Wreck of the Titanic

Wreck of the Titanic
The Titanic's bow, photographed in June 2004
Event	Sinking of the Titanic
Cause	Collision with an iceberg
Date	15 April 1912; 112 years ago (1912-04-15)
Location	325 nmi (600 km) south-southeast of Newfoundland, North Atlantic Ocean
Coordinates	41°43′32″N 49°56′49″W / 41.72556°N 49.94694°W / 41.72556; -49.94694[1]
Discovered	1 September 1985; 39 years ago (1985-09-01)

The wreck of British ocean liner RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3,800 metres; 2,100 fathoms), about 325 nautical miles (600 kilometres) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland. It lies in two main pieces about 2,000 feet (600 m) apart. The bow is still recognisable with many preserved interiors, despite deterioration and damage sustained hitting the sea floor. In contrast, the stern is heavily damaged. A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank. The bodies of the passengers and crew would originally have been distributed across the seabed, but have been consumed by organisms.

The Titanic sank in 1912, following her collision with an iceberg during her maiden voyage. Numerous expeditions unsuccessfully tried using sonar to map the seabed in the hope of finding the wreckage. In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, originally on a mission to find two nuclear Cold War submarines. The wreck has been the focus of intense interest and has been visited by numerous tourist and scientific expeditions, including by the submersible Titan, which imploded near the wreck in June 2023, killing all five aboard.

Controversial salvage operations have recovered thousands of items, many of which have been conserved and put on public display. Many schemes have been proposed to raise the wreck, including filling it with ping-pong balls, injecting it with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to encase it in an iceberg that would float to the surface. However, the wreck is too fragile to be raised and is protected by a UNESCO convention.