73 years after its sinking at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, a joint American-French expedition locates the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The sunk liner was about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface.
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Efforts to locate and recover the Titanic began almost immediately after its sinking. But the technical limitations – as well as the sheer vastness of the North Atlantic research area – made the task extremely difficult. American oceanographer and former naval officer Robert D. Ballard, who was based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, led his first research expedition in 1977, which failed.
In 1985, with French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, Ballard set out again to locate the wreck, this time with an unmanned experimental submersible called the Argo, developed by the US Navy. the Argo traveled just above the ocean floor, sending photographs to the research vessel Knorr. In the early morning of September 1, Argo was investigating the debris on the ocean floor when it suddenly passed over one of the Titanicmassive boilers, lying at a depth of about 13,000 feet.
The next day, the body of the ship was discovered nearby. It had split in two, but many of its features and interiors were remarkably well preserved. Hundreds of thousands of debris were scattered within a 2 square mile radius of the ship. The wreck was then explored by manned and unmanned submersibles, which shed new light on the details of its sinking in 1912.
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the Titanic is now regularly explored and several thousand artifacts have been recovered. Ballard – who was celebrated as a hero after the discovery – led several other high-level research expeditions, including the RMS Lusitania and the USS Yorktown.
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