Ten Greatest Wrecks
RMS Titanic
By JAMES P. DELGADO
Monday, March 11, 2013
North Atlantic Ocean
The best known maritime disaster of the past few centuries, the sinking of Titanic is remembered for the failure of an engineering marvel equipped with technological advances that were, at the time, believed to render it “practically unsinkable.†The luxury liner took some 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers, from rich and prominent aristocrats to poor immigrants, with it when it struck an iceberg and sank into waters two-and-a-half miles deep. The disaster has inspired countless songs, memorials, books, and films, as well as laws to prevent other ships from going to sea without enough lifeboats and to compel nearby ships to respond to calls for help. Discovered by a joint U.S.-French expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert D. Ballard in 1985, the wreck of Titanic proved an irresistible lure for explorers, salvagers, and aficionados. Since 1986, more than a hundred deep-sea dives to the wreck have been made, some 5,500 artifacts have been recovered by a private company for public exhibition, and a variety of films, including the James Cameron blockbuster, have been shot at depths once thought inaccessible
https://www.archaeology.org/exclusives/articles/87-greatest-wrecks
