The Crow's Nest

The wreck of the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet , about 370 miles south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland. It lies in two main pieces about a third of a mile apart. The bow is still recognizable with many preserved interiors, despite deterioration and damage sustained hitting the sea floor. In contrast, the stern is completely ruined. A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank. The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the sea bed, but have been consumed by other organisms. Titanic sank in 1912, when she collided with an iceberg during her maiden voyage. Numerous expeditions tried using sonar to map the sea bed in the hope of finding it, but were unsuccessful. In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The wreck has been the focus of intense interest and has been visited by numerous expeditions. Controversial salvage operations have recovered thousands of items, which have been conserved and put on public display. Many schemes have been proposed to raise Titanic, including 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 encase it in an iceberg that would float to the surface. However, the wreck is too fragile to be raised and is now protected by a UNESCO convention.
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