BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Geographic Society -- Exhibit: Titanic: 100 Year Obsession

DC -- Natl Geographic Society -- Exhibit: Titanic: 100 Year Obsession:

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Description of Pictures: National Geographic was the first to unveil images of the wreck discovered by National Geographic explorer Robert Ballard in 1985. Take a new look, from its historic beginnings to the latest research, at the ship that has captured the world’s imagination since it sank on April 15, 1912.
Explore an intricately detailed 18-foot model of the ship, a floor interactive and touch table, props from the 1997 film, including a full size lifeboat, historical photographs of the ship and passengers, and the latest imagery by National Geographic explorer James Cameron of the wreck on the ocean floor.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. NGSTIT_120511_014.JPG: Building the Titanic: The motivation to build Titanic arose from competition among American, British, and German steamship lines of the early twentieth century. Companies vied for lucrative transatlantic passenger traffic ranging from millionaire vacationers to streams of immigrants. Ships built for speed, size, luxury, and reliability enjoyed an edge. At the time, the Irish city of Belfast dominated the shipbuilding industry. In 1861, Edward J. Harland and Gustav Wolff employed 150 men to build ships one at a time on Queen's Island in the River Lagan. They improved design by substituting iron decks for wooden ones and squaring hulls to increase capacity. Demand rose, and by the early 1900s more than 14,000 Harland and Wolff employees built the world's largest ships. In 1907, the managing director of England's White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, asked Harland and Wolff chairman Lord William Pirrie to design ships that would dwarf all competition. They agreed on three identical vessels Olympic, Titanic, and Gigantic (renamed Britannic). The ships would measure 882.5 feet long, about sixteen feet more than the flight deck of the World War II aircraft carrier USS Lexington. At 46,000 tons, most of it iron and steel held in place by three million rivets, the ships would be a third larger than their biggest rivals. Each ship had 29 boilers designed to burn 825 tons of coal each day. Titanic's keel was laid March 31, 1909. About 3,000 workers attached hull and deck plates and created the skeleton for hundreds of rooms. On May 31, 1911, Titanic, its interiors unfinished, sat ready for launch. A crowd of 100,000 gathered for its first journey. Signal flags spelling "Good Luck" bedecked the gantry as Titanic slid down greased skips into the River Lagan. The Belfast Newsletter proclaimed the dawn of "a new epoch in naval architecture."
2. NGSTIT_120511_025.JPG: Security Room used in the film Titanic
3. NGSTIT_120511_038.JPG: Preparing for Passengers: Following the launch, Titanic required ten more months to be made ready for passengers and crew. Fitters put modern furnishings in staterooms, including linoleum floors, hot and cold running water, and plush beds. Shipbuilder magazine praised the "unrivaled extent and magnificence" of the accommodations. The ship also garnered attention for its system of bulkheads installed perpendicular to the keel, which separated the interior into 16 supposedly watertight chambers. Shipbuilder said this design rendered Titanic "virtually unsinkable." Titanic began sea trials on March 31, 1912, Captain E.J. Smith, a favorite of the White Star Line, took command and announced its initial voyage to New York City and back would be his last before retirement. The ship passed its tests and received certification from the British Board of Trade, a final step required before carrying passengers. Titanic sailed to its home port of Southampton, England, where it berthed to take on coal and the first of more than 1,300 passengers. Among those boarding was passenger Sylvia Caldwell. "Is this ship really unsinkable?" she inquired of a deck hand as she boarded. His answer: "Yes, lady. God himself could not sink this ship." In the days before movie stars, the lives of the ultra-wealthy fascinated the public. The New York Times story noting Titanic's sailing date of April 10, 1912, carried the headline "Largest Vessel in World to Bring Many Well-Known Passengers Here." Among the listed names were business scions Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy's department store; Benjamin Guggenheim, son of a mining millionaire; and streetcar magnate George Widener. The wealthy passenger of all, John Jacob Astor IV, would board in France.
4. NGSTIT_120511_047.JPG: Setting Sail: Titanic left Southampton at noon April 10. It steamed to Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland. Passengers boarded and disembarked at each stop, departing Ireland for the transatlantic crossing on April 11. On ship, they followed Edwardian class structure. The 324 First Class passengers enjoyed a Versailles-style lounge, mahogany-paneled smoking room, Turkish bath, gymnasium, and other elaborate spaces. They ate filet mignon and fresh pastries off fine china in a dining room reserved just for them. Their stateroom options included Queen Anne, Georgia, Empire, Jacobean, and Louis XIV, XV and XVI. Exclusive parlor suites, each with private promenade, rented one way for $4,350 -- several times a schoolteacher's annual salary. Second Class, comprising 284 passengers, occupied staterooms that would have passed for First Class elsewhere. Second and First Class shared a gallery that rivaled any elite restaurant. But they did not mix. Second Class could visit First Class areas before sailing, but afterward kept to their own library, smoking room, and other spaces on six decks. Electric elevators -- one for Second Class and three for First -- were a novelty. Third Class, also called steerage for the low-priced, noisy rooms near the waterline and steering system, had 709 passengers. Many came from impoverished regions of Europe and Asia. Titanic's comfortable beds and Third Class meals of fish, bread, and potatoes likely were the most lavish some had ever experienced. They stayed behind locked barricades, erected to comply with American law requiring isolation of steerage to prevent the spread of disease. That ensured exclusive use of the Poop Deck and its excellent view, but also blocked routes to lifeboats on the Boat Deck. Titanic had a crew of 891, including 23 women. Coal stokers, engineers, stewards, chefs, mail sorters, two radio operators, and others shared the duties of running the ship and seeing to passengers; comfort. Teens as young as 14 ran errands, carried bags, and operated elevators.
5. NGSTIT_120511_055.JPG: First Class Accommodations used in the film Titanic
6. NGSTIT_120511_080.JPG: Engine works boiler ship with two completed rows of boilers for Olympic (Titanic's sister ship).
7. NGSTIT_120511_088.JPG: T.W. McCawley demonstrates a rowing machine in Titanic's gym.
8. NGSTIT_120511_093.JPG: Titanic First Class suite bedroom, B57
9. NGSTIT_120511_099.JPG: Second Class smoke room, Olympic (Titanic's sister ship)
10. NGSTIT_120511_104.JPG: View of Titanic's stern
11. NGSTIT_120511_109.JPG: Titanic leaving the port of Queenstown (Cobh), Ireland, April 11, 1912
12. NGSTIT_120511_115.JPG: Marconi Room: Titanic's radio room was staffed with two operators who worked for the Marconi Company, John (Jack) Phillips, 25, and Harold Bride, 21. The pair installed and tested the equipment before sea trials and maintained continuous coverage once the ship was underway. Passengers delivered personal messages, paid for by the word, to an office which then sent them to the radio room via pneumatic tube for transmission. Incoming messages were typed out on a form and returned to the office for delivery to passengers. Messages concerning navigation were delivered directly to the bridge which was on the same deck as the radio room. During the first 36 hours of the voyage, the two men sent 250 passenger telegrams.
13. NGSTIT_120511_129.JPG: Final Moments: On Sunday, April 14, nearby ships radioed Titanic to warn of icebergs ahead. Captain Smith did not foresee danger. He believed Titanic could avoid collision and maintained full speed. That night, radio operator Jack Phillips received messages about fields of bergs and pack ice. One warning mapped a dangerous rectangle that Titanic was already inside. At 11:00 pm, the liner Californian radioed that it had stopped amid ice. As none of the messages required Phillips to inform Smith, he put them aside to send telegrams for paying passengers. The ocean was calm and flat, eliminating waves that would have made icebergs more visible. Just before 11:40pm, foremast lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg and phoned the bridge to steer wide. It was too late. The berg scraped the starboard hull below the water line. Seawater entered the first six of sixteen watertight compartments formed by transverse bulkheads. The bulkheads had a fatal flaw: they rose only a few feet above the water line. As the weight of incoming water pulled down the bow, the bulkheads sank below the waterline. Spillover topped the bulkheads, sloshing into the seventh compartment, then the eighth, continuing in an unstoppable reaction.
14. NGSTIT_120511_141.JPG: Cqd - sos. From M.G.Y. We have struck iceberg sinking fast come to our assistance Position Lat 41.44 N Lon 50 14 W MGY
15. NGSTIT_120511_148.JPG: Cherub light fixture from the Grand Staircase, used in the film Titanic
16. NGSTIT_120511_171.JPG: Fine Art Models Titanic Model Scale 1:48 -- Length: 18 feet Hull: fiberglass form plated and riveted with brass Rivets: three different styles totaling more than 3,376,000 Deck planking and deck furniture: wood Courtesy Fine Art Models, Birmingham, Michigan www.fineartmodels.com The tradition of creating builder's models of ships probably started in the mid-19th century. Made to celebrate and advertise a shipyard's work, models were displayed in boardrooms and offices, and occasionally sent to international expositions and museums. Today these models remain long after a ship has sailed its last, offering an opportunity to examine accurately rendered details and the artistry of the shipbuilder. Harland and Wolff never built a model of Titanic, perhaps because a model was made of the first ship of the class, Olympic. Fine Art Models approached Harland and Wolff with a proposal to build the definitive model of Titanic. The builders agreed and offered unprecedented access to Titanic's original plans, drawings, and measurements. Development began in 1995. This model was completed in 2002 at a scale of 1:48. The hand-carved case is based on the design used by Harland and Wolff to display other models. While it took nearly three years to build the original Titanic, this model took seven years of painstaking labor to complete. Building wooden sailing ship models is somewhat easier than recreating the iron and steel ships of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their elaborate metal parts can often only be duplicated by metal casting or fabrication with jeweler's tools. It can take hours longer to complete something in miniature than to make the same thing at a scale of our daily lives.
17. NGSTIT_120511_191.JPG: By the Numbers 882.5 feet long 175 feet from keel to stack 60 feet above the waterline to boat deck 46,328 gross tonnage 23 knots top speed 9 decks 29 boilers 159 coal burning furnaces 5,900 tons of coal on board 5 anchors, largest weighed 15 tons 3 propellers 4 elevators 2,208 passenger and crew 370 First Class Staterooms (787 berths) [2.1 per stateroom] 168 Second Class Staterooms (564 berths) [3.4 per stateroom] 297 Third Class Staterooms (1,120 berths) [3.8 per stateroom] Titanic required the following galley supplies for the crossing: 75,000 pounds of fresh meat 25,000 pounds of poultry & game 11,000 pounds of fresh fish 40 tons of potatoes 5 tons of dried rice and beans 7,000 heads of lettuce 2.75 tons of tomatoes 3,500 pounds of onions 40,000 fresh eggs 200 barrels of flour 10,000 pounds of sugar 3,000 pounds of coffee and tea 1,750 quarts of ice cream 180 boxes of oranges (36,000) 1,500 gallons of fresh milk 6,000 pounds of fresh butter 20,000 bottles of beer 1,500 bottles of wine 15,000 bottles of mineral water 850 bottles of spirits 3,000 teacups 2,500 breakfast plates 1,500 souffle dishes 8,000 dinner forks 2,500 water bottles 2,000 wine glasses 12,000 dinner plates 300 claret jugs 2,000 egg spoons 400 toast racks 1,000 oyster forks 8,000 cut tumblers
18. NGSTIT_120511_212.JPG: Titanic carried 20 lifeboats: 14 standard boats, 2 emergency cutters, and 4 collapsible Engelhardt boats. Shown are standard lifeboats at a scale of 1:48 and a collapsible Engelhardt lifeboat at 1:12. The detailed brass pieces are duplicates of what is hidden inside the model. They include an anchor and windlass, the ship's wheel, telegraph, and compass binnacle, and a ventilator.
19. NGSTIT_120511_253.JPG: Iceberg Facts: * The average iceberg is 70,000 cubic feet (1,982 cubic meters) -- about 840,000 ice cubes. * Seven-eights of an iceberg's mass is below the waterline. * Melting an average iceberg takes the specific heat of 2.4 million gallons (9.1 million liters) of gasoline. * It takes 1,900 tons (1,724 metric tons) of TNT to blow up an average iceberg. * The tallest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was 550 feet (168 meters) high, sighted off Greenland in 1967. * Ice islands from Antarctica can reach the size of Rhode Island. * Icebergs float because they are fresh water, which is less dense than salt water. Sea ice floats because water is densest just about its freezing point. * Meltwater flowing off icebergs sustains whole colonies of krill (Arctic shrimp), making them a magnet for fish and whales and thus for seals and polar bears. * Icebergs are most dangerous to ships when they turn over in the water. Don't go near them in a small boat!
20. NGSTIT_120511_289.JPG: Communicating with the Engine Room: A ship's telegraph system consists of a pair of communication devices that allow crew on the bridge to communicate with the engine room. When the handle from the transmitting telegraph on the bridge was moved to a different speed on the dial, a bell would ring on a receiving telegraph in the engine room, alerting workers to the change. The engine room would then move their telegraph handle to the new position to acknowledge the order. PULL THE HANDLE TO REGISTER YOUR ORDER
21. NGSTIT_120511_301.JPG: Distress Signals: As soon as the seriousness of the collision with the iceberg became clear, Captain Smith gave orders to fire distress rockets, load lifeboats, and radio for help. Radio Operator Phillips sent the standard distress call, CQD in Morse Code, then switched to the SOS signal. All messages ended with Titanic's Marconi call sign, MGY. Before nearby ships hearing the call could respond, Titanic sank at 2:20am. While some of the 1,496 victims drowned, most died of hypothermia in the 28 degree water. The passenger ship Carpathia, sailing from 58 miles away, arrived at 3:30am and rescued 712 survivors. Over the years, the number of victims has been disputed because of confusion about people traveled under false names, failed to board, or stowed away, but careful research checked against the Carpathia manifest of arriving passengers has helped bring consensus.
22. NGSTIT_120511_308.JPG: sos sos cqd cqd - MGY We are sinking fast. passengers being put into boats. MGY
23. NGSTIT_120511_312.JPG: cq[d] MGY Women and Children in boats. cannot last much longer. MGY
24. NGSTIT_120511_314.JPG: Morse Code: Titanic's radio operators sent two distress calls. The first, CQD, was the Marconi Company's general distress call meaning the vessel needed immediate assistance. The second distress signal SOS, was the easily recognized Morse code, dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit. Morse code works by replacing letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and numbers, with dots, dashes, and spaces that are transmitted by electrical or mechanical signal. Invented by Samuel Morse in the United States during the 1830s, it was adapted in 1851 to include symbols for non-English letters. CQD From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia CQD, transmitted in Morse code as -- � -- � -- -- � -- -- � � is one of the first distress signals adopted for radio use. It was announced on January 7, 1904, by "Circular 57" of the Marconi International Marine Communication Company, and became effective, beginning February 1, 1904 for Marconi installations. Land telegraphs had traditionally used "CQ" ("s�cu," from the French word s�curit� or secours) to identify alert or precautionary messages of interest to all stations along a telegraph line, and CQ had also been adopted as a "general call" for maritime radio use. However, in landline usage there was no general emergency signal, so the Marconi company added a "D" ("distress") to CQ in order to create its distress call. Thus, "CQD" is understood by wireless operators to mean, "All stations: distress." Contrary to popular belief, CQD does not stand for "Come Quick, Danger", "Come Quickly Distress", or "Come Quick -- Drowning!"; these are backronyms. Although used worldwide by Marconi operators, CQD was never adopted as an international standard since it could be mistaken for a general call "CQ" if the reception was poor. At the second International Radiotelegraphic Convention, held in Berlin in 1906, Germany's Notzeichen distress signal of three-dots/three-dashes/three-dots (� � � -- -- -- � � � ) was adopted as the international Morse code distress signal. (This distress signal soon became known as "SOS". Germany had first adopted this distress signal in regulations effective April 1, 1905.) Between 1899-1908, nine documented rescues were made by the use of wireless. The first distress call was simply 'HELP'. By February 1904, the Marconi Wireless Company required all of its operators to use 'CQD' for a ship in distress, or requiring URGENT assistance. In the early morning of January 23, 1909, whilst sailing into New York from Liverpool, RMS Republic collided with the Italian liner SS Florida in fog off the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts, United States. Radio Operator Jack Binns sent the CQD distress signal by wireless transmission. This was the most famous use and rescue using wireless prior to the RMS Titanic. In 1912, RMS Titanic radio operator Jack Phillips initially sent "CQD," which was still commonly used by British ships. Harold Bride, the junior radio operator, jokingly suggested using the new code "SOS." Thinking it might be the only time he would get to use it, Phillips began to alternate between the two.
25. NGSTIT_120511_323.JPG: Standard Lifeboat used in the film Titanic
26. NGSTIT_120511_328.JPG: Safety and Survival: Huge ocean liners of the early twentieth century were considered so safe that British Board of Trade regulators had not been updated to require lifeboat seats for everyone. Titanic's original plans called for sixty-four lifeboats. That dropped to sixteen, plus four Engelhardt boats with collapsible canvas sides. Twenty boats met the board's rules, based on tonnage, although they only had room for half of the people aboard. Still, Titanic's lifeboats launched with more than 400 empty seats. Some passengers refused to board, believing the ship unsinkable for two long. Many, especially in Third Class, never made it to the Boat Deck. A few stayed behind for personal reasons. Ida Straus of First Class exited a lifeboat when ship's officers refused to let her husband join her. She returned to the ship and both died. Odds of an adult male passenger's survival depended on his choosing a port or starboard boat. Captain Smith ordered "Women and children first" into the boats. To port, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, highest-ranking officer to survive, interpreted the order to exclude men. To starboard, First Office William Murdoch chose to load boats with available women and children, then put men in unused seats. Those lucky enough to board a lifeboat in the chaos had to be lowered approximately 60 feet from the boat deck to the waterline.
27. NGSTIT_120511_346.JPG: News of the Tragedy: The White Star Line insisted intercepted radio signals did not mean Titanic had sunk. Newspapers repeated the company line, saying the ship had survived. Only The New York Times, acting on an editor's hunch, had the initial story right. White Star learned the truth in a radio message from the Olympic at 6:20pm, New York time, on April 15 and confirmed the news the following day. Carpathia, the ship carrying the survivors, arrived April 18. Small craft swarmed the ship in New York harbor. Many carried reporters shouting questions. About 40,000 people including passengers' relatives, crowded the docks. Some had happy reunions, while many more left in tears. Newspapers competed to cover the story from every angle. The New York Times relied on radio messages from the Atlantic to post the first survivor list, handwritten on large boards, outside its offices early April 16. Carpathia passenger Carlos F Hurd, a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's newspapers, tossed a 5,000-word story into a tugboat hired by the New York World. The Times got radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi aboard Carpathia, along with its own reporter, to secure an exclusive interview with Titanic radio operator Harold Bride. He was paid $1,000 for his story. Thrust into instant fame, some survivors exaggerated or invented stories. Others found the press eager to do it for them. Improbable survivor stories emerged after rescue. Teenager Jack Thayer jumped from a railing, bobbed to the surface, and clambered aboard an improperly launched, upside-down Englehardt. A friend who jumped with him never surfaced. Chief baker Charles Joughin, who had drunk some whiskey during the crisis, survived for two hours in the ocean by clinging to a boat. In Lifeboat No. 6, Margaret Brown, soon to be known as "Unsinkable Molly," grabbed the tiller from an officer and threatened to toss him overboard after he refused to let anyone row or look for swimmers. She ordered women to row to keep warm.
28. NGSTIT_120511_373.JPG: The Lost and the Saved Total onboard: 2,208 For every two saved, four perished Lost: 1,496 First Class: Women & Children: 5 Lost -- Men: 118 Lost Second Class: Women & Children: 13 Lost -- Men: 153 Lost Third Class: Women & Children: 144 Lost -- Men: 384 Lost Officers & Crew: Women: 3 Lost -- Men: 676 Lost [Combined: 45% of total losses] Saved: 712 First Class: Women & Children: 143 Saved -- Men: 58 Saved Second Class: Women & Children: 105 Saved -- Men: 13 Saved Third Class: Women & Children: 120 Saved -- Men: 61 Saved Officers & Crew: Women: 20 Saved -- Men: 192 Saved
29. NGSTIT_120511_390.JPG: A commemorative plaque was left on Titanic's deck in 1986 by Bob Ballard and Explorer's Club divers.
30. NGSTIT_120511_397.JPG: The Mir 2 submersible lights Titanic's anchor chains
31. NGSTIT_120511_405.JPG: Search for Titanic: Proposals to find Titanic began among relatives of some of its wealthiest victims, including the Guggenheims, Wideners, and Astors. However, nobody knew the ship's exact location, condition, or depth, and technology had not evolved to examine the ocean floor. Finding Titanic would await the creation of deep-sea vehicles decades later. An oil millionaire, Jack Grimm, underwrote three expeditions in the early 1980s and sought the wreckage with sonar, but did not find it. Finally, in 1985 a joint American-French team succeeded. Led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel of the Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploration de la Mer, the two combined their underwater expertise and a hunch. They plotted Titanic's last position, compensated for the current, and drew a rectangle on the map around the likely wreck site. They also believed the eyewitness account of teenage survivor Jack Thayer, ridiculed in 1912, who said Titanic had broken apart before sinking. Hull rupture would have scattered debris across the seabed. Ballard and Michel believed video cameras and lights dragged above the floor would encounter identifiable debris. Aboard the Knorr, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research vessel, the Ballard-Michel team towed a video camera sled in a grid pattern inside the plotted rectangle. After three frustrating weeks, early on September 1, the crew finally spotted wreckage at 41 degrees, 43 minutes north latitude, and 49 degrees, 56 minutes west longitude. At a depth of 2.5 miles, a boiled appeared on the screen. Its rivet pattern identified it as from Titanic -- they had found the infamous ship. Jack Thayer was correct. Titanic had indeed broken apart. Additional searching revealed the bow section of the ship. The crew celebrated before holding a brief memorial on Knorr's fantail. Later that day, they released the news to the world. Ballard returned to the wreck in 1986 and 2004, and today advocates for the possible designation of the site as a marine protected area. In addition to Titanic, Ballard is credited with tracking down other significant wrecks, including the German battleship Bismark and numerous contemporary and ancient shipwrecks. During his long career, he had conducted more than 120 deep-sea expeditions, using the latest in exploration technology, including deep-diving submarines. He is also known for his discoveries of hydrothermal vents and his pioneering work in science distance learning through the Jason project. This award winning educational program reaches more than one million students annually.
32. NGSTIT_120511_418.JPG: This mosaic image of the bow was made from photos taken on the joint Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Institut Francais de Recherche pour l'Exploration de la Mer expedition, led by Bob Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel. Their discovery of the Titanic marked a turning point for public awareness of the ocean and for the development of new areas of science and technology.
33. NGSTIT_120511_434.JPG: Cherub Light Fixture: The remains of Titanic are not static. The extraordinary violence of its splitting at the surface is being followed by a slow motion disintegration more than two miles below on the ocean floor. As it rests in darkness, tiny marine creatures eat away at its remains. Much of its wood has been consumed while orange rusticles created by iron-eating bacteria drip from the metal frame. Sediments moved by ocean currents threaten to bury it all. Current research efforts include careful mapping of the entire debris field to document the remains in their current state.
34. NGSTIT_120511_437.JPG: Titanic Wreck Model: This scale model of Titanic's sunken bow was used in the film Titanic. Cameron has since used it for planning archeological expeditions to the ship. The detail of access points help to determine where the remotely operated vehicles and enter and leave the ship.
35. NGSTIT_120511_468.JPG: Final Resting Place: Seawater entering Titanic's bow dragged it downward, lifting the stern clear of the ocean. The hull could not stand such stress. It fractured into two main pieces at the aft expansion joint near the third funnel or smokestack. Chunks of keel and hull tore away from the major sections. The bow, more than 400 feet long, landed upright and relatively intact. Because water gradually displaced air inside its decks, it suffered only minor damage after the breakup. It planed gracefully into a gentle slop overlooking a small canyon, its prow pointing north. The stem faced a much more violent end. Scientists speculate it contained trapped air as it sank, especially inside refrigeration compartments. Rising pressure likely collapsed the air pockets throgh implosion followed by explosion. Implosive and explosive forces, impact, and fluid resistance to a heavy, moving object combined to smash, peel, and twist the stern's hull and decks. One 330-foot section landed nearly 2,000 feet from the bow, pointed in the opposite direction. Breakup at the surface opened all decks to the sea. Thousands of objects ranging from chairs to china, and combs to coal, scattered between and around the bow and stern, forming a debris field. Prominent are give of the twenty-nine coal-burning boilers. Salvage expeditions run by a company now known as RMS Titanic Inc. have retrieved nearly 6,000 objects. Micro-organisms have consumed much of the organic material, including deck planks. Symbiotic colonies of bacteria and fungi are slowly consuming hull and deck plate, as well as other iron objects, extracting metal to spin spongy formations called "rusticles." Ceramic and acid-treated leather items, including toilets and shoes, have resisted deterioration. Human remains have yet to be found, although clothing and shoes have been photographed in arrangements suggesting they once enclosed bodies.
36. NGSTIT_120511_502.JPG: Revealing Titanic's Secrets Filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence James Cameron's passion for diving and ocean exploration has led not only to many trips to Titanic, but also to the creation of high-tech, remotely operated vehicles (ROV) that have documented more than 60 percent of the ship's surviving interior spaces. In 1995, Cameron made the first of twelve dives to the shipwreck to gather video. He descended in Russian Mir submersibles, designed to withstand the nearly 6,000 pounds of pressure per square inch exerted at a depth of two and a half miles. Deploying an ROV named Snoop Dog, attached to Mir by tether, Cameron lit and photographed the grand staircase and D Deck, shooting images for the closing scenes of his blockbuster film, Titanic. Cameron returned to the wreck site in 2001 and 2005 and eventually totaled 33 dives to the ship, averaging fourteen hours per round trip. For the 2001 dives, Cameron and his engineering partner, Vince Pace, developed a digital three-dimensional camera system and installed it in agile, revolutionary ROVs that explored deep inside Titanic's interior. The resulting images were used in the 3-D Imax documentary Ghosts of the Abyss. Back again for a 2005 documentation, Cameron deployed an even smaller ROV that reached the ship's Turkish baths and passenger rooms. Surprisingly, Cameron found much of the mahogany paneling and furnishings relatively intact, sheltered from biological decay consuming much of the exterior. Through careful on-site observation and analysis, Cameron recently reconstructed the details of Titanic's breakup and sinking. Cameron's eighth deep ocean expedition is with a unique manned submersible. After seven years of engineering effort, Cameron successfully piloted the sub, called Deepsea Challenger, to the lowest point in the Mariana Trench. The record-breaking solo dive, to a depth of 35,756 feet, makes Cameron the first human to descend to the trench alone. He hopes to continue explorations in other virtually unknown deep-water habitats such as the New Britain Trench and the Sirena Deep. He is also developing an environmentally themed expedition series for television.
37. NGSTIT_120511_512.JPG: Remotely Operated Exploration Tools: James Cameron's fascination with Titanic had led him to develop a series of remotely operated vehicles (ROV) to conduct what he terms an interior archeological survey of the ship. A rudimentary ROV, called Snoop Dog, was used to film the ship's grand staircase in 1995. It was followed by smaller and more versatile models Jake, Elwood, and Gilligan. To date, more than 65 percent of Titanic's surviving internal spaces have been documented. In Cameron's words, "In all that exploration, the strongest memories are these out-of-body experiences of ghostwalking through the corridors and stairwells of Titanic via my ROV avatar."
38. NGSTIT_120511_536.JPG: Competing Theories: Access to Titanic has prompted many new theories about its sinking. One relying on forensic evidence arose from recovery of a hull piece y RMS Titanic Inc. in 1991. Metallurgists said sulfur and phosphorus impurities had made the steel excessively brittle. They suggested the hull shattered when it should have bent. Later tests cast doubts, asserting Titanic met industry standards for so-called "battleship steel." A second theory blamed weakness among the ship's three million rivets. A hull plate retrieved in 1996 had empty rivet holes, an 17 of 18 recovered rivets lacked at least one head. Historians who examined Titanic's construction said many rivets had been improperly forged, hammered, or tested during the rush to finish construction. Others responded that the shipbuilder knew its craft and would not have allowed sloppy work. A third theory postulated weakness in Titanic's frame. Chief designer Thomas Andrews notes "panting" of Olympic during sea trials. Its sides moved in and out three inches at cruising speed. Andrews had been ordered to use thinner hull plates than he wanted. That might have weakened Olympic and contributed to its panting -- and Titanic's sinking. Divers to Britannic, finished after Titanic sank, found upgrades to the expansion joint, suggesting corrective changes. A final theory needed no physical evidence. The granddaughter of Second Officer Charles Lightoller revealed in 2010 that according to family lore, Quartermaster Robert Hitchins, at the wheel, had misinterpreted a steering order and veered toward the iceberg before correcting. At the time the North Atlantic was in transition from Tiller Orders to Rudder Orders. Under the former, pushing a tiller to the right steer left, under the later, moving a wheel right steered right. A descendent of Hitchins insisted he would not have made such a basic error.
39. NGSTIT_120511_564.JPG: This was cool. You walked over a projected photograph of the wreck and the area around you turned into an image of the original ship. I asked how it was done and they said two XBoxes did it all.
40. NGSTIT_120511_597.JPG: Obsession: Titanic has gripped the imagination for a century, spawning literature, movies, songs, poems, and artifact exhibits. Objects recovered from the wreckage drew huge crowds at traveling galleries and permanent Titanic museums in Missouri and Tennessee. Hundreds of books have included Walter Lord's 1955 classic A Night to Remember, based on extensive interviews with survivors. Motion picture accounts appeared shortly after the sinking. In 1912, actress Dorothy Gibson, a Titanic passenger, starred in a ten-minute fictionalized movie. For her costume, she used the dress she wore into the lifeboat that saved her. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels oversaw creation of a 1943 movie blaming the sinking on British corruption and ineptitude. Spoofs included Ghostbusters II in 1989, depicting a spectral version of the ship dropping its passengers in modern New York ("Well, better later than never," says a dockworker) and 1981's Time Bandits, in which a time traveler on Titanic's deck orders champagne "with plenty of ice." Serious versions included a 1958 filming of Lord's book and James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, Titanic. For exteriors set in 1912, he ordered construction of a replica off Baja California. Cameron's version won 11 Academy Awards and ranked as history's highest-grossing movie for 12 years. Titanic's cultural memes, or messages imitated and passed to new audiences, include variations of two young lovers from Cameron's movie standing at the prow with arms outstretched, and the ship's band playing as it sank -- the latter parodied in 2007's The Simpsons Movie. Disaster experts say widespread knowledge of Titanic's story has influenced perceptions of other major tragedies. For example, some ferryboat operators repeated Captain Smith's order, "Women and children first," when taking desperate passengers across the Hudson River to New Jersey during the attacks of September 11, 2001.
41. NGSTIT_120511_607.JPG: XBox systems that controlled the fluid display of the Titanic
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