2023-06-19 23:21:46
BBC News World newsroom
June 19, 2023
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Caption,
The Titanic was 269 meters long. Between crew and passengers, she housed about 3,300 people.
Authorities in the United States and Canada are working around the clock to try to find the submersible that disappeared with 5 people on board while making a dive to visit the wreckage of the Titanic.
The boat disappeared on Sunday morning, 1 hour and 45 minutes after starting the dive.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operates the missing submersible, said in a statement that it is “exploring and mobilizing all options” to bring the crew back to safety.
The company reported that it has received “extensive assistance” from “various government agencies and specialized deep-water companies” in its efforts to re-establish contact with the submersible.
Where is the Titanic and how deep
The remains of the Titanic are located in the North Atlantic Ocean, about 600 km southeast of the Newfoundland coast, in Canada, and about 3,800 meters deep.
They are divided into two parts, with the bow and stern separated by about 800 meters.
A huge field of debris surrounds the two parts of the boat.
The remains are south of the Grand Bank of Newfoundland, in an area known as Titanic Canyon, a name given to it at the suggestion of marine geologist Alan Ruffmann in 1991.
In its time, the Titanic became the largest passenger ship in the world and became infamous because between the night of April 14 and the early morning of April 15, 1912, it sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, in the United Kingdom. towards New York, in the USA, after colliding with an iceberg.
More than 1,500 people died in the tragedy.
The story of how his remains were found in 1985 became known thanks to the declassification of some secret documents by the US government.
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How they found the remains of the Titanic
Robert Ballard, an intelligence officer who had participated in secret missions for the US Navy, was one of those who dared to search for the remains of the Titanic in the 1980s.
The US Navy agreed to give him the means to search for the ship, but only if he used those same resources to find two US nuclear submarines that had sunk in the Atlantic in the 1960s.
The secret Franco-American mission aboard the Knorr research ship began in August 1985.
The excuse of the search for the Titanic was perfect so that the Russians and the press would not suspect that they were looking for the sunken submarines.
The first part of the mission was successful. Ballard found the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion submarines.
Ballard’s problem is that he only had 12 days to find the Titanic, since the boat he was using had already been rented by other people.
In the end, with the experience he gained searching for the Scorpion, Ballard found the Titanic in just 8 days, on September 1, 1985, thanks to the Argo submersible, which was equipped with cameras that could transmit images to the surface.
Ballard recalled in an interview with the BBC in 2021 that they experienced a moment of euphoria when they spotted the wreckage of the ship, but that happiness quickly faded.
“It dawned on us that we were dancing on someone’s grave,” Ballard recalled.
“We feel ashamed.”
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