Where the Titanic sank photo. Secret of the ocean. How they searched and found the legendary Titanic

At the time of its construction, the Titanic was considered the largest passenger liner in the world. On the maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on April 14, 1912. The Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank 2 hours and 40 minutes later. There were 1,316 passengers and 908 crew members on board, for a total of 2,224 people. Of these, 711 people were saved, 1513 died.

Scientists have managed to recreate the most full map site of the Titanic tragedy. 130 thousand photographs taken by robots in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean were used. The map shows wreckage and belongings scattered over 15 square miles.

The remains of the Titanic were found on September 1, 1985, 13 miles from the place where, according to preliminary information, it sank at a depth of 3,800 m.

Because the stern and bow parts of the ship did not sink at the same time and now lie 1,970 feet apart, the area around 3-5 miles is littered with wreckage from the ship.

A detailed image could shed light on what happened after the "unsinkable" liner hit an iceberg and sank.

"If we are to explore the site of the Titanic through the testimony of those who survived, we must understand the nature and physical condition of what still lies at the bottom," said David Gallo, leader of the expedition to investigate the sinking of the ship.

This is not the first time a disaster site has been mapped. The first attempts began shortly after the sunken liner was discovered. The researchers used photographs taken by remotely operated cameras that did not venture far from the bow and stern.

Thus, all previous maps are incomplete and cover only fragments of the disaster area.

Creation of a detailed map of the wreck began in the summer of 2010 as part of a project aimed at "virtually recreating" the Titanic "and preserving its legacy for all time."

During the expedition, autonomous underwater vehicles surveyed the available surface using side-scan sonars. The wreckage was then secured vehicles remote control equipped with cameras.

Resulting in 130,000 photos high resolution were collected on a computer to represent detailed map"Titanic" and the surrounding seabed.

"The images are amazing. There you are on the ocean floor and moving around on the seabed. Even the Titanic survivors look at it with their jaws dropped," Gallo said.

The new findings will be detailed in a two-hour documentary on the History channel on April 15, exactly 100 years after the sinking of the Titanic.

During the show, thanks to computer simulation, an immersive experience will be reproduced. reverse direction. In a virtual hangar, the remains of the Titanic will be raised to the surface and assembled into a ship.

Particular attention was paid to the piles of debris. Oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US state of Massachusetts and the American meteorological service NOAA provided support to the researchers. Now the History Channel television company will present the results to the public.

Now computer simulations, based on photographs, are expected to show the exact course of events during this historic disaster. Perhaps new data will be obtained about defects in the design of this huge ship, which was considered a miracle of technology

"At 2:20 a.m. from April 14 to April 15, 1912, the Titanic liner, considered unsinkable, sank, claiming 1,500 lives. After 100 years, we can penetrate every corner of the sunken ship. Photographs taken using the latest technology - detailed guide on the legendary wreckage.

The remains of the ship rest in silence and darkness - a giant puzzle of rusty steel fragments scattered along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It is readily eaten by bacteria and fungi; this is a haven for them. Bizarre colorless creatures prowl around. Since the wreck was discovered in 1985 by a researcher from the National Geographical Society Robert Ballard and the French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel, deep-sea robots and manned vehicles periodically visited here. They aimed a sonar beam at the Titanic, took a couple of photographs, and sailed away.

IN last years American director James Cameron, French submariner Paul-Henri Narjolet and other researchers brought increasingly clear and detailed photographs from the wreck site. And yet we looked at the Titanic as if through a keyhole - all that was visible was what was illuminated by the spotlights of the underwater vehicle. Never before have we been able to look at thousands of disparate fragments as a whole. Finally the opportunity presented itself.

A trailer equipped with the latest technology is parked in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution parking lot. In the trailer, William Lang hunches over a sonar map of the Titanic's wreck. It took months of painstaking work to assemble this mosaic. The ghostly landscape resembles the surface of the Moon - the bottom is dotted with crater-like depressions. These are traces of large fragments of melting icebergs that have fallen to the bottom for thousands of years.

“Never before have we been able to look at thousands of disparate fragments as a whole. Finally, such an opportunity presented itself.

The owner of this 925 sterling silver men's pocket watch set it to New York time in anticipation of its safe arrival.

The porthole on the page to the right is one of 5,000 objects recovered from the Titanic wreck. When it hit the bottom, the steel sheets of the hull plating were bent, but the portholes remained intact, having jumped out of their “eye sockets.”

Most likely, this felt hat belonged to a businessman. In an era when people were “meet by their clothes,” a bowler hat was a sign of belonging to the class of doctors, lawyers or entrepreneurs.

But if you look closely, you begin to distinguish the creations of human hands. On the computer screen, Lang hovers the cursor over a fragment of a map created by overlaying photographs with acoustic images - sonar data. He enlarges the picture until the bow of the Titanic appears on the screen in all its “glory”: where the first chimney once stood, there is now a gaping black hole. A hundred meters to the northeast, a detached manhole cover was buried in the muddy mud. All this can be seen in the smallest detail - in one fragment you can even see how a white crab scrapes its claws against the railing.

So, by moving the mouse across the screen, you can see everything that remains of the Titanic - every mooring bollard, every davit, every steam boiler. “Now we know exactly where everything is,” Lang says. “A hundred years passed, and finally the light came on.”

Bill Lang directs the Imaging and Visualization Laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This is something like a state-of-the-art photo studio specializing in underwater photography. The inside of the laboratory is lined with soundproof panels, and the room is crammed with computers and high-definition television monitors. Lang participated in the famous Ballard expedition that discovered the remains of the Titanic, and since then everything Newest technologies he certainly experiences deep-sea photography in this underwater cemetery.

Next to the giant propellers of the Olympic liner - an almost exact replica of the Titanic - the workers of the shipyard in Belfast seem like midgets. Both sister ships were built in Belfast. The Titanic was rarely photographed, but we can judge the grandeur of its design from the Olympic. National museums Northern Ireland, Harland and Wolf Collection, Ulster Folk and Transport Museum

A guide to the sunken wreck is the result of the work of an expedition that sank to the bottom in August-September 2010. Millions of dollars were invested in this ambitious project. The survey was carried out by three underwater robots, which moved at different distances from the bottom surface along programmed trajectories. Stuffed with side-scan sonars, multi-beam sonars, and optical cameras that took hundreds of pictures per second, the robots combed the bottom over an area of ​​5x8 kilometers. The data obtained was subjected to careful computer processing, and here is the result: on a huge high-resolution map, sunken objects and features of the bottom relief are reflected in their relative position, indicating exact geographical coordinates.

“This is a breakthrough,” says expedition leader, archaeologist James Delgado of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. - Previously, studying the remains of the Titanic was like exploring the center of New York at night in the pouring rain with a flashlight. Now we have a certain area with clear boundaries where everything can be examined and measured. Perhaps, over time, thanks to this map, people who, as it seemed to us, were silent for centuries when the icy waters of the ocean closed over them, will find a voice.”

What kind of magnet attracts us to the remains of the Titanic? Why, even 100 years later, does this pile of metal at a four-kilometer depth haunt people? Some are fascinated by the scale of the disaster. Others are haunted by the thought of those who were unable to leave the ship. The Titanic sank for 2 hours and 40 minutes, and this time was enough for 2,208 epic tragedies to unfold on its stage. Cowardice (there was a story about a gentleman who tried to board a boat while dressed in a woman's dress) coexisted with courage and self-sacrifice. Many turned out to be real heroes. The captain remained on the bridge, the orchestra continued to play, and the radio operators gave distress signals until the very end. And the passengers - almost all - behaved in strict accordance with the hierarchy of Edwardian society: social barriers turned out to be stronger than watertight partitions.

But the Titanic took with it more than just human lives. Together with giant ship the illusion of order, faith in scientific and technological progress, the desire to live, to move towards the future went to the bottom. “Imagine that you inflated a soap bubble, and it burst - this is the sinking of the Titanic,” says James Cameron. - In the first decade of the 20th century, it seemed that an era of prosperity had arrived on Earth. Elevators! Cars! Airplanes! Radio! People believed that nothing is impossible, that progress is endless, and life is like a fairy tale. But everything collapsed in an instant.”

It’s hard to imagine a more surreal picture: on the Las Vegas Strip, on one of the top floors of the Luxor Hotel, next to the strip show, an exhibition of relics from the Titanic has settled for a long time. They were extracted from depths of the sea corporation "RMS Titanic" (RMS Titanic, Inc.), which since 1994 has the exclusive right to lift objects from the sunken giant. Similar exhibitions were organized in another 20 countries around the world, and in total they were visited by more than 25 million people.

In mid-October last year, I spent a whole day at the Luxor, wandering among the artifacts: a chef's hat, a razor, pieces of coal, several perfectly preserved dishes from the service, countless boots and shoes, perfume bottles, a leather travel bag, a bottle of champagne with so much and untouched by the cork. These ordinary objects became unique, having made a long and scary journey to sparkling glass display cases. I walked through a dark, cold room - there was an “iceberg” with a freon cooling system on display, which you could touch. The sound of torn metal can be heard from the speakers, adding to the feeling of anxiety. And here is the pearl of the collection - a huge fragment of the Titanic’s hull, weighing 15 tons. In 1998, it was pulled out from the ocean floor using a crane.

The Titanic's rudder is buried in the sand, and propeller blades are visible on the sides. The badly mangled stern rests on the ocean floor 600 meters south of the bow, which has been photographed much more frequently. This image is a mosaic photo collage of 300 high-resolution photographs taken during the 2010 expedition.

The exhibition in Las Vegas was done with dignity, but over the past years, submarine archaeologists have repeatedly spoken unkindly about the RMS Titanic and its leaders. Robbers, grave desecrators, treasure hunters - all sorts of nicknames were found for them! “You don’t go to the Louvre and point your finger at the Mona Lisa,” Robert Ballard, an implacable fighter for the integrity of the Titanic, told me. “These people are driven by greed - look how much they have done!”

The gaping stern reveals the Titanic's two engines. They are covered with orange growths - a waste product of bacteria that eat rusty iron. Once upon a time, these giants, the size of a four-story building, set in motion the most ambitious creation of human hands.

However, in recent years, RMS Titanic has undergone changes in management - and in the approach to business. The new leaders are not trying to lift as many objects as possible from the bottom - on the contrary, in the future it is planned to conduct archaeological research at the crash site. The corporation began to cooperate with research and government organizations. The same 2010 expedition, during which scientists first photographed the entire complex of sunken wrecks, was organized, led and financed by RMS Titanic. The company has sided with those calling for the Titanic wreck to be turned into a maritime memorial. In late 2011, RMC Titanic announced plans to auction off its entire collection and associated intellectual property for a total value of $189 million—but only if a buyer could be found who agreed to abide by strict conditions imposed by a federal court. One of these conditions: the collection cannot be sold in parts.

RMC Titanic President Chris Davino invited me to the exhibit storage room. This treasure trove is hidden next door to a dog groomer in an unremarkable Atlanta neighborhood. The brick building is climate-controlled, and a forklift maneuvers between the long rows of shelving, just like in a regular warehouse. The shelves are lined from top to bottom with boxes and crates, provided with a detailed description of the contents. There is so much to see here: dishes, clothes, letters, bottles, fragments of water pipes, portholes - everything that was raised from the bottom of the ocean over three decades. Davino headed RMS Titanic in 2009, taking on the difficult mission of helping the ill-fated enterprise start new life. “There are many interested parties in the Titanic case, and there are many disagreements between them, but for many years they were all united by their contempt for us. The time has come to reassess values. We realized that we can't just pick up artifacts and do nothing else. We should not fight with scientists, but cooperate,” says Davino.

Titanic: wreck site

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And it is not just words. Not long ago, government agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did nothing but sue the RMS Titanic. Now yesterday's opponents are working together on long-term research projects, the goal of which is to create a protected conservation area at the crash site. "The trade-off between protecting the memorial and making a profit is not easy," admits maritime archaeologist Dave Conlin. - These businessmen had something to condemn for. But now they are worthy of respect.”

Scientists also liked the corporation’s decision to involve one of the world’s leading experts to analyze the 2010 images. Bill Sauder is a veritable walking encyclopedia on Titanic-class ocean liners. Bill's title is project manager, but he prefers to call himself "the knowledge keeper about all sorts of things."

When we met in Atlanta, he, wearing thick glasses and looking like a gnome with a shaggy beard covering half his face, sat staring at the computer. On the screen were the wreckage of the Titanic's stern. During previous expeditions, the focus was almost always on the more photogenic bow, which lies to the north of the main body of remains. But Sauder suspects future research will shift toward the stern. “The nose looks cool, no doubt, but we’ve been there a hundred times already,” the scientist admits. “I’m much more interested in this junk on the south side.”

Bill tries to identify something in the pile of scrap metal. “Many people think that the wreck looks like the picturesque ruins of an ancient temple on a hill,” he says. - No matter how it is! They are much more reminiscent of an industrial dump: mountains of sheet metal, all sorts of rivets, spacers. Who will figure this out? Unless he’s a Picasso fan.”

Sauder enlarges the first image he comes across, and within a few minutes one of a thousand mysteries is solved. At the very top of the pile of rubble lies a twisted brass frame of a revolving door, apparently from the first class cabin. In general, you can sit on the “what is what” puzzle for more than one year. This is an incredibly labor-intensive job that only someone who knows every centimeter of the ship can handle.

At the end of October 2011, I attended a round table where James Cameron invited the most authoritative experts in the field of marine research. In California, in the town of Manhattan Beach, at a film studio the size of airplane hangar, among the props salvaged from the filming of Titanic were Bill Sauder, RMC Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Narjolet, historian Don Lynch and marine artist Ken Marshall, who has been working on Titanic for 40 years. They were joined by a naval engineer, an oceanographer from the Woods Hole Institute and two US Navy architects.

For the first time: a complete portrait of the legendary wreckage

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Cameron, by his own admission, is “so obsessed with the Titanic that he knows every rivet there.” The director has three expeditions to the crash site under his belt. He pioneered the development of a new class of small, remotely controlled robots that can film while detached from an underwater base and maneuvering through debris. Thus, for the first time, it was possible to photograph the interior of the Titanic with its luxurious Turkish bath and magnificent apartments (see “Walk on the Titanic”)

10 years ago Cameron filmed documentary about the remains of the German battleship Bismarck, sunk in 1941, and at the time of our meeting he was preparing alone, armed with a 3D camera, to go down to the bottom Mariana Trench. But the Titanic's spell continues unabated. “What we see down there at the bottom is a strange mixture of biology and architecture—I would call it a biomechanical environment,” says Cameron. - I think this is fantastic. It feels like the ship has plunged into Tartarus - into the kingdom of shadows.”

With two days at his disposal, Cameron decided to conduct something of a forensic examination. Why did the Titanic break in half? Where exactly did the body crack? At what angle did the debris fall to the bottom? “This is a crime scene,” Cameron says. - As soon as you realize this, you want to get to the bottom of the truth: how did this happen? Why was the knife here and the gun there?”

As one might expect, the experts immediately begin speaking in bird language. Without being an engineer, from all these “angles of incidence”, “shear forces” and “turbidity of the environment”, one thing can be understood: the last moments of the Titanic’s life were cruel, painful agony. You often hear that the waves “closed over the liner” and it “sank to the bottom of the ocean,” as if it had quietly and peacefully fallen into eternal sleep. Nothing like this! Based on the experience of many years of research, experts carried out computer modeling based on the finite element method. We now have a detailed understanding of the Titanic's death throes.

Late in the evening, at 23:40, the ship ripped open its starboard side on the edge of an iceberg. As a result, a 90-meter “laceration” was formed on the hull; six front waterproof compartments received holes and began to fill with water. From that moment on, the Titanic was doomed. But it is quite possible that his death was hastened by an unsuccessful attempt to put passengers into boats from a lower deck: the crew members opened the door to lower the ladder on the left side. As the ship began to list to port, it was no longer possible to overcome gravity and close the massive door again. The bow gradually sank down, and by 1:50 the water reached the open door and poured inside.

By 2:18 a.m., the Titanic's bow was filling with water and its stern was rising so high into the air that the propellers were exposed. Unable to withstand the monstrous pressure, the hull broke in half in the central part - just 13 minutes after the last boat left the Titanic.

Then Cameron stands up and demonstrates what it all looked like. Taking the banana in his hands, the director begins to break it: “Look how it bends and swells in the middle before it breaks - see?” The last thing to give in was the skin below - the double bottom of the vessel.

Having come off the stern, the bow sank to the bottom at a rather acute angle. As it sank, it picked up speed, losing various parts: smokestacks fell off, the wheelhouse collapsed. Five minutes later, the bow hit the bottom with such force that lumps of muddy mud were fanned out in all directions, traces of which are still visible today.

The stern was inferior to the bow in hydrodynamics. As she went to the bottom, she tumbled and spun in a spiral. Near the fault line, the hull cracked again, and soon a large fragment of the hull broke away from the stern and completely collapsed, all its contents spilling out. The compartments burst under air pressure. The decks were falling on top of each other. The steel plating of the hull was torn at the seams. The deck of the poop deck was bent by a screw. Heavier objects like steam boilers sank like stones, and everything else was scattered in different directions. Before reaching the bottom, the stern turned into a pile of scrap.

Mark on history

Cameron sits down and pops a piece of banana into his mouth. “We are all sorry that the Titanic fell apart in such an undignified manner,” he concludes. “I would like it to rest on the bottom unharmed, like a ghost ship.”

“Hundreds of living people could have remained inside. 100 years have passed since then, but it is still unbearable to imagine this picture.”

I listened to all these discussions, and the question was in my head: what was the fate of the people who were still on board when the Titanic began to sink? Most of the disaster's 1,496 victims died of hypothermia while floating in icy waters wearing cork life jackets. But hundreds of living people could remain inside - for the most part these were third class passengers, families of emigrants traveling to America in search of a better life. What happened to them in this metal hell? What did they hear and feel? 100 years have passed since then, but it is still unbearable to imagine this picture.

St. John's, Newfoundland. On June 8, 1912, a rescue ship returned here, picking up the last body of a passenger from the Titanic. For many months after the tragedy, the waves washed beach chairs, pieces of wooden wall paneling and other items from the ship onto the shores of the island.

I hoped that from here I would be able to fly to the crash site on an International Ice Patrol plane. This organization was created after the sinking of the Titanic to monitor icebergs along ship routes in Atlantic Ocean. But, alas, due to the storm, all flights were canceled, and instead I headed to a beer hall, where they began to treat me to local vodka, which is made from water from a melted iceberg. For added effect, the bartender threw a piece of ice into my glass, telling me that it was from the same Greenland glacier that created the ice block that sank the Titanic.

South of St. John's, a desert rock juts out into the sea - Cape Race. A few years before the Titanic disaster, Guglielmo Marconi built a radio station here. According to local legend, the first to receive a distress signal from a sinking ship was Jim Myrick, a 14-year-old assistant radio operator. At first, there was the then generally accepted call for help - CQD. After some time, Cape Race received a new signal, which had hardly been used before - SOS.

I came to Cape Race to talk with David Myrick, Jim's great-nephew, among the remains of old Marconi apparatus and detector radios. David is a naval radio operator, the last representative of a glorious dynasty. According to him, his grandfather did not like to talk about that tragic night, and only in his old age began to indulge in memories. By that time, Jim had become deaf, so family members had to communicate with him using Morse code.

"Titanic" outside and inside: virtual tour on the famous liner

We went out to wander near the lighthouse and, stopping at the edge of the cliff, looked down for a long time at the icy waves crashing against the rocks. A tanker was visible in the distance. Even further, on the Great Newfoundland Bank, according to ice survey data, new icebergs appeared. And already very far away, beyond the horizon, lay the remains of the most famous ship in history. I thought about the thousands of signals that have crisscrossed the airwaves over the past 100 years. In this silent ocean of radio waves, an innumerable number of voices merged into one drawn-out cry. I imagined that I could hear the voice of the Titanic itself. The crown of the creation of human hands, bearing such a proud name, he rushed at full speed towards the brave new world. But an ancient element stood in the way of the ship to deal him a fatal blow.

a" Frederick Fleet noticed an iceberg directly ahead, approximately 650 m from the liner. Having struck the bell three times, he reported to the bridge. The first mate ordered the helmsman: “Left aboard!” - and moved the machine telegraph handles to the “Full back” position. A little later, so that the liner would not hit the iceberg with its stern, he commanded: “Right on board!” However, the Titanic was too large to maneuver quickly, and continued to coast for another 25-30 seconds until its bow began to slowly veer to the left.

At 23:40, the Titanic tangentially collided with an iceberg. On the upper decks, people felt a weak shock and a slight trembling of the hull; on the lower decks the blow was more noticeable. As a result of the collision, six holes with a total length of about 90 meters were formed in the starboard side skin. At 0:05, Captain Smith ordered the crew to prepare the lifeboats for launch, then went into the radio room and ordered the radio operators to broadcast a distress signal.

At about 0:20, children and women were put into the boats. At 1:20, water began to flood the forecastle. At this time, the first signs of panic appeared. The evacuation went faster. After 1:30, panic began on board. At about 2:00 the last boat was lowered, and at 2:05 water began to flood the boat deck and captain's bridge. The 1,500 people remaining on board rushed towards the stern. The trim began to grow before our eyes, and at 2:15 the first chimney collapsed. At 2:16 the power went out. At 2:18 with a bow trim of about 23°, the liner broke apart. The bow part, having fallen off, immediately sank to the bottom, and the stern filled with water and sank in two minutes.

At 2:20, the Titanic completely disappeared under water. Hundreds of people swam to the surface, but almost all of them died from hypothermia. About 45 people were saved on two folding boats that did not have time to be lowered from the liner. Eight more were rescued by two boats that returned to the wreck site (No. 4 and No. 14). An hour and a half after the Titanic was completely submerged, the steamer Carpathia arrived at the disaster site and picked up 712 survivors of the wreck.

Causes of the crash

After the tragedy, commissions were held to investigate the causes of this incident, and, according to official documents, the cause was a collision with an iceberg, and not the presence of defects in the design of the ship. The commission based its conclusion on how the ship sank. As some survivors noted, the ship sank to the bottom as a whole, and not in parts.

As the commission concluded, all the blame for the tragic disaster lay with the ship's captain. In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, who had been searching for the sunken ship for many years, was lucky. It was this happy event that helped shed light on the causes of the disaster. Scientists have determined that the Titanic split in half on the surface of the ocean before sinking. This fact again attracted media attention to the reasons for the sinking of the Titanic. New hypotheses arose, and one of the assumptions was based on the fact that low-grade steel was used in the construction of the ship, since it is a well-known fact that the Titanic was built in a short time.

As a result of lengthy studies of the wreckage raised from the bottom, experts came to the conclusion that the cause of the disaster was poor quality rivets - the most important metal pins that tied together the steel plates of the ship's hull. Also, the studied wreckage showed that there were mistakes in the design of the ship, and this is evidenced by the nature of the ship's sinking. It was finally established that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as previously thought, and the ship broke into pieces and sank. This indicates obvious flaws in the design of the ship. However, after the disaster, this data was hidden. And only with the help of modern technologies it was established that it was these circumstances that led to one of the most terrible tragedies of mankind.

On the night of September 1, 1985, an American-French expedition led by oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the Titanic's steam boiler at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Soon the remains of the ship itself were discovered. Thus ended the many-year epic search for the sunken steamship, which was carried out by several independent researchers, but for a long time was unsuccessful due to the incorrect coordinates of the ship’s death, broadcast on the fateful night of 1912. The discovery of the remains of the Titanic opened a new page in its history: answers to many controversial issues; a number of facts that were considered proven and irrefutable turned out to be erroneous.

The first intentions to find and raise the Titanic appeared immediately after the disaster. The families of several millionaires wanted to find the bodies of their dead relatives in order to properly bury them, and discussed the issue of raising the Titanic with one of the companies that specialized in underwater salvage work. But at that time there was no technical possibility to carry out such an operation. A plan was also discussed to drop charges of dynamite on the ocean floor so that some bodies would rise to the surface from the explosions, but these intentions were eventually abandoned.

Later, a whole series of crazy projects for raising the Titanic were developed. For example, it was proposed to fill the ship's hull with ping pong balls or attach helium cylinders to it, which would raise it to the surface. There were many other projects, mostly science fiction. In addition, before trying to raise the Titanic, it was necessary to first find it, and this was not so simple.

One of controversial issues In the history of the Titanic, for a long time there remained coordinates transmitted on the air along with a distress signal. They were determined by the fourth mate Joseph Boxhall based on the coordinates that were calculated several hours before the collision, the speed and course of the ship. There was no time to check them in detail in that situation, and Carpathia, which came to the rescue a few hours later, successfully reached the boats, but the first doubts about the correctness of the coordinates arose already during the investigation in 1912. At that time, the question remained open and , when the first serious attempts to search for the Titanic began in the 80s, researchers were faced with a problem: the Titanic was neither at the specified coordinates nor near them. The situation was also complicated by the local conditions of the disaster - after all, the Titanic was at a depth of almost 4 km and the search required appropriate equipment.

In the end, luck smiled on Robert Ballard, who had been preparing for the expedition step by step for almost 13 years. After almost two months of searching, when only 5 days remained until the end of the expedition and Ballard was already beginning to doubt the success of the event, some strange shadows appeared on the monitor connected to the video camera on the deep-sea descent vehicle. This happened at almost one in the morning on September 1, 1985. It soon became clear that this was nothing more than the wreckage of some kind of ship. After some time, one of the steam boilers was discovered and there was no doubt that the wreckage belonged to the Titanic. The next day, the front part of the ship's hull was discovered. The absence of a stern was a big surprise: after an investigation in 1912, it was officially considered that the ship had sunk entirely.

Ballard's first expedition answered many questions and gave the world a number of modern photographs of the Titanic, but much still remained unclear. A year later, Ballard again went to the Titanic, and this expedition already used a deep-sea descent vehicle that could deliver three people to the ocean floor. There was also a small robot that made it possible to conduct research inside the ship. This expedition clarified many questions that had remained open since 1912, and after it Ballard no longer planned to return to the Titanic. But what Ballard did not do, others did, and new expeditions soon flocked to the Titanic. Some of them were purely research in nature, some pursued the goal of lifting various objects from the bottom, incl. and for sale at auctions, which caused many scandals about the moral and ethical side of the issue. James Cameron also went down to the Titanic several times; not only for the filming of his 1997 film, but also for research using robotics inside the ship (see the documentary "Ghosts of the Abyss: Titanic"), which led to the discovery of many new facts about the condition of the ship and its once magnificent finish.

Regarding the issue of raising the Titanic, after Ballard’s expeditions it became obvious that this operation would not only be extremely complex and expensive; The ship's hull has been in such a state for a long time that it will simply fall apart, if not during lifting, then on the surface.

1. Let's see what the Titanic looks like now and what it looked like before. The Titanic sank in the Atlantic at a depth of almost 4 km. While diving, the ship broke into two parts, which now lie on the bottom about six hundred meters from each other. There are a lot of debris and objects scattered around them, incl. and quite a large piece of the Titanic's hull.

2. Model of the bow. When the ship fell to the bottom, the bow was very well buried in the silt, which greatly disappointed the first researchers, because it turned out to be impossible to inspect the place where it hit the iceberg without special equipment. The torn hole in the hull, which is visible on the model, was formed by hitting the bottom.

3. Panorama of the bow, collected from several hundred images. From right to left: the spare anchor winch protrudes directly above the edge of the bow, behind it there is a mooring device, immediately behind it is an open hatch to hold No. 1, from which the breakwater lines diverge to the sides. On the inter-superstructure deck there is a fallen mast, under it there are two more hatches into the holds and winches for working with cargo. In the front part of the main superstructure there used to be a captain's bridge, which collapsed when it fell to the bottom and can now be discerned only by individual details. Behind the bridge there is a superstructure with cabins for officers, captain, radio room, etc., which is crossed by a crack that formed at the site of the expansion joint. A gaping hole in the superstructure is the place for the first chimney. Immediately behind the superstructure, another hole is visible - this is the well in which the main staircase was located. To the left there is something very ragged - there was a second pipe.

4. Titanic's nose. The most fascinating object of underwater photographs of a ship. At the end you can see the loop on which the cable that held the mast was placed.

5. In the photo on the left you can see the spare anchor winch rising above the bow.

6. Main anchor on the port side. It's amazing how he didn't fly down when he hit the bottom.

7. Spare anchor:

8. Behind the spare anchor there is a mooring device:

9. Open hatch to hold No. 1. The lid flew off to the side, apparently when it hit the bottom.

10. On the mast there used to be the remains of a “crow’s nest”, where the lookouts were, but ten or twenty years ago they fell down and now only the hole in the mast reminds of the “crow’s nest”, through which the lookouts got to the spiral staircase. The protruding tail behind the hole is the fastening of a ship's bell.

11. Ship's side:

12. Only one of the steering wheels remains from the captain's bridge.

13. Boat deck. The superstructure on it was either uprooted or torn in places.

14. The preserved part of the superstructure in the forward part of the deck. Bottom right is the entrance to the 1st class grand staircase.

15. Surviving davits, a bathtub in Captain Smith's cabin and the remains of a steamship whistle, which was installed on one of the pipes.

16. In place of the main staircase there is now a huge well. No traces of the stairs remain.

17. Staircase in 1912:

18. And the same perspective in our time. Looking at the previous photo, it’s somehow hard to believe that this is the same place.

19. Behind the stairs there were several elevators for 1st class passengers. Some elements from them have been preserved. The sign shown below on the right was located opposite the elevators and indicated the deck. This inscription belonged to deck A; The bronze letter A has already fallen off, but traces of it remain.

20. 1st Class Lounge on Deck. This is the bottom of the main staircase.

21. Although almost all of the wooden trim of the ship has long been eaten by microorganisms, some elements are still preserved.

22. The restaurant and 1st class lounge on Deck D were separated from the outside world by large stained glass windows, which have survived to this day.

23. Remnants of former beauty:

24. From the outside, the windows are recognizable by the characteristic double portholes.

25. Chic chandeliers have been hanging in their places for more than 100 years.

26. The once magnificent interiors of the 1st class cabins are now littered with rubbish and debris. In some places you can find preserved elements of furniture and objects.

27.

28.

29. A few more details. The door to the restaurant on Deck D and the sign indicating the service doors:

30. The stokers had their own “front staircase”. To avoid encountering passengers, a separate staircase led from the boiler rooms to the stokers' cabins.

31. Hundreds of objects are scattered along the ocean floor, ranging from ship parts to personal belongings of passengers.

32. Some pairs of shoes lie in a very characteristic position: for someone this place has become a grave.

33. In addition to personal belongings and objects, large parts of the casing are also scattered along the bottom, which they also tried to repeatedly raise to the surface.

34. If the nose is preserved in more or less decent condition, then aft after falling down it became a shapeless pile of metal. Starboard:

35. Left side:

36. Feed:

37. On the 3rd class promenade deck, it is difficult to discern individual details of the ship.

38. One of three huge screws:

39. After the ship broke into two parts, even steam boilers spilled out onto the bottom.

40. The engine room was located at the fracture point, and now these giants, the height of a three-story building, are visible to researchers. Piston device:

41. Both steam engines together:

42. The dry dock in Belfast, where the final painting of the ship's hull was carried out, still exists today as a museum exhibit.

43. And this is what the Titanic would look like against the backdrop of the largest passenger airliner modernity "Allure of the Seas", put into operation in 2010:

Comparison in numbers:
- The displacement of "Allure of the Seas" is 4 times greater than that of the "Titanic";
- The length of the modern liner is 360 m (100 m longer than the Titanic);
- The greatest width is 60 m versus 28 for the Titanic;
- The draft is approximately the same (about 10 m);
- The speed is also almost the same (22-23 knots);
- Crew size - 2.1 thousand people (there were up to 900 on the Titanic, many of whom were stokers);
- Passenger capacity - up to 6.4 thousand people (on the Titanic up to 2.5 thousand).

105 years ago, April 15, 1912, “unsinkable ship”, “the largest and most luxurious ocean liner"On his first flight, he crashed into an iceberg and took with him more than one and a half thousand passengers to the bottom of the ocean. It would seem that for many decades there are no more secrets and mysteries about this terrible disaster. And yet, let's remember how it was.

Captain Edward Smith on board the Titanic. Photo: New York Times

First official version

Two government investigations that followed the disaster determined that it was the iceberg, and not the ship's defects, that caused the death of the liner. Both commissions of inquiry concluded that the Titanic sank not in parts, but as a whole - there were no major faults.

The blame for this tragedy was placed entirely on the shoulders of the ship's captain, Edward Smith, who died along with his crew and passengers of the Atlantic liner. Experts reproached Smith for the fact that the ship was traveling at a speed of 22 knots (41 km) through a dangerous ice field - in dark waters, off the coast of Newfoundland.

Robert Ballard's discovery

In 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard, after a long unsuccessful search, finally managed to find the remains of a ship at a depth of about four kilometers on the ocean floor. It was then that he discovered that the Titanic had actually split in half before sinking.

A couple of years later, the wreckage of the ship was brought to the surface for the first time, and a new hypothesis immediately appeared - low-grade steel was used to build an “unsinkable ship.” However, according to experts, it was not the steel that turned out to be of low quality, but the rivets - the most important metal pins that tie together the steel plates of the airliner's hull. And the found wreckage of the Titanic does indicate that the stern of the ship did not rise high into the air, as many believed. It is believed that the Titanic split into parts while relatively level on the surface of the ocean - this is a clear sign of miscalculations in the design of the ship, which were hidden after the disaster.

Design miscalculations

The Titanic was built in a short time - in response to the production of a new generation of high-speed liners by competitors.

The Titanic could stay afloat even if 4 of its 16 watertight compartments were flooded - this is amazing for a ship of such gigantic size.

However, on the night of April 14-15, 1912, just a few days into the liner’s debut voyage, its Achilles’ heel was revealed. The ship, due to its size, was not agile enough to avoid a collision with the iceberg, which the watchmen had been shouting about for the last minute. The Titanic did not collide with the fatal iceberg head-on, but drove along it on its right side - the ice punched holes in the steel plates, flooding six “watertight” compartments. And after a couple of hours the ship was completely filled with water and sank.

According to experts studying the potential weak point of the Titanic - the rivets, they found that due to the fact that time was running out, builders began to use low-grade material. When the liner hit an iceberg, the weak steel rods in the bow of the ship cracked. It is believed that it was no coincidence that the water, having flooded six compartments held together by low-grade steel rods, stopped exactly where the high-quality steel rivets began.

In 2005, another expedition studying the crash site was able to establish from the wreckage of the bottom that during the crash the ship tilted only about 11 degrees, and not 45, as had long been believed.

Memories of Passengers

Because the ship tilted only slightly, passengers and crew were lulled into a false sense of security—many of them did not understand the gravity of the situation. When the water sufficiently flooded the bow of the hull, the ship, while remaining afloat, split in two and sank in minutes.

Charlie Jugin, the Titanic's chef, was standing near the stern when the ship sank and did not notice any signs of hull fracture. Nor did he notice the suction funnel or the colossal splash. According to his information, he calmly sailed away from the ship, without even getting his hair wet.

However, some passengers sitting in lifeboats claimed to have seen the stern of the Titanic raised high in the air. However, this could only be an optical illusion. With a tilt of 11 degrees, propellers sticking out in the air, the Titanic, the height of a 20-story building, seemed even taller, and its roll into the water even greater.

How the Titanic sank: a real-time model

The menu for the last dinner on the Titanic, which sank in 1912, has been sold in New York. The price for it was 88 thousand dollars (about 1.9 million hryvnia).

Company " Blue Star Line announced the construction of Titanic 2. According to the designers, the ship will be an exact copy of the famous liner that sank in 1912. However, the liner will be equipped with modern safety equipment. The project was financed by the Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer.

Now this 105-year-old cracker is considered the most expensive in the world.

It turns out that a cracker made by Spillers and Bakers called "Pilot" was included in the survival kit that was placed on each lifeboat. Later, one of these products went to a man who kept it as a souvenir. It was James Fenwick, a passenger on the ship Carpathia, which was picking up shipwreck survivors.

REFERENCE

On the night of April 15, 1912, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank. He sailed in the Atlantic Ocean on his way from Southampton (England) to New York. About 1.5 thousand people died then, mostly third class passengers. In total there were more than 2.2 thousand people there.

 

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