Olympic-class ocean liner
When "Titanic" sank in 1912 and "Britannic" sank in 1916, their sinkings did not receive the same attention, due to the death toll (1,517 on "Titanic" and 30 on "Britannic"). Because the exact position of the sinking of the "Britannic" is known and the location is shallow, the wreck was discovered relatively easily in 1975. "Titanic", however, drew everyone's attention in 1912. After several attempts, the wreck was finally located by Jean-Louis Michel of Ifremer and Robert Ballard following a top secret mission for the US Navy to investigate the wreckage of two nuclear submarines, USS Thresher (SSN-593) and the USS Scorpion (SSN-589), that sank in the North Atlantic in the 1960s. The discovery of the wreck occurred on 1 September 1985, at 25 kilometres from the position given of the sinking. The wreck lies about 4,000 metres deep, broken in two. The bow is relatively well preserved, but the stern partially imploded, and to a large extent disintegrated during the descent and impact on the seabed.
RMS Titanic in popular culture
James Cameron's "Titanic" is the most commercially successful film about the ship's sinking. "Titanic" became the highest-grossing film in history nine weeks after opening on 19 December 1997, and a week later became the first film ever to gross $1 billion worldwide. By March 1998 it had made over $1.2 billion, a record that stood until Cameron's next drama film "Avatar" overtook it in 2009. Cameron's film centres around a love affair between First Class passenger Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Third Class passenger Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). Cameron designed the characters of Rose and Jack to serve as what he has termed "an emotional lightning rod for the audience", making the tragedy of the disaster more immediate. As Peter Kramer puts it, the love story is intended to humanise the disaster, while the disaster lends the love story a mythic aspect. Cameron's film cost $200 million, making it the most expensive film ever made up to that time; much of it was shot on a vast, nearly full-scale replica of "Titanic"s starboard side built in Baja California, Mexico. The film was converted into 3D and re-released on 4 April 2012 to coincide with the centenary of the sinking. Cameron's film is the only "Titanic" drama to have been partially filmed aboard the vessel, which the Canadian director visited in two Russian submersibles in the summer of 1995.