TITANIC
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The Titanic was the most luxurious ship of her time and she was believed
to be "unsinkable" and here is how the story goes.
on April 10, 1912, a fashionable woman climed aboard the Titanic.
A deckhand carried her luggage.
"Is this ship really unsinkable?" she asked
"Yes, lady. God himself could not sink this ship." he answered, but he was roung.
The voyage of the Titanic started in the English port of Southampton
on April 10, 1912. Befor heading to New York the Titanic made 2 stops;
the first stop she made was at Cherbourg, France and the second stop was
the next day at Queenstown, Southern Ireland. On the way to New York the
Titanic recieved 7 warnings of icebergs, but Captain Edward J. Smith decided to
keep on course traveling about 21 knots (nauticl miles per hour), nearly its
top speed. 
While they
were on there way to New York on April 14, 1912, around
11:40 pm lookout Fredrick Fleet squinted into the darkness-was there a shape
out there? He did not have the ship's binoculars so he was working at a handicap.
The slight haze lying over the water added to his difficulties. But there was
no question about it, there was ice in their path. First Officer Murdoch noticed
the ice when Fleet brought it to the attention to everyone on/in the bridge.
Murdoch ordered "full speed astern" and "hard a starboard." slowly the ship
began to turn and it looked as if it was going to clear the ice but when they heard
a strange scraping noise, Murdoch knew that they had hit the iceberg. He then ordered the
water tight doors shut. 
When the Titanic hit the iceberg it ripped the riversteel hull below
the water line. In 10 seconds the iceberg wiped out the craftmenship and splendor of the
ship that took thousands of Belfest workers 5 years to assemble. Not long after
hitting the ice Captin Smith knew that the ship would sink and he ordered for
prople to start putting on life jackets and loading the life boats. Then the panic
began; everyone was fighting to get into one of the few life boats but orders were
"women and childern first!" As people filled the boats some left only half
full, the crew was affaied that if the boats were filled to capasity that
they would buckle, but when Murdoch found out he ordered that they be filled
to the capasity. 
Around 2:20 am nearly 3 hrs. after hitting ice allmost all of
the cries of panic were gone because now the Titanic was completly under water.
The olny cries that were heard were the cries of people freezing to death
in the icey water but soon the cries were gone. There were olny about 20 life boats
with sivivors and olny 1 came back to where the Titanic sank to see if there were
anymore sivivors left in the icey water. About 6 were saved from the water
and taken into the lifeboat. There were about 712 sivivors out of aproximatly 2,220
peoeple that were abord the Titanic which included passengers and crew. More
than 1,500 people died in the sinking of the Titanic. Statistics show that
91% of first class women and children 31% of first class men surived. Over
all 60% of the first class passengers, 44% of second class passengers, and
25% of steerage passengers lived. Now about 7 of the Titanic sivivors are
alive today. 
A little
over 73 years the French reserch ship Le Suroit arrived near the place where
the Titanic sunk. In command was Robert Ballard's old friend
Jean Louis Michel. Both Ballard and Michel beleived that their state-of-the-art
deep-towered sonar was just the peice of technology to find the wreck. 2 weeks
after Michel started the serch Ballard arrived on baord Le Suroit on July 22, 1985.
SAR (sonar) had given Michel a lovely portrate of the ocean floor, but no trace of
the Titanic wreckage. Ballard wondered if they were looking in the right place.
The only things known for sure about the Titanic's sinking position were the
coordinates radioed from the ship when it sent out its distress call.
Ballard and Michel thought if they took the destress coordinates and the coordinates
of the Carpathia where the lifeboats were found. With that they could come up with an idea
of where the ship's position on the ocean floor is. So the Titanic ought to be
east of the distress coordinates and north of where the lifeboats were picked up
by the Carpatha. Accordingly they had drawn a square target area within which they would
focus their serch. 
The Titanic's stated sinking position was at the western
boundary of this square and the lifeboats recovery position near the southern
boundary. The wreck had to be inside this square-they hoped. Soon less than 2 weeks remained
in their 6 week expodition. They had hoped for Le Suroit to find the wreck then
Angus and Argo (2 small subs.) would explore it, and take videos and pictures. Now Ballard and Michel were
forced to improvise. As they returned to the serch site aboard Woods Hole's Knorr,
they plotted a desperation strategy; use Argo to find the wreck. Ballard knew that on ship
sank to the bottom in a single peice; instead it would leave behind a trail
of dedris behind it. So he thought instead of looking for the ship, they would look
for the debris. Since SAR had aready covered most of the target area they expanded
the square East. As extra insurance, each Argo run would overlap the previous SAR
coverage.
Now they olny had 5 days left. The weather was getting steadly worse and
most of the expanded area had been covered by Argo. There were olny a few
lines left to run. One morning Ballard was in his cabin reading when the ships
cook stuck his head inside the cabin door, "The guys think you should come down to the van,"
he said. Ballard got up and pulled a jumpsuit on over his pajamas and charged
down the 3 decks to the van. "We've just passed over a boiler!" one of the watch team
announced excitedly. Ballard franticly reversed the Argo video to 1:13 A.M.,
olny a few minutes eiriler. As the tape replayed he watched a massive round
shape before his eyes. He knew that it was one of the Titanic's boilers, for
he had seen pictures of them a thousand times. This was it, the long hunt
for Tianic was over.
Now the most luxurious ship of 1912, that was believed to be "unsinkable"
lies in 2 main peices; with the stern section 1,970 feet away form the
bow section. Nearly 86 years after the Titanic sank George Tulloch, the president
of RMS Tianic Inc., has since 1987, recovered some 5,000 artifacts from the ocean floor.
The artifacts that were recovered are being restored in secercey in France.
The over 5,000 restored artifacts are kept together and put in museums for the world to see.
Sources of Info
Archbold,Rick. Deep Sea Explorer New York: Scholistic, 1994
Brown, Donald. "Titanic: Voyage to Infamy." Palm Beach Post 13April 1997: 1-4
Diski, Jenny. "Rising Our Own Titanics." Harpers Ag 1997: 29-30
Author unknown Titanic. [online] Available http://www.fireflyproductions.com/titanic/breif.html The Tragic Story of the Titanic, date unknown
Author unknown Titanic. [online] Available http://www.flordia musuem.org/ ship or exibit, date unknown.
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