The real fates of the passengers of the Titanic. The mystery of the Titanic: what happened to the bodies of people who failed to escape in the shipwreck. Rare photos taken after the Titanic sank

It is difficult to find a person who does not know the sad story of the sinking of the Titanic. In the more than one hundred years since its collapse, many myths and theories have emerged about why it happened. Some people think that the speed of the ship was too high, which is unacceptable in that dangerous part of the Atlantic Ocean, others blame the weather, and still others believe that this was nothing more than a coincidence and bad luck. But only people who managed to survive the disaster can tell what really happened on that fateful day. Today we will tell you about the people who were able to escape during the world's most famous shipwreck.

April 10, 1912 cruise ship The Titanic set off on its first and, as it turned out, last voyage. There were more than 2 thousand passengers on board the ship, while another thousand people came to say goodbye to relatives before departure. On the night of April 14-15, a huge ship crashed into an iceberg and sank. Only 7 hundred passengers managed to survive.

Orphans of the Titanic

Michel, 3, and Edmond Navratil, 2, were on the ship with their father under the false names Louis and Otto. Their father, also named Michel, described himself as a widower. In fact, he divorced his wife and took her children away from her without even telling her. When it became clear that the ship was sinking, Michel put the children in the last lifeboat. These are the words he said to them: “My children, when your mother comes for you (which she certainly will), tell her that I have always loved her, and still do. Tell her I expected her to follow us so that we could all live happily together in a free new world.” Since the children's father was unable to escape and they were too young and did not speak English, it was very difficult for their relatives to find them. The boys' mother saw their photo in the newspaper only a month later and was reunited with them on May 16. How did their lives turn out next? Michel married a girl from his college, trained as a psychologist, and remained in Montpellier all his life. He died at the age of 92.

Edmond also married and trained as an architect. During World War II he joined the French army and died at the age of 43.

Unsinkable Molly

The name Mrs. Margaret Brown was known long before the Titanic sank. She became one of the first American women to run for political office, eight years before women were officially allowed to do so.

While in Europe, she received a message about her grandson's illness and therefore decided to immediately come to New York. It was precisely because the decision was made in haste that few people knew that Margaret was on the Titanic. After the ship crashed into an iceberg, Margaret found herself in rescue boat No. 6, where she had to lead the people, since the person who was actually in charge of it turned out to be emotionally unstable. Back on Carpathia, Margaret was chosen to chair the survivors' committee and managed to raise nearly $10,000 for those in need. She did not leave the ship until she was sure that all passengers had received medical care, which they needed.

Margaret Brown received a medal for helping the surviving passengers of the Titanic. She died of a brain tumor when she was 65 years old.

Another interesting fact about Margaret Brown is that no one ever called her Molly. The name was invented in Hollywood.

The girl who survived three shipwrecks

Violet Constance Jessop worked as a stewardess on the White Star cruise ships. She was on board the Olympic when it hit the Hawk in 1911, then on the Titanic, and during the First World War she was aboard the Britannic, which sank after a mine explosion.

Despite surviving shipwrecks, Violetta continued to work on ships, and it was only in 1950 that she moved to Great Ashfield in Suffolk. Her total experience on ships is 42 years. Violet Jessop died of heart failure when she was 83 years old.

The actress who survived the disaster starred in the film wearing the same clothes she was wearing that day

Actress Dorothy Gibson was in Paris with her mother when they decided to buy first class tickets to the Titanic. On April 14, Dorothy was playing bridge with the bankers and was walking to her cabin at approximately 11:40 p.m. when she heard a bang. Dorothy, along with her mother and bankers, ended up in lifeboat No. 7, which turned out to be half empty. But the boat also began to sink due to a leak. Luckily, they were able to cover the hole with clothing.

Upon returning to New York, Dorothy was determined to star in a film about the shipwreck. She wrote the script and even acted in the same clothes she was wearing during the crash. The film was shot a month after the tragedy.

Soon after, Dorothy decided to end her film career and began working at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1928, she moved to Paris with her mother. During World War II, the actress lived in Italy, where she was charged with anti-fascist views and sent to San Vittore prison, but Dorothy managed to escape. She spent the rest of her life in Paris and died at the age of 65.

The guy who was able to walk again after frostbite

Richard Norris Williams was on the ship with his father, and both of them remained very calm during the crash. Williams even wanted to go to the bar, but the door was closed. So they decided to go to the gym to escape the cold. When all the people were in the water, Richard saw the boat and managed to get into it. His father could not survive because a steam pipe fell on him. The passengers who were able to survive in that boat were transferred to lifeboat No. 14.

But there were victims. It turned out that Richard had frostbitten legs, and already on board the Carpathia, doctors advised him to amputate them. However, the man refused. Richard was later able to recover and even continue his tennis career. He won a gold medal in the Olympics, fought in World War I, and became a successful banker in Philadelphia. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Historical Society for 22 consecutive years. Richard died of emphysema when he was 77 years old.

The youngest passenger who remembers the crash

Eva Miriam Hart boarded the Titanic at the age of 7 with her parents. She says her mother barely slept at night because she suffered from anxiety and had a bad feeling about swimming. When the ship began to sink, her father rushed into the cabin, wrapped Eva in a blanket and put her and her mother in a lifeboat, telling her goodbye to hold her mother’s hand and behave. The father's body was never found.

Eva became a singer and one of the organizers of the Conservative Party in Great Britain. She led a very active life and described the day of the disaster in detail. Eva died when she was 91 years old.

The manager who jumped ship

Joseph Bruce Ismay was Chairman of White Star Line and actually responsible for the construction of the Titanic. He managed to escape by boat. In his testimony, Joseph said that in the last minutes, when the Titanic sank under the water, he turned away because he could not look at it.

After the crash, Ismay was severely criticized by the press. He was accused of fleeing the ship while women and children were still on board. He later donated a lot of money to the Dead Seamen's Fund and the Trade Fund during the First World War.

Ismay stayed away from everyone all his life and died at the age of 74 from thrombosis.

Rare photos taken after the Titanic sank

The surviving passengers of the Titanic aboard the Carpathia.

Survivors aboard the Carpathia.

A crowd awaits the Carpathia, the ship that carried survivors of the Titanic. New York, April 1912.

Announcement of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

The legendary maiden voyage of the Titanic was supposed to be the main one solemn event 1912, but instead it became the most tragic in history. An absurd collision with an iceberg, an unorganized evacuation of people, almost one and a half thousand dead - this was the only voyage of the liner.

History of the ship

Banal rivalry served as the impetus for the start of construction of the Titanic. The idea of creating a liner better than that of a competing company came to the mind of the owner of the British shipping company White Star Line, Bruce Ismay. This happened after their main rival, the Cunard Line, launched its largest ship at that time, the Lusitania, in 1906.

Construction of the liner began in 1909. About three thousand specialists worked on its creation, and over seven million dollars were spent. The last work was completed in 1911, and at the same time the long-awaited launch of the liner took place.

Many people, both rich and poor, sought to get the coveted ticket for this flight, but no one suspected that just a few days after departure the world community would be discussing only one thing - how many people died on the Titanic.

Despite the fact that the White Star Line managed to surpass its competitor in shipbuilding, the subsequent damage to the company's reputation. In 1934 it was completely absorbed by the Cunard Line.

The first voyage of the “unsinkable”

The ceremonial departure of the luxury ship became the most anticipated event of 1912. It was very difficult to get tickets, and they were sold out long before the scheduled flight. But as it turned out later, those who exchanged or resold their tickets were very lucky, and they did not regret not being on the ship when they found out how many people died on the Titanic.

First and last flight largest airliner White Star Line was assigned to April 10, 1912. The ship departed at 12 o'clock local time, and just 4 days later, on April 14, 1912, a tragedy occurred - an ill-fated collision with an iceberg.

Tragic prediction of the sinking of the Titanic

The fictitious story that later turned out to be prophetic was written by British journalist William Thomas Stead in 1886. With his publication, the author wanted to draw public attention to the need to revise navigation rules, namely, he demanded to ensure the number of seats in ship boats corresponding to the number of passengers.

A few years later Stead returned to a similar theme in new history about a shipwreck in Atlantic Ocean which occurred as a result of a collision with an iceberg. The death of people on the liner occurred due to the lack of the required number of lifeboats.

How many people died on the Titanic: composition of those who drowned and those who survived

More than 100 years have passed since the most discussed shipwreck of the 20th century, but each time during the next one, new circumstances of the tragedy are revealed and updated lists of those killed and survived as a result of the sinking of the liner appear.

This table gives us comprehensive information. The ratio of how many women and children died on the Titanic speaks most of all about the disorganization of the evacuation. The percentage of surviving representatives of the fairer sex even exceeds the number of surviving children. As a result of the shipwreck, 80% of the men died, most of them simply did not have enough space in the lifeboats. High percentage of deaths among children. These were mostly members of the lower class who were unable to get on deck in time for evacuation.

How were people from high society saved? Class discrimination on the Titanic

As soon as it became clear that the ship would not remain on the water for long, the captain of the Titanic, Edward John Smith, gave the order to put women and children into lifeboats. At the same time, access to the deck for third class passengers was limited. Thus, advantage in salvation was given to representatives of high society.

Big number dead people became the reason why investigations and legal disputes have not stopped for 100 years. All experts note that class affiliation also took place on board during the evacuation. At the same time, the number of surviving crew members was greater than that of the III class. Instead of helping the passengers into the boats, they were the first to escape.

How was the evacuation of people from the Titanic carried out?

The unorganized evacuation of people is still considered the main cause of mass death. The fact of how many people died during the sinking of the Titanic indicates a complete lack of any control over this process. The 20 lifeboats could accommodate at least 1,178 people. But at the beginning of the evacuation, they were launched into the water half filled, and not only with women and children, but also with entire families, and even with lap dogs. As a result, the boats' occupancy rate was only 60%.

The total number of ship passengers excluding crew members was 1,316, meaning the captain had the ability to save 90% of the passengers. III class people were able to get onto the deck only towards the end of the evacuation, and therefore even more crew members were eventually saved. Numerous investigations into the causes and facts of the shipwreck confirm that responsibility for how many people died on the Titanic lies entirely with the captain of the liner.

Memoirs of eyewitnesses of the tragedy

All those who were pulled from the sinking ship into the lifeboat received an unforgettable experience from the first and last voyage of the Titanic. The facts, the number of deaths, and the causes of the disaster were obtained thanks to their testimony. The memoirs of some of the surviving passengers were published and will forever remain in history.

In 2009, Millvina Dean, the last woman to survive the Titanic passengers, passed away. She was only two and a half months old at the time of the shipwreck. Her father died on the sinking liner, and her mother and brother escaped with her. And although the memories of that scary night the woman did not remember the disaster made such a deep impression on her that she forever refused to visit the site of the shipwreck and never watched artistic and documentaries about the Titanic.

In 2006, at an English auction where about 300 exhibits from the Titanic were presented, the memoirs of Ellen Churchill Candy, who was one of the passengers on the ill-fated voyage, were sold for 47 thousand pounds.

The published memoirs of another Englishwoman, Elizabeth Shutes, helped in drawing up a real picture of the disaster. She was a governess for one of the first class passengers. In her memoirs, Elizabeth stated that the lifeboat on which she was evacuated had only 36 people, that is, only half of the total number of places available.

Indirect causes of the shipwreck

All sources of information about the Titanic indicate a collision with an iceberg as the main cause of its death. But as it turned out later, this event was accompanied by several indirect circumstances.

During the study of the causes of the disaster, part of the ship's hull was raised to the surface from the bottom of the ocean. A piece of steel was tested, and scientists proved that the metal from which the hull of the airliner was made was of poor quality. This was another circumstance of the crash and the reason for how many people died on the Titanic.

The perfectly smooth surface of the water did not allow the iceberg to be detected in time. Even a small wind would be enough for the waves hitting the ice to detect it before the collision occurred.

The unsatisfactory work of the radio operators, who did not inform the captain in time about the ice drifting in the ocean, the too high speed of movement, which did not allow the ship to quickly change course - all these reasons together led to the tragic events on the Titanic.

The sinking of the Titanic is a terrible shipwreck of the 20th century

A fairy tale that turned into pain and horror - this is how one can characterize the first and last voyage of the Titanic. True story The disaster even after a hundred years is the subject of controversy and investigation. The death of almost one and a half thousand people with unfilled lifeboats still remains inexplicable. Every year, more and more new reasons for the shipwreck are named, but not one of them is capable of returning lost human lives.

Of the 2,224 people on board ocean liner Titanic, only 706 people survived. Among them were selfless heroes, and those who cared only about their own salvation, and those who survived by miracle, and those who could not live on, remembering the hundreds of dead. The tragedy changed the fates of not only those who were on the ship, but also those who were forced to wait on land for their loved ones.

Lifeboat problem

Available on the ship life-saving equipment could only accommodate 1,178 people. The Titanic had 20 lifeboats - to the standard set of 16 lifeboats of two types of capacity (for 65 and 40 people), four collapsible lifeboats were added for 47 people each.

The managing director of the White Star Line shipping company, Joseph Bruce Ismay, was responsible for the construction of the Titanic. It was he who decided not to place extra lifeboats on board the ship for reasons of economy. Money. These boats could have saved 1,500 lives - almost all who died.

This circumstance is aggravated by the fact that Ismay, despite the captain’s order “women and children first,” took his place in the boat on time and was able to survive the disaster. On the ship "Carpathia", which carried 706 people on board, Ismay settled in a separate cabin, while the rest slept on the floor and tables.

However, the crew members did not even manage to launch all the boats that were on the ship. One boat was washed overboard, the other floated upside down. It is also striking that most of the boats were no more than two-thirds full. This happened for many reasons.

At first, passengers did not want to take seats in the lifeboats because they thought it was safer to remain on the Titanic. Later, when it became obvious that the death of the ship was inevitable, the boats were filled better.

In one of the boats, designed for 65 people, only 12 were saved. There is still controversy about this case. Wealthy passenger Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon and his wife Lucille - the fashion designer who coined the word "chic" - escaped by paying seven crew members five pounds each to board the boat and row. According to Gordon, it was an act of generosity. But some believe that he hired sailors to sail away from the sinking ship as quickly as possible, thereby depriving the rest of the chance of salvation.

Among the passengers there were those whose heroism was not questioned. 17-year-old Jack Thayer helped others climb into boats, but refused to board himself. When the ship sank, the boy dove into the icy water. He survived by climbing onto an overturned boat. He returned home as a celebrity, the whole country was talking about him. Thayer was one of ten people who committed suicide after the tragedy.

The price of salvation

Another circumstance of the tragedy is that the bulk of the surviving passengers traveled first and second class. Thus, of the 143 women who traveled first class (tickets costing £875), four died. At the same time, the three ladies themselves refused to leave the ship. Of those who paid £12 for third-class cabins, more than half the passengers died. Of the crew members, no more than 25% of the people were able to survive. Signs of such social stratification were observed after their deaths. The ship, which was sent by the White Star Line to search for the dead, recovered the bodies only of those who sailed first class. The rest were buried directly at sea.

During the investigation into the circumstances of the sinking of the Titanic, it turned out that many third class passengers died due to their own indecision and ignorance in English. So, some were afraid to go up to the boat deck, considering it unsafe; others argued with each other and could not decide what to do.

The language barrier played a significant role in this - many passengers did not speak English, and therefore could not understand each other or even read the signs on the signs leading to the upper decks.

When some managed to get out onto the boat deck, almost all of the Titanic's boats had already been launched. There were only a few collapsible boats left on deck, which the crew intended to lower last. It was in them that the third class passengers who managed to escape from the holds were saved. Those who found themselves in the water died from hypothermia almost instantly, since the water temperature did not exceed minus two degrees Celsius.

Arrival in New York

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the radio operators of the Carpathia received a distress signal from the Titanic. Other ships either did not respond to calls for help or were too far away. Having learned about the situation on the Titanic, the captain of the Carpathia, Arthur Rostron, immediately gave the order to proceed to the site of the sinking liner. To reach maximum speed, the heating on the entire ship had to be turned off.

On the morning of April 15, after the last surviving Titanic passenger boarded the Carpathia, the ship headed for New York. Three days passed before the ship reached its destination. During this time, a message was transmitted from the ship about what had happened. As a result, the press began to publish rumors that the Titanic was being towed to the New York pier. When it became known for sure that most of the people on the Titanic had died, crowds of people began to come to the White Star Line offices around the world in the hope of finding out the details. It was only on April 17 that the unrefined list of dead and missing was announced. And the final list was published only four days after the Carpathia arrived in New York.

About 40 thousand people greeted the Carpathia in the port of New York. Many charitable organizations supplied people going down to the pier with warm clothes, medicines, and offered to help them get to home, hospital or hotel. Many were heading home to relatives. Wealthy passengers rented entire trains. And the crew members were placed in the passenger cabins of another ship that belonged to the White Star Line.

Of course, among the crowd that greeted the Carpathia there were also reporters eager to tell the stories of the surviving passengers. Some even managed to board the Carpathia before it docked.

Until December 1987, when the Philippine ferry Dona Paz sank, the sinking of the Titanic remained the deadliest maritime disaster in history. Peaceful time. Informally, it is the most famous disaster of the 20th century.

1496 people died in this disaster. The majority of people died from hypothermia, since the temperature ocean water was −2°С. An hour and a half after the Titanic was completely submerged, the steamship Carpathia arrived at the scene of the tragedy and picked up the survivors in the boats. 712 passengers and crew members were saved.

Frederick Fleet, the lookout on the Titanic who first spotted the iceberg. He survived and later participated in the first and second world wars. In 1965 he committed suicide.

People wait for news outside the White Star Line offices in New York.

April 1912. Titanic boats at the White Star Line pier in New York.

April 18, 1912. People wait for the arrival of the steamship Carpathia, carrying survivors of the Titanic disaster, in New York.

Surviving crew members, front row: Ernest Archer, Frederick Fleet, Walter Perkis, George Symons and Frederick Clench. Second row: Arthur Bright, George Hogg, John Moore, Frank Osman and Henry Etches.

A crowd in Devonport listens to survivors of the Titanic tragedy.

The Secretary of the National Union of Sailors and Firemen pays a monetary reward to the surviving members of the Titanic crew.

Relatives wait on the railway platform for survivors of the Titanic disaster to arrive in Southampton.

April 29, 1912. Relatives wait for survivors of the Titanic disaster on the shore in Southampton.

29 April 1912: Relatives greet survivors of the Titanic disaster upon their return to Southampton.

April 29, 1912. The stewards who survived the Titanic disaster await interrogation by the commission investigating the causes of the accident.

April 29, 1912: The four surviving members of the Titanic's crew, the Pascoe brothers, returned to Southampton.

Four-year-old Michel and two-year-old Edmond Navratil. They are known as the Titanic orphans - Louis and Lola. They sailed on the Titanic with their father M. Navratil, who died during the disaster. Because the children were toddlers and did not speak English, they could not identify themselves. French-speaking first class passenger Margaret Hayes took charge of the boys until their mother, Marcel, recognized them from photographs from newspaper articles. Marcel traveled to New York and was reunited with her sons on May 16, 1912.

Louis and Lola.

Radio operator Harold Thomas Coffin before a Senate committee at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

In this November 1912 photograph, a nurse holds newborn Lucien P. Smith. Lucien's parents, Heloise and Lucien P. Smith Sr., were married in February 1912 and were returning on the Titanic from honeymoon. She was eighteen, he was twenty-four; she was saved, he died. On board the Carpathia, Eloise met another surviving Titanic passenger, Robert Williams Daniel. It is worth noting that Daniel was one of those men who was saved not because he got into a boat from the deck of a ship, but because he jumped into the water and swam to an already lowered boat.

They married in August 1914, although nine years later, in 1923, they divorced. In the same 1923, Eloise married for the third time, and Robert married for the second (but not for the last - both of them were married three times). In 1935, he was elected senator of the state of Virginia and served in this position until his death in 1940, and his son from his third marriage, also Robert Williams Daniel, was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1972 and served there until 1983 . Robert Jr. was four years old when his father died, and he himself lived almost to the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic - he died on February 4, 2012.

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the most modern at that time passenger airliner The Titanic, making its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, collided with an iceberg and soon sank. At least 1,496 people died, 712 passengers and crew were rescued.

The Titanic disaster very quickly became overgrown with a mass of legends and speculation. At the same time, for several decades, the place where the lost ship rested remained unknown.

The main difficulty was that the location of the death was known with very low accuracy - we were talking about an area 100 kilometers in diameter. Considering that the Titanic sank in an area where the depth of the Atlantic is several kilometers, finding the ship was very problematic.

Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

The bodies of the dead were going to be raised with dynamite

Immediately after the shipwreck, relatives of wealthy passengers who died in the disaster came up with a proposal to organize an expedition to raise the ship. The initiators of the search wanted to bury their loved ones and, to be honest, return the valuables that had sunk to the bottom along with their owners.

The decisive attitude of the relatives came across a categorical verdict from experts: the technology for searching and lifting the Titanic from great depths simply did not exist at that time.

Then a new proposal was received - to drop dynamite charges to the bottom at the supposed site of the disaster, which, according to the authors of the project, were supposed to provoke the ascent of the corpses of the dead from the bottom. This dubious idea also did not find support.

Started in 1914 First World War postponed the search for the Titanic for many years.

Interior of the veranda for first class passengers of the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Nitrogen and ping pong balls

They started talking about searching for the liner again only in the 1950s. At the same time, proposals began to appear for possible ways lifting it from freezing the shell with nitrogen to filling it with millions of ping-pong balls.

In the 1960-1970s, several expeditions were sent to the area where the Titanic sank, but all of them were unsuccessful due to insufficient technical preparation.

In 1980 Texas oil tycoon John Grimm financed the preparation and conduct of the first large expedition to search for the Titanic. But, despite the availability of the most modern equipment for underwater searches, his expedition ended in failure.

Played a major role in the discovery of the Titanic ocean explorer and part-time US Navy officer Robert Ballard. Ballard, who was involved in improving small unmanned underwater vehicles, became interested in underwater archeology and, in particular, the mystery of the Titanic sinkhole back in the 1970s. In 1977, he organized the first expedition to search for the Titanic, but it ended in failure.

Ballard was convinced that finding the ship was only possible with the help of the latest deep-sea bathyscaphes. But getting these at your disposal was very difficult.

Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Doctor Ballard's Secret Mission

In 1985, having failed to achieve results during an expedition in French research vessel Le Suroît, Ballard moved onto the American ship R/V Knorr, with which he continued the search for the Titanic.

As Ballard himself said many years later, the expedition, which became historic, began with a secret deal concluded between him and the command of the Navy. The researcher really wanted to get the Argo deep-sea research vehicle for his work, but the American admirals did not want to pay for the work of equipment to search for some historical rarity. The ship R/V Knorr and the Argo apparatus were supposed to carry out a mission to examine the sites of the sinking of two American nuclear submarines, Scorpion and Thresher, which sank back in the 1960s. This mission was classified, and the US Navy needed someone who could not only carry out necessary work, but will also be able to keep them secret.

Ballard's candidacy was ideal - he was quite famous, and everyone knew about his passion for finding the Titanic.

The researcher was offered: he could get the Argo and use it to search for the Titanic if he first found and examined the submarines. Ballard agreed.

Only the leadership of the US Navy knew about the Scorpion and Thrasher; for the rest, Robert Ballard simply explored the Atlantic and looked for the Titanic.

Robert Ballard. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

"Comet tail" at the bottom

He coped with the secret mission brilliantly, and on August 22, 1985, he was able to again begin the search for the liner that died in 1912.

None of the most advanced technology would have ensured his success if not for the previously accumulated experience. Ballard, while examining the sinkhole sites of the submarines, noticed that they left at the bottom a kind of “comet tail” of thousands of fragments. This was due to the fact that the hulls of the boats were destroyed when sank to the bottom due to enormous pressure.

The scientist knew that during the dive on the Titanic, steam boilers exploded, which meant that the liner should have left a similar “comet tail.”

It was this trace, and not the Titanic itself, that was easier to detect.

On the night of September 1, 1985, the Argo apparatus found small debris at the bottom, and at 0:48 the camera recorded the Titanic’s boiler. Then we managed to discover bow vessel.

It was found that the bow and stern of the broken liner were located at a distance of about 600 meters from each other. At the same time, both the stern and the bow were seriously deformed when sank to the bottom, but the bow was still better preserved.

Ship layout. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

House for underwater inhabitants

The news of the discovery of the Titanic became a sensation, although many experts hastened to question it. But in the summer of 1986, Ballard carried out a new expedition, during which he not only described in detail the ship at the bottom, but also made the first dive to the Titanic on a manned deep-sea vehicle. After this, the last doubts were dispelled - the Titanic was discovered.

The liner's final resting place is located at a depth of 3,750 meters. In addition to the two main parts of the liner, tens of thousands of smaller debris are scattered along the bottom over an area of 4.8×8 km: parts of the ship’s hull, remains of furniture and interior decoration, dishes, and personal belongings of people.

The wreckage of the ship is covered with multi-layered rust, the thickness of which is constantly growing. In addition to multi-layered rust, 24 species of invertebrate animals and 4 species of fish live on and near the hull. Of these, 12 species of invertebrates clearly gravitate towards shipwrecks, eating metal and wooden structures. The interior of the Titanic was almost completely destroyed. The wooden elements were consumed by deep sea worms. The decks are covered with a layer of shellfish, and stalactites of rust hang from many of the metal elements.

A wallet recovered from the Titanic. Photo: www.globallookpress.com

Are all the people left with shoes left?

During the 30 years that have passed since the discovery of the ship, the Titanic has been rapidly deteriorating. His current state such that there can be no talk of any lifting of the ship. The ship will forever remain at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

There is still no consensus on whether human remains were preserved on the Titanic and around it. According to the prevailing version, all human bodies completely decomposed. However, information periodically appears that some researchers have nevertheless stumbled upon the remains of the dead.

But James Cameron, director of the famous film "Titanic", whose personal account includes over 30 dives to the liner on the Russian Mir deep-sea submersibles, is sure of the opposite: “We saw shoes, boots and other footwear at the site of the sunken ship, but our team has never encountered human remains.”

Things from the Titanic are a profitable product

Since the discovery of the Titanic by Robert Ballard, about two dozen expeditions have been carried out to the ship, during which several thousand objects were raised to the surface, ranging from the personal belongings of passengers to a piece of plating weighing 17 tons.

The exact number of objects recovered from the Titanic is impossible to establish today, since with the improvement of underwater technology, the ship has become a favorite target of “black archaeologists” who are trying to obtain rarities from the Titanic by any means.

Robert Ballard, lamenting this, remarked: “The ship is still a noble old lady, but not the same lady I saw in 1985.”

Items from the Titanic have been sold at auction for many years and are in great demand. So, in the year of the 100th anniversary of the disaster, in 2012, hundreds of items went under the hammer, including a cigar box that belonged to the captain of the Titanic ($40 thousand), a life jacket from the ship ($55 thousand), and a master key first class steward ($138 thousand). As for the jewelry from the Titanic, their value is measured in millions of dollars.

At one time, having discovered the Titanic, Robert Ballard intended to keep this place secret, so as not to disturb the resting place of one and a half thousand people. Perhaps he shouldn't have done this.

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