Robert Ballard is an ocean explorer who was part of the team that discovered the Titanic in her final resting place in 1985. Now, Ballard is on a new quest to protect Titanic’s massive underwater graveyard in Save the Titanic With Bob Ballard. Already crucial pieces of Titanic’s history are gone, including the crow’s nest where lookouts spotted the doomed iceberg; apparently knocked into a cargo hold by a passing tourist submarine.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with the man himself on his latest deep sea exploration.

Question: Dr Ballard, you are titan of the Titanic among the most accomplished deep sea explorers.  Can you tell us a little about the Titanic?

Bob Ballard: Well as you know it was of all the ships to find in the ocean Titanic was at the top of the list and for many, many years people tried and there was four attempts before we went out and then we were the ones that got lucky and found her.  And then it really set off a whole chain of events because Titanic in many ways was the first pyramid of the deep.  But we went on to find the Bismarck and other contemporary shipwrecks.  And then we began to look into the ancient world and over the last 10 years we have found more ancient shipwrecks, many of them Greek shipwrecks than any other organisation on the planet.

It is a realisation that deep sea is a museum.  It is the largest museum on the planet.  And yet there is no guard on the door.  I am deeply concerned about not only the Titanic but all the ancient history that is now at risk.  And so one of the things we are doing on the hundredth anniversary with National Geographic Channel is doing a programme called Save the Titanic.  And our goal is that if you cannot save this iconic ship then there is very little hope we can save ancient ships.  What we are trying to do is to get the world to realise that you don’t have to go down and take everything and you do not have to do a treasure hunting.  That this is our heritage and it is a common heritage of all of us and if we really want to take steps to preserve human history in the ocean and we want to start with the Titanic.

Question: Can I take it back to 1 September 1985. Could you describe for us your sensations when you first saw the rubble, the wreckage from Titanic and the boiler room?

Bob Ballard: Well as you know the expedition was almost over.  We were getting very nervous that we were going to not succeed and we were going to join the ranks of the people that had tried before and failed.  It is now the night of 1 September and it is midnight and we changed over the watch.  We have watches, we go around the clock, but every four hours we have a changing of the guard.  And because I was chief scientist I have to be at every one of those watch changes, so don’t get a lot of sleep.  We changed over the watch and I said well, I am going to go and see if I can catnap.  I went up to my stateroom and I could not fall asleep, there was some premonition or something I couldn’t fall asleep.

Then at 2:00 in the morning there was a knock on the door and the cook put his head in the door and I said, “what are you doing?” I mean the cook never was at that part of the ship.  He said, “Well the guys think you should come down.”  He did not finish his sentence.  I blasted past him and I almost killed myself going down six decks in the middle of the night.  Going out on the open deck, into the control room and as I walked into the control room the camera, the vehicle went over the boiler of the Titanic and we had a picture of the boiler on the wall and heads went back and forth from the picture and we realised that this wreckage was the Titanic.

There was a huge explosion because we were so pent up with anxiety and we found it is like scoring the winning goal.  And then someone on the wall looked at the clock on the wall and said she sinks in 20 minutes.  And that innocent comment we realised how inappropriate it was to be celebrating anything and the mood.  It was like someone took an emotional switch and just went click and our mood changed and we realised this was not something to celebrate.  And so we stopped this ship, we raised the vehicles, we went out on the fantail, we raised the flag of Harland and Wolff and we had a memorial and then we went back to work but our mood never changed.  And we realised that this was a very special place.  And it was not just the ship it was the place.  It was no longer lost, we now knew where it was and we felt almost surrounded by the lifeboats of all the people that were in the water at that very spot.

Question: On this hundredth centenary of the Titanic sinking, what do you think the legacy of the Titanic will be, and what is the most fitting memorial for the relatives of those that were lost at sea?

Bob Ballard: Well I think it was a sea change and the realisation that the ocean has a tremendous amount of history.  And because of its darkness, its cold temperatures and its great pressures it is in a high state of preservation.  It is like putting something in suspended animation.  I think that is the realisation and I think the best we can do is to preserve it for future generations to visit just as you preserve the Acropolis.  It is not something that you let crumble.  I actually think you can go down and clean it and paint the hull.  And when I tell children they ask “what colour?”  And we think we would like to keep it the colour it is right now.  But we now have that technology and so just as you do the wonderful conservation that is doing throughout Greece, on its great history, we would like to do the same to the Titanic.

 

Saving the Titanic With Bob Ballard airs on National Geographic Channel April 15 at 7.30pm in Australia and New Zealand, and May 3 at 7:00pm in Japan.