Recent comments in /f/history

stellvia2016 t1_j99aaed wrote

Reply to comment by Mugwumpen in Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

Yeah I was going to say, I heard it's decaying rapidly at this point, so I wonder how much is still left that looks like the documentaries we've seen from the 80s and 90s.

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reformed_colonial t1_j9995cl wrote

Reply to Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

Bob Ballard made a deal with the US Navy - they asked him to study the wrecks of USS Thresher and Scorpion, which he agreed to so long as he could use some of the technology/funding to find Titanic as well.

https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/news-people/article/Two-Fallen-Nuclear-Submarines-and-Their-17044586.php

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czartaylor t1_j999053 wrote

Reply to comment by Paintsnifferoo in Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

That is actually not true. Whale falls exist so it's entire conceivable that bodies fell to the bottom intact and never refloated. In fact we have a couple photos of the wreck that indicate that some bodies did make it all the way down (there's a photo of two shoes side by side where a body landed, and everything else was eaten away but the shoes remained). Your buoyance as a human corpse is largely driven by a combination of the air in your lungs and post-death gas release. But at certain low temperatures and pressures (found in deep ocean), the death and pressure removes the air from your lungs, decomposition slows down significantly so there's no gas release, and thus you sink instead of float. The cold and pressure would actually in a vacuum do a better job of preserving your body than you'd think.

There is however no chance that any skeletal remains exist unless there's a room on the titanic that somehow miraculously was not flooded since the ship sank (no evidence to suggest this is true, but it's technically possible) , because anywhere water can get fish, crustaceans, and microorganisms that consume every single part of a human body can get. Some organisms can eat through bone. Organic material (bodies, wood, etc) was eaten away by ocean life long, long before the wreck was discovered.

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ANALOGPHENOMENA t1_j995ney wrote

Reply to comment by Mugwumpen in Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

It won’t. The ship is deteriorating, but the overall hull structure will still be around for a very very long time. What we know as the white part that’s all the decks above the waterline–the superstructure–will disappear within a few decades, but the hull will continue to exist for much much longer.

EDIT: used the wrong terms.

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Paintsnifferoo t1_j992qzc wrote

Reply to comment by GabeDef in Previously unreleased footage from first submersible dives in July 1986 to the RMS Titanic shipwreck — British passenger liner that sank 14-15 April 1912 remains about 4,000 metres undersea in the Atlantic Ocean by marketrent

Very doubtful that there’s skeletal remains but not impossible.

Bodies nearly always float in salt water, and most of the ones from the Titanic were still on the surface a few days later. Any that didn't certainly would have been carried away by currents/turbulence well before the wreckage reached the bottom of the ocean. Which means the only bodies that might still be in the wreckage are those belonging to people who were trapped in the lower decks, of which there were very few. And given the fragility of the wreckage, we can't actually reach those areas to see if there's anything left after over a hundred years of predation (somewhat unlikely, given that the local microorganisms have done such a thorough job eating people's abandoned luggage.)

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