|
The wreck of the RMS ''Titanic'' is located about south-southeast of the coast of Newfoundland, lying at a depth of about . Over the years since 1912, when the liner hit an iceberg and sank during her maiden voyage, many impractical, expensive and often physically impossible schemes have been put forward to raise the wreck from its resting place. They have included ideas such as filling the wreck with ping-pong balls, injecting it with 180,000 tons of Vaseline, or using half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to turn it into a giant iceberg that would float back to the surface. Until 1985, the location of the wreck was unknown. Numerous expeditions tried using sonar to map the sea bed in the hope of spotting the wreck, but failed due to a combination of bad weather, technological difficulties and poor search strategy. The wreck was finally located, from the inaccurate position transmitted by ''Titanic''s crew while the ship was sinking, by a joint French-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The key to its discovery was an innovative remotely controlled deep-sea vehicle called Argo, which could be towed above the sea bed while its cameras transmitted pictures back to a mother ship. The wreck lies in two main pieces about a third of a mile (600 m) apart. The bow is still largely recognizable, in spite of its deterioration and the damage it suffered hitting the sea floor, and has a great deal of preserved interiors. The stern is completely ruined due to the damage it suffered while sinking and hitting the ocean floor, and is now just a heap of twisted metal, which may explain why it has barely been explored during expeditions to the ''Titanic'' wreck. A substantial section of the middle of the ship broke apart and is scattered in chunks across the sea bed. A debris field covering about around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from ship as she sank, ranging from passengers' personal effects to machinery, furniture, utensils and coal, as well as fragments of the ship herself. The bodies of the passengers and crew once also lay in the debris field, but have since been entirely consumed by sea creatures, leaving only their shoes lying together in the mud. ''Titanic''s wreck has been the focus of intense interest since its discovery and has been visited by numerous expeditions, including salvage operations which have controversially recovered thousands of items which have been conserved and put on public display. The wreckage is too fragile to be raised because its condition has deteriorated in the century it has spent on the sea bottom, and the deterioration has increased since its discovery. Many species of marine animals have made ''Titanic'' their home, such as rattail fish, spider crabs and brittle starfishes. The ''Titanic'' also plays host to great communities of metal-eating bacteria, which as they consume the ship have created rusticles covering most of the hull. The bacteria are slowly devouring ''Titanic'' and will gradually reduce her to a spot of rust on the ocean floor with only the remaining scraps of her hull intermingled with her more durable fittings, like the propellers, the Telemotor and the Capstans, which can resist attack by microbes. == Salvaging ''Titanic'' == Almost immediately after ''Titanic'' sank on 15 April 1912, proposals were advanced to salvage her from her resting place in the North Atlantic Ocean, despite her exact location and condition being unknown. The families of several wealthy victims of the disaster – the Guggenheims, Astors, and Wideners – formed a consortium and contracted the Merritt and Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to raise ''Titanic''. The project was soon abandoned as impractical as the divers could not even reach a fraction of the necessary depth, where the pressure is over . The lack of submarine technology at the time as well as the outbreak of World War 1 also put off such a project. The company considered dropping dynamite on the wreck to dislodge bodies which would float to the surface, but finally gave up after oceanographers suggested that the extreme pressure would have compressed the bodies into gelatinous lumps. (In fact, this was incorrect. Whale falls, a phenomenon not discovered until 1987 – coincidentally, by the same submersible used for the first manned expedition to ''Titanic'' the year before – demonstrate that water-filled corpses, in this case cetaceans, can sink to the bottom essentially intact. The high pressure and cold temperature of the water would have prevented significant quantities of gas forming during decomposition, preventing the bodies of ''Titanic'' victims from rising back to the surface.) In later years, various proposals were put forward to salvage ''Titanic''. However, all fell foul due to practical and technological difficulties, a lack of funding and, in many cases, a lack of understanding of the physical conditions at the wreck site. Charles Smith, an architect from Denver, proposed in March 1914 to attach electromagnets to a submarine which would be irresistibly drawn to the wreck's steel hull. Having found its exact position, more electromagnets would be sent down from a fleet of barges which would winch ''Titanic'' to the surface. An estimated cost of $1.5 million (£ today) and its impracticality meant that the idea was not put into practice. Another proposal involved raising ''Titanic'' by means of attaching balloons to her hull using electromagnets. Once enough balloons had been attached, the ship would float gently to the surface. Again, the idea got no further than the drawing board. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wreck of the RMS Titanic」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|