Robert Ballard Interview (page: 5 / 7) Discoverer of the Titanic	Print Interview

At some point in this project though, the poetry of the Titanic must have struck you.

Robert Ballard: That came later. When I first set out after the Titanic, it was sort of a mechanical, technical problem. My soul was not in it. My mind was in it. But in the course of getting ready, I had to study it and I met a man by the name of Bill Tantum who died just before I found the Titanic. Bill was the soul of the Titanic. He lived in Connecticut, and he started the Titanic Historical Society. He had been injured in Korea, always wanted to be career Army officer, but he got hurt. His dream went away, and he needed a new dream, and it became the Titanic. This man lived and breathed Captain Smith. When you sat and talked with him, you talked with the past. He knew how many buttons the Captain had on his uniform. He knew everything about it.

I was going after him in a very investigative reporter way, but in the course of asking those questions, I had to listen to all this other stuff. It enters your soul, that tragedy. I wasn't terribly conscious of that, until I found it. Then it blew me right over, like a truck ran over the top of me. It was months before I could deal with it emotionally. It was a complete surprise.

What was the date when you found it?

Robert Ballard: September 1, 1985.

And when did you go back to dive on it?

Robert Ballard: I had to wait an entire year, for the weather window to open up, before I could go back. The longest year of my life. We went out with ALVIN and our little JJ, the vehicle I wanted to send inside to investigate. Beautiful weather -- gosh, it was gorgeous. It was the summer season, the perfect time to dive. We had satellite navigation. We knew exactly where the Titanic was. We put in our tracking network, and I got into ALVIN, buttoned up, put it over the side, pulled the valves, to vent it, and down we went. We began to fall like a big rock for two and a half hours, with all this great anticipation: seeing the Titanic for the first time, landing on its deck, having it pop into reality from the myth that it was living in, to make it real.

So there we were, falling through total darkness, and then everything started to go to hell.

The first thing that started to happen was the sonar stopped working, so we couldn't sweep out and find the ship. Well, that's okay, because I've got my tracking, and I know where I am, and I'll just drive over there. Then the tracking went out. So now I don't know where I am. I can't reach out. All I am is a ball somewhere in the ocean, with a little window. Am I a mile from the Titanic? Is it behind me? Is it in front of me? Is it right or left? Then the submarine starts to take on water into the battery systems, and the alarms start coming on. We haven't got sonar, we haven't got tracking, we are becoming deaf, dumb, and blind down there, and on top of that, the submarine is taking on water. And it's penetrating into the batteries, and it's starting to short circuit the batteries. It's just turning into disaster, and the pilot says, "Look, we are going to have to abort." "No! Come on, I've waited so long for this moment. Don't abort the dive."
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Courage

He said, "We're going to watch it, if it gets too much water, I've got to get us out of here. If we destroy the batteries, the expedition is over, and you will never see the Titanic." We went down, and the batteries' alarms are screaming, he is turning it down so it doesn't blast in our ears. The bottom comes into view, and it's just mud. I'm sitting there, and he says, "Well, now what?" All that three-dimensionality in my brain is taking in all this limited data. I'm looking at the currents, I'm looking at everything and my brain just said, "It's over there."

He brought the submarine around, and started driving. The alarms are getting worse, and he says, "Bob, we've got minutes. We've got to get out of here." "Keep going. Speed up, go faster." Then I saw a clump of mud, like a mud ball. Like someone had a snow fight. Well, they're not supposed to be down there. And then there were a few more. I said, "Turn over towards those mud balls." The Titanic had hit with such force, it just threw mud balls everywhere, and we were seeing the splatter. I said "Follow that splatter," and the mud balls got bigger, and bigger. Finally, out of my window on the starboard side, there is a wall of mud, like a giant bulldozer had just been down there bulldozing the bottom of the ocean. And I said, "Ralph, it's right around the corner."
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime

We came around the corner and it was in my view port. There was this wall of steel. Like the slab in 2001, like the walls of Troy at night, the end of the universe. I just looked out of my window -- I had to look up -- because the Titanic shot up a hundred and some feet above me. I'm down at the very keel, and I just went "My God."
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime

Then we aborted the dive, and we were out of there. I saw it for 12 seconds.

You and your crew were the first people to see the Titanic for how many years after it hit that iceberg?

Robert Ballard: Well, the Titanic hit the iceberg April 14, 1912, at 11:40 P.M. It sank the next morning at 2:20 A.M., April 15. And we were there on, September 1, so it was over 73 years since it had vanished.

Did you feel at that point that history kind of struck you in the face?

Robert Ballard: Of course. You know, it's interesting, when you look back into time. In 1912, the very early moving picture cameras were around, but the world was black and white. When you think of the past, you think of it as if there was no color, and it sort of distances you from that. Black and white always sort of distances you. Even when we first found the Titanic in 1985, our cameras were black and white cameras. So it was still black and white. It wasn't until I saw it in color that it zoomed from the past to the present, like a lightning bolt, and there it was in today's reality.

The real thing that got me, when the goose bumps were having goose bumps, was after we fixed the submarine and came down on the second dive. That's when we made love. Because we came in on the bow and landed, and it was clunk, clunk. It was like Armstrong on the moon. And you took on the ten-degree list of the Titanic. It was listing to the starboard, and you listed. You just sat there. "We... are... on... the... deck of the Titanic. Oh my God!" And you just looked out the windows and just looked at it.
[ Video ] Low High    [ Audio ] Quicktime	[ Key to Success ] Passion

Robert Ballard Interview, Page: 1   2   3   4   5   6   7