The Night Lives On (23 page)

Perhaps Ballard felt at this point that he had stretched his luck enough. The rest could wait until next year, when he planned to return. In any case, September 5 was the last day of filming. The
Knorr
turned for Woods Hole and a noisy welcome of Klaxons and air horns.

July 9, 1986, Bob Ballard headed out again. This time the French were gone—no money—and the Woods Hole crowd had the
Titanic
to themselves. The
Knorr
was also gone, replaced by
Atlantis II
, which could house and service a remarkable three-man submersible named
Alvin.
Built for the U.S. Navy in 1964,
Alvin
was originally designed to operate at a maximum depth of 8,000 feet but had been strengthened for 13,000 feet. This brought it within reach of the
Titanic.
Ballard no longer had to depend on robots and video; he could go down and see for himself.

Even more remarkable,
Alvin
carried its own robot,
Jason Jr.
About the size of a power lawn mower, “J. J.” was controlled by an operator inside
Alvin.
Linked to the submersible by a 200-foot tether,
Jason Jr.
could prowl the bottom, squirming into places too small or too dangerous for
Alvin
itself.

This curious armada reached the
Titanic’s
position on the evening of July 12, where it was joined by USS
Ortolan,
a Navy submarine rescue vessel. In case of accident,
Ortolan’s
services might prove vital; meanwhile she could play a useful role in fending off unwelcome visitors. Ballard was as determined as ever to
keep the exact location of the
Titanic
a secret.

About 8:30
A.M
., July 13, he squeezed into
Alvin
along with Ralph Hollis and Dudley Foster, his two most experienced submersible pilots. Casting off, they began the long descent to the bottom. To save power, they let gravity do the work, and the free-fall took two and a half hours; later, the trip back up would consume a similar amount of time. These daily “commutes” gradually became routine—tapes of classical music going down; soft rock coming up—but not this first morning. The sonar wasn’t working, and the batteries began to leak. When the threesome finally groped their way to the
Titanic
, it was time to return to the surface. Ballard did catch a brief glimpse of a towering wall of steel, making him the first human being actually to see the lost liner in 74 years.

For the next eleven days Ballard and his team continued their dives, selecting targets on the basis of thousands of photographs taken the previous summer. July 14, they made a five-hour inspection of the forepart of the ship…and immediately discovered that the wreck was in far worse shape than they had thought. The medium-range pictures taken by
Argo
and
Angus
in 1985 suggested a bow in pristine condition. Now, close-up, they saw that the steel hull was covered by rivulets of rust and that wood-boring mollusks had eaten almost every scrap of woodwork on the ship. What appeared to be deck planking in the pictures taken by the two robots was, on close inspection, just the caulking, which the mollusks had found unappetizing.

July 15, Ballard sent
Jason Jr.
down the grand staircase, hoping that the interior of the vessel, at least, had escaped the mollusks. No—they had been here too. Not
a trace of the magnificent paneling or of the ornate wall clock symbolizing Honor and Glory crowning Time.

But nature wasn’t always hostile. The same strong current that spread the mollusks throughout the hull actually burnished the nonferrous metal fittings of the ship. The brass porthole rims, copper pots from the kitchen, the bronze pedestal for the ship’s wheel—all gleamed as brightly as the day they were installed.

A new target was picked every day, as
Alvin
continued its probe: July 16, the bow (alas, no trace of the ship’s name)….July 17, the “tear area,” where the forepart of the
Titanic
broke off near the base of the third funnel….July 18, the debris held aft of the split—a mass of wreckage roughly the size of a city block.

On July 20, the stern was at last discovered—a separate, 250-foot section of the vessel lying about 2,000 feet south of the bow. It was twisted 180°, so that it now faced in the opposite direction from the rest of the vessel.

Next day, Ballard made a close inspection of this new find. In contrast to the bow, the stern was hideously smashed. It had slammed down on the ocean floor so hard that all the decks were pancaked together. The debris looked like a surrealistic garage sale: deck machinery, the head of a china doll, a spittoon, electric heaters, bottles of champagne, hardware from the wooden benches that once graced the poop deck, a patent leather evening shoe.

July 22, back to the bow to look for the famous 300-foot gash said to have been caused by the iceberg. The search was fruitless, confirming the suspicions of several shore-bound observers. What the iceberg really did to the
Titanic
probably can never be known. Too much
of the bow and the bottom are now buried in the mud. But it appears that seams opened in the steel plating by the initial blow did as much damage as any other holes caused by the berg itself.

The grand finale came on July 24, and for Ballard—ever the perfectionist—it was the best dive of all.
Alvin
was again on familiar territory, mostly around the bridge, and
Jason Jr.
performed flawlessly. “J. J.” hadn’t behaved all that well during the middle dives, and it was especially gratifying to see the little robot rise to the occasion. For his part, Ballard was willing to take risks on this last dive that he wouldn’t have taken earlier. He even sent “J. J.” through one of the windows on the forward Promenade Deck for a look inside the ship. Nothing of interest turned up, but technically the feat was a masterpiece.

Curiously, Ballard did not appear especially elated. Normally jaunty—even gung-ho—he seemed rather subdued. Perhaps he was simply tired from having participated in 8 out of 11 successful dives; a three-man submersible is no place for a rangy six-footer. More likely, his two companions in
Alvin
were right when they decided he was feeling the letdown that naturally came from knowing that his great adventure was over.

That evening the crew retrieved the transponders, stowed away their gear, and headed for home. Early on the morning of July 28 they arrived at Woods Hole, greeted by another salute of horns and Klaxons. They had done it again.

Some mysteries remain. Where are the funnels? All are missing. The first things to go and of comparatively light metal, they probably shied off on their own and have settled separately near the wreck. Where are the
boilers? Only 5 or 6 have been found in the debris. I think the other 23 or 24 also broke loose during the final plunge and now lie in the mud, possibly under the forepart of the ship. Where are the bodies? Happily, no trace of them has been found. Best explanation: the chemical content of salt water at this great depth has, over the years, consumed them completely. Despite the question marks, the whole effort remains one of the era’s great scientific achievements.

Why did this effort succeed when all the others failed? First of all, there was the equipment. It was not that the other expeditions cut corners; technology was simply moving so fast that Ballard enjoyed an extra edge.
Argo’s
side-scanning sonar, for instance, could cover as much ground in 20 days as previously took 12 years.

Money was another factor. Even a wealthy Texan couldn’t match the combined resources of the French government, the U.S. Navy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Geographic Society. The Office of Naval Research sank $2.8 million into
Argo
alone. It took $20,000 a day just to support
Atlantis II.
Altogether, it’s estimated that each expedition cost $6 million, with a possible total of $15 million if certain projected equipment were added.

Another advantage was Ballard’s team of assistants. Most were “old pros.” On the first trip Emory Kristof, a staff photographer with the
National Geographic
, had worked with Ballard for years. On the second, men like Ralph Hollis and Dudley Foster had long years of experience with
Alvin.

Finally there was Ballard himself. He not only had a Ph.D. in marine geology and geophysics plus a fistful of
scientific awards; he was also a diver with much practical experience in deep-sea submersibles. And he had been hooked on the
Titanic
for years. As early as 1978, according to an article appearing that year in
The Washington Post
, he was president of Seaonics International Ltd., “a firm formed with the express purpose of finding the
Titanic
.” His almost passionate interest makes odd reading of the accounts in
The New York Times
and elsewhere, stating that the
Titanic
was a “surprise yield” of sea trials conducted to test new underwater research equipment.

Add to these assets charm, brashness, showmanship, and the intuition that seems to guide successful inventors and explorers. As one colleague put it: “Bob has an extraordinary ability to find interesting things on the bottom.”

But his most striking quality was a sensitivity that verged on piety. It was there the night the
Titanic
was found and he held that brief service on the
Knorr’s
fantail. It was there in his frequent references to the lost “souls” below. And it was there at the press conference in Washington after the
Knorr’s
return. Even the hardest cases were moved by the closing lines of his formal statement:

The
Titanic
itself lies in 13,000 feet of water on a gently sloping alpine-like countryside overlooking a small canyon below.

Its bow faces north and the ship sits upright on the bottom. Its mighty stacks pointing upward.

There is no light at this great depth and little life can be found.

It is quiet and peaceful and a fitting place for
the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.

May it forever remain that way and may God bless these found souls.

True, the reference to “mighty stacks” was a bit of hyperbole. They were all gone. But Ballard’s reverence for the ship and what she stood for was very real indeed. His feelings emerged in a little incident that took place during the second expedition.
Angus
, used for still photography when
Alvin
rested, surfaced from one dive trailing a length of entangled steel cable. Clearly a part of the
Titanic
herself! Sliced into small pieces and sold to collectors, it would be worth a fortune. Onlookers crowded the rails, but Ballard stopped any gold rush. The
Titanic
must remain an unsullied memorial forever. He threw the cable back into the ocean.

A noble thought, but “forever” is a long, long while. Pompeii was once the scene of an enormous human tragedy, but now it is a fascinating dig. King Tutankhamen’s tomb was a sacred grave, but today it’s a tourist attraction. The same sort of fate must ultimately overtake the
Titanic
, and meanwhile who is to police the site? A resolution passed by the House of Representatives urges that the wreck be designated a maritime memorial, protected by international treaty, but the sea belongs to no one, and there are few funds for guarding a patch of ocean.

The danger lies not in man’s greed but in his curiosity. By now nearly everyone knows that no great treasure is tucked away somewhere in the
Titanic.
There is no evidence of a fortune in diamonds or gold. Her cargo manifest lists ordinary goods worth less than $500,000; the passengers’ jewelry was impressive but not
spectacular. Mrs. Widener’s fabulous pearls were saved. Nor is there any practical chance of raising the
Titanic
for commercial purposes.

But the lure of the ship remains, if only because “it is there.” Again, she is like Mount Everest. As new technology makes the
Titanic
ever more accessible, all that is left to protect her is a human sense of propriety. A congressional resolution designating the wreck as a “maritime memorial” is not enough.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter. Those who fall under the spell of that famous night will always have their own favorite vignette as a special memorial—perhaps the band, or the Strauses, or the eight Goodwins clinging together. And there will always be the memory of that last glimpse of the
Titanic
as she stood in 1912—stern high; her black silhouette pointing like an accusing finger at the stars; then gliding slowly out of sight, leaving her handful of lifeboats alone in the empty sea.

I
T IS IMPOSSIBLE TO
be very knowledgeable about the
Titanic
without studying the official records of the American and British investigations. This is no easy task. There are 181 witnesses and 2,111 pages of testimony. Some of it is ambiguous, inconsistent, and even contradictory.

Here is an attempt to sift the opinions of various witnesses on several of the more controversial points. After each witness’s name, source is indicated by page number in the Senate hearings and by question number in the British proceedings. These gleanings may prove useful, if only because they show how hard it is to corner that elusive quarry, the truth….

Weather at time of collision

“Perfectly clear…you could almost see the stars set.” (Boxhall, US 224, 231, 256) “Perfectly clear” (Boxhall, Br 15338-15340).

Very clear…“we could see the stars setting.”
(Lightoller, US 68). Perfectly clear and fine (Lightoller, Br 13523, 13528, 14194, 14196)

Fine night (Rowe, Br 17602)

“There was a haze right ahead…a haze on the water.” (Lee, Br 2401-2408)

Haze “nothing to talk about” (Fleet, Br 17253, 17266-17268, 17271, 17253, 17390, 17393)

Clear, starlit (Hitchens, Br 1191)

“We could not have wished for better weather.” (Lucas, Br 1405)

“Grand” (Poingdestre, Br 2780)

Haze (Shivers, Br 4700)

“A very clear night” (Symons, Br 11984)