On an expedition in 1993 Ballard investigated the sinking of the Lusitania, a rival transatlantic liner to the Titanic, that was torpedoed by a German U-boat in May 1915 off the coast of Ireland. Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images Distinguished careerįinding the Titanic wasn’t just a one-off gig, Ballard went on to seek out other lost ships, rewriting the archaeology, geology, chemistry and microbiology textbooks along the way. And then we went downstairs and there was Neil Diamond and the Marine Band and they struck up Saturday Night Fever and Lady Di went straight over to John Travolta to dance.” “So we were up in the private quarters in the White House with a small number of people. The gala dinner, in November 1985, became infamous when a then 24-year-old Princess Diana danced with John Travolta. “I learned later this was because he was in on me doing this mission and knew all about it.”

“I always wondered why, after Titanic, Reagan invited me to the White House dinner with the Prince and Princess of Wales,” Ballard reveals. The discovery of Titanic propelled Ballard into the public eye in ways he couldn’t have foreseen. But I couldn’t tell people where I’d got the idea.” Rubbing shoulders with royalty “I dreamed up this idea to do broad strokes across the area, doing a quick reconnaissance, spacing lines more than kilometre apart to look for the debris field. “From my experience of mapping the pressure of the Scorpion I was able to visualise what had happened to Titanic,” Ballard recalls. Robert Ballard and Martin Bowen/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) He used the same innovative technique for both missions – unmanned submarines that trawled the ocean floor for Titanic’s debris trail. However, the quest for the subs heavily influenced Ballard’s methods during the Titanic search. “At some point, I happened to mention that all my life, I’d wanted to search for Titanic, and maybe I could piggyback that search onto these expeditions.”īallard found the two submarines, but only had a few days to seek out Titanic. “And we were actually looking for nuclear weapons that we'd lost during the Cold War, and we didn't want the Soviets to follow us.”īallard struck a deal that once he’d completed the main job, he could look for Titanic. “I was living two lives, as an academician and an army and navy intelligence officer,” Ballard explains. Robert had been sent by the US navy to search for two nuclear submarines, Thresher and Scorpion, which had sunk in the 1960s. What only a select few knew in 1985 was the hunt for the Titanic itself had a backstory worthy of a Hollywood script.īallard’s assignment to find the Holy Grail of the high seas was nothing more than a decoy to deflect attention away from a Cold War mission. READ MORE: Amazing period images of the Titanic Secret mission to find Titanic Robert Ballard and MartinBowen/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Ballard was 43 when he found the Titanic and his name has remained synonymous with the transatlantic liner and those first eerie images of the ship’s bow, benches and boilers taken on the seabed. Now they are only going to remember you for that rusty old boat’.” That was until the phone rang at his farmhouse in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. This time, however, Bob returned home a hero, not only in the US but around the world. Many had tried to find her – including Ballard himself on a previous mission in 1977 – and failed. It was a phone call from his mum that firmly planted Robert Ballard’s feet back onto terra firma after he returned from locating the wreck of RMS Titanic in September 1985.įresh from finding the remains of history’s most ill-fated ocean liner in the North Atlantic, Bob had done the rounds of every breakfast, late-night show and news outlet in America he could muster after weeks at sea.ĭespite lying undiscovered for 73 years in the North Atlantic, the story of the Titanic’s sinking on her maiden voyage in 1912 still endured.

Here he reveals the secrets behind the Titanic story and his own incredible journey. During his 50 years surveying the seas, Ballard has also shed new light on how life on Earth was formed and located many other shipwrecks, including the Bismarck and Lusitania.

Robert Ballard might be best known as the scientist behind the discovery of the RMS Titanic in 1985, but that’s just one highlight in his remarkable career as an oceanographer.

When was the titanic found