A 'Bay Window' View of Desolation
June 1, 2004
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."
(Note: nationalgeographic.com does not research or edit dispatches.)
