Shipwrecks - Time Capsules of Human Civilization

Titanic Logs - July 9th Arrival on Dive Site

This is our series of supplemental logs that were taken from our scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic earlier this month. I hope that you enjoy!

Arriving over the wreck site of Titanic at 8:30 am, the Russian crew of Keldysh will spend the next hours preparing to place four transducers positioned in a rectangle pattern around the wreck area. These transponders are essential for the Keldysh to stay geographically positioned over the wreck site. Because of this arrival time, there will be no diving today. Rob McCallum, the dive operations manager, has released the MIR dive schedule and I am slated to dive on Dive Day Three with Trevor Montgomery, aka Monty, from Melbourne Australia. Monty is a deep submersible veteran of dives out to the German battleship, Bismarck and the mid-ocean thermal vents. Whenever Monty enters a room his personality lights up the place and I look forward to diving with him down to Titanic.

Today I had my MIR orientation visit with Anatoly Sagalevitch, my good friend from my 2003 research expedition to Titanic. In 2003, I spent many hours with Anatoly discussing many different topics ranging from our scientific works, diving, shipwrecks, the Russian submarine Kursk, thermal vents, James Cameron and visits to the USA. Seeing him again was like visiting with an good old friend and he is truly a wonderful person. Following lectures by Ralph White about his research and thirty-three dives to Titanic and Don Walsh on Manned Exploration of the Oceans, it was time to brief several of tomorrow's divers on what to do and what to see. Many of the expedition participants spent time designing beautiful styrofoam cups that will be brought down in the MIR's compartment; and because of the 3 tons of water pressure, are reduced to the size of a shot glass.

Titanic Logs - July 8th Calm Seas Ahead

This is our series of supplemental logs that were taken from our scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic earlier this month. I hope that you enjoy!

The Keldysh is making get time getting out to the wreck site of RMS Titanic at 41° 44 North, 49° 46 West. The ship is going at a fast but comfortable speed of almost 11 knots in calm seas. At this pace and barring any foul weather, we should be getting to the Titanic site at 9:30 am Saturday morning. We picked up a group of dolphins on our way out and they followed us for quite a distance.

Shipboard life is very full with a MIR Orientation and Dive Briefing by Anatoly Sagalevitch and lectures by Don Walsh on The Seas Around Us and Ralph White on Titanic 1910-2005. We had our Abandon Ship Drill today that most people seemed to enjoy. The first set of aquanauts have been assigned and have gone through a walk-through of the MIR while familiarizing themselves with the MIR pilot and the submersible. Following a wonderful gourmet evening meal, the movie, Aviator was shown.

Titanic Logs - July 7th Great Start to our Expedition

Today starts our series of supplemental logs that were taken from our scientific research expedition to RMS Titanic earlier this month. I hope that you enjoy!

Despite a dark, cool, overcast day in St. John’s, Newfoundland, nothing could overshadow the optimistic enthusiasm of the passengers and crew as they board the Russian research vessel, Akademik Keldysh for their expedition out to RMS Titanic. The Keldysh will be leaving port at 20.00 hrs while the passengers will be treated to a 5-star gourmet meal from our two chefs, Robert Bartl and Michael Holz. St John’s is a beautiful city and one that I would highly-recommend to visit. Although I would love to spend more time here, I am very excited to get underway out to Titanic.

The expedition out to Titanic is rather full with twenty-five observers and seven staff members representing twelve different countries coming on this trip. This evening will be spent getting to know our fellow passengers and exchanging discussions about their reasons for visiting this once great liner. As an evening treat, we will be watching a movie entitled, Sideways followed by an early bedtime. Our Deep Ocean Expedition leader for this trip to Titanic will be Rob McCallum with assistance from Peter Batson. The guest speakers throughout the trip, that will be discussing various areas of underwater experiences, will be David Bright, Don Walsh, Ralph White and Peter Batson.

Another New Great Wreck Expedition

Having just a week to "decompress" from Titanic, I am now ready to tackle my next big wreck expedition. I am heading up a huge wreck discovery project in Florida that will employ two research vessels and a twenty-man crew on an underwater project that will be looking for the discovery of a lost naval vessel. Nautical Research Group is collaborating with the US Naval Historical Center on the discovery of this vessel utilizing the latest in underwater technology.  We will be using side-scan sonar, magnetometer, metal detector, visual camera arrays etc in pursuit of this vessel. Additionally, we have the capability to use some ROVs on the site and most of our divers will be using the latest in closed-circuit rebreather technology (including the new Evolution) to dive perspective targets. Please stay tuned for the outcome of our latest adventure.

In the meantime, we will be publishing the supplemental logs from our scientific research expedition to Titanic that we just completed starting this Friday. For those people in the Pennsylvania area, we will be premiering portions of our new video footage of Titanic on August 19th at Harrisburg's Whitaker Science Center.  I would like to invite our loyal fan base to come out and see some great video of Titanic. In addition to our presentation, they have an exhibit on loan from the company RMS Titanic that includes many recovered items from Titanic and will be showing a special IMAX screening of James Cameron's Ghosts of the Abyss.

Italian Beauty Andrea Doria - 49th Anniversary!

With all the press buzzing about our observations about Titanic and the beautiful documentary by James Cameron that was released last night on the Discovery network, it is hard to talk about anything else but Titanic.

Despite this "titanic" uproar, I would like to change the topic for another Lost Liner that today will mark a quite ominous anniversary. Tonight at 11:10 pm in dense fog, the Swedish-American liner, Stockholm collided with the pride of the Italian merchant fleet, the beautiful Andrea Doria about 50 miles southwest of Nantucket Island Massachusetts 49 years ago.  Nautical Research Group has spent many decades exploring and researching this "floating art museum" and has amassed the largest collection of Andrea Doria items in the world. The rescue of over 1700 passengers has been described as the "greatest open sea rescue" of all time. Unlike Titanic and the Empress of Ireland's massive toll of lives lost, the Andrea Doria lost 46 passengers that night, primarily in the impact zone where the Stockholm impaled itself into the starboard hull, just below the bow wing bridge.

Next year there will be a huge reunion of the Andrea Doria survivors, tentatively planned to be held at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in King's Point, Long Island, New York. Survivors, family and their guests will be treated to a wonderful day of activities and fine dining. In order to mark the 50th anniversary, Andrea Doria survivor Pierette Domenica Simpson will be publishing a book about the survivor's perspective of this tragedy and will lay the framework for uncovering the real reasons why the Stockholm collided and sank the Andrea Doria. This book will become a classic and will finally solve the mystery of how this accident could have occurred in the era of radar. I will give further information about this book as the publication date approaches.

The state of decay on the Andrea Doria is quite amazing. All of the top deck levels above the hull have collapsed and lie on the bottom of the ocean like a huge junk pile. Even Gimbel's Hole in the Foyer Deck has twisted upon itself and the opening can not be penetrated. In the mid-1980's, I discovered that there was more damage inflicted by the reinforced "ice-breaking" bow of the Stockholm on the Andrea Doria than was ever envisioned by its Ansaldo builders. It appears that the Stockholm's bow had even breached the starboard side keel as it collided at nearly full speed into the most vulnerable spot on the Andrea Doria. Over the past twenty years, this keel breach has expanded throughout the hull of the Andrea Doria and now threatens to separate the entire bow section of the ship, from the forecastle to the tip of the bow, from the remainder of the ship. Strong currents and relatively shallow waters at 265 feet have taken its toll on the Andrea Doria and even Titanic is in much better shape in comparison to this once-proud Italian liner.

High Quality Digital Video Footage of RMS Titanic

While viewing the underwater video footage from our dive to Titanic as it was being loaded and streamed into our computer servers was quite a thrill. The high quality digital video of Titanic is breathtaking and the processing of this film has begun. Our recent footage is so much better than our footage shot in 2003.  Nautical Research Group will be publishing digital footage from our scientific research expedition in the next 6 weeks. We will be premiering several new portions of this high quality digital footage at the Titanic Exhibit at the Whitaker Center for Science and Arts ' Harsco Science Center in Harrisburg, PA.  This special Titanic event will be held on Friday, August 19th from 7-9 pm. Stay tuned and syndicate this blog for some truly awesome shots of the Titanic that we will be releasing over the next four to eight weeks.

RMS Republic - Sad Times for Older Sister of Titanic

I noticed in recent days the news about the plight of Titanic's older White Star Line sister named Republic.  The Republic sank on January 24th, 1909 when she collided in a dense fog with an immigrant ship named SS Florida. The approximate location of her sinking is about 50 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The Republic was reportedly carrying a fortune of 5 tons of newly minted American Gold Eagle coins valued at $3 million in 1909, 15 tons of gold bars, a Navy payroll with estimated current value around $70 million and several tons of silver, as well as passengers' jewelry.  Additionally, it was reported to have on board JP Morgan's rare library of documents and books. She was discovered in 1981 by Martin Bayerle and salvaged throughout the mid-1980's. While I was diving the Andrea Doria through the 1980's, I could look off to the horizon and see about 5 miles away all the machinery of the rigs that were used to split open the Republic like a ripe watermelon. In all their destruction of this once-beautiful vessel, not one part of this vast fortune was found. Evenually, the salvors lost money and abandoned their claim to the ship. Auctions were held for the recovered artifacts from the Republic; however, there were very few buyers for these items. Literally boxes of artifacts were sold at a cheap rate and then the ship seemed to disappear for the past 15 years. In the mid-1990's, many of us that dove the Andrea Doria every year would then come over and dive Republic once.  Unfortunately, the salvors had broken up the ship very badly and we were all disappointed in the structural integrity of the ship.

Now Mr. Bayerle has, once again, secured salvage rights to the Republic. Since she lies in the shipping lanes into and out of New York, the Coast Guard has a mandatory 180 day notice to mariners period that must be given before diving can commence. With the weather window to dive the Republic all but closed, the operations will not begin until 2006. It will be certainly interesting to see if Mr. Bayerle's efforts will pay off or whether he will only succeed in desecrating the wreck site a second time.

Breaking News on Titanic - Some New Observations

In the  course of processing the video shot on Titanic last week, two observations of note were discovered. As more of this film is processed, I am sure that we will find many new changes to the morphological structure of Titanic.

The first significant observation was that the mast has finally collapsed in the area above the bell stanchion. In a recent scientific article that will be presented at Oceans 2005 in Washington, DC in September, Nautical Research Group's 2003 visit revealed a split in on the left side of the mast above the crow's nest with very distinctive crumbling of the metal on the right side of this portion of the mast. In the paper that I will present, the original estimate for the collapse of this section was given as ten years. Last year, Dr. Ballard filmed this area extensively and although they were able to verify our observations of the mast being damaged in this area, it was still rigid and intact. Over the past year, this area weakened until the mast collapsed (so much for my ten year prediction-it only took two years). Although the mast is intact, she now looks like an "L" supported upward by the forecastle of the ship. Unless you look at the mast from the side, you might not realize that it had indeed collapsed. I can best describe the mast looking like a huge waterslide from the upper decks of Titanic down to its mooring. We will be publishing digital footage of this spot in the next 6 weeks.

The second observation of note was one that I had not expected. We found a life boat davit on the stern section of the ship. For me, this was quite a revelation as I had thought that the break-up of Titanic was more aft than any of these davits. Obviously this was not the case and may suggest that Titanic broke up more forward than what was originally thought. Further analysis of this observation will need to be done.

Time for Home - Now the Work Really Begins

After whirlwind expeditions to the two Lost Liners, Empress of Ireland and Titanic in more than a month, it is time to return home and get down to the real work. Yesterday, we disembarked from our home of 11 days - the Russian research vessel Akademik Keldysh in St John's, Newfoundland after a extremely successful diving expedition to Titanic. Today is a travel day back to our New Jersey base and tomorrow we will be getting to the arduous task of unpacking after five weeks away from home.

The digital high-quality video and still photographs that we captured from the MIR submersibles on Titanic are stunning. It will take us a good month to process and edit the high-quality digital videos and still photography that was taken of the ship. Certain dynamic shots and preliminary data from the expedition will be released to the press within 4 weeks but the exact date still needs to be established. The scientific findings will be quantified and the full data released to global scientists before the end of the year. In the meantime, we will be reporting our latest findings at the Oceans 2005 conference in Washington, DC on September 20th.

There were so many notes that were taken from our expedition that we created supplemental logs that we would like to exclusively post over the next couple of weeks. Included in the supplemental logs will be a very detailed account of our dive plan and related observations. Please don't miss James Cameron's LIVE dive to Titanic documentary that will air July 24th on the Discovery Channel. I have seen the equipment used while on Keldysh and it is on the cutting edge of underwater technology. This documentary is a must-see event.

Voyage Home - Scientific Mission on Titanic Accomplished

This morning we were greeted by the harbor pilot and picked up the captain that will steer us into port. The surroundings of St. John's, Newfoundland are breathtaking. As we come into port I am sad that this voyage has come to an end. The familiar red and white Canadian maple leaf greets our boat as we dock at our harbor spot. I will miss my friends of scientists and crew of Keldysh that have been so friendly and hospitable during my two week stay.  A special thanks goes out to Anatoly Sagalevitch, Yuriy Gorbach, Belinda Sawyer, Ralph White and Don Walsh for a truly unforgettable expedition. May we meet up on another project soon!

Coming back from visiting the Titanic seems to make you feel like a different person. I have been changed by my visits to Titanic where I can truly touch the history of this famous liner; however,  more relevant is my appreciation for the sanctity of life. Coming home, I feel very honored and blessed to have the opportunity to experience Titanic to its fullest. Hopefully, the scientific community can find ways of preserving this ship and its very moving experiences for many people to witness.