"Into The Abyss" D Clarke 97

Titanic plunged to the bottom of the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m, the 15th of April 1912, taking 1,523 souls with her into the abyss. Her shattered hulk is their memorial now, more than two miles beneath the sea.

When the wreck was discovered in 1985 by a joint US-French effort led by Woodshole scientist Robert Ballard and FREMER's Jean-Louis Michel, facination with the ship and it's history reached a fever pitch. To the disappointment of many, the wreck lies in two major pieces, some 1900 feet apart, with a vast debris field covering the seabed between.

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DEBRIS FIELD

Between the two sections of the wreck is a large debris feild, which contains any contents that spilled out of the wreck as it broke up and dank. Dishes, hull fragments, thousands of peices of coal litter the ocean floor, a silent museum at the bottom of the sea. At first startling explorers who beleived they had found human remains, a porcelain dolls head peers from the sediment, possibly where it landed after falling from a child's frightened grip.

THE BRIDGE AREA

Standing alone on the ruined bridge area, the bronze telemotor shines as if new. The image at right shows it as it was in 1912, and as it looks now.

THE STAIRCASE

The incredible woodwork and beautiful carving of honor and glory crowning time is long vanished, victims of time and the upheaval of her sinking. But some evidence of what was can still be made out. This rendering is in progress and shows an ROV sheding light on the remains of a chair while the submersible rests in relative safety above.

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THE PROPELLERS

When Robert Ballard found the wreck, it seemed as if the propellers were buried under tons of bottom sediment, the result of the stern's heavy impact with the seabed. The boss arms that supported the wing propellers were specially reinforced, but they were not built to withstand the kind of force generated when the stern came to rest. The starboard wing propeller was bent upward on impact, and now protrudes through the rust covered bottom, where a submersible pilot brave enough to enter the no-man's land beneath the overhang of the rusting stern can shed light on it.

THE FUNNELS

The funnels were all shorn away in the sinking. In the Cameron movie, they were all dislodged before the ship went under, but if they were attached when the ship left the surface, they surely would have been shorn off by the wrecks rapid decent through the water. Fragments of the funnels have been identified at various points throughout the wreck site and debris field. There are some excellent photos of the wreck in Robert Ballards book, Discovery of the Titanic, which is listed in my book list.

WRECK INTERIOR

Several of the expeditions have sent remote vehicles into Titanic's interior, and on one of RMS Titanic Inc.'s expeditions, the video feed from the ROVs was broadcast live. For the most part, Titanic's interior is a jumbled mass, quietly rusting away in darkness, but now and then, recognizable objects emerge from the darkness. Some of the dome shaped light fixtures hang from their wires, like chandeliers. Where wood was painted, the ornate carvings can be discerned on posts. The wrought iron dome, and ornate clock that graced the first class staircase is long gone, perhaps lying in a jumble of debris at the bottom of the staircase opening. Possibly the flow of seawater into the wreck has swept figures of honour and glory aft into the wreck.

SHOES

One of the more moving images brought back from the seabed, pairs of shoes lie in silence in the sediment. At various places throughout the wreck site, shoes, laced and lying side by side, might mark the spot where victims found their final rest. Marine organisms and corrosive salt water have long since vanquished the mortal remains of the victims, but the chemicals used in the tanning process seem to have preserved the leather from decay.

Though this image is moving, is it correct? Anti salvors were quick to point this out as evidence that Titanic was indeed a gravesite. Others feel that a body is unlikely to fall straight down. From a scientific point of view, they are simply a pair of shoes, and it cannot be stated with certainty that they are the remains of a body. There were thousands of shoes on board, so it would be unlikely that you wouldn't find a pair at some point around the wreck. The pair in the picture seem to be too far apart to be laced together, and I find it unlikely that a pair of shoes that were not laced together would fall in this position after a fall from the surface, but who knows. When looking at pictures from this special place, emotion colors all perception. Whether they mark a passenger's final resting place or whether they tumbled out of a steamer trunk, the shoes bring the human side of the tragedy vividly to life.

BOILER

Another stirring image, a recreation of which appears below, is this tin cup, which gently came to rest atop one of Titanic's huge boilers. This rendering is a recreation I made from a photograph in Robert Ballard's Discovery of the Titanic.

DETERIORATION

One of the things that comes up repeatedly in discussions about the Titanic is it's rapid deterioration. Like all man made objects, the wreck will of course deteriorate over time. In spite of the lack of oxygen at that depth, iron eating bacteria continue to eat away at Titanic's structure and eventually the wreck will collapse on itself. The estimations for this vary from a few decades to another 75 years, but eventually, all that will remain of Titanic are memories.

SALVAGE

The debate over whether or not to salvage Titanic has raged almost since the discovery of the wreck. Since she settled on the bottom of the Atlantic, people have made plans to raise her, using everything from filling the hull with ping-pong balls to encasing her in ice. Since the technology was never there to carry through with these wild dreams, there was little in the way of debate over the ethics of salvage.

Although the wreck's condition is too poor to consider raising, the company RMS Titanic Incorporated has been raising items from the wrecksite for several years, and displaying them in a touring exhibit. Many critics charge the company with grave robbing, while others say they are preserving history and bringing the Titanic to the thousands of people who are intrigued by this facinating moment in time. You be the judge.