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.
Wreck of the RMS Titanic
Almost immediately after "Titanic" sank on 15 April 1912, proposals were advanced to salvage her from her resting place in the North Atlantic Ocean, despite her exact location and condition being unknown. The families of several wealthy victims of the disaster – the Guggenheims, Astors, and Wideners – formed a consortium and contracted the Merritt and Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to raise "Titanic". The project was soon abandoned as impractical as the divers could not even reach a significant fraction of the necessary depth, where the pressure is over . The lack of submarine technology at the time as well as the outbreak of World War I also put off such a project. The company considered dropping dynamite on the wreck to dislodge bodies which would float to the surface, but finally gave up after oceanographers suggested that the extreme pressure would have compressed the bodies into gelatinous lumps. (In fact, this was incorrect. Whale falls, a phenomenon not discovered until 1987 – coincidentally, by the same submersible used for the first manned expedition to "Titanic" the year before – demonstrate that water-filled corpses, in this case cetaceans, can sink to the bottom essentially intact. The high pressure and cold temperature of the water would have prevented significant quantities of gas forming during decomposition, preventing the bodies of "Titanic" victims from rising back to the surface.)