Almost immediately after the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, attempts were made to recover the wreckage and the bodies of those who had gone down with the ship. However, limited diving technology of the time prevented this from becoming a reality for over seven decades.
On September 1, 1985 — almost 39 years ago — the wreck was found during a joint exploration by an American oceanographer, Robert Ballard, who was also a naval officer, and a French oceanographer, Jean-Louis Michel , as reported by the New York Times. at the time.
But initially, the dive had nothing to do with the Titanic: it was a secret mission to find the wrecks of two nuclear submarines, the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher.
However, this information was not made public until 2008, when Ballard revealed the true nature of the mission to National Geographic.
“The Navy is finally talking about it,” Ballard told National Geographic in 2008.
Robert Ballard on a book tour in 1987. Bettmann/Getty
Ballard initially met with the U.S. Navy in 1982 to secure funding for a new type of submersible technology that would allow him to find the Titanic. The Navy agreed to fund the project, but only if it was used to investigate sunken submarines. The USS Thresher sank in April 1963, followed by the USS Scorpion five years later in May 1968. They remain the only nuclear submarines the Navy has ever lost, the United States Naval Institute reported .
The Navy agreed that Ballard could search for the Titanic if there was time left on the mission after finding the submarines — and after confirming whether the Soviet Union played a role in their sinking.
“We saw no indication of any sort of external weapon that caused the ship to sink,” Ronald Thunman, then deputy chief of naval operations for undersea warfare, told National Geographic.
A photo of the Titanic wreck in 1996. Xavier Desmier/Gamma-Rapho/Getty
With 12 days remaining in the mission, Ballard found the Titanic believing the ship had split in two and left a trail of debris.
“That’s what saved our butts,” Ballard told National Geographic. “It turned out to be true.”
Ballard said the Navy was nervous about people understanding why they were actually scouring the ocean floor.
“The Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and when that happened, they got very nervous because of the publicity,” Ballard said. “But people were so focused on the legend of the Titanic that they never connected the dots.”
So, 23 years later, Ballard revealed the truth about his mission. He also wrote about his experience discovering the ship in his book “The Discovery of the Titanic”.
“It was one thing to have won: to have found the ship,” he wrote. “It was something else to be there. That was the scary part.”
Correction: July 18, 2023 — An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the date of the USS Scorpion’s disappearance. It was lost in May 1968, not May 1965.
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