A destructive combination of natural forces and human intrusions is threatening the wreck of the Titanic. Can the famous ship still be preserved?
Return to Titanic , Return to Titanic , The Titanic's discovery brought mixed emotions.
Return to Titanic,This period photography shows Captain Edward J. Smith, commander of the ill-fated Titanic.
Return to Titanic,In the control van, Institute for Exploration ROV pilots Mark DeRoche (left) and Dave Lovalvo go through their pre-dive check-ups.
Return to Titanic,In the control van on the deck of NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown Dr. Robert Ballard (foreground) and NOAA Capt. Craig McLean view the Titanic shipwreck.
Return to Titanic,Hercules, one of the Titanic expedition's ROVs.
Return to Titanic,Drawn on a 1987 mosaic (originally published in National Geographic Magazine) of the bow section of the Titanic are many small boxes.
Return to Titanic,NOAA bosun Bruce Cowden leaning on the ROV Argus next to his carved "good luck" Tiki dolls strapped to the ROV frame.
Return to Titanic,Commemorative plaque left by Robert D. Ballard and the Explorers Club divers in 1986 on the sunken deck of Titanic.
Return to Titanic,The shoes of a Titanic victim are photographed in a debris field near the stern of the ship June 6, 2004 by the ROV Hercules.
Return to Titanic,Photo from Dr. Ballard's expedition to the Titanic in 1986 u2014 rust forms on the bow of the ship.
Return to Titanic,In the control van, Institute for Exploration ROV pilots Dave Wright (left) and Dave Lovalvo go through their pre-dive check-ups.
Return to Titanic,The rusted prow of the Titanic that sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg.
Return to Titanic,Two port side bits and a falling railing, near the bow of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,NOAA bosun Bruce Cowden holds one of his carved "good luck" Tiki dolls strapped to the ROV frame.
Return to Titanic,The bow of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,NOAA research ship Ronald H. Brown.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard (in yellow jacket) stands on the deck of of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown during the afternoon launching of the ROV Hercules.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard (in yellow jacket) has reached the site of the Titanic shipwreck and will begin photographing and mapping the site by nightfall.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard completes a handmade puzzle of the Titanic created by Mark Cappitella and presented to Dr. Ballard before departing.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard (in yellow jacket) stands on the deck of of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown on June 1, 2004, during the afternoon launching of the ROV Hercules.
Return to Titanic,A haunting memento, the watch was recovered from the floating body of a victim on April 23, 1912, a week after the Titanic sank and indicates that the hour hand stood just short of two o'clock when the watch stopped.
Return to Titanic,IFE engineer Dave Wright puts the finishing touches on the repaired tether cable between the ROV Hercules and Argus just before the ROVs began their four-hour descent to the Titanic wreckage.
Return to Titanic,Institute for Exploration engineer Todd Gregory makes final adjustments on the remotely operated vehicle Hercules which is sailing toward the wreck site of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,Microbiologist Dr.Roy Cullimore holds a rusticle experiment station on June 2, 2004, brought up from the wreck of the Titanic in the ROV Hercules "bio box."
Return to Titanic,Now lacking the wooden ship's wheel, the bronze telemotor on the bridge once operated the steering gear of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,NOAA Ens. Silas Ayers takes down the ship's flag to raise a new flag to half-mast in honor of the late president Ronald Reagan.
Return to Titanic,IFE engineer Dave Lavalvo removes a rusticle experiment station on June 2, 2004 from the ROV Hercules "bio box," and hands it to microbiologist Dr. Roy Cullimore.
Return to Titanic,The port side forward expansion joint on the boat deck (in the vicinity of the officer's lavatory) of the bow section of the shipwreck Titanic.
Return to Titanic,IFE engineers control the movements of the Argus and Hercules ROVs as they maneuver through the wreckage of the Titanic on May 31, 2004.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard discusses expedition strategy with the IFE and NOAA crews in the sonar lab onboard NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown May 27, 2004.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard applies the finishing touches to the recently repaired tether connecting ROV Hercules to the towed camera sled Argus.
Return to Titanic,First class cabins in the Titanic appear undamaged even after eight decades underwater.
Return to Titanic,IFE engineer Brennan Phillips (foreground) stands along the railing of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard stands on the deck of the Ronald H. Brown on May 30, 2004, just prior to launching his two ROVs Hercules and Argus.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard joins his crew of engineers as they repair the damaged tether on the ROV Hercules.
Return to Titanic,IFE's Mark DeRoche on the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown relaunches the Hercules ROV late May 31, 2004.
Return to Titanic,IFE's Mark DeRoche (center) and Brennan Phillips (kneeling) on the Ronald H. Brown loosen the tie-down straps to relaunch the ROV Argus.
Return to Titanic,IFE engineer Mark DeRoche (right) and Dr. Robert Ballard with the ROV Hercules that was brought to the surface for repairs.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard stands over plot maps of the Titanic shipreck and discusses expedition strategy with the IFE and NOAA crews in the sonar lab.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard stands on the deck of of the Ronald H. Brown on May 31, 2004, looking at a threatening sky just prior to launching of the ROV Hercules.
Return to Titanic,The collapsed promenade deck (window at left) with the boat deck above, rests on the port side, forward section of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,Bow railing of the Titanic illuminated by the Mir 1 submersible behind the forward anchor crane and the slant of the rusticles show the direction of the current.
Return to Titanic,Dr. Robert Ballard watches the submerged ROVs maneuver around the Titanic shipwreck, on screens in the control van on the deck of the Ronald H. Brown.
Return to Titanic,Exploring the Titanic's hulk, a robot camera-equipped submersible called Jason Jr. peers into a first-class cabin.
Return to Titanic,A door handle resting on the seafloor near the stern of the Titanic.
Return to Titanic,Captain Edward J. Smith's cabin window in the Titanic hangs open with the lights of the Russian research submersible Mir 2 glow beyond.
Return to Titanic,Capt. Craig McLean, Director of NOAA-Ocean Exploration stands in front of remotely operated vehicle Little Herc and discusses NOAA's participation in the Titanic revisit led by Dr. Robert Ballard.
Return to Titanic,The enclosed promenade beneath the boat deck of the port side bow section of the Titanic and the rusticles hang from openings that used to hold windows (left).
Return to Titanic,In the control van on the deck of NOAA research vessel Dr. Robert Ballard (background) and NOAA Capt. Craig McLean view the deck of the Titanic shipwreck's bow section.
Return to Titanic,A smiling Dr. Robert Ballard puts the finishing touches on the repaired tether cable between the ROV Hercules and Argus.
Piece together what the Titanic looked like when it was first discovered by Dr. Robert Ballard in 1985.
Dive to the Wreck »
Dr. Robert Ballard stands on the deck of the Ronald H. Brown on May 30, 2004, just prior to launching his two ROVs Hercules and Argus. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic Society
Though she lies silent at the bottom of the North Atlantic, the Titanic still beckons explorers to probe her secrets.
On Monday, June 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT, answer the Titanic's call when you join the National Geographic Channel and scientist Dr. Robert Ballard on a live expedition 2 1/2 miles beneath the ocean's surface. Visit Titanic's suites, her cabins and the dining room where passengers danced till early in the morning.
Explore her final resting place. And investigate just what is causing her to slowly vanish.
It's been nearly 20 years since Dr. Ballard last visited the majestic ship—and now, his voyage is urgent. After 92 years underwater and countless intrusive visitors since her discovery, the Titanic has now dramatically deteriorated. The goal of this "Return to Titanic" is to identify ways to protect her from further decay, and preserve her for the generations to come.
Read daily dispatches from the expedition as Dr. Ballard and his crew close in on the Titanic's underwater site. Study the Titanic using amazing, high-tech, state-of-the-art submersible robots; these robots will enable you to go up close and examine her condition. Watch unbelievable footage beamed from sophisticated satellite telecommunication systems. And finally, tune into the National Geographic Channel to gain live, unprecedented access to this legendary symbol of a more innocent time.
As Dr. Ballard said, "I am returning to the site to show the world a better future for Titanic than the one she has suffered. I want to talk to the next generation about the possibilities the future holds for them and for Titanic. I want to prove that their priorities should not be the plundering of the pyramids of the deep, but instead its long-term care and appreciation."
Learn how the dream of returning to the Titanic became a reality. Through the funding and guidance of celebrated partners including the National Geographic Society, Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration (MA/IFE), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Partisan Pictures, the JASON Foundation for Education, and the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Robert Ballard will now be going back to the Titanic for the first time in 18 years. A professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, and Director of its Institute for Archaeological Oceanography, Dr. Ballard and scientists from NOAA, MA/IFE, and other institutions will spend 11 days at the site, mapping the ship and conducting scientific analyses of its deterioration.
NOAA will offer an in-depth look at the expedition vessel Ronald H. Brown. The JASON Foundation for Education will send visitors on an interactive field trip—featuring behind-the-scenes access to the expedition—and introduce new math curricula for grades 6 - 8 based on concepts used by the scientists and researchers. The Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration in Mystic, CT will be presenting a new exhibit—"Return to Titanic"—featuring the world's finest scale-model reproduction of the R.M.S. Titanic. In addition, the Immersion Project will bring the "Titanic Live" expedition to children all over the country, allowing them to follow the mission in real time.
Visit www.returntotitanic.com to learn more about the people who made it possible.
Photo from Dr. Ballard's expedition to the Titanic in 1986?rust forms on the bow of the ship. Photograph by Dr. Robert D. Ballard and Martin Bowen © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
"May God bless these found souls." ? Dr. Robert D. Ballard, 1985
BOSTON ? A thousand miles due east, and 2 1/2 miles straight down.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research ship Ronald H. Brown sailed out of Boston today, embarking on a journey into the future of deep-sea exploration, while exploring the history of the world's greatest maritime tragedy.Its destination: approximately 41 degrees, 43 minutes north of the equator, and 49 degrees, 56 minutes west of the prime meridian. Its object of study: more than 12,000 feet (3,658 m) below the ocean's surface.
There, far out in the North Atlantic, lies the wreckage of R.M.S. Titanic. During her maiden voyage on the night of April 14-15, 1912, the palatial passenger ship struck an iceberg and sank. Over 1,500 lives were lost.
In 1985, renowned scientist Dr. Robert D. Ballard led a joint French/American expedition that discovered and photographed the derelict ship on the ocean floor. One year after that, he returned to explore the wreckage in more detail in the submersible Alvin.
Now, Dr. Ballard returns to the Titanic for the first time in 18 years, once again leading a voyage of discovery.
Except this time, the mission is urgent.
NOAA researchers, scientists, and other Titanic visitors have reported that the ship is deteriorating at a shocking rate. Holes have widened in her decks and walls; the bridge railing has disappeared; the entire roof above the Reading and Writing Room has collapsed. A gangway door that Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller opened as the ship sank is gone, as is the gymnasium roof. And the crow's nest from which lookout Frederick Fleet shouted "Iceberg, right ahead!" just seconds before the fatal collision has similarly vanished.
Dr. Ballard is convinced the decay has been caused by people repeatedly visiting the site and its surrounding wreckage; visitors include adventurers, tour companies, filmmakers, and salvors who have removed over 6,000 artifacts. In addition, countless marine organisms feast on the ship's iron and wood.
Dr. Ballard intends to document the ship's deterioration during an 11-day expedition. Comparing the photographs from the 1985 and 1986 voyages with those gathered during this latest trip will let scientists assess the rate of decay, while providing new data to help them determine how best to preserve Titanic.
Dr. Ballard envisions turning her into a protected historic site.
"Despite all that has been done to Titanic since her discovery, she is still there," Dr. Ballard said. "Yes, they have removed many of the jewels from the old lady while she rested in her grave, but she is still there. And if we do the right thing, she and her memory will remain."
Viewers at home can follow the scientific team's progress. The National Geographic Channel will broadcast images from Titanic during an hour-long special airing Monday, June 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The program, "Return to Titanic," will begin with an update on the expedition's progress before taking viewers to the wreckage. ABC correspondent Jay Schadler will be the onboard host.
The expedition's partners include the National Geographic Society, NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration, Ballard's Mystic Aquarium Institute for Exploration, the JASON Foundation for Education and the University of Rhode Island's Institute for Archaeological Oceanography.
(Note: nationalgeographic.com does not research or edit dispatches.)
Little Herculesone of the expedition's remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Photograph courtesy of Immersion
"When you dive, you begin to feel like an angel." ? Jacques Cousteau
ABOARD THE RONALD H. BROWN Dr. Robert D. Ballard, returning to the Titanic after 18 years, is thrilled about visiting the wreckage without having to leave his research ship. That's because in the last two decades, Dr. Ballard and his team of engineers have developed technology for what he calls "telepresence," the feeling among distant viewers that they are physically moving across the ocean floor.In cooperation with the Jason Foundation for Education, live, Internet2 video feeds have already been streamed from the bottom of the Black Sea, Lake Huron and other sites to students and scientists many miles away. Such instant communication allows distant experts to participate in ocean exploration. And for students, it's a thrilling educational experience.
But now, Dr. Ballard's telepresence faces its biggest test: A nationally televised show. The National Geographic Channel's Return to Titanic will share live images from the Titanic on Monday, June 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Dr. Ballard is excited to learn whether the cutting-edge electronics aboard the Ronald H. Brown and the exploration vehicles beneath it can touch the hearts of viewers. "Will they really believe they are there? Will the Titanic speak to them like those who actually dive to the site? Does it speak to me now, 12,000 feet [3,658 meters] above her?"
Providing live, high-definition images from the ocean floor will require an impressive chain of high-tech wonders. Gliding above the seabed will be three unmanned vehicles equipped with lights, sonar and high-definition cameras.
The first, a tow sled called Argus, takes its name from a mythological creature with 100 eyes. It flies at the end of a 2.5-mile tether connected to the surface ship. A pilot aboard the Ronald H. Brown fine-tunes Argus's movements by sending commands down its cable to operate propeller-driven thrusters.
When Argus finds something worth scrutinizing, the pilot then dispatches Little Hercules from the sled. This neutrally buoyant, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) easily moves in three-dimensional space. It remains connected to Argus by a slack tether, which relays Little Herc's video signals.
Little Herc's brother, Hercules ? also known as Big Herc ? is a much larger ROV. Initially designed for archaeological research, Big Herc gathers video images and can retrieve biological samples.
The data from these vehicles is relayed via fiber optics up to the Ronald H. Brown. There, Dr. Ballard and his team monitor the signals from the comfort of their control van. The same images are sent by uplink to a communications satellite and on to distant viewers.
In addition to the National Geographic Channel's televised event, hours of real-time images will be sent to Internet2 sites at museums, universities and other viewing areas throughout the voyage. Internet2 is an advanced version of the Internet; real-time Internet2 video from Titanic will not be available on conventional Internet connections.
Dr. Robert Ballard stands over plot maps of the Titanic shipwreck and discusses expedition strategy with the IFE and NOAA crews in the sonar lab onboard NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, May 27, 2004. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic magazine
Of all the artifacts on the ocean floor near the wreck of Titanic, Dr. Robert D. Ballard has the highest hopes that his team will find and photograph pairs of shoes and a doll's head.
"It's symbolic of what I remember most," said the man who led the expeditions to discover and explore Titanic in 1985-86.
Such images remind Dr. Ballard and others aboard the research ship Ronald H. Brown about the human scale of the tragedy that broke Titanic in two and sent it to the bottom of the Atlantic in 1912.
The Ron Brown, flagship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is churning eastward at 12 knots. When it reaches the site of the shipwreck Sunday afternoon, Dr. Ballard intends to begin with a detailed photographic exploration of the bow. Afterward, he'll move on to the stern.
The catastrophic tearing and flattening of Titanic's stern section as it sank showered the ocean floor with debris. Much, particularly items of porcelain and leather, remained remarkably intact decades later.
"The bow looks like it is still under way, trying to get to New York City," Dr. Ballard said. "But at the stern, what you think about is death. It's a haunted house, a house of horrors."
Ballard's previous expeditions to Titanic found and photographed a pair of work boots. Their relative position ? about shoulder-length apart, heels in, toes out ? suggest they remained on someone's feet as the body came to rest on the ocean floor. Over the years, flesh and bone dissolved, leaving the microbe-resistant leather intact. A ceramic doll's head also resisted the ravages of time. Both artifacts call to mind the more than 1,500 deaths.
Dr. Ballard knows the cards may be stacked against him during the search. Thousands of artifacts have been removed by salvors, starting in 1987, and finding particular ones still undisturbed will prove a challenge.
Shortly after setting out from Boston, Dr. Ballard and his team began looking at old notes about the location of objects in the debris field. Unfortunately, some data are missing, Dr. Ballard said. Furthermore, he characterized his locator drawing as a "rubber map" ? one that might have to be stretched or twisted to be completely accurate because of its lack of precision. Objects could be fixed to a point on the globe only within several meters in 1985-86, compared with millimeters today, so the old map data are imperfect.
The Ron Brown's voyage has been relatively uneventful although the ship sounded its horn several times during a thick fog Friday morning as a warning to nearby vessels.
Routine fire and abandon-ship drills introduced the passengers to the potential hazards of life at sea. First-timers on the Ron Brown had to learn how to put on a "gumby suit" ? a rubbery neoprene jumpsuit designed to keep a person warm and afloat if the ship should sink.
"That'll keep you alive, even in the North Atlantic," Dr. Ballard joked as the newcomers toddled about the main deck in bright red suits like cartoon characters. "Unless a great white shark decides to take a bite out of you."
Dr. Ballard's scientific crew members met Friday to coordinate their schedules with each other and with the National Geographic team that is documenting the expedition. The National Geographic Channel's Return to Titanic is scheduled to give viewers live pictures from Titanic at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, June 7.
Capt. Craig McLean, Director of NOAA-Ocean Exploration stands in front of remotely operated vehicle Little Herc and discusses NOAA's participation in the Titanic revisit led by Dr. Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the Titanic shipwreck. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic Society
The NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown is expected to reach the site of the Titanic shipwreck at about 10 a.m. ET Sunday, just in time for the worst weather of the voyage so far.
The ship got a boost from the Gulf Stream and increased its speed over ground to more than 13 knots Saturday, which moved forward the estimated arrival time.
Ship's Capt. Tim Wright said the forecast calls for eight-foot seas and 30-knot winds Sunday morning.
"I've put equipment over the side in weather worse than that, but this is much more expensive," Wright said of Argus and the remotely operated vehicles designed to explore and photograph Titanic. The sea is expected to grow calmer Sunday evening as a low-pressure system moves out.
Dr. Robert H. Ballard, leader of the expedition to revisit Titanic, said he intends to wait patiently and decide after arrival about the best time to try a launch.
He spent Saturday afternoon listening to a Vladimir Horowitz recording and working on a Titanic jigsaw puzzle in his cabin.
"The sea is the only place where I'm patient," he said.
Earlier Saturday, when control van navigator Katy Croff asked how he was doing, Dr. Ballard shook the rainwater from his clothes and said, "I'll tell you in three days."
Dr. Ballard's team completed a pre-dive check Saturday and declared Argus and the ROVs ready for action.
When the vehicles descend to Titanic, they will follow what Craig McLean, director of NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration, calls a "look but don't touch" exploration plan.
McLean, who is on board the Ron Brown, said NOAA decided two weeks ago that in order to minimize the risk of damage to Titanic, the ROVs would not enter the deteriorating vessel. The hands-off policy reflects the federal government's interest in preserving shipwrecks and respects the rights of salvors, said McLean, a NOAA captain.
The decision means Little Hercules, the smaller of the two ROVs, will play a limited role. Dr. Ballard originally had expected "Li'l Herc" to travel down Titanic's Grand Staircase and explore the interior. Instead, Li'l Herc will pass most duties to "Big Herc," its seven-foot-tall brother, which weighs nearly 5,000 pounds in air but will hover and fly weightless along Titanic's exterior.
However, Dr. Ballard said only Li'l Herc is designed to aim a camera straight down, so it may be called upon to do an overflight.
Dr. Ballard said he wants to use lights on Big Herc and Argus, the towed sled that relays ROV signals to the surface, to create breathtaking "sunrises" over the wreck.
"We'll do a lot of ?reveals,' like the sun coming up. It'll look like the skyline of New York City," he said.
Dwight Coleman, oceanographer and assistant chief scientist, took advantage of quiet time Saturday morning to train first-timers on their roles in the ROV control van on the stern. The van two shipping containers fastened to the main deck and filled with computers, communication gear, and video monitors will be the ?round-the-clock home to Dr. Ballard's team once Argus and the ROVs are in the water.
Coleman divided the science team into three shifts. Each will have four hours on station and eight hours off. Control van stations include watch leader, Hercules pilot, Argus pilot, navigator, video operator, and data logger.
The science team's work will appear live on Return to Titanic at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, June 7, on the National Geographic Channel.
Dr. Robert Ballard (in yellow jacket) launches "Hercules" over the side of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown on May 30, 2004. He has reached the site of the Titanic shipwreck and will begin photographing and mapping the site by nightfall. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic Society
After more than five hours of searching across the ocean floor with remotely controlled cameras, Dr. Robert D. Ballard found what he was looking for shortly after 11 p.m. ET Sunday: The bow section of Titanic. "The back end is all sandwiched," he said into his control van microphone as the clouds of sediment cleared. Then, "That's a boiler!"
The moment was fittingly parallel to 1985, when Ballard's search team confirmed its original discovery by seeing one of Titanic's boilers on video.
After the monotony of the science crew looking at mud, coal, old submersible tracks, and fish, high-definition images of the promenade deck, a davit, and rusticles began to fill the video monitors aboard the surface ship Ronald H. Brown.
The remotely operated vehicle Hercules and towed sled Argus reached the ocean floor shortly before 6 p.m. ET Sunday and then traveled at fractions of a knot through the debris field until they came upon the torn end of the bow.
Surprisingly clear weather allowed the exploration vehicles to be launched Sunday afternoon.
The crew first saw an indication of Titanic at 12:43 p.m. ET on the monitor of the Ron Brown's sub-bottom profiler, a sophisticated echo sounder. The color-coded data showed the broken bow as a purple, peanut-shaped bump above a gentle, yellow-green curve marking the ocean floor. A small crowd gathered near the monitor to marvel at the significance of that violet dot.
"All right, everybody, let's go to launch position," expedition leader Ballard announced.
The bridge crew swung the bow to the west and locked the ship's dynamic positioning system into a "quartering sea." That kept it meeting the waves and five- to seven-foot swells at a 45-degree angle. Avoiding the alternatives ? rolling in the troughs, or smacking waves head-on ? minimized rolling of the deck.
At 1:40, a crane operated by Chief Bosun Bruce Cowden raised Hercules from the main deck and dropped it gently over the port side into the sun-splashed waters of the North Atlantic.
Herc's propellers slowly drove it behind the stern, where its yellow, syntactic foam buoyancy package held it just beneath the surface. Then the ship's A-frame lifted Argus and lowered it into the waves. The heavy, towed sled ? the size and shape of a small car ? plunged straight down as its cable paid out.
Herc and Argus remained connected by a tether. A yellow "football" of syntactic foam remained attached to the tether to help maintain slack.
With both vehicles in the water, there was little to do but wait. Herc's pilot drove it downward, while the cable lowered Argus like a cinder block.
Both vehicles carried good-luck charms.
Hercules suffered hydraulic problems a couple of weeks ago during a voyage to study coral in the sea mounts east of Massachusetts, ROV scientist Jim Newman said. Cowden offered to try to change the bad luck. He used a Dremel tool and a knife to carve a six-inch "smiling tiki" figure out of scrap wood to "keep us up and in good order."
The ROV crew attached the figure to Hercules and anointed it with hydraulic oil. Cowden and Newman agreed on what happened next: All problems vanished.
Cowden then carved a female tiki figure and attached it to Argus. Finally, after seeing nothing but gray skies since the ship left Boston Thursday, the crew asked Cowden to create a "sun tiki." He carved it Saturday night, and the sun came out just as he was attaching it to his crane Sunday morning.
Asked if he believed in the power of superstition, Newman deadpanned, "I think we proved it. It's a fact."
Dr. Ballard joked that Cowden ought to "carve a flag that's limp on a pole" if it would help calm the seas. The weather is expected to get rougher this week.
Return to Titanic, including a live broadcast from the shipwreck, will air at 9 ET/PT Monday, June 7, on the National Geographic Channel.
IFE engineers control the movements of the Argus and Hercules ROVs as they maneuver through the wreckage of the Titanic on May 31, 2004. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic Society
Dr. Robert D. Ballard feels almost as if he's experiencing Titanic for the first time. The remotely operated vehicle Hercules sent live, high-definition pictures from Titanic's broken bow section late Sunday and early Monday to the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. The ROV camera gave Dr. Ballard a much closer and broader view of the shipwreck than he got during his 1986 dives, he said.
"I never got to see the Titanic very well through the window of [the submersible] Alvin," he said. "It was a tiny window. It was like looking at it at night with a flashlight, compared with seeing it now with sunlight, through a bay window."
Hercules toured the port side of the promenade deck, capturing clear images of rows of windows that Dr. Ballard characterized as "haunting." Hull plates, bollards, and bow railings all appeared with crystal clarity on giant screens in the control van and main lab.
Herc zoomed in on the one remaining davit, or boat crane, still standing. The image struck Dr. Ballard as a symbolic statement about the passengers who never had the chance to enter a lifeboat and perished in the icy seas.
"They're getting some incredible images from the high-definition cameras," said ABC correspondent Jay Schadler, who watched some of the pictures coming up from the ocean floor. "They have a real three-dimensional feel to them."
As the seas grew calmer Monday afternoon, Dr. Ballard sent Argus and Herc into the water again. Late in the day, they were in the middle of another long descent and on their way to a second visit to the bow.
The public will get a taste of the vehicles' recorded images, as well as live shots from the shipwreck, during Return to Titanic, an hour-long National Geographic Channel program to air at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, June 7.
Along with the excitement of the expedition's initial dive came some challenges.
The tether connecting the buoyant Hercules to the towed sled Argus kept pulling tight, yanking Hercules back as it tried to approach for close-ups of the port side. Dr. Ballard said the Ron Brown doesn't have a longer tether, so the shipboard pilots for Hercules and Argus will have to learn how to move their vehicles in tight formation.
In addition, Dr. Ballard said he's still getting a feel for the Ron Brown, which he is using as a mother ship for deep-sea exploration for the first time. He was surprised how long it took for the ship's motions on the surface to be transferred through the tow cable to Argus on the ocean floor.
Most frustrating were the seas that turned stormy Sunday evening. The surface ship's up-and-down motion snapped Argus around as if it were on the end of a bullwhip, Dr. Ballard said. A light and a camera wire came loose.
After Argus and Hercules had been a bit more than an hour at Titanic, Dr. Ballard ordered them to the surface and to safety.
While the scientific crew waited for better weather Monday morning and afternoon, the Ron Brown made a series of east-west passes over Titanic Canyon in a pattern Dr. Ballard calls "mowing the lawn." The ship's multibeam echo sounder began pinging to create the first detailed topographical maps of the ocean floor where Titanic came to rest in 1912. The Ron Brown will work on completing the map, which should take a total of about 40 hours, whenever Hercules and Argus are not in the water.
"Bob did a pass 20 years ago, with a single beam directly below the ship," said assistant chief scientist Dwight Coleman. "It'll be interesting to do it with modern technology."
Drawn on a 1987 mosaic (originally published in National Geographic Magazine) of the bow section of the Titanic are many small boxes. They are the guides for a new mosaic of the bow section being made from images collected by the ROV Hercules. Photograph by Bert Fox © National Geographic Society
Two still-frame digital imaging cameras aboard the ROV Hercules on Tuesday began taking the first in a series of photographs that will be stitched together with computer software to form a complete mosaic of Titanic on the ocean floor. Comparison with a similar but low-resolution monochrome mosaic, produced in 1987, will help scientists assess damage to the ship and its rate of decay.
"I want to sit here, and go back and forth, back and forth, and do some mosaicing," Return to Titanic expedition leader Dr. Robert D. Ballard told his crew as Hercules hovered a few meters above the bow.
"I want to go down the center axis of the ship, and out past like you're Leonardo DiCaprio standing on the bow," he added, drawing chuckles from those running the cameras and motors of his two exploration vehicles.
Dwight Coleman, sitting in the control van on the deck of the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, fired the mosaic cameras' flash every few seconds as Herc glided above anchor chains, captstans, winches, and bow railings.
Meanwhile, high-definition video cameras aboard the ROV and its relay vehicle, the towed sled Argus, sent hours of live images to the ship 2.25 miles (3.63 kilometers) overhead.
A crowd watching a monitor in the main lab gasped as Hercules pilot Tom Orvosh flew the remotely operated vehicle along the collapsed mast. Lookout Frederick Fleet had been up the mast when he spotted the fatal iceberg in 1912.
"Follow the mast. Rise up," Dr. Ballard quietly told his crew.
The third voyage of Hercules and Argus to the sea bottom proved to be the charm. Heavy seas cut short the first trip. A second journey, which began late Monday, proved frustrating when the signal from Herc's high-definition camera cut out just as the ROV approached the bow.
Dr. Ballard explained that the tether joining Hercules and Argus, which must remain slack to be effective, had been jerked taut too many times. The "bullwhipping" damaged the ends, he said.
Hercules lost telemetry and had to be recovered "dead stick." A winch operator reeled in the long cable connected to Argus, and as it rose, it pulled up Hercules by its fiber-optic tether.
Engineers and technicians declared the tether a loss. Two of its three optical filaments would not pass a signal from end to end.
They spent Tuesday morning replacing the 98-foot (30-meter) tether and strengthening its ends with reinforced rubber tubing and what ship's Bosun Bruce Cowden called a "Chinese finger puzzle" of interwoven cords.
In addition, engineering support worker Dave Wright polished the fiber-optic cable connectors and aligned the embedded fibers to strengthen a weak signal that had been compromising data transmission.
Dr. Ballard acknowledged that there are always surprises during an expedition at sea but emphasized that "failure is not an option."
The repairs apparently worked. Hercules performed as advertised during a third mission that began when it and Argus went into the water at noon Tuesday.
Three hours later, they arrived at Titanic's bow.
The control van crew moved the vehicles along the port side, collecting startling video images: Portholes, still containing glass. Red paint on the keel. Rusticles and pitted iron in swirls of turquoise and orange, looking like nothing so much as a Jackson Pollack drip painting.
The vehicles headed north toward the bridge, pausing to allow the crew to photograph five memorial plaques left in front of the telemotor by earlier expeditions. The lettering was easy to read under the lights, and a tiny American flag was clearly visible.
Return to Titanic, an hourlong National Geographic Channel program, will be broadcast at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, June 7.
Dr. Robert Ballard (left) kneels on the deck of the NOAA research vessel Ronald H. Brown and applies the finishing touches to the recently repaired tether connecting ROV Hercules to the towed camera sled Argus. Photograph by Dave Wright © IFE/National Geographic Society
Argus and Hercules are pushing the technological envelope, but Wednesday they needed some jury-rigged steel pipes, plates, and bolts to get them ready to return to the water. The two exploration vehicles were found to be banged up after being hauled aboard the stern of the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. Repairs began almost immediately.
Dr. Robert D. Ballard, leader of the Return to Titanic expedition, pronounced himself "tickled pink" by the 12 hours worth of breathtaking images the vehicles captured at Titanic's bow, yet saddened by the decay and damage.
"Yes, it's still the grand old lady down there," he said. "But it's not the same grand old lady as it was when I was there (in 1986)."
The live video images confirmed holes in the bridge and boat deck, as well as impact damage from submersibles. Television viewers can see for themselves during Return to Titanic, an hour-long National Geographic Channel program, to be broadcast at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday.
As the barometer fell and winds rose above 30 knots early Wednesday, the science team decided to raise Argus and Hercules from the bottom and lash them to the deck.
When engineers examined Argus's tow cable, as well as the tether that connects it to ROV Hercules, they found damage that required some tricky repair before the next dive.
Dave Wright, a self-described "shadetree mechanic" from Louisville, Kentucky, as well as a skilled engineering support member of Dr. Ballard's team, said the cable's "mechanical termination" had pulled about an inch from its setting and would have to be rebuilt.
Argus's 4,000 pounds of dead weight puts a tremendous strain on its cable, especially when it is whipped by the motion of the surface ship.
"We had a backup for it," Wright said of the crucial part. "Sort of like a belt and suspenders." Nevertheless, he said, it started to move and might have dropped Argus and Herc on the floor of the North Atlantic if not fixed.
Later that night, after the part was disassembled, Wright and the senior engineers inspected it and decided it wasn't as bad as they thought. They reassembled it and successfully pull-tested 18,000 pounds from the stern.
In addition to the cable problem, welds in the aluminum connections at both ends of the 98-foot (30-meter) optical-fiber tether cracked and had to be strengthened.
They could not be rewelded in place without destroying embedded glass filaments, which transmit Hercules's video images to the surface.
Instead, ship's Acting Chief Engineer Jim Gatlin suggested the eventual solution: Fashion a new support collar out of steel ? shaped in a mirror image of the aluminum parts, wrapped around the cracks, and bolted in place.
Brennan Phillips, an engineer with Dr. Ballard's Institute for Exploration, said he and Ron Brown First Assistant Engineer Keegan Plaskon made the parts by welding the end of a steel pipe to a steel plate, and then slicing through the pipe lengthwise. The finished product looked like two halves of an ankle-high tee-ball stand.
The IFE tool van on the stern contains hydraulics repair equipment, spare parts, computer hardware, a drill press, and virtually a small hardware store, but Phillips and Plaskon had to borrow the ship's arc welder and band saw for the job.
A minor problem with Hercules's mechanical arm also was being corrected. A faulty cylinder made the arm jerk repeatedly as pilot Todd Gregory attempted to pick up a rusticle experiment station from Titanic's boat deck. After at least 15 minutes of trying, Gregory finally snagged the station and dropped it in Hercules's "bio box."
Hours later, on the stern deck, microbiologist Roy Cullimore retrieved the experiment he had placed on Titanic in 1998. He intends to analyze the rusticle colonies it acquired to help him plot a rate for the ship's deterioration.
Herc's arm received a new cylinder Wednesday afternoon.
The repair team hoped to re-launch Argus and Hercules sometime Thursday. Dr. Ballard said he expects the next voyage will visit Titanic's catastrophically ruptured stern.
While the science crews worked, many on board went forward to watch dolphins playing in the Ron Brown's bow wake or relax with a movie in the ship's lounge.
The collapsed promenade deck with the boat deck above, rests on the port side, forward section of the Titanic. It is photographed 5/31/2004 by ROV Hercules deployed from the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown. Video image © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
The Return to Titanic expedition's roughest night at sea gave way to the calmest dawn Thursday, setting up Argus and Hercules for an easy launch and smooth trip to the shipwreck's shattered stern section. The two vehicles set out on their fourth descent at noon and arrived on site three hours later, virtually directly above the wreckage.
"It took us a while to realize it," Institute for Exploration engineer Jim Newman said of the pinpoint accuracy. "It's all a jumble down there."
When Titanic broke apart on the morning of April 15, 1912, the bow section sank smoothly because it had filled slowly with seawater.
The stern section, however, still contained huge air pockets as it descended. Mounting pressure caused a terrible implosion, contorting everything into a scrapyard of metal and showering the ocean floor with debris.
"It's not a very aesthetic thing. It's not like the bow," said Dr. Robert D. Ballard, head of the expedition.
Argus dangled a few meters above the crazily tilting plates and twisted metal while Hercules floated over the desolation.
Pilots in the command and control van on the stern of the surface ship Ronald H. Brown zoomed Herc's high-definition cameras in and out while Argus's lights illuminated the field of view.
"Think of Hercules as a curious creature," Dr. Ballard told his team. "It sees something, and it wants to go look at it."
Dr. Ballard found a spittoon next to an engine wrench.
A crane leaned at a 45-degree angle, its operational levers still in place. A squat lobster, blue as a robin's egg, perched on the crane platform. Nearby, a living coral, rough and feathery like a bottle brush, waved in the current.
Dr. Ballard ordered the camera operators to focus on the crane's electrical connection box and the brass plates of its operational levers.
The high-definition cameras brought individual bolts into sharp focus.
"Let's go down and count the threads," Dr. Ballard said.
He said that as the exploration vehicles gather photographs and make maps, he feels tugged by competing emotions.
"There is the professional carrying out the technical operation, and the human side. There are constant moments while we have explored the Titanic, where I just sit back, and take it in," he said.
While watching the stern on the 52-inch (1.3-meter) plasma monitors in the control van, Dr. Ballard told his team members they were looking at "the diving board of death."
Hundreds of people who failed to get a seat in one of Titanic's lifeboats made their way aft up the ship's tilting decks, hoping to stay out of the North Atlantic as long as possible.
Father Thomas Byles gave absolution and led prayers while frightened passengers, primarily Third Class, gathered near the stern rail. At the final moment, they jumped or plunged into the icy water. Most quickly froze to death.
Return to Titanic will air at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday on the National Geographic Channel.
This image shows the enclosed promenade beneath the boat deck of the port side bow section of the Titanic. Rusticles hang from openings that used to hold windows. It is photographed 6/1/2004 by ROV Hercules. Video image © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
Other than a few mechanical hiccups, the ROV Hercules has gotten good reviews from scientists. Meanwhile, its photos are sparking plenty of questions from curious schoolchildren. Dr. Robert D. Ballard, leader of the Return to Titanic expedition, said Hercules and its relay vehicle/lighting platform, Argus, repeatedly have demonstrated their superiority to manned submersibles.
First, under ideal conditions, they can stay down indefinitely.
Second, they can get closer to Titanic than bulky submersibles, yet hover without touching the endangered ship. Dr. Ballard said Herc demonstrated this skill when it plucked a scientific experiment station from the boat deck without bumping the bow.
"Submersibles are like bulls in a china shop, and the china is getting broken," Dr. Ballard said. He has found evidence of submersible strikes on Titanic's bow section, and said holes are appearing in the deck where visitors repeatedly land.
Third, vehicles such as Argus and Hercules don't put human lives at risk in the incredible pressures at Titanic's depth.
Finally, the fiber-optic signals from the cameras aboard Herc and Argus, sent to the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, are relayed by an antenna on the bow to a communications satellite to be shared with distant viewers. The signal is received by EDS Corp. of Plano, Texas, and sent to selected museums, schools, aquariums, and other sites. Live video feeds allow schoolchildren to ask questions of the scientists on the Titanic expedition and get answers in real time.
(The largest audience for live video from Titanic will tune in at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday, when the National Geographic Channel airs Return to Titanic.)
That final advantage took the spotlight Friday, as Dr. Ballard and other scientists began hosting a series of programs with students in the United States. Schoolchildren participating in the JASON Foundation for Education's Titanic program are learning the same geometry skills that navigators have used during this expedition.
NOAA Lt. (j.g.) Jeremy Weirich, who helps coordinate navigation of the remote vehicles with the Ron Brown and serves as the expedition's chief archaeologist, answered questions from students in Wisconsin and Michigan during Immersion Project webcasts.
Weirich has a master's degree in archaeology from the University of Southampton in England. He said he sometimes is asked why an archaeologist would explore Titanic, considering that scientists and historians already know a great deal about the ship's construction and contents.
"There's not a lot of historical or archaeological knowledge we could get, but there's a heck of a lot to learn about science," he said. "Titanic is a great test bed for analyzing shipwrecks."
Titanic's bow sank virtually intact and has been degrading much more slowly than the wrecked stern section. Both have been attacked by microorganisms, buffeted by currents, and dusted with "sea snow," the organic particles that settle on the ocean floor. What scientists learn about Titanic is expected to help them explore and preserve other shipwrecks, Weirich said.
The mechanical arm Hercules uses to pick up objects and drop them in its bio box acted up early this week, and again during the fourth dive late Thursday after it received a new cylinder.
Institute for Exploration engineer Brennan Phillips said the arm turned "screwball" and refused commands from Herc's pilot. The arm smacked the frame holding the ROV's mosaicing cameras, knocking them out of alignment.
Herc has a second arm ? "dumber and stronger" than the persnickety one, said IFE engineer Jim Newman ? but it cannot reach the bio box.
Repair work performed during a driving rainstorm Friday morning replaced the part believed to be faulty in the main arm. A new frame was installed and the cameras repositioned.
Herc and Argus made their fifth dive, toward the bow, late Friday. The arm then worked fine when Herc reached the ocean floor.
This image shows a port side forward expansion joint on the boat deck (in the vicinity of the officer's lavatory) of the bow section of the shipwreck Titanic. It is photographed 6/1/2004 by ROV Hercules. Video image © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
The engineers and pilots staffing the control van for Argus and Hercules broke out in big smiles late Saturday for two reasons ? one mechanical, one just plain fun.First, the two exploration vehicles reached a milestone by staying on the ocean floor for more than 30 hours. That's what they were designed to do, but until a marathon fifth launch began Friday afternoon they had been stymied by a combination of bad weather and mechanical glitches.
Second, the science crew clearly enjoys exploring Titanic's debris field, which Hercules and Argus entered Saturday evening after visiting the bow.
"We love flea markets," Institute for Exploration engineer Dave Lovalvo said. "You never know what you're going to find."
Justin Manley, a Mitretek Systems consultant to NOAA who helps coordinate the vehicles' navigation with the surface ship Ronald H. Brown, said that although submersibles have picked over the field, "we've got a much better ability to find targets."
Herc's ability to hover, glide, and light up a broad swath of the ocean floor brought hundreds of artifacts into view, mostly one or two at a time. The ROV's pilots let it hunt at the end of its 98-foot (30-meter) tether like a hound on a leash. The lack of overhanging decks, davits, and rails common at Titanic's bow and stern allowed the pilots to relax a bit.
Among the objects Herc found and photographed were:
The black thruster cowling from a submersible, looking like a giant camera lens hood. Cowlings protect propellers from impact; it was not apparent how this one might have been knocked free.
A stack of serving dishes, possibly silver, covered with green slime.
A cup showing the White Star Line's red pennant. A light dusting of sea snow rested on the lip.
A torn section of hull plating with all of its rivets missing. Whether they were popped by the iceberg that sank Titanic or by the collision with the ocean floor, or whether they merely became food for microbes, was unclear.
A porcelain toilet, which landed upside down and has been perfectly preserved.
A bright orange crab scurrying from right to left in front of Herc's lights, all the while carrying a pale pink anemone. The piggyback anemone's ruby red stinging tentacles swished in the crab's wake like ruffled skirts.
Crabs often live symbiotically with anemones, explained NOAA oceanographer and Return to Titanic science crew member Catalina Martinez. "That's how they camouflage and protect themselves," she said.
Earlier Saturday, Hercules and Argus finished collecting still-frame digital images of the bow section to be stitched into a full-color mosaic. Assistant Chief Scientist Dwight Coleman said the team took more than 2,200 mosaic photographs.
During that same visit to the bow, Dr. Robert D. Ballard found more evidence of damage to Titanic from submersible visits. Impact ovals on the deck, the footprints of submersible landings, appeared as orange smudges filled with flattened caulk.
Upon inspecting the portside bow portholes, Dr. Ballard had Hercules zoom in on a recent gouge in the metal plates. It crossed over a porthole and apparently knocked curtains of rusticles to the ocean floor, microbiologist Roy Cullimore said.
A series of rusticle-free ovals next to nearby portholes may have marked where submersibles rubbed up against the side to allow passengers to peer inside.
Near the bow section, as Hercules was moving southward toward the torn back end, it found a poignant reminder of Titanic's unfinished Atlantic crossing. The brass "LETTERS" sign from a passengers' mail drop box had landed face-up on the sediment. Mail posted after Titanic left its last port, in Ireland, would have been delivered to the ocean floor.
Herc and Argus remained on the bottom late Saturday, adding to their endurance record. Their startling photographs and video will be seen at 9 p.m. ET/PT Monday during Return to Titanic on the National Geographic Channel.
The shoes of a Titanic victim are photographed in a debris field near the stern of the ship 6/6/2004 by the ROV Hercules. Photograph © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
Dr. Robert D. Ballard found the elusive shoes.
He said at the start of the Return to Titanic voyage that he longed to photograph boots and shoes, which resist decomposition because of the tannic acid in treated leather. For the first week, the hunt came up empty.
That changed Sunday. Searching for personal items deposited on the ocean floor when Titanic sank in 1912, the remotely operated vehicle Hercules hit the jackpot when it wandered into an unsalvaged section of the ship's debris field.
Herc's cameras found stacks of wine bottles, their corks pistoned inside their glass shoulders by the tremendous water pressure.
It found eyeglasses, brushes, dishes, and plates.
And it found pair after pair of shoes, as well as single shoes scattered in the sediment.
High-buttoned shoes. Work boots. Delicate, feminine shoes.
Dr. Ballard, watching the live video originating from below the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, picked out three images as being among the most dramatic: The first shoes discovered in an obvious pair, followed by two boots at the bottom of a slicker, and then a pair of high-topped woman's shoes beside three combs, a mirror, and a section of linoleum tile.
"Stop the ship!" Dr. Ballard declared when he saw the first matched pair of shoes.
Those shoes had high heels and rested beside two small, white dishes painted in blue with the word "Stockholm."
The work boots rested below a dark slicker, its arms and belt dusted with sediment.
The next image was perhaps the most powerful.
"Is that a comb?" asked NOAA Lt. (j.g.) Jeremy Weirich, peering at a 52-inch (1.3-meter) plasma screen in the control van.
"It is!" Dr. Ballard declared. "It's a comb. A woman's hair comb."
Although perspective sometimes is hard to judge in the video, the decorative comb appeared to have teeth about three inches (eight centimeters) long. As the control van pilots and navigators examined the screen, they realized that a shiny disk at the bottom was the remains of a hand mirror.
Dr. Ballard said it's intriguing to think about who might have owned the items.
"You're trying to imagine the person, sitting in front of her hand mirror, combing her hair," he said. "We don't know, and we'll probably never know, who she was. Whoever it was, though, she had long, long hair."
Images gathered by Hercules and its towed relay sled, Argus, will be featured at 9 tonight (Monday) ET/PT during Return to Titanic on the National Geographic Channel. Live video images from Titanic will be featured, relayed to the world via a satellite link connecting the ship to EDS in Plano, Texas.
Dr. Ballard said that he hopes images such as the field of shoes get viewers thinking about Titanic in a human context.
"This was a ship full of people. A lot of them survived. A lot more didn't," he said.
Argus and Hercules kept extending their record fifth dive late Sunday.
Their more than 60 hours continuously underwater far exceeds the duration of any dive during this expedition or one last year to the Black Sea.
Saturday night saw the science and ship's crews gather in the lounge to watch a DVD of A Night to Remember. The lounge shows movies every night, usually to a handful of viewers. However, the 1958 British account of the sinking of Titanic, based on Walter Lord's book of the same name, filled the room with nearly two dozen people. Every seat was taken, the floor was covered with reclining bodies, and a ship's officer watched from the doorway.
At 8 a.m. Sunday, NOAA Ens. Silas Ayers lowered the Ron Brown's flag and raised a new flag to half-mast in honor of the late President Ronald Reagan. The crew learned of Reagan's death Saturday via the ship's internet connection to the mainland.
The ROV Hercules went dead in 12,500 feet of water over the wreck of Titanic early 6/7/2004 and was brought to the surface for repairs. Pictured are IFE engineer Mark DeRoche (right) and Dr. Robert Ballard. Photograph by Bert Fox (c) National Geographic Society
Cheers and applause filled the control van on the stern of the Ronald H. Brown as the flashy, flawless live video from Titanic's bow ended the National Geographic Channel broadcast Monday night.
"Wow! Yes!" exclaimed Dr. Robert D. Ballard, who burst from the van a minute after 10 p.m. and began shaking hands and hugging everyone. "We set a new standard."
It was a thrilling end to a challenging day.
Hercules and Argus gave the science team a scare before the remotely operated vehicle and its towed relay sled were ready for the Return to Titanic broadcast.
The vehicles ended their marathon fifth dive before dawn Monday when signals from Herc abruptly stopped. The ROV had to be hauled, powerless, from the Atlantic.
"I forgot what the vehicles looked like," joked Institute for Exploration engineer Brennan Phillips. They had been underwater for 65 hours, which probably set an endurance record for Hercules, ROV designer Jim Newman said.
When the vehicles finally were brought on board, two problems became evident.
First, a fiber-optic connection inside Hercules had gone dead. The connection, which links the tow cable to the ROV's main "bottle," a pressurized container for electronics, had to be replaced. The bottle itself, pressure-tested to operate at one-and-a-half times Titanic's depth, remained intact.
Second, the mechanical termination of the cable that suspends Argus from the stern of the NOAA ship Ron Brown showed signs of wear. The cable end is designed to allow Argus to pitch, meaning its front and back ends can swing up and down, but not to roll, a motion in which its sides rise and fall. Surface swells had made Argus act like a 4,000-pound yoyo and caused enough of a rolling motion to abrade the cable's metal fibers. The worn end was hastily rebuilt.
Dr. Ballard said he didn't feel fazed by the problems as the time for the live portion of the broadcast approached.
"There's no point [getting anxious]," he said. "It doesn't do any good."
By Monday afternoon, both vehicles had been repaired and tested. A winch raised Hercules and dropped it over the stern rail.
But no sooner had the ROV splashed into the North Atlantic than its signal to the control van went dead ? again.
The deck crew retrieved the stricken Herc and parked it on the fantail for diagnostic tests. The ROV was powered up, and ? zap! ? its tether began to smoke.
The engineers decided they had to replace the entire tether. They fetched Hercules's third and final leash, one that had served them well during a Black Sea expedition in 2003.
Time began to work against them. In order to get Hercules and Argus to the bow before the 9 p.m. ET/PT broadcast, which had been advertised as including live images from the shipwreck, the vehicles would have to leave the Ron Brown no later than about 6 p.m. for the three-hour trip to the bottom. And even if they arrived on the ocean floor at the appointed time, there would be no guarantees, given the unpredictability of ocean currents and a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) cable, that Hercules would drop close enough to swim to the bow before showtime.
"That's the A-Team out there," NOAA Capt. Craig McLean said as the clock ticked down. "They'll make it."
A flock of gulls watched calmly from the still waters behind the stern as the crew raced to fix the problem. Dr. Ballard cut his hand while helping to connect and reinforce Hercules's end of the tether, but he continued to work.
Hercules finally went into the water at 5:20 p.m. Argus followed a few minutes later. The blue water and white bubbles outside their cameras, which normally bore those watching the bank of monitors, proved a welcome sight as the pair descended. They meant Herc was still working.
Only two-and-a-half hours later, in the fastest descent yet, Herc and Argus reached bottom. Incredibly, navigator Justin Manley and the rest of the team in the control van landed the vehicles less than 50 meters from the bow. A few minutes later, their live video of the shipwreck appeared topside, ready to be shared with the world.
Two port side bits and a falling railing, near the bow of the Titanic, are photographed in high-definition video on 6/1/2004 by the ROV Hercules. Video image © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
Dr. Robert D. Ballard said goodbye Tuesday to Titanic and, overcome by the moment, threw his hat over the side of the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown.
The ship got under way for Woods Hole, Massachusetts, under gray skies and a steady rain. A thousand sea birds riding the rising swells saw the Ron Brown begin its 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) journey west.
Their work done, the remotely operated vehicle Hercules and the towed sled Argus were lashed to the deck.
The end of the Return to Titanic expedition came just in time. The barometer fell steadily during the morning and early afternoon, and the bridge kept the control van updated on the worsening winds and seas.
As the ship rolled, Hercules's and Argus's pilots babied the ROV's tether to keep it working until the last minute.
"We're about at the end of our useful life with these tethers," Institute for Exploration engineer Dave Lovalvo said. "I'm trying not to put too much strain on this one."
It was the last full-length tether on board.
"We were coming down to the cliche, ?the last wire,'" navigation consultant Justin Manley said later.
The tether held despite being hastily connected Monday night to replace one that had fizzled.
On the last day of exploration, Herc's pilots turned its high-definition video cameras on the stern. The ROV completed a series of pictures that will be converted into a photomosaic, similar to one planned for the bow section. Video cameras were drafted into duty when the downward-looking, still-frame cameras refused to work.
The stern lacks the majesty of the bow. Ruptured by implosion as it sank and flattened by a catastrophic impact with the ocean floor, it lies in a jumble of metal.
Herc explored the underside of flipped-over deck plates, turned back upon themselves like the lid of a sardine can. It dropped below the fantail and inched beneath the overhanging rusticles. The ghostly edge of the rudder and two tracks from Dr. Ballard's 1986 visit in the submersible Alvin lay at the far edge of the lights.
The crew dared not go farther for fear of getting the tether tangled in overhead obstructions. The two vehicles backed away without touching the ship.
While they finished their work, Dr. Ballard spoke at 2 p.m. ET via satellite to the G-8 summit at Sea Island, Georgia, about the need for international cooperation to protect shipwrecks.
"The deep sea is a museum that contains more history than all of the museums of the world combined," he said. "Yet there is no law covering the vast majority of shipwrecks, and a great deal is at risk."
He referred to shipwrecks as "pyramids of the deep."
After his remarks, Dr. Ballard gave the order to bring Herc and Argus out of the water.
As they began to rise, Herc's parting image from Titanic filled the plasma monitors in the control van: The giant reciprocating engines that once drove the mighty ship.
They stand as monuments to the size and grandeur of the most legendary of shipwrecks. And if microbiologist Roy Cullimore is right, they will stand for a long, long time. If the shipwreck continues to decay, those engines someday will be the last remaining piece of the stern, he said. Rusticles that have been consuming the ship's iron have found it tougher to get a toehold on the thick metal of boilers and engines than the relatively thin deck and hull plates, he said.
The reciprocating engines disappeared in the gloom. The video images faded to blue.
The bow of the Titanic photographed in high-definition video on 6/1/2004 by the ROV Hercules. Video image © Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island
It'll take some time to sort through and analyze the video and still-frame photographs taken during the Return to Titanic expedition, but Dr. Robert D. Ballard says his preliminary observations are hopeful. Titanic does not appear to be deteriorating as rapidly as he had been led to believe before the expedition, he said.
"They're saying it's collapsing from the rear forward," he said of Titanic's bow section. "Possibly. But I think sub damage has occurred. The problem is the sub damage is in the main places. They want to get down the Grand Staircase, so they land there."
Submersibles damage the deck during landings, he said. They also bump the ship. Dr. Ballard noted the collapse of the walls of Capt. E.J. Smith's cabin and what he believes is sub damage to Chief Officer Henry Wilde's room, both at the rear of the bridge. However, he said it is difficult to tell how much of the collapse was due to impacts instead of natural decay.
"If you look from the bridge forward, I saw no change, other than one landing spot and the destruction of the mast," he said. He believes the mast was damaged when the crow's nest and bell were removed, although some microbial damage also is evident.
Aft, he saw no change in the openings where the funnels stood.
The stern doesn't look different at all, he said. As he compares the photographs taken by the remotely operated vehicle Hercules and its tow sled Argus with the painting of the stern section by Titanic artist Ken Marschall, he said he finds them "identical."
"Why? Well, no one lands on the stern," he said. It's too torn up.
Dr. Ballard said it would be interesting to see Titanic again in 20 years and study how much has changed.
As he heads for home, he said he will always look back on his return to Titanic and think, "What a visit!"
He said he accomplished about 99 percent of what he set out to do. He would have liked to have sent the ROV Little Hercules down the Grand Staircase, but was prevented from doing so by a NOAA ruling aimed at preserving the shipwreck. NOAA Capt. Craig McLean called it a "look, but don't touch" expedition. In addition, Dr. Ballard never found the doll's head he photographed in 1986, or one similar.
Dr. Ballard said he expects to keep with his personal tradition and raise a broom on the mast by the flags as the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown approaches the pier at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The broom only goes up when the expedition performs a "clean sweep" of objectives.
Those objectives ? which included mapping and mosaicing the bow and stern, testing the power of remotely operated vehicles to create "telepresence," assessing decay and damage, and photographing Titanic's human scale ? were accomplished despite a series of setbacks. Hercules's tether, never tested at this depth, repeatedly failed. A low pressure system off the coast of Newfoundland kept generating rough seas that jerked Argus in the water. And the 11 days on the site of Titanic's grave required the science crew to rush its work and hope for good weather.
Storms kept Hercules and Argus out of the water for a total of about a day. Dr. Ballard said his plans had allowed for two. He was elated when the weather cleared and allowed for long dives.
"I slept about four hours a day," Dr. Ballard said. "I'll start sleeping again now."
Soon, he expects to begin work on an exhibit at Mystic Aquarium based on his findings. His science team will fiddle with the exploration vehicles to try to improve them. Wednesday, he cranked out the first 1,000 words of an article about this voyage.
All in all, it has been a satisfying journey to Titanic, he said, particularly when so many things that could have gone wrong, went right.
"She let me in," he said of Titanic at the bottom of the fickle North Atlantic, as if the ship had human qualities. "I had a real sense, when the weather went flat, that she let me in."
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