National Geographic: Secrets of the Titanic Page #3

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do it tomorrow.

What happens next?

Well, they're gonna be up all night.

They've got a sick puppy and they

got to fix it,

and it's gonna take them all night.

Alvin is quickly repaired but

the mood next morning is uncertain.

Everyone has been reminded

that technical problems,

bad weather, or a combination of

both could terminate the expedition.

This time everything goes according to plean

Titanic, no longer lost,

no longer legend.

There are people aboard the great

ship once again after

Now, like astronauts newly arrived

on a distant planet

Alvin's crew is learning

something new every second.

A disappointment; Titanic's decks

thought to be intact

have been consumed by

wood-boring organisms.

What speared to be planks turns

out to be ridges of caulking.

A revelation; standing all alone

is the bronze peaestal

where Titanic's wheel was mounted.

It gleams as if brand new.

What we thought was organic growth

appears to be rust.

The ship looks like it's

bleeding steel

and it's rusting down its entire side.

All over it's draped in rust.

It's formed a river and little veins

that flow down the side

and out onto the sediment.

All right,

let's terminate conversation.

We are losing our light energy

and we'll see you on the surface, over

On the return to the surface a near disaster

the robot submarine Jason,

is dislodged from its garage

on the front of Alvin and almost lost.

Only quick word by divers saves

the million dollar robot.

Well, that's one way to come home

Jason-swimming.

That's right.

Repairs will go on all night as

Ballard reports what he's seen

and prepares for tomorrow's dive.

We come in on the debris field,

right through here.

Titanic is a frightening place

to explore.

Everywhere there are wires,

rails and tubing which could trap.

Coming in along the mud line toward

the ship should be fairly safe.

But the robot, Jason

can get close to such hazards

and venture inside the wreck

without risking human lives.

Alvin's crew is skeptical about robots

in general and Jason in particular.

But, Ballard ignores today's

problems and plans to send

Jason deep into Titanic's interior

on the next dive.

The funnels are all gone.

We've never even seen one

in the debris field.

The idea is to bring Alvin down

in a vertical sense

and land at certain places.

Naturally we'd like to enter the

bridge and we'd like to go

down the staircase and there's a

nice landing pad right here.

That staircase goes down many

many flights

so it would be a question of

how deep you wanted to go in.

But certainly at least 2 to 3 decks in

On succeeding dives special

cameras aboard Alvin pierce

the darkness and reveal

spectacular aerial views

of the wreck;

traveling aft, passing over the cargo

holds and cranes...

the bridge area

where the wheel pedestal stands alone

the hole where the first

funnel once stood

big enough to admit a locomotive.

Now on the third dive Alvin

makes a landing at the edge

of Titanic's grand staircase.

Make sure that that lip won't

jam J. J so he can't get out.

Don't get too close.

Right.

Jason is launched with

Martin Bowen at the controls.

Go forward. Tethering out.

I'll be taking shots periodically.

Further out.

That lip is right in front of me.

Yeah okay.

If you can just head out over the edge

Like a frightened puppy

Jason seems to want to dive back

into his garage and go home.

Gaining control and confidence

Bowen sends Jason down

into the grand staircase.

Seventy for years have taken

their toll

this is what Jason's camera sees

this is what once was.

Seem-ingly there's nothing

recognizable here

but, then, pillars define a room.

One of these light fixtures still

hangs from the ceiling

suspended both in space and time.

The elaborate ornamental clock is gone

leaving only its outline on the wall.

Jason bumps into something

causing an avalanche of rust.

Alarmed, Ballard and

Martin Bowen decide to withdraw.

Keep knocking that rust off.

Yeah

Now, 2 miles down

Jason salutes his creator.

For man and machine

it's a moment of eerie victory.

In further tests

Jason skims over the wreck like an

inquisitive humming-bird.

He can move more safely and

quickly than Alvin and

get in close to capture small details.

Something door for use...

This door for bridge...

This door for use of crew only.

Napier Brothers Company Engineers,

Glasgow. Napier Brothers Limimted.

Some parts of the ship seem almost new

paint still clings to

these window frames

handles and hinges still turn,

and the awesome steel anchors

still hang from Titanic's bow.

Soon Baliard's work for the Navy

may produce robots

so sophisticated everything can be

seen and controlled from the surface.

On some jobs manned submarines

like Alvin may not be needed.

The success of Jason on Titanic

is a major step toward that goal.

Bring it around A little more,

there we go.

Okay, if we want to drop

weights I'm happy.

Okay.

Success.

God, that was not easy.

In one spectacular dive

Robert Ballard and Martin Bowen

have accomplished all

their major objec-tives.

We had a chandalier right there!

We were taking pictures, of it.

We went dancing in the ballroom.

Now for 9 days

Atlantis gather information on Titanic

Deployed each night,

an unmanned instrument package

captures some 57,000

photos of the wreck site.

I want to go through regions,

not specific targets.

There's only a couple targets left.

Ballard and his colleague

Dr. Elizar Yuchupe,

begin to create a detailed map

of Titanic's remains.

That's it

There's nothing else but that.

It reveals new information

and sometimes contradicts

accepted accounts of the disaster.

That's right down here, you see

that's where it would be.

So south of the...

South of the wine bottles.

Most strikingly the wreck lies

in 2 major sections,

This supports some

eye witnesses who said the ship broke

in 2 as it went down.

Between the 2 sections of the

wreck lies a vast field of debris

and scattered throughout the wreckage

are many common place objects;

a bottle of champagne still corked

and a cup, sitting on a 57 ton boiler

where it gently came

to rest 74 years ago.

Ballard brought nothing up from

Titanic and had vowed not to

interfere with the wreck.

But that was before Alvin came upon

the assistant purser's safe

The handle turns

but the door won't open.

At any rate,

experts say it was emptied

by the crew before Titanic went down.

As the wreck is explored

the Titanic story is relived

and in some cases revised

to suit new evidence.

It is 11:
40 p.m., April 14th, 1912.

From the crow's nest

an iceberg is spotted dead ahead

by lookout, Fredrick Fleet.

Fleet immediately rings on alarm bell

and calls the bridge

where the First Officer

William Murdoch, orders the wheel,

"Hard a starboard,"

and the engines, "Full astern."

Titanic grazes the ice,

possibly causing only

a few crumpled hull plates

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