Almost immediately after the Titanic sank in April 1912, there were attempts to recover the wreckage and the bodies of those who had gone down with the ship.
Originally, Ballard met with the US Navy in 1982 to secure funding for a new type of submersible technology that would allow him to find the Titanic. The Navy agreed to fund the project – but only if it could be used to find the sunken submarines.
The USS Thresher sank in April 1963, and the USS Scorpion followed two years later, in May 1965. They remain the only nuclear submarines the Navy has ever lost. The Navy agreed that Ballard could search for the Titanic if there was any time left in the mission after finding the subs – and after confirming whether or not the Soviet Union had played any part in sinking them.
"We saw no indication of some sort of external weapon that caused the ship to go down," Ronald Thunman, the then-deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare, toldWith 12 days left in the mission, Ballard was able to find the Titanic using a hunch that the ship had split in two and left a trail of debris.According to Ballard, the Navy was nervous that people would catch on to why they were actually scouring the ocean floor.
"The Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity," Ballard said.So, 23 years later, Ballard revealed the truth about his mission. He also wrote about his experience finding the ship in his book,
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