13. Raise the Titanic

Summary

Podcast Summary: Titanic: Ship of Dreams
Episode 13: Raise the Titanic
Release Date: June 23, 2025
Host: Paul McGann

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1. The Discovery of Titanic's Wreck ([06:20] - [10:06])

The episode opens with marine archaeologist James Delgado recounting the monumental discovery of the RMS Titanic. He reflects on the media frenzy that ensued following Robert Ballard's successful expedition to locate the shipwreck:

James Delgado ([06:29]): "I remember going to those very first press conferences, the one at National Geographic, when Bob Ballard talked about what had happened with those very blue images of Titanic in the depths of. And with that came this growing awareness that would only continue through the years..."

Robert Ballard's discovery not only elevated him to prominence among oceanographers but also resolved long-standing debates about the Titanic's sinking, particularly disproving Second Officer Charles Lightoller's claim that the ship did not split in two before sinking.

2. Physical Condition and Insights from the Wreck ([10:06] - [15:17])

James Delgado provides a detailed description of the Titanic's current state on the seabed:

"Titanic sits on the seabed two and a half miles down, 12,436ft. The bow is separate and dug into the seabed at an angle, pushed in, flexed a bit and broken..."

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky elaborates on the structural damage:

"The bow still looks pretty much like the Titanic, but the stern is just a mess... You get a sense of the violence of the last moments of the ship from seeing that."

Notably, the wreckage surprisingly lacks human remains, a fact that Eva Hart, a survivor, comments on:

"There are none. One of the strangest things one of the early discoverers found in the 80s was they found many instances of pairs of shoes sitting on the ocean floor together..."

3. Ownership and Salvage Controversies ([15:17] - [24:12])

The discovery opened a Pandora's box regarding the ownership and salvage of the Titanic:

James Delgado ([15:35]): "What followed then was, as I once said to Bob, the unintended consequences of discovery."

A pivotal moment occurred in 1994 when a U.S. federal court granted RMS Titanic Inc. exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the wreck. This decision sparked significant controversy:

James Delgado ([17:38]): "The Titanic, as far as I am concerned, is a grave. Go down, dig into my father's grave, bring things up and sell them. I think it's disgusting."

Pablo Ohana, a critic of RMS Titanic Inc., highlights the company's profit-driven motives:

Pablo Ohana ([19:26]): "Premier Exhibitions and RMST... their most famous one... Titanic the Artifact exhibition... Their most famous one will be Titanic the Artifact exhibition... their most famous one."

4. RMS Titanic Inc.'s Operations and Ethical Debates ([24:12] - [30:34])

The company embarked on extensive salvage operations, retrieving thousands of artifacts. While some, like James Penker, express contentment with the company's current practices:

James Penker ([20:40]): "I think they're doing a great job... I'm completely content."

Others remain critical of the company's early approaches, particularly regarding the sale of personal artifacts:

James Delgado ([21:35]): "My criticism is focused on the approach they took early on, the sense that things might be sold..."

Legal interventions attempted to regulate artifact sales, ensuring that significant collections remain intact for public benefit:

Pablo Ohana ([23:44]): "There was a ruling that they had to keep the two largest collections together forever for public benefit..."

5. Legacy of Titanic in Popular Culture ([34:29] - [36:18])

The episode transitions to the cultural impact of Titanic, particularly spotlighting James Cameron's blockbuster film:

Pablo Ohana ([32:58]): "James Cameron's Titanic was the first time anyone had ever got images that clear of the wreck."

While the film received widespread acclaim and emotional resonance, it also faced criticism for its fictionalized love story:

Eva Hart ([35:20]): "I slightly annoyed me that... Leonardo DiCaprio was able to pop on someone else's white tie and just jog into first class for dinner..."

Experts like James Delgado argue that real Titanic stories possess dramatic and emotional depth surpassing fictional narratives:

James Delgado ([36:18]): "Titanic is already the greatest story of all time. You don't need to create a fictional person."

6. Titanic Tourism and Ethical Debates ([36:18] - [49:54])

With the Titanic's discovery and subsequent cultural resurgence, tourism to the wreck site became a contentious issue. James Delgado shares his experiences diving to the wreck:

James Delgado ([37:31]): "A voyage into inner space is not unlike a voyage into outer space... It was the first and not the last time that I would cry on Titanic."

The allure of visiting the site led to the emergence of high-risk expeditions, culminating in the tragic implosion of the Titan submersible in 2023. This event reignited debates about the ethics of commercializing such a solemn site:

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky ([44:02]): "When the Titan imploded, I think it created some of the same tensions about how we value certain lives more than others..."

Social media reactions varied, with some expressing sympathy while others criticized the privileged nature of the passengers:

Eva Hart ([45:35]): "We put a ludicrous importance onto money, and we want it so much that we actually hate people who've got it."

7. Recent Events: Titan Submersible Implosion ([40:29] - [48:04])

The episode delves into the tragic 2023 incident where the Titan submersible imploded, resulting in the loss of five lives. James Delgado reflects on the inherent risks:

James Delgado ([41:14]): "I think these days... maybe we now have a sense that, oh, this is simple, it's not, you know, we're talking about Titanic. So of course technology fails, right?"

The implosion intensified discussions on the commercialization of Titanic's wreck and the moral responsibilities involved:

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky ([44:25]): "We were very compelled by these wealthy people on board the Titan submersible... why are American taxpayers putting the bill to go rescue these rich people?"

8. Reflections on Titanic's Future and Legacy ([48:04] - [50:50])

Experts ponder the future of the Titanic wreck, considering its deterioration and the ethical implications of further exploration:

James Delgado ([48:04]): "We visit battlefields, we visit archeological sites... So to go to a place that has had a great loss of life is not something that should be shied away from."

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky emphasizes the enduring fascination with Titanic, likening it to other historical memorials:

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky ([50:37]): "It never goes away... It's the thing that I get asked to talk about, you know, more than probably anything else that I've ever written about."

9. Final Thoughts and Possible Future Voyages ([50:50] - [52:24])

The episode concludes with a debate on whether the Titanic should remain undisturbed or if further exploration and salvage operations are justified:

Tim Moulton ([50:50]): "The bow of Titanic could quite easily be raised... It would reveal a great deal to history that we don't know now."

Conversely, others advocate for preserving the wreck as a permanent memorial:

James Delgado ([49:04]): "Titanic's returning to nature, it's kind of a beautiful thing in a way... The artifacts will soon be non-recoverable. They'll just be mush and they'll be lost."

The enduring legacy of the Titanic is acknowledged, suggesting that its story will continue to captivate and teach future generations:

Professor Stephanie Barchevsky ([49:54]): "The story is going to live on. It's the thing that I get asked to talk about... People just have this kind of enduring fascination with it."

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Conclusion

Episode 13, "Raise the Titanic," offers a comprehensive exploration of the Titanic's discovery, the ensuing ethical debates surrounding artifact salvage, the ship's profound impact on popular culture, and the recent tragedies that have reignited discussions about the respectful remembrance of this historical site. Through expert insights and poignant reflections, host Paul McGann provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of Titanic's enduring legacy and the complex decisions that shape its future.

Transcript

[Narrator]

Now more than ever, Lowes knows you don't just want a low price, you want the lowest price. And with our lowest price guarantee, you can count on us for competitive prices on all your home improvement projects. If you find a qualifying lower price somewhere else on the same item, we'll match it. Lowes we help you save price match applies to same item current price at qualifying retailers. Exclusions and terms apply. Learn how we'll match [e-mail] Lowest Price Guarantee It's September 1, 1985, the early hours of Sunday morning. We're 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. In his cabin on the research vessel Kannor, oceanographer Robert Ballard is trying to get some rest. He's been searching for the wreck of RMS Titanic for more than a week now, carefully combing the seabed 4,000 meters below using sonar and state of the art cameras. His dream of finding Titanic has been a decade in the making. And on this trip he's brought some friends along. Ballard has teamed up with France's oceanographic agency Ephraima. Their sonar equipment is second to none, as well as the US Navy, who've agreed he can piggyback his search under some military reconnaissance he's doing for them. He's been mapping the wrecks of two nuclear submarines using his new Argo submersible to capture and transmit images and video up to the research vessel. This Navy mission has given him a new idea when it comes to locating Titanic. Both the submarines that he's been looking at imploded as they sank to the bottom of the ocean. Ballard expected to find them surrounded by a halo of debris. In fact, the debris fields stretched out from the wrecks like the tail of a comet. Previous attempts to find Titanic have focused on spotting the wreck itself, but that's no easy task. She might have been the biggest ship in the world in her day, but 4km beneath the surface, she's a needle in a haystack. Her debris field, on the other hand, could stretch for a good mile. A trail of breadcrumbs leading to the wreck. Around 1am There's a knock on the door of Ballard's cabin. It's an unlikely messenger, the ship's cook. The guys think you should come down to the van, he tells Ballard. The boss knows what that means. His men have spotted something and they can't even tear their eyes away from their screams long enough to come and tell him themselves. Ballard leaps out of bed, throws on a jumpsuit and races out of the cabin. He flies down the stairwell, his feet Barely touching the steps. Turning a corner, he approaches the entrance to the control van. Inside, his eyes are drawn immediately to the three screens showing the feed from the Argo's cameras. Grainy, indistinct images from the seabed. He can see what looks like debris. Definitely man made. One of his men, Stu Harris, tells him they think they just spotted a ship's boiler. He rewinds the video feed. Ballard stares at the frozen image on the screen. It's a round metal object a good 15ft across. The doors where the coal was once shoveled in are clearly visible. It's a boiler alright. God damn. Ballard exclaims. God damn. After more than seven decades lost at the bottom of the ocean, a piece of Titanic's wreckage has been found and with it, a clear line to the ship itself. Ballard's French colleagues congratulate him. They signed up for this collaboration, hoping to pip the Americans to the post to find Titanic. While Ballard was busy with the nuclear submarines. And they very nearly succeeded. One of their sonar scans missed the wreck by less than 300 yards. Merde. Exclaims team leader Jean Louis Michel when he realizes how close he came. But right now, nothing can dent the good mood on the canoe. The oceanographers crack open a bottle of Portuguese wine to toast their success. It's approaching 2am now, around the time the Titanic sank. Suddenly, Ballard is hit by a realization. This is the very spot where it all happened. Right here, 73 years earlier. 2,000 people were fighting for their lives, and for most of them, it was a fight they couldn't win. Ballard tells his colleagues he's going out on deck for a moment. Most of the others follow him outside. In the dead of night, they stand together, looking out to sea, grappling with the magnitude of their discovery from the Noiser podcast network. This is the final part of Titanic Ship of Dreams.

[James Delgado]

One day, suddenly, there it was. Titanic was found.

[Narrator]

Marine archaeologist James Delgado.

[James Delgado]

I remember going to those very first press conferences, the one at National Geographic, when Bob Ballard talked about what had happened with those very blue images of Titanic in the depths of. And with that came this growing awareness that would only continue through the years, that this heralded a new frontier in terms of what we as humanity could do to reach that which had previously been inaccessible. But also a sense that Titanic itself was going to be a project. It was already an icon, it was already something that society had never really quite let go of. But now the physical entity of Titanic itself was going to now be the focus of that societal obsession.

[Narrator]

The discovery of Titanic's wreck makes waves around the world, catapulting Bob Ballard to the ranks of the 20th century's top oceanographers. But it also answers a number of questions that have lingered for over 70 years. At the official Titanic inquiries, Second Officer Charles Lightoller was adamant that the ship had not split in two before going down, as other survivors had claimed. Now, though, Lightoller's position is conclusively disproved.

[Tim Moulton]

Tim Moulton until the wreck was discovered in 1985, most people believed Lightoller and others, that the Titanic sack intact. It was a matter of pride for the White Star Line that this British ship hadn't actually been ripped in half by the water. It was only when Bob Ballard discovered the wreck that we then knew for certain that the few people who had noticed her ripping in half actually were telling the truth.

[James Delgado]

There were people even in 1912 who knew darn well it had broken. Later is only, I think, wishful thinking that the ship had not completely broken apart.

[Narrator]

With the bow and Stern discovered 800 meters apart on the seabed, there's no longer any room for doubt. Professor Stephanie Barchevsky the front two thirds.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

Of the ship are in one big chunk, and then the stern is in another chunk some distance away from that. And then there's a large kind of field of debris in between. The bow still looks pretty much like the Titanic, but the stern is just a mess. It's just a tangled mess of metal and cables and, you know, and it's hardly recognizable at all. And you get a sense of the violence of the last moments of the ship from seeing that.

[Narrator]

Julian Fellowes I remember very well when.

[Eva Hart]

The wreck was found that these two bits had split early enough to land in completely different places on the ocean floor. That was a real surprise to all of us. And in those days there were still one or two survivors who'd got off and were now, you know, fairly old people.

[Narrator]

Eva hart was just 7 years old when she witnessed Titanic's final moments.

[Dr. Robert Ballard]

I didn't close my eyes at all. I saw that ship sink and I saw that ship break in half. And for so many years, people have argued with me about that. But now at last it has been proven beyond all doubt that she did break in half. I know she did. I saw her.

[Narrator]

Dr. Delgado was one of only around 250 people who've witnessed Titanic's wreck on the ocean floor.

[James Delgado]

Titanic sits on the seabed two and a half miles down, 12,436ft. The bow is separate and dug into the seabed at an angle, pushed in, flexed a bit and broken, leaving the open faces of the various boilers still in position. The superstructure is there. Portions of it have started to collapse and areas have opened up, but you can see that this is unmistakably Titanic. Moving several hundred yards off and away from it is the stern section and the stern section badly crushed and deformed, and with part of the deck peeled back with the engine still standing tall, you know, four stories high remain in place. In between those two pieces of Titanic is a vast field of scattered and separated pieces, from chunks of the hull to boilers to some of the machinery, but also things like the outlines of the dome of one of the grand staircases, most likely from the aft grand staircase. But small pieces, luggage, shoes, I mean, plates and dishes, coal, you name it. Everything that dumped out of Titanic when it tore in two lies in that vast field of artifacts in between. It really is powerful evidence that this is not just a ship. This was a small community of thousands that basically died together. On that early morning.

[Narrator]

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[Commercial Voiceover]

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[Narrator]

Perhaps. Surprisingly, one thing you won't find on the wreck is human bodies.

[Eva Hart]

There are none. One of the strangest things one of the early discoverers found in the 80s was they found many instances of pairs of shoes sitting on the ocean floor together. And what they didn't understand was that they had originally been worn by passengers. But as their bodies were consumed by the sea, what was left was the pair of shoes.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

I mean, I don't want to get too grisly about it. Human bodies basically can't withstand the pressure down there.

[Narrator]

Klausior and wetterhome, at a certain depth.

[Klausior and Wetterhome]

The bones grinded together more or less, so the bodies are gone. And if there were bodies, there are lots of fish and mussels and crabs and all sorts of living creatures down there who have taken the rest.

[James Delgado]

There's no skeletons, there's no bodies. It's evidence of people. There's personal effects. And there are likely people still inside the wreck. And by that, when I say people inside the wreck, there would be traces of them, forensic traces of them, regardless of what's actually visibly there. Everybody who goes there understands this is a site that is treated sensitively and carefully. You don't need skeletons on the deck to. I understand that this is a very special if not sacred place.

[Narrator]

It's also a place that's gradually reverting to nature. Titanic's hull is being consumed by tiny microorganisms. To the scientists who study them, they're known as Halomonas titanicae. But the long brown stalactites they produce as they work through the ship's metal have a catchier name. Courtesy of Robert Ballard Rusticles.

[Tim Moulton]

I think one of the greatest shocks for Ballard was think he hoped that the cold water and the dark depths that she was in might have preserved the ship a little bit better. Certainly Ballard himself was shocked by the devastation that the years and these little microbes had wrought on Titanic.

[James Delgado]

Nothing lasts forever. I mean you go back to that ashes to ashes, dust to dust type of philosophy. All things change. What we are learning from Titanic is not only how best to engage when the time comes to step away from something, but also that the complexities of life, the survival of life, and that's the most amazing thing, is to find this bacteria that lives in the metal and eats the metal and excretes the byproduct that we see as the raw sickles. That's fascinating. It's different aspect of life that we didn't know existed. And now we do.

[Narrator]

In 1985, the discovery of Titanic is a major international news event. Bob Ballard and his team have closed the lid on a 73 year old mystery. But in doing so, they've also opened a massive can of worms.

[James Delgado]

What followed then was, as I once said to Bob, the unintended consequences of discovery.

[Tim Moulton]

Titanic sank 400 miles southeast of Cape Wraith and that's international waters, which means that technically no one owns Titanic, which means that legally it's kind of a free for all.

[Klausior and Wetterhome]

This is an interesting question. Who owns the Titanic and its artifacts? She was written off from the insurance company back in 1912 because they said she's not reachable. So she was lost to the world and whoever found her would have the right to her.

[Tim Moulton]

The US and French and British and a couple of other countries actually got together and agreed that they would protect the wreck. But of course there are countries that haven't signed up to that treaty.

[Klausior and Wetterhome]

There are no laws for international waters. If for example, the Chinese construct robots or whatever or the Russians or whoever hasn't signed this document that only a few countries have signed, if they do this, they go out with their equipment, no one can stop them. Nobody.

[Narrator]

In 1994, a federal court in the United States grants a Private company, RMS Titanic Inc. The exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the wreck site.

[Klausior and Wetterhome]

There is a giant in Norfolk in Virginia who's decided that this company, RMS Titanic, has the right to recover the artifacts. And they are the sole owner of these rights. It has never been questioned.

[Narrator]

In 1996, RMS Titanic Inc. Begins a monumental salvage operation raising thousands of objects from the seabed. But it's a controversial move and one of the company's staunchest critics is the man who found the ship, Bob Ballard.

[James Delgado]

Bob's desire, I think affected emotionally by what he saw, was nothing should come up. It's a graveyard.

[Tim Moulton]

His view is it shouldn't be disturbed. And I can understand that because he would slightly feel responsible for the fact that it was disturbed. He feels that he kind of opened Pandora's box when he found it and he kind of wanted to put the lid back on it again and just sort of leave it there. Perfect.

[Narrator]

At the time, for Titanic's remaining survivors, emotions run high.

[Dr. Robert Ballard]

The Titanic, as far as I am concerned, is a grave. Go down, dig into my father's grave, bring things up and sell them. I think it's disgusting. I feel very strongly about it and I resent it very much when people think otherwise.

[Narrator]

In an interview with Naval History magazine, Ballard describes RMS Titanic Inc. Salvage operation as a carnival, one that perpetuates the tragedy of the sinking.

[Dr. Robert Ballard]

I am so glad Dr. Ballard agrees with me. I said to him once, surely we can't learn anything from bringing bits up from the Titanic to. And he agreed with me. If we can't learn anything from her, then leave her alone. Leave her alone.

[Narrator]

Even today, more than a century after the disaster, it's a hot topic. One man's salvage is another's grave robbing. And RMS Titanic Inc. Has a checkered history, to say the least.

[Pablo Ohana]

They are, in my opinion, less than wholesome.

[Narrator]

Let's just say Pablo Ohana is a former guide at Titanic Belfast and an outspoken critic of rmst.

[Pablo Ohana]

RMS Titanic Inc. Is a subsidiary of something called Premier Exhibitions and they are a company that run a number of exhibitions and museums around the world. So some people might have seen the bodies exhibition. They do things like Cleopatra and Extreme Dinosaurs, things like that. But their most famous one, the one that most people will know, will be Titanic the Artifact exhibition, which is based in Las Vegas but tours all around the world. They've had something like 30 million visitors. One of the founders of RMS Titanic Inc. Was somebody called Joe Marsh. And I've never forgotten this quote that he said, I'm going to read it just to make sure that I don't misquote him. But he said, we all know there are billions of dollars down there under the water. It's like sitting on a gold mine. This is a private company, remember? So they've got shareholders who are pressuring them to be more aggressive, to go down, pull up more stuff. They're not actually that interested in telling the story of Titanic. It's about making as much money as possible.

[Narrator]

James Penker is host of the Witness Titanic podcast and creative Director of Titanic Honor and Glory. Until recently, he worked as a researcher and spokesperson for RMS Titanic Inc. Even traveling to the wreck as part of their 2024 expedition.

[James Penker]

I worked for them for two years and went on an expedition with them. And I understood when I accepted the job that I was going to see how the sausage gets made. Everyone in the Titanic community knows rmst. You may even say they have a bad reputation. And I knew I might be seeing that. You know, I might leave this expedition hating Titanic. But it was, it was kind of scary. Is somebody going to like steal an artifact and tell me to keep my mouth shut? I don't know. And I'm so happy to report the respect match the respect I would want Titanic to see and exceeded it. All I can speak for is RMS Titanic Incorporated as they stand today. I think they're doing a great job. Yes, there is a past that I know very little about. But all I can speak for is the present of rmst, which I'm content.

[James Delgado]

With as an archaeologist and as a museum director, I've been a critic of RMS Titanic through the years. But my criticism is focused on the approach they took early on, the sense that things might be sold, the fact that certain items were set aside and reserved for sale.

[James Penker]

Initially, I think a big part of it is the wreck was discovered while survivors were still alive and they could, they could weigh in. And while a big talking point will be that survivors said to leave it alone, there were other survivors saying, no. You know, my father died that night and I'd love to know if his pocket watch could be recovered. You know, there's a survivor whose father died and RMST recovered his pocket watch and she was able to keep it for the rest of her life. Like that's a really magical thing.

[Narrator]

In December 1993 at a hotel in Southampton, 97 year old Edith Heisman is presented with the watch her father was wearing the night he died.

[James Delgado]

It was her father's watch and the last time she saw him, he took it out and looked at it before he said goodbye to her forever. And there's very few of us who actually knew people who had been on that deck. The power of having this old woman say to me, the last time she saw her father was when he put her into the boat. And you're talking to this person who remembers this, and you see it on their face. And he kissed her and asked her to be good and then stepped away. And that was the last she ever saw of him. And so that's a pretty powerful connection.

[Narrator]

Edith Heisman was just 15 when her father perished. For her, his pocket watch carries enormous sentimental value. But getting it back eight decades later isn't as simple as it sounds.

[James Delgado]

They offered to sell it to her initially and then ultimately gave it to her in life as long as she was alive. But at that stage, the courts had already intervened, and there was no allowance of sale of individual artifacts.

[Pablo Ohana]

There was a ruling that they had to keep the two largest collections together forever for public benefit, for research. They were not allowed to break them up. And that was kind of the first step to trying to provide some sort of oversight to RMST.

[Narrator]

When Edith Heisman died in 1997, her father's pocket watch reverts to RMS Titanic incident. Today, it's on display as part of their exhibition in Las Vegas.

[Pablo Ohana]

I mean, not to go on a tangent, but what is the connection of Titanic to Las Vegas? Why is that where RMST's biggest experience is?

[Narrator]

Whether in Vegas or on tour, the artifacts on display in RMST's exhibitions represent a fraction of the total number of items collected over the years. Exactly how many remain behind closed doors is a matter of contention.

[Pablo Ohana]

We don't know because there's no public record, there's no documents. We just have to trust this private company. There is apparently a warehouse down in Atlanta in Georgia, which just has thousands of artifacts sitting there.

[James Penker]

So about 5,500 artifacts, I want to say, have been recovered. There's quite a few hundred, maybe a thousand of them are on display. The rest of the artifacts are in Atlanta where they are stored. But the ones that are in storage are in storage because they can't be on display for the most part. I mean, there are pieces of paper that are an artifact that we could never even pull out into the light because a light source would start to fade the image. You know, a photograph, for example.

[Narrator]

And as for the mysterious warehouse where thousands of these artifacts are held, its location is top secret. Not surprising given the value of what's inside. But it's not exactly the sinister Hangar 51 from the Indiana Jones movies.

[James Penker]

I think RMST makes the mistake of saying the word warehouse because it does kind of suggest that they're just on a shelf somewhere. I've been to that warehouse. It is a lab. It's a climate controlled, high security lab that is inside a warehouse. They store the artifacts in various rooms. You know, there's a room for textiles and there's a room for metals. It's a very interesting place. And the big room where most of the artifacts are, it's really something to stand there and feel a part of history.

[Narrator]

In 2004, RMS Titanic Inc. Allowed a team from the BBC inside the Atlanta facility. Journalists were shown tiny phials of perfume that still retain their sweet smell, an unopened bottle of champagne, and a delicate handwritten note carried by third class passenger Marion Meanw.

[James Penker]

Marian Meanwell has a letter in her bag from her landlord saying that she's a good tenant so when she gets to New York, she can find a place. We know very little about her aside from this letter. If we did not recover that, we would know even less about her.

[James Delgado]

As an archaeologist, what do I study? I don't study things. I study people. I'll always come back to Franz Polbaum's declaration of intent to become a United States citizen. He did not make it, but his bag, when found, had basically his life packed in it. So it had his work clothes, it had his tools, it had his German English dictionary. It had a bundle of postcards of the various places that he'd grown up. And around, not the top of it was that declaration still preserved, that paper preserved inside that leather trunk. And with that brand's Pullbauman away came to life again.

[Klausior and Wetterhome]

This is our connection to history. You see these things, they are the real things. You can identify with them. You get drawn into the story of the Titanic, this history, and if you can feel it in your heart, then you can really take it to your soul, so to speak.

[Pablo Ohana]

These items are going to decay at the bottom of the ocean. They will one day just disappear and we'll never see them again. So even though I speak extremely critically of rmst, I myself am completely torn on the fundamental debate of do we raise or not. There is no doubt that seeing those items is a completely compelling and moving and educational and insightful experience. One of the first kind of interactions I had with Titanic was when RMST brought their Titanic exhibition to my hometown, Manchester in the uk And I was completely compelled by it. Titanic is a very emotional thing. Aside from what happened that night People are incredibly attached to it and people feel very passionately on both sides of the debate.

[James Penker]

The word gravesite, I think, is a very emotional phrase. You know, when does grave robbing become archaeology, I guess, is the question referring to someone like me who has, you know, literally given my whole life to this one topic, you know, to refer to me as a grave robbery? There are literally no graves there. There are no graves, there are no human remains there. There haven't been human remains there, if there ever was, for at least a century. You know, I've been there myself. It feels less like a gravesite and more like a scrapyard in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

[Narrator]

In 2012, Titanic Centenary UNESCO designates the wreck a World Heritage Site. Four years later, RMS Titanic Inc. Files for bankruptcy for the first time. A district court in Virginia authorizes the company to sell its stock.

[Pablo Ohana]

So this is where, for me personally, I have a difficult relationship, let's say, with rmst, because at this point, the National Geographic Society, Titanic Belfast, the National Maritime Museums and the National Museums of Northern Ireland, supported by Dr. Robert Ballard Club, together to try and basically buy Premier Exhibition and RMST so that they would then bring those artefacts back to Belfast and they'd be on permanent display in Titan Belfast. They were actually rejected from entering this auction. And on the 11th of October 2018, thousands of those artefacts were sold to private bidders and we haven't seen the majority of them since. And the thing that has always got me since then is that RMST miraculously survived bankruptcy.

[James Penker]

In regards to the bankruptcy thing, I really don't know the legal ins and outs of rmst and I really don't want to speak for them. But yes, I am aware that is there. There's some drama in the past.

[James Delgado]

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[Narrator]

The discovery of the wreck reignites interest in the ship's story. It puts to bed more than seven decades of searching and resolves a number of unanswered questions, even as it raises questions of A different kind. In 1985, Bob Ballard's mission cost the US Navy and Iframer an undisclosed eight figure sum. But it's another even more expensive project that will come to redefine the titanic story. In 1912, RMS Titanic was the largest movable object ever built. 85 years later, James Cameron's Titanic is the most expensive movie ever made with a budget of $200 million. Even adjusted for inflation, that's almost twice what White Star spent on the original ship. And unlike the actual Titanic, this one will turn a tidy profit. A record breaking box office gross of $1.8 billion.

[Pablo Ohana]

James Cameron's Titanic changed everything. I think it's very rare that you get a film that achieves the kind of public consciousness cut through that Titanic had.

[James Penker]

Titanic. The film introduced Titanic to a lot of us, myself included. My parents took me to see the 1997 movie when it was in theaters and I was six years old, probably a little too young to see that movie, but I really liked it. We went back and saw it a second time. I'm a super fan like that.

[Pablo Ohana]

I saw it 30 times in the cinema. That is not an exaggeration. People really want to hate it. I actually went through a phase of wanting to hate it when I was a teenager in college being like really adamant that I didn't like the film and that it was too commercial and it was too like romance and it was cliche and all this sort of stuff. And then all to me I was like, who am I kidding? Like it's a great film, it does a great job at telling the story of Titanic. I'm completely obsessed with it. It's my all time favorite film in case that haven't come across.

[Narrator]

Titanic's story has been depicted on screen before, most famously in the 1958 film A Night to Remember, which helped launch an entire genre, the disaster movie. In 1980, five years before Ballard discovered the wreck, Cold War thriller Raise the Titanic featured a secret mission to plunder the ship for rare minerals before the Russians get to them first. Then the filmmakers had to imagine Titanic's wrexsite. Seventeen years later, James Cameron can show the audiences the real one.

[Pablo Ohana]

All of that stuff was completely groundbreaking. James Cameron's Titanic was the first time anyone had ever got images that clear of the wreck. But any images at all of the Inside.

[Narrator]

At the 1997 Oscars, it sweeps the board with 11 wins. Even among the notoriously picky community of Titanic obsessives or titaniacs, it's rare to find someone who doesn't love it. The attention to detail is forensic. Less accurate perhaps is its central love story between socialite Rose DeWitt Buqueta and impoverished artist Jack Dawson. While many of the supporting characters in the film are real people, Captain Smith, Bruce Ismay, Thomas Andrews, Molly Brown, these star crossed lovers are very much a work of fiction.

[Eva Hart]

I mean, of course I'm always delighted when anyone makes a big film and I'm always delighted when it's a big success. But it slightly annoyed me that, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio was able to pop on someone else's white tie and just jog into first class for dinner. This was not the world of the Titanic. These barriers were absolutely, and I'm sure Mr. Cameron is not terribly interested in my comment.

[James Penker]

I understand why James Cameron created fictional characters. It's much easier. You can put them wherever you want them. You don't have to ask any family's permission for this and that. But there are equally dramatic stories from Titanic that would exceed the drama and the romance of the movie that actually happened. Really dramatic and at times romantic, heroic, villainous things. Titanic is already the greatest story of all time. You don't need to create a fictional person.

[James Delgado]

James Cameron knows Titanic better than anyone. He probably knows it better than Captain Smith and he certainly spent more time on it than Captain Smith has. He's a brilliant guy and I think the film in many ways reflects how he's processed it. And that process has been not only responding to the human side of it, but also, I think, a pretty innate understanding of the ship itself.

[Narrator]

One unexpected consequence of the success of Cameron's movie is the rise of a whole new industry.

[James Delgado]

Titanic had now opened up to tourism. And with that the whole question was, is this the right thing to do? Is this the responsible thing to do? I was sent out to basically audit this and to report back to all of my colleagues in the archaeological field to take a good hard look and honestly report back on what I saw.

[Narrator]

In August 2000, James Delgado makes his first dive to the Titanic wreck in a Russian owned Mir submersible. The cramped cabin has room for just three people.

[James Delgado]

A voyage into inner space is not unlike a voyage into outer space. In the mirrors you're on a six foot diameter nickel steel sphere. You're breathing pure oxygen. And as anybody who knows the Apollo 1 disaster, a spark is fatal. So you're not bringing metal in with you. But you're also wearing a Nomex flight suit that just burn resistant. You don't eat beforehand. You fast a bit, you're not going to pee. You don't want to do anything else than pee. And if you have to pee, you're the most unpopular person because now the entire sub smells like a gas station washroom. You're bouncing on the surface. Doesn't take much to start to drop, flood the ballast chamber and down you go. And you just watch the instruments tick off the depth as you go down. It was about a two and a half hour drop. You just fall. And what you realize ultimately is that you're spiraling down like water down the drain. You don't feel anything other than the change in the temperatures. We dropped on down and sat down quietly just onto the seabed when you could see the bow of Titanic and the sonar. So then lift it off and we move towards it and you're going through the darkness and all of a sudden your brain senses it before your eyes, actually see it. And then there it was. We were alongside the port bow, the hull stretching up above us so it's bubbling with the excreta of the bacteria and the brilliant oranges and yellows and the reds. You have left the world behind and you're now in another space and place where your own fragility is very much there front and present in your mind. And you get it. I've seen the iceberg damage. I've been hovering over the bridge where Robert Hitchens would spin that wheel, where Captain Smith would likely end his time, but also where he got the news, where Thomas Andrews would come up and forecast how long they had to. The davits swung out to bits of rope and blocks still in place to that space where Isidore Strauss stood by as his wife got out because she would not leave him alone and would die with him to the stern where they were all at the end. I said to my wife when I got back, it's just a story. And then you're there. It ceases to be a story. It's real. It was the first and not the last time that I would cry on Titanic. Never cried looking at it through a screen, but hovering through it in a submarine and down there, surrounded by the cold and the dark. Yeah.

[Narrator]

In the four decades since Robert Ballard first discovered the wreck, around two hundred and fifty people have made the trip to see Titanic, trusting their lives to a tiny craft barely big enough to sit up in and paying a cool $250,000 for the privilege.

[Eva Hart]

I wouldn't do it in a million years.

[Narrator]

On Sunday, June 18, 2023, five people climb inside the tiny Titan submersible and begin the two and a half hour journey to the seabed. The youngest of them, Suleiman daywood, is just 19 years old. His mother Christine had given up her seat so that Suleiman can share the experience with his Titanic obsessed father. At 9:18 that morning, the Titan begins its descent. One hour and 33 minutes later, the sub's radio signal cuts out.

[James Delgado]

I think these days, after decades of going back down and prodding at Titanic, perhaps we now have a sense that, oh, this is simple, it's not, you know, we're talking about Titanic. So of course technology fails, right? People fail, people make mistakes. That being said, this way is to manage your risk as best you can.

[Narrator]

The disappearance of the Titan leads to a media frenzy. A four day search broadcast around the globe in real time.

[Pablo Ohana]

The world was gripped beyond belief. I mean, the BBC news in the UK launched its own online Titan channel. There was 170,000 people on that page watching literally nothing. There was no update, there was nothing happening. It was just the same news being repeated until they got new news.

[Narrator]

The tension of the Titan story comes from the horrifying idea that the passengers on the sub may still be alive, gradually running out of air at the bottom of the ocean. In fact, as most experts know full well, that's extremely unlikely. It's probable that the five men died instantly. On Sunday morning, as the media storm continues, questions begin to be raised about the safety record of Oceangate, the company operating the sub, and the fact that the Titan is piloted using a wireless video game controller. There's a fascination too with the identities of the sub's wealthy passengers. British Pakistani businessman Jazado Daiwood and his son Suleiman, billionaire Hamish Harding, Oceangate Chief Executive Stockton Rush, and RMS Titanic Inc's Director of Underwater research, Paul Henri Narjolet, known to his friends as Mr. Titanic. On Thursday, June 22, debris from the Titan is discovered on the sea floor, confirming what experts already suspected. The submarine imploded on Sunday morning, most likely thanks to a tiny pinhole sized leak which combined with the pressure down below, turn the Titan into a deathtrap. Oceangate expresses its sympathy. RMS Titanic Inc. Puts plans for further artifact recovery on hold. James Cameron leads the tributes to his friend Paul Henri Narjolet. But among the wider public, some of the sympathy for the dead is qualified.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

When the Titan imploded, I think it created some of the same tensions about how we value certain lives more than others, right, that the Titanic story itself creates. So as we all know, on board the Titanic what class you were in very much determined your chances of survival. So first class passengers survived in much greater numbers than steerage passengers did.

[Narrator]

Just four days before the Titan disappeared from Oceangate's radar screenshots, a migrant vessel carrying hundreds of people sinks off the coast of Greece. 82 bodies are recovered, but the UN estimates the true number of the dead may be as many as 500.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

We were very compelled by these wealthy people on board the Titan submersible. We want to know who they were, we want to know all about them, right? We're very compelled by them in a way that I think we weren't by the same people who were dying on the microphones at the same time. And I think it raised a lot of questions about the kinds of things that very wealthy people now do, right? They launch themselves into space and they launch themselves, you know, a mile down in the Atlantic Ocean. There was this massive international effort to rescue these people. And I think we were torn, right? I mean, I think. And I was torn, right? Some of us said, well, these people, like, they, they paid a lot of money. They knew what risks they were getting into. Why are American taxpayers putting the bill to go rescue these rich people?

[Narrator]

On social media, not all responses to the disaster are sympathetic. Many Twitter users seem to revel in the bleak fate suffered by the ultra wealthy Titanic tourists.

[Eva Hart]

We put a ludicrous importance onto money, and we want it so much that we actually hate people who've got it. Not because they've done anything bad at all, just because they're rich. I am extremely sorry for the people who went down in that machine, and I'm very sorry, particularly for the young man whose father took him when it was, in a way, his father's dream and not his own.

[Tim Moulton]

I couldn't bear it.

[James Delgado]

For the mother, things come full circle, right? The Washington Post had a cartoon. It shows a young girl in a period costume carrying a streamer as a toy. And she's skipping along and suddenly she comes across some debris in front of her on the ground and there's a controller from a video game. And then her mother shows up and her mother is also in a period dress and takes her by the hand and walks her back to the submerged wreck of Titanic. They're ghosts. And looking once again at an over reliance on technology and thinking, we know better.

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[Narrator]

113 years on from the Titanic disaster, the questions it raises are as pertinent as ever. And so too is the fierce debate over what to do with the ship's remains. We might know more than ever about Titanic's past, but no two experts entirely agree on her future.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

You know, we visit the pyramids, right? I mean, we visit tombs of other things. But on the other hand, there is a kind of commercial aspect to it that disturbs me a little bit. And there's a kind of macabre aspect to it that disturbs me a little bit that people want to see this scene of tragedy. There's a little bit of me that feels like maybe we should just leave it alone.

[James Delgado]

We visit battlefields, we visit archeological sites. People go to places where great tragedies have happened. People visit concentration campsites. So to go to a place that has had a great loss of life is not something that should be shied away from. I think we need to confront sites like this because everybody who goes there in their own way is changed by the experience of being there. Personally, if I was to develop a plan as an archaeologist for what I would wish to recover from Titanic, it would be the luggage. In some cases, everything they had that they could take with them that represented their life as it was. And the life they thought they'd have was in those bags.

[James Penker]

We're honestly running out of time. You know, the Titanic is deteriorating faster and faster. The artifacts will soon be non recoverable. They'll just be mush and they'll be lost. And that's fine. Titanic's returning to nature, it's kind of a beautiful thing in a way. It started with the iceberg and it's going to finish with the organisms on the ocean floor.

[Eva Hart]

The Titanic is an event that has happened and one day it will dissolve into the ocean, and then the Titanic will just be a story. But I feel we should leave it there and we should allow ourselves to move on. And there will be other tragedies and other blessings and other triumphs and other disasters. And that's part of being alive.

[Professor Stephanie Barchevsky]

I'm sure it will still be with us 100 years from now. I think we're going to continue to search for meaning from it and understanding of it. Even when we don't have the human survivors or the physical remains of Titanic. I think the story is going to live on it. It's the thing that I get asked to talk about, you know, more than probably anything else that I've ever written about, because people just have this kind of enduring fascination with it. And I can always tell when I start to talk about it that people actually listen. Right. People never listen to anything that historians say. They're not very interested most of time. But the Titanic, it just really compels people. I mean, it still is a very powerful story. It never goes away.

[Narrator]

But not everyone is ready to let go of Titanic just yet. Maybe, just maybe, there could be one more voyage ahead for the ship of dreams.

[Tim Moulton]

It will be just a rust stain on the sea floor in, you know, 100, 200 years time. So while it's really quite well preserved, I would leave the stern where it is as a permanent memorial to the disaster that happened. But actually, the bow of Titanic could quite easily be raised. When I say quite easily be raised. It would cost less than the next blockbuster movie about the Titanic. And oil rig companies absolutely have the technology to be able to get horses around the bow and lift it up. And it would reveal a great deal to history that we don't know now. And it would make Titanic accessible to the whole world in a way that she just is not at the moment. And where would I put it? I would put it on the slipway where she was built in Belfast. It would be a fantastic tourist attraction for the whole world. It would be great for. For the economy of Northern Ireland. And it also is its rightful place because it was built there. She started her journey there, and I think she should come to rest there.

[Narrator]

Thanks for listening to Titanic Ship of Dreams. Now you've finished, you can find your next immersive history [e-mail] Home of the Noiser Podcast Network. Choose from a range of shows including Real Dictators and D Day, the Tide Turns, both hosted by me, Paul McGann. That's Noiza dot com.

[James Penker]

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[James Delgado]

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[James Delgado]

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