Twenty fifth anniversary of Titanic discovery

Brian Handwerk

The images of Titanic in late August are among the first results of the ongoing Expedition Titanic. Its goals: to use acoustic imaging, sonar, and 3-D video to virtually preserve Titanic in its current state and to help determine just how far gone the shipwreck is and how long it might last.

Due to recent hurricane activity, the expedition crew is currently docked in St. John’s, Newfoundland, some 560 kilometers from Titanic’s North Atlantic resting place—but the team is eager to get back to work.

“What we have witnessed, so far, has been nothing but extraordinary,” Chris Davino, CEO of Premier Exhibitions, Inc., said in a press statement.

“We are anxious to return to the site and continue this groundbreaking expedition,” added Davino, whose company’s RMS Titanic, Inc., division organized the expedition with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Well deck, ill preserved

A National Geographic Society-funded team led by ocean explorer Robert Ballard rediscovered the shipwreck in 1985.

Pictures taken since then show a wreck beset by metal-eating life-forms, powerful currents, and possibly even human negligence, suggesting Titanic could be vanishing for good, scientists say.

Already explorers have documented caved-in roofs, weakening decks, a stern perhaps on the edge of collapse, and the disappearance of Titanic’s crow’s nest—from which lookout Frederick Fleet spotted history’s most infamous iceberg.

Rusticles form as microbes eat away at Titanic and form self-contained, icicle-like biological communities.

By 1996 there were some 650 tons of rusticles on the outside of Titanic’s bow section alone, according to estimates by microbiologist Roy Cullimore, a microbiologist and veteran Titanic explorer. Since then rusticles have continued to grow both inside and outside the wreck.

Window on Titanic decay

“Everyone has their own opinion” as to how long Titanic will remain more or less intact, research specialist Bill Lange, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said.

“Some people think the bow will collapse in a year or two,” Lange said.

“But others say it’s going to be there for hundreds of years.” So far the expedition’s pictures show that the two major sections of Titanic’s hull—the ship split in two before sinking—are whole.

Expedition Titanic’s data should help experts predict how long the wreck will remain relatively stable. “We’re trying to bring the actual hard data to the people who can make those determinations,” Lange said.

Strolling into oblivion

Built in Belfast, U.K., the 270-meter-long luxury liner was the world’s largest passenger ship when it launched in 1912. On its maiden voyage, Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1,500 people.

To Robert Ballard, who found Titanic 25 years ago Wednesday, the shipwreck site should remain undisturbed as a “sacred grave.” Instead, salvagers, tourists, and filmmakers have “turned her into a freak show at the county fair,” he’s said.

Titanic unbound

The next leg of Expedition Titanic will retrieve hard evidence of corrosion—steel test platforms that look something like mini-stepladders. First deployed in 1998, the platforms have endured the same destructive conditions as Titanic itself. Because the scientists know precisely how thick the platforms were at deployment, they allow researchers to gauge exactly how fast metal degrades at the Titanic site. “Basically we look and see how much steel is left on them,” Cullimore, the microbiologist, said. The estimated rate of decay should allow scientists to better predict just how long Titanic will remain fairly intact.

Titanic mast, unmoored

Rusticles may infest the interior of the mast, which might completely collapse in the next year or two, speculated Cullimore, founder of Regina, Canada-based Droycon Bioconcepts, Inc., a biotechnology company.

Already the foremast is a symbol of Titanic’s inevitable decline.

On an early 1990s dive, P.H. Nargeolet, co-leader of Expedition Titanic, saw that the crow’s nest—previously seen still attached to the forward mast—had disappeared altogether, apparently damaged to the point where it snapped off and fell to an as yet unidentified location.

- National Geographic