Shoes and Boots Galore
June 7, 2004
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.
(Note: nationalgeographic.com does not research or edit dispatches.)
