TITANIC FOUND 1985 SEPTEMBER 1

TITANIC FOUND 1985 SEPTEMBER 1

டைட்டானிக் கண்டுபிடிப்பு september 1 ,1985

A team of American and French researchers was reported yesterday september 1 ,1985 to have found the hulk of the luxury liner Titanic south of Newfoundland.

After combing the site with new undersea robots, the team was able to verify the ship's identity with cameras and sonar early Sunday morning, according to American and French officials. A French announcement said the wreck was found at a depth of more than 12,000 feet.

The discovery came more than 73 years after the luxury liner, said to be unsinkable, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and went down, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 lives. The ship was the biggest and most luxurious liner of her day.

Dr. Robert D. Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the leader of the joint expedition, said in a ship-to-shore interview that pieces of the ship were found early Sunday.

''To finally put those souls to rest was a very nice feeling,'' Dr. Ballard told the Canadian television network CTV.

The Titanic's wreckage had eluded at least three teams who set out to find it. Researchers have come back with only dim, tantalizing hints.

One account put the wreck at 370 miles south of Newfoundland, but there were conflicting figures.

The American-French team was working in the general area where the Titanic was believed to have gone down, generally put at 41 degrees 46 minutes north latitude, 50 degrees 14 minutes west longitude.

In an announcement, the Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, a French Government organization, said the wreck was positively identified by a French-made submarine sonar system and American-made underwater cameras.

The American part of the expedition, financed by the National Geographic Society, is based aboard the oceanographic survey ship Knorr, built for the Navy. The ship, 244 feet in length, tows Woods Hole's robot submarine Argo, equipped with video and still cameras.

''We went smack dab over a gorgeous boiler,'' Dr. Ballard said.

''We came on it early this morning,'' he said. ''It was just bang, there it was on top of it. Our initial reaction was excitement, then a coming down off that to realize we had found the ship where 1,500 people had died.''

For ''a lot of us who had researched it for so many years, the Titanic has taken on more than a shipwreck,'' Dr. Ballard said, adding that it seemed somehow to have a far larger dimension - ''a true disaster.''

She Stops Taking Calls

After the announcement was made in France, the Knorr was beseiged by ship-to-shore callers, and the ship ceased taking calls. Shelly Lauzon, a spokesman at Woods Hole, Mass., said the institution's own people had not reached their team. ''It's my understanding,'' she said, ''that it was the Argo that made the discovery.''

The French said that the French and American organizations in charge had agreed beforehand to make no public statement on the success of their search ''unless they were absolutely certain of the facts.''

The Titanic sank on her way from Southampton, England, to New York after striking an iceberg April 14, 1912. She took more than 1,500 of her approximately 2,200 passengers and crew to their death.

Great Wealth Was Aboard

She was believed to be ''unsinkable'' because of her double bottom and reinforced bulkheads.

In 1980 an American expediation surveyed the North Atlantic with sonar and announced that it might have traced the Titanic's hulk. But the expedition's leaders were later unable to confirm this.

The French announcement yesterday said that a French research ship, the Suroit, began work in the area on June 28 and was joined on Aug. 5 by the Knorr. It added that the responsibilities of the two teams had been set forth in an agreement signed in June just days before the French ship set out.

''Those on board the Suroit were almost sure they had pinned down the Titantic,'' the announcement said. ''But we had to be certain, and the agreement prevented making any statement. The cameras of the American Argo system came in the past few days and confirmed the discovery.''

Secret Negotiations Reported

The French announcement did not give the site of the wreck, apparently to maintain secrecy.

The American and French research teams are said to have reached their agreement only after long, secret negotiations.

Their final agreement, code-named White Star after the White Star line, the British company that owned the Titanic, specifies the rights to anything recovered from the wreck under both French and American law, according to the French announcement.

A news conference will be held Sept. 13 in Paris and Washington at which the discoverers will describe their findings, according to the French announcement.

Ten millionaires were aboard the Titanic,and the safe storage room was filled with valuables, including diamonds valued at $7 million in 1912.

The Titanic was carrying some of the richest of the world's rich, including John Jacob Astor and his wife, who bore his child after Astor went down with the ship. They were aboard in a suite that cost $4,000 for the one-way voyage.

Isidor Straus of Macy's was lost, as was Mrs. Straus, who refused to leave her husband of many years to enter a lifeboat.

The researchers worked at finding the wreck with advanced robots that use remote-controlled television, photography and sonar-mapping systems that can survive crushing pressure and pierce the darkness miles under the ocean surface.

It Was a Test for the Argo

Finding the Titanic was only a secondary goal of the American expedition, according to researchers at Woods Hole. Its main mission was to perform the first field tests of the new robot Argo, from a new generation of unmanned deep sea submarines and ''swimming eyeballs'' that are expected to extend vastly knowledge of the ocean floor.

Unlike submersibles that can take one or two scientists to a tiny spot of ocean floor for a few hours at most, the new robots can dive deeper, roam across miles of territory and stay underwater for weeks at a time while scientists monitor data from a remote spot.

In contrast with the television cameras of the Argo, the Suroit swept the ocean bottom with a side-scanning sonar to try to pick the location of the Titanic. The Suroit also carries a bottom camera.

Memories of Survivor SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Sept. 2 (UPI)

Ruth Becker Blanchard, who was 12 years old when she escaped from the Titanic on a lifeboat, said today she retained a vivid memory of that night.

''On a ship there's always a rumbling of engines,'' she said in an interview. ''They stopped. Everything was silent and it woke us up.

''That worried my mother and she went out and asked a stewardess. She said there was just a little accident and we would go on in a few minutes.

''Well, it got noisier with people rushing around, and she went out again in the hall and met a cabin steward who said, 'We struck an iceberg. Put on your life belts and come up immediately.' ''

Ruth Blanchard ended up in one lifeboat and the rest of her family -her mother, her 2-year-old brother and 4-year-old sister - in another.

''I was just excited,'' Mrs. Blanchard said. ''I wasn't nervous at all. I didn't think for a minute we would not be saved.

''When we got down to the ocean we could see a great big gash in the Titanic, and the water was running in there,'' she continued. ''We rowed away as fast as we could. All four decks were covered with people all looking from rails with nothing to get into.

''Ice water was rushing into the boat, and it exploded when it got into the boilers. That was a terrible time. That's when they started screaming and jumping off the decks into the water. It was terrible to see that.

''It seemed to us, in our boat, that the ship broke in two,'' she said.

''Then the stern seemed to stand up for about a minute or so, and then it went down very quietly.''

டைட்டானிக் சிதைவுகள் கண்டுபிடிப்பு 
நடு நிசி இரவு / அதிகாலை சுமார் 2.00 மணி 1985 செப்டம்பர் 1
முதலில் தென் பட்டது நிலக்கரிகளின் குவியல் -பின்னர் பாய்லர்

சந்தோசம் மற்றும் கைதட்டல்களுக்கு இடையே ....

In the 1980s Dr. Robert Ballard was determined to discover the Titanic. On several occasions he tried to rally an expedition to find the most famous shipwreck of all time. To him undersea exploration was easy but the Titanic, deep on the Atlantic sea bed would push boundaries further than any deep sea diver had previously gone

Equipment had to be specially designed to withstand the water pressures of the depths they needed to explore. The Titanic would lay at a depth over 13,000 feet.

In 1973, the submersible Alvin went through design changes. Inparticular, her steel hull was replaced with titanium alloy which could better withstand the depths involved.

Eventually funding was granted from Woods Hole and equipment was borrowed from various sources that included a side scan sonar, a deep-towed magnetometer, an LIBEC imaging system and of course underwater cameras.

The Titanic's distress signal placed the Titanic at 41°46'N, 50° 14' west. Part of the British Enquiry was to ascertain if this was exact. It concluded that the position given was slightly inaccurate as the Carpathia, who raced to the Titanic's rescue, reached the lifeboats before they should have done if the position was accurate.

Ballard's search strategy was simply: they would scan the ocean floor within a best search triangle until they found the ship.

Earlier in 1981 Jack Grimm led a team to find the ship, positive that they were searching the exact spot the ship foundered - they had not. Revised calculations suggested that the Titanic was eight miles further north than previously thought. They allowed for the speed of the lifeboats and the probable drift Titanic would have had on her way both after she had stopped and then down to the bottom of the ocean.

After reworking these calculations, a second 1981 expedition failed again. The Deep-tow passed within a mile and a half of the wreck but the sonar scanners were out of range. After three weeks of searching Grimm was convinced he had found one of Titanic's propellers. He began to tell the world that Titanic had been found.

Two years later Grimm wanted to search the area again but the expedition failed. Ballard who had followed the expeditions with great interest realised that Grimm had not spent enough time looking for the ship. It was now Ballard's turn.

Ballard had a realisation which led him to develop the Argo/Jason concept. When assembled they were a remote controlled deep towed deep sea video vessel combined with a swimming robot on a cable leash. The name of the project was derived form Greek mythology (Jason and the Argonauts).

Argo would be an unmanned submarine loaded with video cameras towed above the ocean bottom at the end of fibre-optical wires. The built in sonar could scan accurately the ocean floor for small debris.

In 1984 the US Navy agreed to fund a three week test for the following summer and Argo was built.

Aboard the Knorr, Ballard sailed to where he believed the Titanic sank. He hoped that his French colleagues had not beaten him to the wreck. However, by the end three weeks he had not found the ship and on August 6 1985 headed home.

When a ship it sinks it leaves a path of debris (objects from within the ship or objects breaking off). Depending how deep the vessel sinks this debris can be scattered over a large distance. On a shorter descent, the debris falls more or less vertically. However, as the Titanic sank 21/2 miles a huge debris field was expected.

A new search strategy was formed. This time they would first look for the debris field rather than the Titanic herself.

The logbook of the Californian enabled Ballard and his crew to estimate the speed and direction of drift of the lifeboats. The Californian was between five to ten miles away from the Titanic at the time of the disaster and reported in its log that they had experienced drift. Also Ballard knew that the Titanic had to be north of where the lifeboats were found.

On August 24 1985 Ballard returned to the vacinity of the Titanic. He had 12 days to locate the wreck. Argo was launched the next day but encountered technical problems. After another six days, the crew was fed up with the monotiny of observing sand, mud and the bottomless ocean.

But on the 1st September 1985 a strange appeared on the Video monitors. A BOILER!!!

The RMS Titanic had to be near.

New hopes were realised. Argo was launched to scan the search area for the Titanic. Eventually at an altitude of 160 feet above the bed, Argo passed over the main hull of the ship. They could see that the funnel had gone (the one which Lightoller recalled saved his life when it tore out of its fixtures moments before the ship went down).

Their first look at the Titanic lasted six minutes: she was upright and a large section of her hull was in tact. She laid 13,000 feet below the surface.

Following much the cheering and clapping, reverential silence overcame the crew of the Knorr. It was almost 2 a.m. and very close to the time when the Titanic actually sank. Argo was used to photograph the wreck during the many passages made over her.

Soon news that the Titanic had been found had reached the corners of the world. Once more the RMS Titanic was in the minds of millions of people.