Titanic (29 page)

(Preceding image)
Dr. Robert Ballard led the team that discovered the wreck of the
Titanic
.

“Finding
Titanic
completely changed my life.”

— Dr. Robert Ballard

On September 1, 1985, at 1:05 a.m., a geologist and marine scientist named Dr. Robert Ballard, who had been interested in locating the
Titanic
for many years, first sighted the wreckage of the ship after a search of fifty-six days.

He and his team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were using a camera system called Argo. Argo is a device that can be towed from a remotely operated underwater vehicle; Argo enables researchers to use real-time video cameras to see underwater images.

The video cameras showed “images of twisted railing and crumpled steel.” Suddenly the reality of what they were seeing struck everyone watching.

“Then it hit us, and the room fell silent. Here lay the remains of one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century. We went outside to quietly honor the ship. Then we went back to work,” said Ballard.

(Preceding image)
The bow of the wrecked
Titanic
.

The researchers spent four days working around the clock to take photographs of the wreckage. They made important discoveries. On their last day, notes Ballard, the team was able to identify “the stern section, lying in a heap and turned in the opposite direction of the bow, which lay nearly 2,000 feet away.”

Almost a year later, in July 1986, Ballard and his team returned to the site with the manned submersible
Alvin
. It took two and a half hours to descend the 12,500 feet to the bottom of the ocean. On July 13, 1986, Robert Ballard, Ralph Hollis, and Dudley Foster became the first human beings to set eyes on the
Titanic
since the early morning hours of April 15, 1912. In all, the team made eleven exploratory dives that year. Dr. Ballard saw china cups, huge chunks of twisted metal, and the head of a child’s doll.

“Before leaving the wreck we placed two plaques on her remains,” wrote Ballard. “One on the stern, honoring those who had died, and one on the bow, asking that the ship be left in peace.”

Since then, the United States Congress passed the R.M.S. Titanic Maritime Memorial Act of 1986, calling for guidelines for the recovery of artifacts. A company called RMS Titanic, Inc. was granted salvage rights. According to their website, the company has conducted seven research and recovery expeditions since 1987, and recovered over fifty-five hundred objects from the site. Photographers and filmmakers, including James Cameron, who made the 1997 film
Titanic
, have also visited the wreck in recent years. The results have been used for films as well as technical research and analysis of damage to the ship.

It seems that the story of the
Titanic
, the most magnificent ship in the world, truly will go on.

able seaman:
An experienced deckhand capable of performing routine duties on board a ship.

aft:
Near, toward, or in the stern of a ship.

boiler:
A furnace in which coal was burned to boil water and create the steam that powered the
Titanic
’s engines.

bow:
The forward (or front) part of a ship.

bridge:
A raised platform or structure where the Wheelhouse is mounted; the ship is navigated from here.

bulkhead:
An upright partition or wall dividing a ship into compartments that help protect it by adding structural rigidity and preventing the spread of leaks, water, or fire.

collapsible:
A boat made with canvas sides that can be raised and lowered so the boat can be stored flat. The collapsible boats on the
Titanic
were made by the Engelhardt company and were sometimes called “Engelhardt collapsibles.”

crow’s nest:
A lookout platform mounted high on a ship’s mast.

davit:
A cranelike device, usually mounted in pairs, that can be swung over the side of a ship to lower a lifeboat or to load cargo.

forepeak:
The narrow part of a vessel’s bow, or the hold within it.

forward:
At, near, or toward the bow of a ship.

glory hole:
The traditional name for the stewards’ and stokers’ quarters on board a ship.

growler:
A small iceberg. “A growler is really the worst form of ice. It is a larger berg melted down, or I might say a solid body of ice which is lower down to the water and more difficult to see than field ice, pack ice, floe ice, or icebergs.” — Charles Herbert Lightoller, British Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry, Day 11, 13560.

hold:
A storage space usually located at the bottom of a ship.

keel:
The main structural element of a ship, which runs lengthwise along the center of its bottom from bow to stern and to which the frames or ribs are attached.

knot:
A unit of speed equivalent to one nautical mile per hour or approximately 1.150 overland miles (6,076 feet) per hour.

port:
The left side of a ship when one is on board and facing the bow.

RMS:
Royal Mail Ship (or Steamer).

starboard:
The right side of a ship when one is on board and facing the bow.

stern:
The rear part of a ship.

stokers:
Stokers and firemen both shoveled coal to feed a ship’s boilers, but the position of a stoker was considered more important than that of a fireman.

tender:
A boat used for transportation between a ship and the shore.

tonnage:
A measure of the size or cargo-carrying capacity of a ship.

For more nautical definitions visit the Nautical Dictionary at Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea: www .mysticseaport.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.viewPage&page_id=5E023867-65B8-D398-7B2E90D4A0DC4941 or The Dictionary of English Nautical Language at www.seatalk.info.

Rhoda Abbott

Often known as “Rosa,” Rhoda Abbott was the only woman plucked from the water by a lifeboat (Collapsible A). A divorced mother of two sons, the thirty-nine-year-old Rhoda supported her boys by sewing. Originally from England, she had lived in both Great Britain and Providence, Rhode Island. She refused to get into a lifeboat because her children, Rossmore and Eugene, would not be allowed in. Her sons were separated from her when the ship went down and perished. Only Rossmore’s body was recovered. Rhoda spent more than two weeks hospitalized after arriving in America. She never recovered from the loss of her children and died in London, lonely and poor, on February 18, 1946.

Olaus Jorgensen Abelseth

Twenty-five years old at the time of the disaster, third class passenger Olaus (“Ole”) hailed from Norway. As a teenager, he immigrated to America with his brother and worked as a farmhand. In 1908 he was homesteading on a farm in South Dakota. Ole spent the winter of 1912 visiting family in Norway and was returning to the United States on the
Titanic
along with several relatives and friends. Ole survived by swimming to Collapsible A. The two girls in his party were rescued, but Ole was the only male to survive. He married Anna Grinde in 1915, worked his farm for thirty years, and had four children. He died December 4, 1980, at the age of ninety-four.

John Jacob Astor IV

One of the richest men in America, John Jacob Astor IV was forty-seven at the time of the disaster. He was returning to the United States with his eighteen-year-old second wife, the former Madeleine Force, and their Airedale, Kitty. Colonel Astor, who had served in the Spanish-American War, was the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor, the fur trader who built one of America’s greatest fortunes and for whom the city of Astoria, Oregon, is named. Madeleine escaped in Lifeboat 4, but Astor died in the sinking. Four months later, on August 14, 1912, Madeleine gave birth to a son and named him after his father.

Lawrence Beesley

Born in England in 1877, second class passenger and science teacher Lawrence Beesley sailed on the
Titanic
to visit his brother in Canada. A widower with a young son, Alec, Beesley was rescued in Lifeboat 13. He wrote a book about his experiences entitled
The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons
. His son, Alec, later married Dodie Smith, who wrote many books including
The Hundred and One Dalmations
. Lawrence remarried in 1919 and had three more children. There is a well-known story that on the movie set of
A Night to
Remember
(1958), Beesley attempted to enter the action and “go down with the ship” but was stopped by the director.