National Geographic: Treasures of the Deep Page #4

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Finally, in 1985,

Ballard and French explorer

Jean-Louis Michel

discover the remains of

the ruined giant over 12,000 feet down

Ballard always treated the grand wreck

as a site to be explored.

But he did it with respect.

To him it was a shrine for the dead

to remain untouched, intact.

Ballard and the crew even held

a memorial service

for those who died in the tragedy.

When I found the Titanic,

certainly I became emotionally

attached to it.

And Jean-Louis Michel,

who was co-discover

of the Titanic with me,

was equally moved.

And I can remember both of us saying,

well, we'll never let this ship

be spoiled or desecrated.

Ballard discovered the Titanic, but

he never claimed the laws of the sea.

Inadvertently,

he was opening a Pandora's box.

Once the location of the Titanic

became public knowledge,

it was a target for salvagers.

A new expedition,

led by Connecticut businessman

George Tulloch,

probes the rotting remains

of the Titanic.

Tulloch spends tens of millions

of dollars to send down robot vehicles

and bring up jewelry, eyeglasses,

furnishings anything within reach

from the devastated liner.

Once Tulloch retrieved the objects,

he legally claimed the Titanic

for his own.

Ballard never thought

this day would come.

I don't think in my wildest imagination

did I think they would go out

and salvage it.

I mean, I was convinced they wouldn't.

And it just caught me by surprise.

I was really shocked.

And there was nothing

I could do about it,

because, since I didn't claim it,

I mean, it didn't even cross my mind

to claim it!

Eighty-five years ago this month,

the luxury ship, the Titanic, sank

on its maiden voyage across

the North Atlantic.

Tomorrow, mid-Southerners

and people from across the world

will be able to see the treasures

that that disaster left behind.

Like Ballard, George Tulloch expresses

deep reverence for the Titanic's dead.

But he argues that people will

better understand the tragedy

if they can see the artifacts firsthand.

I think Titanic is by itself

capable of saying it is,

it is incomparable in terms of tragic

suffering for that moment in time.

And I think the objects from that moment

deserve to stay with us.

Tulloch says his company

will never sell the artifacts,

never sell off the possessions

of the dead.

But his company will profit handsomely

from the traveling exhibition.

I think the blessing we have is that

the court says that it's ours

the company that I'm the president of.

And we don't feel that it's ours.

We feel that we're the guardian of it.

Tulloch's historian, Charles Haas,

does not want to deny ordinary people

an opportunity to experience the past.

One only has to look at the museums

of the world to see

that part of the archeology process

is recovering artifacts

from the ocean floor.

There are ample demonstrations

of Mediterranean vessels

of all kinds of shapes having

their contents brought up

and placed in museums

for people to enjoy.

I think it's certainly preferable

to have the Titanic's artifacts

guaranteed to be placed

before the public and teach them,

than to allow them to sit on the

ocean floor where they'll be ravaged

by time and the elements down there,

and accessible, really,

by only a very few people.

But to archeologist Jon Adams,

there is no scientific reason for

Tulloch's excavation of the Titanic.

We know a lot about the Titanic.

We know the names of the people on board.

We know its itinerary.

So the question the potential

archeological researcher would ask is,

if you actually go and investigate

that wreck archeologically,

in other words, pull up pieces

of the material remains,

what is he going to tell you

that you don't know already?

Now, this is further muddied by the

fact that there are still people alive

whose relatives died on the ship.

Is there any difference between

exhibiting a teacup from the Titanic

and bringing up an ancient drinking

glass from the Mediterranean floor?

Tulloch doesn't think so.

One of the people that would criticize

is in the Mediterranean

is sucking up the clay containers

from Roman and Greek shipping vessels.

There's something about Titanic

that makes people a bit crazy,

if they feel that it's theirs.

For Ballard,

there is an enormous difference

between an archeological expedition

and salvage for profit.

Every object that's recovered

is recovered

because an archeologist, an expert,

says, I want that.

Sometimes they would say see

that broken jar?

Pick it up.

Well, how about the unbroken one?

No, actually the broken jar

has more scientific value.

Bring it up.

So we'd bring it up.

And so it's a very big difference

between doing something to fill in

a missing chapter in human history

and doing it for personal greed.

Nearly a decade after discovering

the Titanic,

Ballard dove on another grand wreck,

the British luxury liner Lusitania.

High-tech treasure hunters had stripped

as much of the broken vessel possible

looking to sell off the remains.

The salvagers even brought up

three of the boat's propellers.

One propeller made it to

a maritime museum.

The second was believed to be

melted down

and recast as a very expensive

set of golf clubs.

And the last one met

an even gloomier fate.

I can remember going out and

trying to find the propeller

of the Lusitania and

finding it in this junkyard,

just sitting there amongst

all this other junk.

And I can remember when we were diving

on the Lusitania to have

that empty shaft

something was missing

its propeller was missing.

And if the propeller was in a museum,

if it was serving some purpose,

I could understand that,

but to find it in a junkyard,

waiting to be sold for scrap,

you have to wonder, why did you do this?

What was going through your brain?

And it had to have been just a lark.

And that's really sad.

Ballard's Mediterranean expedition

is down to a precious handful of days.

And now the NR-1 finally pays off.

The sub uncovers two new sites,

including the oldest they've found,

containing a Roman wreck

from the first century B.C.

The evidence is now inescapable.

Skerki Bank has been

a major intersection

throughout Mediterranean history.

Ballard is anxious to find more.

But the seas suddenly turn dark

and angry.

Well, we just found the best ancient

ship we've ever discovered

and we can't get to it.

We got to get in the water.

We can't get in the water.

They're telling us that we've got a

storm that's coming

that's going to be sea state five.

This is our second major storm

on this trip.

We lost 32 hours to the last storm.

How many hours are we going

to lose to this one?

You know, I want to get down.

I can't get to it.

But there is one way

to get beneath the waves.

Ballard decides to send down

the NR-1 during the storm.

Once under the surface,

the sub will be free of the weather,

free to continue exploring.

On board is archeologist Jon Adams,

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