Finding the Titanic | Bob Ballard: An Explorer’s Life
The Titanic was really a cover for a highly classified military operation to investigate two nuclear submarines that we lost during the Cold War with all hands: the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpio. They ironically turned out to be on either side of where the Titanic was lost. Quite honestly, had that not been the case, you wouldn't be looking at the guy that found the Titanic. The Navy wanted complete 100% photo documentation of both wreck sites and to answer some questions. What are the nuclear reactors doing? What's the status of the nuclear weapons? Is there any evidence Soviets have been there?
Well, I said to both the Secretary of the Navy, John Layman, and Admiral Thundeman, who was my boss as a naval officer, "What if we use the Titanic as the cover?" I thought it was a cockamamie story. I mean, find the Titanic? I said, “Well, it'd be great cover, wouldn't it?” Finally, they said thumbs up. I told them, “Do whatever you want, just don't spend any more money.” Boy, did I work faster!
We pretty well knew what happened to the Thresher; we mapped her a year earlier. They knew very little about the Scorpio. It took me about a week to get there and map it. We mapped it extensively, and there was no evidence of human remains. I mean, that would have been tough, but no, the reactors were intact, so that was good news. There were no other indications of something amiss other than the submarine had gone down, and it had imploded.
As soon as the Navy was satisfied, we headed northwest for the Titanic. I had 12 days to hunt, but I had learned something from the Thresher and Scorpio that I couldn't tell anyone because both submarines imploded before they came to the bottom. So, on their way down, the pressure hulls went, and that implosive event is a gigantic explosion, and it just blew the submarines apart.
But when I was mapping it, we realized that the heavy stuff went down like a bowling ball—reactors, boom! But then the lighter stuff was a big long line, and I went, "Didn't the Titanic do the same thing?" So let's not look for the big pieces of Titanic because they're only that big. Let's look for the debris, which meant I could space my search lines much wider apart.
But Titanic did not lie where she was thought to be. Days of futile search dragged on. How close were you to failure? Well, I had—I was reaching the point of where I thought we'd failed. If I thought we had, I was going back to my room. We had the watch going; it was a mid-watch. Everything happens on the midnight watch, 12 to 4. I don't know why everything important occurs right around midnight.
Wreckage! Bingo! Somebody out here. I went in, and there it was. I mean, the boiler was on the screen. Oh, I love it! I love it! This sucker exists! Okay, we were jumping up and down; we were patting one another on the back. Then someone looked at the clock in the command center and said, “She sinks in 20 minutes.” It was two in the morning; she sank at 2:20.
That innocent comment just grounded us, and we realized we have finally put to rest where these souls were lost. Everyone filed out, and it was a moment of silence because we were there, and that was pretty, pretty powerful. [Music]