1st September, 2025 in Maritime

The Discovery of Titanic: 40th Anniversary

By Eugene Nesmeyanov

It’s been exactly 40 years since the world was treated to blurry black-and-white visuals of the torn apart wreck of Titanic – for the first time since April 1912 (officially), thanks to new era technologies that the investigators of the disaster apparently never dreamed of in 1912, otherwise they would not have so zealously promoted the scenario of the ship’s hull not being broken, as if they were sure that it would never be found and photographed.

The 1985 discovery (or rediscovery) opened up a whole new chapter in the history of Titanic, its visible and tangible contemporary underwater stage centered in maritime archaeology, artefact recovery, tourist and cinematic dives accompanied by endless academic and amateur disputes armed with an arsenal of new, previously unavailable empirical data; ‘steel does not lie’, as the Titanic’s forensic students and rivet counters used to say. Steel itself indeed cannot lie, but for as long as this key piece of material evidence, this very last ‘silent witness’ – another metaphorical name for the wreck – is being perceived by the human senses and analyzed and interpreted by the human mind, discord and controversy will continue to blaze. At this point, studying the wreck of Titanic grows into the sphere of philosophy and epistemology, marking the limits of our cognitive abilities.

Back to the history of deep-water exploration: after 1985, it became a kind of tradition to compare some of the most notable Titanic expeditions to that of Ballard/Michel in order to emphasize the importance of their successors’ achievements – but only a few of them did manage to get close to this high status of being just as important or next in importance after the US–French discovery mission.

The following post-1985 expeditions can be listed as the most science-intensive, productive and receiving the greatest coverage in the media and literature:

1. The 1986 WHOI expedition led by Ballard minus the French, but with the use of the Institution’s human-occupied submersible Alvin and the newly developed remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason Jr. Extensive photography and videography of the main features of the wreck site, including the largest portions of the ship’s hull and its scattered debris. The first manned dive to the wreck in Alvin (13 July 1986) that allowed human eyes to observe Titanic directly for the first time since 1912; plus, what can be called the first cautious and tentative penetration into some of the interiors.

In 2023, the WHOI released the 81-minute-long uncut wreck dive footage recorded in July 1986, with some parts of this batch video never shown to the public before:

According to Dr. Dana Yoerger, a Senior Scientist at the WHOI and a member of the 1985 Titanic discovery cruise, the 1986 expedition played a key role in transforming deep-sea exploration by showcasing the capabilities and potential of underwater imaging and navigation systems[1].

2. The first large scale systematic recovery of the Titanic artefacts – around 2,000 of them – carried out by a joint American (Titanic Ventures Limited Partnership[2]/Westgate) and French (IFREMER) team in 1987. Having missed the opportunity to gain salvor-in-possession rights for himself, Ballard took a sharply critical stance and has since been categorically against the retrieval of the artefacts.

3. The first and last joint American-Canadian-Soviet multi-tasking expedition of 1991 aimed primarily at filming an IMAX documentary Titanica (directed by Stephen Low). The Soviet-designed, Finnish-built twin Mir submersibles made their successful debut on Titanic this year. The scientific program of the expedition included hydrobiological and geological studies, sampling and examination of the Titanic’s steel and rust. The first 3D images of the wreck were also captured.

4. The two expeditions ran by RMS Titanic, Inc. in conjunction with IFREMER et al. in 1996 and 1998. They were distinguished by further metallurgical and microbiological research, the first sonar scanning and the first real-time broadcast from the deck of the sunken liner, the recovery of the largest hull chunk dubbed The Big Piece (from the second attempt in August 1998) and other achievements.

5. A series of penetration dives performed by James Cameron using a squad of compact ROVs[3] launched from the Mir submersibles in 2001 and 2005. The most thorough survey of the accessible internal spaces of the wreck, both public and private rooms, including the deepest exploration ever made inside Titanic.

6. Another expedition took place during what was apparently the busiest wreck dive season in the history of Titanic exploration, that is, in the summer of 2005: this one was led by David Concannon, Richie Kohler and John Chatterton, co-funded by Kirk Wolfinger of Lone Wolf Documentary Group, again utilizing the Mir submersibles in the work on The History Channel TV special. The two overturned sections of the double bottom plus the third funnel deckhouse remains spotted on the eastern edge of the debris field were carefully documented and provided important clues to understanding the process of the hull failure.

2005 was likely the last year of the Mirs diving to Titanic, despite some loud statements heard on the Russian internet.

7. Perhaps the most technology and science intensive of all the Titanic expeditions conducted up to that point, and admittedly the second most important one after 1985: a large-scale real archaeological mapping of the entire wreck site completed by a group of organizations under the scientific leadership of the WHOI and NOAA assembled and financed by RMS Titanic, Inc. in 2010. The execution of this monumental task was entrusted to advanced and much more sophisticated descendants of the devices used by Ballard and Michel 25 years earlier. Ideally, this type of mapping should have been done in previous decades, but the level of technology was not sufficient back then. Anyway, this allowed us to obtain for the first time a topographically precise bird’s eye (or God’s eye) view of the whole area of scattered wreckage, which subsequently led to a new look at the process of the archaeological site formation.

8. The work initiated by RMS Titanic, Inc. was continued and developed in 2022 by the British deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd in cooperation with a factual television production company Atlantic Productions (which was filming a documentary for the National Geographic Channel). The wreck site was thoroughly laser captured within the frames of the underwater scanning project billed as the largest of its kind in the history of deep-sea mapping. As a result, the most detailed full-sized virtual 3D model of the remains of Titanic was produced, labelled the Digital Twin. Sadly, as can be seen from the mentioned National Geographic documentary, not all of these minute details proved accurate.

It was proclaimed that the Digital Twin is created for the benefit of a wide public, but as of now, it is not available to all interested researchers – the situation will hopefully change in the future.

Data obtained by RMS Titanic, Inc. on their last to date expedition (in 2024) allows them to generate their own 3D model of the same or even better quality, so it is possible we will see another Digital Twin in due course.

In just 40 years, humanity has made a huge leap forward in the study of Titanic, both the wreck and the events that led to the current sad condition of the sunken vessel; from descriptive archaeology, extensive photographic and video documentation of exterior and interiors to microbiology of the ship’s metal structures, from artefact recovery shedding light on individual items and sometimes even on their former owners to a comprehensive forensic analysis of the entire wreck site.

While the present author has doubts about the possibility of any major or revolutionary ‘titanicological’ discoveries being made in the near future, it will nevertheless be interesting to see what else Titanic can bring us in the coming years. Its ability to surprise even after more than a century is one of the main factors fueling the interest of millions of people all over the world in this ‘Grand Old Lady’ of the deep.

The author wishes to express special gratitude to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and OceanGate Expeditions

Header image © 2021 OceanGate Expeditions

[1] Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution releases rare video footage from the first submersible dives to RMS Titanic. https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/woods-hole-oceanographic-institution-releases-rare-video-footage-from-the-first-submersible-dives-to-rms-titanic/

[2] The predecessor of RMS Titanic, Inc.

[3] One of the ‘X-bots’ was unfortunately lost in the cooling room of the Turkish Baths on F Deck.