In 1985, Robert Ballard and Jean Jarry were looking for the ship. There were twenty-three crew and twenty-three scientists on their ship, the Knorr. The team was using a submarine without a crew to search the ocean. They worked for weeks and found nothing.
Then, on September 1, they saw pieces of metal on the ocean floor. Soon they couldn’t believe what camera was showing them. There was a big, dark shape in the water. It was the front part of the Titanic! The crew and scientists of the Knorr were silent for a minute, as they remembered the dead of the Titanic.
In 1987, the ship was visited by a team with a different idea. This time the scientists went down in the submarine. They brought 1,800 things up from the Titanic. A box from the ship was even opened on a French TV show. It was empty. Many of the survivors were angry about all of this. When Ballard was asked for his opinion, he said, “In a word, sad.” This didn’t stop the French team returning a few years later. They brought 3,600 things up from the Titanic.
What will the future of the Titanic be? One business man wants to sell trips to the ship. Will anyone ever bring the ship back up from the bottom of the ocean? Survivor Eva Hart hoped not. Before her death in 1996, she said, “Leave it there.”