Rare images of the Titanic, at peace on the ocean floor, were released this week. Some of the footage, shot during the 1986 expedition to the world’s most famous shipwreck, has never been seen before by the public. The expedition’s leader, Robert Ballard, described what he saw then as “haunting” and “very powerful.” The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution made the footage available to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of James Cameron’s “Titanic” motion picture.
The sheer size of the vessel and the shoes were what struck Robert Ballard when he descended to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic in 1986, the year after he and his crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution helped find the ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic in 1912.
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“The first thing I saw coming out of the gloom at 30 feet was this wall, this giant wall of riveted steel that rose over 100 and some feet above us,” he said in an interview from his Florida home on Wednesday, the same day the WHOI was releasing on YouTube 80 minutes of never before publicly seen underwater video of the expedition to the wreckage.
“I never looked down at the Titanic. I looked up at the Titanic. Nothing was small,” he said.
