The Discovery of the Titanic: Exploring the Greatest of all Lost Ships

Lavishly illustrated first-hand account of the search and discovery of the wreck of the Titanic.

On a cold April night in 1912, the magnificent new liner R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg and sank beneath the icy waters of the North Atlantic, The following day the words “TITANIC LOST” shocked the world. Seventy-three years later, on September 1, 1985, the headlines would proclaim “TITANIC FOUND” For on that morning, Dr. Robert Ballard and a joint French/American expedition had located the legendary lost ship and had photographed her standing proudly upright on the ocean floor.

In the summer of 1986, Dr. Ballard returned to the Titanic and descended 2½ miles in a tiny three-man submarine to explore the ghostly wreck. Actually landing on the deck of the ship, Ballard sent the Jason Junior, his robotic ‘swimming eyeball,” down the Grand Staircase to “see” glass chandeliers still hanging in place, unseen for three-quarters of a century. During eleven separate descents to the Titanic, Ballard and his team explored the entire ship — including the artefact-strewn debris field and severed stern section ~ and photographed her in remarkable detail.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE TITANIC is the compelling, firsthand account of Dr Ballard’s twelve-year quest to find the sunken liner With the help of dozens of never-before-seen photographs, rare archival pictures, charts, paintings and a 25-inch “photo-mosaic” of the ship, Dr Ballard recounts the Titamic’s fateful last night and describes the moment-by-moment drama of the expeditions that found and explored her. For the first time, the exact location of Titanic is revealed and, finally, many of the mysteries that have surrounded her tragic fate are laid to rest.

Here is the fascinating concluding chapter to a story that has captured imaginations for almost a century, the dramatic account of the most exciting underwater discovery of our time.