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Titanic Wreck Discovery and Legacy

Dr. Robert Ballard located the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 while on a secret mission to find lost nuclear submarines for the US Navy. When they realized they had found Titanic, the discovery team was overjoyed but then somber upon remembering the lives lost. In 2004, Ballard returned to the wreck and was disturbed by evidence that salvagers had removed artifacts and that the site had become more of a tourist attraction than a memorial, which went against his desire to treat Titanic's remains with dignity.

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Isabella Vido
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60 views1 page

Titanic Wreck Discovery and Legacy

Dr. Robert Ballard located the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 while on a secret mission to find lost nuclear submarines for the US Navy. When they realized they had found Titanic, the discovery team was overjoyed but then somber upon remembering the lives lost. In 2004, Ballard returned to the wreck and was disturbed by evidence that salvagers had removed artifacts and that the site had become more of a tourist attraction than a memorial, which went against his desire to treat Titanic's remains with dignity.

Uploaded by

Isabella Vido
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Intermediate Students

Life
Return to Titanic
On 15 April 1912, the largest passenger steamship ever built, appropriately named Titanic, sank
in the North Atlantic Ocean after hitting an iceberg. Titanic had left Southampton, England, five
days earlier and was on her maiden voyage.

In 1985, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr Robert Ballard located the wreck of


Titanic. He went back to Titanic nineteen years later to see how it had changed.

1 It was the height of the Cold War and in fact I was on a secret mission when we found Titanic.
The US Navy had agreed to finance the development of our underwater video technology. In
return, we had agreed to use the technology to find two US nuclear submarines which had
disappeared in the 1960s.

2 Not at first, because many ships had sunk in that area. When we realised it was Titanic, we
jumped for joy. Then we realised we were celebrating something where people had died. We
actually stopped our work and held a memorial service at that point.

3 I saw champagne bottles, intact, with the corks still in. The box holding the bottles had
disappeared long ago. Suddenly, my eye was drawn to a womans shoe. Nearby I saw a pair of
smaller shoes that had perhaps belonged to a child. I felt that the people who had died here in
1912 were speaking to me again. But I knew that a private salvage company had legally removed
thousands of objects from the site. A Russian submarine had taken Hollywood filmmaker James
Cameron to the wreck. A New York couple had even got married on Titanics bow. It was
exactly what I didnt want to happen. Id asked people to treat Titanics remains with dignity.
Instead, theyd turned her into a freak show. The story of Titanic is not about the ship, its about
the people.

bow (n) /baU/ the front of a ship or boat

freak show (n) /frik / something unusual which people watch for

entertainment (often used negatively)

salvage (n) /salvd/ money or compensation when people recover or

rescue shipwrecks

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