Next month marks the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic by American oceanographer Robert Ballard.
It was one of the biggest news events of the 20th century and the image of the famous liner’s bow looming out of the darkness soon became iconic.
Ballard’s success was the culmination of 73 years of imaginative, outlandish and often crazy schemes to find the Titanic and raise the ship from her watery grave.
Here, we chart a history as remarkable as the liner which has captivated the world since its tragic sinking…
April 15, 1912, 2.20am
Two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg, the Titanic disappears beneath the surface of the North Atlantic.
With it went all the possessions its passengers were travelling with in preparation for making new lives in America – wedding presents, Steinway pianos, children’s toys, pearl necklaces, even a Renault motor car, all tumbling through the dark water.
It takes ten minutes for the remains of the great ship to reach the ocean floor. The Titanic’s Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, one of hundreds watching her sink from lifeboats, recalled: ‘We realised she’d gone and then we heard all the screams. We couldn’t do anything.’
Two hours earlier, on the ship’s bridge, Boxhall had calculated their final position and given it to a wireless operator so ships could come to their aid. ’41 degrees, 46 north, 50 degrees, 14 west’ became one of the most famous coordinates of the 20th century.
Wreckage of the Titanic shows the prow or stem with metal-eating rusticles clearly visible
April 20
Within days of the disaster, the first plan to find the Titanic is hatched.
Multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor IV went down with the ship and his son Vincent is desperate to retrieve his body and so approaches American salvage companies to help.
In 1912 the deepest divers can operate is only 210ft, so a dramatic solution is needed. Vincent asks the Merritt & Chapman Derrick & Wrecking Company to blow up the wreck so his father’s body can float to the surface.
They tell him that it is feasible ‘as the White Star Line (Titanic’s owner) has a fairly good idea as to where the Titanic sank’.
Merritt & Chapman plan to drop charges onto the ship and detonate them electronically, telling Astor the operation will be easy, ‘although we would be compelled to completely wreck the boat’.
But John Jacob’s body is recovered from the sea a week later and the plan is abandoned.
RMS Titanic left Southampton at the start of her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. Five days after this photo was taken, the ship was on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean
May
A month on from the disaster, newspapers are full of theories and rumours.
Some believe that there are priceless paintings and jewellery aboard the Titanic – even though the manifest (the list of passengers and cargo) has been released and it contains no references to gold or jewels.
But the document’s vague term ‘merchandise’ – referring to items brought on board by first-class passengers – leads some to believe it must refer to treasure.
An unscientific but evocative theory circulates that the Titanic didn’t sink at all, but is floating just below the surface, kept afloat by the density of the water.
In fact, it is 12,500ft down in an environment as challenging for humans as outer space.
April 1914
An engineer from Denver named Charles A. Smith announces he has a plan to recover the Titanic.
Public interest in the ship remains high, due to vivid accounts published by survivors and movies such as Saved From The Titanic, which stars Dorothy Gibson, who had been a passenger on the stricken liner and appeared in the silk evening dress she had worn on the night of the disaster.
To help him locate the ship, Smith has designed a submarine equipped with massive magnets (dubbed ‘monster leeches’ by the Press) that, once within range of the Titanic, will be pulled towards its steel hull.
The sub’s crew of seven will then attach more magnets and ships will winch Titanic to the surface. Using Joseph Boxhall’s last radio position to locate the wreck, Smith believes it will only take 30 days to find, raise and tow the Titanic to New York.
His scheme captures the public imagination and hundreds send him money to contribute to the $1.5million (about $32million or £24million today) he needs.
But scientists point out flaws in Smith’s plan, most notably that it would take more than 3,000 magnets to raise the 46,000-ton liner. Despite the widespread interest, Smith abandons his plan.
The shoes of a Titanic victim are photographed in a debris field near the stern of the ship
August 1, 1953
The passing of time and hundreds of tragic sinkings during two world wars have lessened public interest in the Titanic.
This means that an expedition to the wreck site by a salvage ship named Help, belonging to Southampton-based firm Risdon Beazley Ltd, only merits a few lines in British newspapers, which suits the publicity-shy company.
A spokesman says: ‘If we were to make any comment on the movement of the Help, some foreign salvage company might attempt salvage operations in the area.’
The Help sails to the famous coordinates and sets off a series of underwater explosions, hoping their sonar equipment might detect shock waves bouncing off the hull of the Titanic, but their efforts are unsuccessful.
OceanGate submersible named Titan, is pictured in June 2023 on a visit to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic
November 1955
American historian Walter Lord publishes his book A Night To Remember – a vivid account of the disaster based on 63 interviews with survivors.
The book is an instant bestseller and The New York Times says its pull ‘is as powerful as the downward plunge of the ship itself’.
A film of the same name is released three years later and, in a heartless pursuit of accuracy, invites survivor Lawrence Beesley to Pinewood Studios to record what the cries of the drowning sounded like.
Because of the book and the film, the world is once again gripped by Titanic fever.
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio starred in box-office hit Titanic in 1997 which was directed by James Cameron
December 31, 1964
In Kuwait harbour, Danish inventor Karl Kroyer successfully salvages the sunken freighter Al-Kuwait by filling its hull with 27 million ping-pong balls which he manufactured close to the wreck site.
Following his success, there is widespread discussion about whether the Titanic could be salvaged in the same way but scientists point out the Al-Kuwait was only 200ft down and the Titanic is 12,500ft below the surface.
To Kroyer’s dismay, his ping-pong technique is refused a patent as officials say the idea is not original, first appearing in a 1949 Donald Duck cartoon where Donald and his nephews successfully raise their yacht.
June 12, 1967
Despite the trauma of the loss of the Titanic, Fourth Officer Boxhall spent the rest of his life at sea. He died on April 25, aged 83, and his family are on board a vessel in the North Atlantic carrying out his last wishes seven weeks later.
During a brief ceremony, Boxhall’s ashes are scattered at ’41 degrees, 46 north, 50 degrees, 14 west’ his calculation of the Titanic’s last position.
The Daily Mail’s page five on September 6, 1985, showed the first ‘dramatic picture’ of the sea-bed Titanic – 73 years after it sank
October 1969
A nylon stocking factory worker from Hertfordshire named Douglas Woolley enters the Titanic story. He became obsessed with the ship when he discovered his two great aunts cancelled their tickets for the liner after a premonition of disaster.
Woolley is convinced there is treasure on board and has assembled a ten-man team who plan to lift the ship by first using a powerful ultrasonic blast to shake the ship free from the seabed, then raise her with reinforced nylon bags pumped full of hydrogen.
Woolley’s unlikely associates include one of his workmates from the stocking factory and a fish and chip shop owner.
Woolley tells a reporter: ‘Don’t mention his name because he gets enough teasing off his mates already.’ A friend named Peter Deacon has designed a machine that does the work of a diver but is operated from the surface. He says: ‘I’m not an engineer or anything. I just had an idea and made a rough sketch.’
Woolley’s team plans to bring the Titanic to Liverpool and charge tourists to come aboard. A chapel will be built below deck so people can pay their respects to those who died.
The mission is abandoned when it’s estimated it will take ten years to inflate the nylon balloons.
For the rest of his life Woolley will believe the Titanic can be raised and treasure found.
Henri Nargeolet, the director of a deep ocean research project dedicated to the Titanic, is seen looking at a model of the famous liner
December 3, 1975
The science of oceanography is improving all the time and its superstar is Frenchman Jacques Cousteau.
In the course of searching for the lost city of Atlantis off the coast of Greece, he discovers the Titanic’s sister ship, Britannic, which was sunk by a German mine in 1916 while serving as a hospital ship.
The fact that Britannic is in excellent condition after almost 60 years underwater encourages Titanic hunters around the world to believe she, too, may be intact.
Shoes belonging to a child were discovered from the wreckage of the Titanic
July 14, 1980
An oil tycoon named Jack ‘Cadillac’ Grimm sets sail from Florida on board the research vessel HJW Fay on the latest mission to find the Titanic.
He has already searched for the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot and Noah’s Ark (indeed, Grimm always carries a piece of wood in his briefcase which he believes is from the Ark.)
He is so confident of finding the wreck of the Titanic that he’s already sold the movie rights to his story, booked Orson Welles to present a documentary and hired country singer Kenny Starr to sing a theme song: ‘We’re going to find the Titanic; in her cold and lonely grave. We’ll find the Titanic, with the cowards and the brave.’
Although eccentric, Grimm has equipped the research vessel with state-of-the-art sonar equipment and has hired respected scientists to join him on the voyage.
But he has also brought a monkey called Titan, trained to point to a map of the Atlantic where it believes the Titanic can be found.
The appalled scientists declare it is either them or the monkey. Grimm says: ‘Then fire the scientists.’
He is eventually persuaded to leave the monkey behind.
‘Ghosts of the Abyss’ – a MIR submersible observing the bow of the Titanic wreck in a 2003 film
August 6
After three weeks of bad weather, Grimm abandons the search for the Titanic.
A member of the crew says: ‘It seemed like trying to find a single star in the universe.’
They have covered more than 500 miles of ocean floor but have found nothing. Only later will Grimm realise just how close he came to success. A valuable piece of equipment that detects metal on the seabed broke off just before they passed over the wreck.
This accuracy is not down to luck – before they set sail, Grimm and his team had discovered a crucial piece of information – the radio position calculated by Joseph Boxhall was inaccurate.
In the chaos of the sinking, the Fourth Officer had failed to correct for the changing local time as they sailed west.
By coincidence, the film Raise The Titanic is released in cinemas, based on Clive Cussler’s bestselling novel.
The story revolves around a race between Russians and Americans desperate to salvage the ship because it contains rare minerals that can power a sound beam to knock out missiles.
Over $5 million is spent on a 50ft model of the Titanic but the film is an expensive flop. Legendary producer Lew Grade said that it was so costly ‘it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic’.
June 1981
Jack Grimm returns to the North Atlantic with an even more sophisticated sonar rig called Deep Tow, whose equipment can produce sharp images of any large feature on the seabed.
His research vessel moves back and forth in a technique that is nicknamed ‘mowing the lawn’, but Grimm is too impatient and keeps interrupting his crew’s methodical search to ask them to head for any sonar blip that intrigues him.
On the last day of the expedition a strange shape is detected that Grimm will always insist was one of Titanic’s propellers.
The wreck is close to being discovered – all that is needed is a scientist with both the equipment and the patience to succeed.
This image of the OceanGate Titan was captured as it ventured to the wreckage of the Titanic
Summer 1982
Oceanographer Robert Ballard, 42, has developed a sophisticated robotic submersible equipped with multiple cameras and lights bright enough to penetrate the dark ocean depths, but doesn’t have the funds to build it.
Ballard is determined to find the Titanic and approaches the US navy to see if they would put up the money for his sub.
The navy isn’t interested in the wreck of an old liner, but they are interested in two of their own wrecks – the nuclear attack subs USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, which sank with all hands in the 1960s.
The navy’s top brass is concerned that the vessels’ nuclear reactors may be damaging the environment and that the Russians sank the Scorpion and robbed it of its nuclear weapons.
Ballard and the navy reach an agreement – if he finds the subs and assesses the damage, with any time left over he can search for the Titanic, but his mission to find the nuclear submarines must remain a secret.
President Ronald Reagan is delighted when he hears of the Titanic expedition as it will show the Russians how sophisticated American technology is and approves the $5million dollar budget with the words: ‘Absolutely, let’s do it.’
On September 1, 1985, underwater explorer Robert Ballard located the world’s most famous shipwreck
August 24, 1985
Using the research vessel Knorr and his new navy-funded submersible Argo, Bob Ballard’s team has found and surveyed the Thresher and the Scorpion and established that both vessels’ reactors are safe and there is no sign of Russian involvement.
Although Ballard has only 12 days left to find the Titanic his secret mission has given him a valuable insight – as the subs sank, they left a trail of debris a mile long and Ballard suspects that the Titanic may have done the same.
He wrote later: ‘I shouldn’t be searching for the ship. I should be searching for the debris trail.’
The world’s Press knows about Ballard’s joint American-French expedition but, as so many Titanic expeditions have failed, their search is greeted with scepticism.
The OceanGate Titan submersible, seen above, imploded in June 2023 when carrying five passengers to the the sea-bed where the Titanic lies
September 1, 12.48am
Like Jack Grimm, Ballard’s team believe Joseph Boxhall made a mistake about the ship’s position and so is searching east of the Titanic officer’s co-ordinates.
On board the research vessel Knorr, Ballard is lying in his bunk while, in the control room, the crew are fighting to stay awake as they watch pictures of miles of mud from submersible Argo’s cameras.
Crew member Stu Harris suddenly points at the screen and says: ‘There’s something.’ He gets the camera to zoom in. His colleague Bill Lange says: ‘Wreckage.’
The ship’s cook runs to get Ballard and the control room crew run the videotape to show him an image of what is clearly one of the Titanic’s boilers.
Ballard wrote later: ‘I didn’t yelp or shout. In fact for a few seconds, I didn’t say anything. Then, totally at a loss for words, I simply kept repeating: ‘God damn. God damn’.’
For 26,802 days the Titanic had remained hidden from the world, until now.
A pocket was watch found in the belongings of a third class passenger named William Henry Allen in the Titanic wreckage
2.20am
The euphoria of the crew dies down and they realise it’s the exact time the Titanic sank and begin to congregate at the stern of the Knorr.
Ballard raises the flag of Harland & Wolff, the shipyard which built the ill-fated liner, and they observe a few moments of silence.
Further dives over the next few months reveal the Titanic is upright and in two sections lying 2,000ft apart, surrounded by a vast debris field containing items such as shoes, gloves, bottles of wine, reading glasses and a doll’s head – all poignant reminders of the 1,500 lives lost 73 years before.
DiCaprio and Winslet’s 1997 film grossed more than two billion US dollars worldwide, more than £1.5billion
Aftermath
Following the discovery of the Titanic, bizarre schemes to raise the wreck re-emerged. A British firm which helped salvage an Argentine submarine after the Falklands War suggested pumping 180,000 tons of Vaseline into the wreck. As it solidified, they claimed, it would become buoyant.
A haulage contractor from the West Midlands suggested, without irony, turning a vessel that had been sunk by an iceberg into an iceberg.
His plan was to use liquid nitrogen to encase the wreck in ice in the belief that this would cause it to float to the surface.
Although the Titanic was never raised, over the past 40 years numerous submersibles have retrieved artefacts, picking the debris field clean. More than a century after she slipped beneath the waves, the Titanic still lies broken and silent on the ocean floor.
Unfortunately, the once great liner is slowly disintegrating and it’s estimated that by 2050 it will be little more than a rusty stain on the seabed.
- Jonathan Mayo is the author of Titanic: Minute By Minute, published by Short Books.
