable with many preserved interiors, despite deterioration and damage sustained hitting the sea floor. It lies in two main pieces about 2,000 feet (600 m) apart. The wreck of the Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3,800 metres 2,100 fathoms), about 370 nautical miles (690 kilometres) south-southeast of the coast of Newfoundland.
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