How the Titanic Was Found

just before the Titanic sank to the bottom of the ocean the ship sent out a distress signal containing its exact location the coordinates sent out by the Titanic were extremely useful the nearby ship arms Carpathia quickly headed towards them and in fact all survivors of the Titanic were rescued by this ship and if it was easy to find the lifeboats it seems like it would be easy to find the wreck but this turned out to be wrong and locating the ship became a puzzle that would take Decades of technological advancements to solve and spurt a

race between several explorers all competing to be the first this is how the Titanic was found with the last known location of the Titanic already recorded the most immediate question after it sank wasn't focused on finding the wreckage but rather how to raise it from the ocean floor nearly 2 and 1/2 miles below to surface technology just wasn't there in 1912 for divers to reach even a fraction of such deaths and absurd ideas such as using Dynamite to dislodge the bodies from the wreck were quickly scrapped it would take more than 40 years in two

world wars that brought with them technological advancements such as submarines and sonar for the first serious expedition to head back out to the Titanic's last known location in 1953 risten Beasley the founder of a salvage company from England decided to try his hand at finding the impossible visible here are the coordinates from the distress call the Titanic mate before it sank sent out at 10:35 p.m. New York time but even with the coordinates in hand the search radius has to be quite a bit larger the distress call was made 2 hours before the entire ship

slipped beneath the water time in which the Titanic could have drifted and the currents could have pushed the ship even further while it was sinking the ocean is vast and trying to find one single a point on the ocean floor in complete darkness is nearly impossible wisdon Beasley began by dropping Dynamite over the reported location of the Titanic wreckage these explosives would create an echo that using Sonar could be plotted to create a bottom profile which Beasley hoped would reveal the ship basically a very imprecise early version of sonar mapping in fact too imprecise to

yield any results as Beasley found no luck 20 more years would pass after his attempt when Robert Ballard a marine geologist wanted to make history in 1977 the Woods Hole oceanographic institution had developed new survey equipment for mapping out the ocean floor Ballard was tasked with testing this new state-of-the-art tech but personally his motivation lied with using this equipment for finding the Titanic in the middle of the ship was a hole that would allow a long pipe to be extended into the water just above the ocean floor attached to the end of this pipe Ballard

rigged a pot that contains sonar and cameras with the hope that it would be able to detect the Titanic's wreckage once the ship passed above it the expedition began with some early tests when suddenly disaster struck the drill pipe broke sending thousands of feet of pipe and the pot containing the expensive equipment crashing to the ocean floor ending the search before it could even begin heartbroken and embarrassed Ballard had to return to the institution without the expensive equipment he was set out to test and without any hint on the Titanic more years would pass and

even during an age where the technology had finally Advanced enough it should theoretically be possible to find the Titanic having the resources to undertake such an expedition was another matter entirely every trip had the potential to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and not many were willing to part with so much money for what could be a fruitless sech that is until Jack Grim entered the scene Grim was an eccentric oil tycoon based out of Texas and he was no stranger to trying to find the impossible he had previously tried to find Noah's Ark and

he had also financed expeditions to find the loches monster Bigfoot and even an attempt to prove the hollow Earth theory by trying to find a large hole in the North Pole now Grim was determined to solve the mystery of the Titanic even though Grim had the money he lacked the other piece of the puzzle the technology and knowledge he knew he would need a capable team with the expertise to work the equipment that would be required to accomplish this he donated $300,000 to the geological Observatory of the Columbia University in New York in exchange for

the equipment and crew he needed for to search he would be joined by renowned scientist Dr William Ryan and Dr Fred SP an unlikely alliance between two renowned scientists and a conspiracy theory-driven oil tycoon perhaps exactly what's needed to find the ship it seemed everything was lined up for this expedition to be a success but Grimm believed one thing was still missing always a believer in spectacle Grim surprised the scientists by bringing a monkey named Titan on board grim whim claimed that this monkey was trained to point at a map and is able to figure

out where the Titanic should be located Dr Ryan and Dr spe were shocked not used to Scientific Pursuits being joined with what they considered a performance act the scientists threatened to leave the Expedition and told Grim directly that it is either them or the monkey and to their surprise Jack Grim actually chose the monkey in the end cooler heads prevailed and Grim was finally persuaded to leave Titan behind and the Expedition could finally begin the crew headed to the coordinates from the Titanic's distress call and they would lower a side looking sonar attached to a

cable into the ocean which would be towed along the ocean floor this type of sonar sends out acoustic pinks to each side this way there is a small area beneath the probe without any data but on the sides large areas of the ocean floor can quickly be mapped and unusual shapes and bumps are spotted once such a shape has been found an onboard magnetometer would be used to detect if that shape is metal essentially if it is man-made or just a natural feature of the seabed finally transponders were dropped in the ocean that would keep

track of the sonar itself so any areas of Interest could be precisely marked with coordinates but even after searching the entire area around the ship's coordinates the crew found nothing and increasingly the scientists started to doubt the accuracy of the initial coordinates even though the Titanic gave its last known location here the survivors that escaped in lifeboats were actually picked up around here much farther east than they should have been even accounting for ocean drift knowing this the scientists theorized that the coordinates the Titanic gave were actually wrong as the first officer did not account

for a time change as they were traveling and the only reason the Carpathia was still able to rescue people was because the actual recite was somewhere within the path towards the false coordinates this opens the search area quite significantly and they now believe the Titanic had a high probability of being somewhere in this 1,500 M rectangle with the old coordinates ruled out it was time to Once Again Begin searching the crew used a process commonly referred to as mowing the lawn Towing the sonar in overlapping lines each pass they would marked anything that stood out

from the sonar's readings but there was an issue the magnetom meter which was supposed to let them know if any of these abnormal shapes were metal was broken and to make matters worse bad weather rolled in threatening the entire Expedition itself determined to carry out the mission they still carried on and continued marking every abnormal area of Interest they came across and each time they found a new one Grim's excitement grew continuing until the last area was marked making 14 in total Grim was convinced that one of these areas had to be the Titanic but

he wouldn't get the chance to prove it time had run out the charter for the equipment in the ship they were using was about to expire and they needed to head home not ready to give up over the course of the next year the scientists and Grim prepared to set back out once again this time using a more advanced sonar than the one they had used previously one by one each area was looked at in more detail and one by one they were ruled out as natural features on the very final day ready to give

up they decided as a lasted effort to try to use digital film the camera would be fixed on a sled and dragged above the ocean floor after passing the route the camera was brought up to review the footage and while watching a new strange shape began to appear looking closer it started to look more and more like a propeller Grim was immediately convinced that they had done it they had found a piece of the Titanic unfortunately though the time had run out and before they could investigate further they were once again forced to head home

feeling that victory was just Within Reach Grim was ready to hat back out a third time in 1983 to investigate this propeller shape he searched and searched but found nothing there has since been much debate over what Grim found whether the shape was in fact a propeller or rather just a rock with even his own scientists disputing Grim over what the shape could be either way it would never be located again while Jack Grim was busy with his Expeditions Robert Ballard had watched from the sidelines disheartened by his own failed attempt earlier but not ready

to fully give up on like Grim Ballard did not have immense wealth at his disposal but what he had was his own unique Advantage ties with the US Navy Ballard had approached the US Navy with a proposal to design a new submers that could be used to locate the Titanic the Navy however wasn't so interested in the Titanic but they were interested in the submersible the US Navy made Ballard a deal they would fun his project but he would need to use the equipment to help them first on a completely different Mission Ballard agreed and

began to develop this new tool for deep sea exploration Argo Argo is a deep toad sled that is remotely navigated above the ocean floor attached to a research vessel by a long cable and piloted by a team on board the sled is outfitted with Sid scanning sonar as well as cameras that provide real real time Imaging of the ocean floor still in the late stages of the Cold War the US Navy wanted to investigate two nuclear submarines that had been lost the USS fresher and the USS scorpion however they didn't want the Russians to know

about this and so Ballard was deployed in 1984 under the guise of testing Argo in order to find the Titanic in reality he was to map out the wreckage side of both submarines in order to assess any radioactive [Music] threats using Argo Ballard studied the rec sites of the submarines and he began to pick up on something peculiar about both of them Ballard noticed that as the warship sank to increasing deaths their wreckages imploded creating a debris field around them the heavier pieces sank closer to the wreckage itself but the lighter pieces were carried away

from the wreckage leaving a sort of comet trail around it an idea began to form in Ballard's mind while searching for the Titanic everyone had attempted to find the ship itself a needle in a Hy stack but what if instead of trying to find the ship he would look for the debris field that was likely around the wreckage if he could find any parts of the debris he could follow the comet trail back to the ship a revelation that would change everything but before searching for the Titanic Ballard would still need to bite his time

and continue his mission for the US Navy he finally caught a lucky break in 1985 when he was sent out once again to map out the USS scorpion this time however he would be allowed to use any remaining time he had to take Argo on a search for the Titanic knowing the deadline would be tied Ballard reached out to the French oceanographic institution ifer and they devised a two-face strategy the first part of the search would be led by John Lou Michelle of ifer and the second part would be done by Robert Ballard the idea

was simple Michelle would first Scout the entire search area using sonar mapping just so that in the Second Step Ballard could focus his limited time to search only the most interesting spots they came up with these two search areas and while Robert Ballard was still carrying out his mission for the Navy Michelle would begin by using the same moing the lawn technique that Jack Grim had used scanning the ocean floor using a more advanced sonar these search lines were not always exactly straight ocean currents would often drift the boat away adding yet another challenge when

it was time for Balor to join and take over the search Michelle had not found anything and to add even more pressure to the growing sense of another potential failed Expedition only 12 days remained before Ballard would need to return whether he found anything or not in order to use his limited time as effective as possible Robert Ballard came up with a plan informed by what he has learned about the brief Fields he would not look for the ship itself but rather for its debris field he also knew that on the night the Titanic sank

there was an ocean current going south therefore lighter pieces in the debris field should have drifted towards the South he came up with an estimate of how big the debris field should be now he started searching but instead of carefully doing lines over the entire search area he would space out his Lines Just far enough apart that he should fear theoretically run into this debris field spacing these lines out allows him to cover a much larger area in a small amount of time he also decided to rely much more on the camera feedback rather than

on the sonar data cameras had been used in past Expeditions such as when Jack Grim believed he found a propeller from the Titanic but his camera was not capable of providing live video feed Argo instead could and Ballard would be almost exclusively relying on the video rather than sonar his team would take turns piloting Argo and watching the video feed Around the Clock days rolled by with nothing but the Landscapes of the ocean floor passing through the video feed and the crew was beginning to feel the mounting pressure of the approaching deadline the night watch

was especially difficult with the crew making sure to keep themselves awake as it felt like they watched the same natural features Roll by minute for minute but then suddenly the Rocks they were watching started to look less like rocks and more like man-made debris now they were glued to the screens the blurry images coming more into Focus definitely not [Music] rods not daring to look away for even a second a crew member quickly flashed pack down the ship's cook so that he could grab Ballard from his room within seconds Ballard joined the crew on their

monitors and after a few more tense moments an even larger shape began to fill the screen there was no mistaking as they had studied photos of the Titanic until they knew every detail by heart Argo had just passed over the Titanic spoiler after 73 years of searching they had finally found the Titanic its location was a mere 3,300 ft away from where Michelle had searched previously the ocean currents drifting him away from the wreck immediate celebrations kicked off disbelief and excitement making its way through everyone on board but it was not for long until the

reality of what they had found sank in and the celebration was replaced with a moment of silence with the crew honoring the more than 1,500 people who perished during this tragedy the boiler the team had found was not far off from even more debris and the team soon found the stern section of the ship when it sank the ship violently broke into two parts and about 800 y from the stern they then also discovered the bow with the now iconic railing still intact and now that the ship was found it did not take long until

people wanted to recover it a dream that had long been imagined and even inspired a Hollywood film years prior and smaller artifacts were soon brought up but one man had larger Ambitions not far off from where the original boiler was discovered there is a large section of the ship's Hall that could be recovered on August 27 1996 everything was prepared free Expedition ships were circling the site and right next to them are two large cruise ships the recovery mission was to be a media spectacle with thousands of guests including Titanic survivors and even celebrities on

board using a submersible special bags were attached to the piece and soon it starts to rise from the ocean floor with cheers all throughout the cruise ships but then things start going wrong good evening everyone I'm Brad Edwards here in the forecast center of the weather channel of course special coverage continues with hurricane eduard which is posing a threat to the Eastern Coastline the full story of the raising of the Titanic is fascinating and it is one of many twists and turns which is why I have produced a fulllength video about this Mission explaining exactly

how the piece was supposed to be raised what went wrong and what this story tells us about whether we should recover artifacts in the first place this video was part of my ongoing series under exposure in which I create my most ambitious larger budget documentaries I've also made a video about the tenor disaster the worst aviation accident that ever happened as well as a video about the US military raate on the bin Laden compound these are the videos that I am most proud of making they are documentaries that are not made for the YouTube algorithm

but unrushed cinematic storytelling this series is exclusive to nebula a streaming site that I'm building together with other creators where we can create these higher budget Originals so go to [Music]