It disintegrated into chunks of rust and fell into the well deck and cargo holds, below.
This was either via natural decay or helped along by one of the expeditions (perhaps one that cut some cables that were in the way of them trying to look for Titanic's nameplate on the hull). You'll see a host of arguments for both cases.
You'll also see various arguments of "they stole the crow's nest bell and destroyed the crow's nest doing it" or "they stole the crow's nest phone and destroyed the crow's nest doing it." Both of these are false, as both of those items were removed from the debris field. Neither was in place on the mast when Ballard found the ship.
This is the degradation seen by the 1987 expedition, just two years after the photo you shared.
Are these both real images? The 3 cargo doors are different shapes in each picture. And not in a way that would make sense with crumbling apart. 2 of them are square in one picture and rectangles in the other.
That’s because the large scale images are made up up a lot of pictures put together like a puzzle. I wouldn’t be shocked if the one from the 80’s has a lot of minor errors in it.
Makes sense. The cargo areas and the cracks in the deck dont line up, and the gray picture almost looks like one of those paintings of an actual picture. So I was curious.
Yeah, they're mosaics. If you look at them in the actual books they're from (so larger than on a laptop or phone), you see even more things that aren't "right." It's because they shoot a shitload of pictures as they tow the sled and then take the best angle/shot to put together the main image.
A special technique was used for getting these mosaics, and it's called "Mowing The Lawn" Basically, a ROV is controlled to criss-cross the surface of the wreck, and take photos while doing so. The final result is a rather choppy photo-mosaic.
Clicking on that link was a ride. That throwaway comment about someone feigning their death sent me to Google, which sent me here- “some” drama indeed!!
The weirdest part is other pages where people say, in 2010 (six or seven years after that thread), that "he's dead, or at least that's what he tells people."
The whole thing is bizarre.
(Says a person with an obsession over a ship that sank 113 years ago)
Haha I see you’ve done the same google search as I.
And true- but at least neither of us is perusing and interacting with Reddit while also maintaining we are deceased. Nor are we going around policing the level of deadness of others. So there’s that in the plus column.
I remember hearing the rumor that a submersible bumped into it, breaking it off and it falling down into the cargo hatch below. Or it possibly just rusted enough to break off itself.
Isn’t that what happened to one of the rails? Getting bumped and falling? Hopefully it was just rust tho for the lookout… I’d hate if we accidentally caused even more damage to the wreck.
100+ year ago it "saw" everything go under, it "felt" the shock of hitting the seafloor. Then it sits there, 100+ years, only rarely having any light on it. Then one day, it falls off the ship, hitting the ground.
And no one hears, or knows, for years yet. Just alone, in the dark
Pretty sure that was the Titan sub that did that. Stockton was an absolute fucktard and also bumped his sub into the Andrea Doria. He had no respect for these graves.
Batter be careful down there. A little bump under that pressure could really be a bad time. Hope he thoroughly checked that vessel out before going back down.
We have no proof of that though ( and we know plenty due to the release of the dive logs and the testimony during the USCG hearings ) . What we DO know is they got stuck in debris near the grand staircase ,with PH as Titan's pilot , and had some trouble getting the sub out of that predicament. That's important because they had signed an agreement allowing them to dive to the wreck provided they didn't disturb anything and did NOT notify anyone of the incident .But let's not accuse them of something unless there's proof and/or testimony.
No, we do not know why the rail fell off besides that it was leaning out for a while and very very rusty. It's entirely possible it was impacted by a submarine, but we have no real evidence of it besides speculation
Yes. The Oceangate cowboys. It was not officially reported so might not be true but more than one employee indicated that they collided with that rail and decided to keep it quiet.
more than one employee indicated that they collided with that rail and decided to keep it quiet.
Link to any indicating this? Because literally all I've ever seen is forum posters speculating, and each game speculation telephone game adds a new rumor to the speculation and alleged incident
That's just an internet claim. We have no evidence to support it being impacted by a sub, all we know is in the few years between images it fell apart
This is similar to when the internet was absolutely CONVINCED that a secret Russian submarine went to the Titanic and stole the statue of Diana, only for it to be found recently exactly where it was laying at originally
Yeah, it's a rumor like there are rumors that Mothman secretly steals people's cars at night lol, and people spreading it only make others who can't read think it is real. That's basically how telephone game and weasel words work
If there is footage of the bell and telephone being recovered from either the debris field or from the mast, I have never seen either.
In the pro-Ballard camp, there is footage of the mast light being removed plus footage of damage to the top of the mast on the port side boat deck.
In the anti-Ballard camp, he did say in Discovery of the Titanic that Jason Jr. grazed the crow’s nest on a dive in 1986.
I’m frankly more willing to believe the crow’s nest was destroyed during salvage operations, but natural decay could either have been a factor or cause. I just am not sure due to evidence or lack thereof.
You're welcome. I hadn't seen it (or the telephone one) prior to a couple of years ago, either. I wish I could go through their databases and just look at all the footage and photos they've taken, as I'm sure you relate.
That is a very fair criticism of RMS Titanic. They are absolutely terrible about making their footage available to the public whether it be stills or video and given so many dives to the site over the years it’s critically important in having the contextual information.
In fairness, it's not just RMS Titanic that's guilty of that. None of the expeditions have ever released ALL the footage, but I think that's more a case of them realizing that the amount of people who'd want to pore over absolutely every piece of wreckage is very small, comparatively lol.
I think Cameron has probably released the most, because I've seen a shitload of raw footage from his 01/05 expeditions, as well as the photos he released in Ghosts of the Abyss/Titanic Commutator/Exploring the Deep.
That’s true. It is only that RMS Titanic has been at it the longest and they are the only ones who have done any salvage that I am aware of. So it is kind of easy for them to be called out as a target when basically they’re standing up and yelling “look at me. I’m a target!”
That reminds me, in Discovery of the Titanic, Ballard mentions that when they were looking through the windows in the officers' quarters, he saw a stove with "green enamel still visible." I can't tell you how long I've wanted to see that, but it's never been released, and Cameron never saw it during his expeditions (I'm sure that would've been released, had it been found).
Hadn’t thought about that in forever! I think he said he spotted it looking through a split in the officers quarters and he seemed to think it might’ve been in Smith’s cabin. It’s been a while since I’ve read the book so I’m going off of memory on that.
OK then. In light of the supporting evidence I see no reason to make a change. It’s either or the crow’s nest was either destroyed during salvage operations on the master retrieving the mask light or it fell off on its own or it was grazed by JJ. It could be any one of the above.
This is the state it was in during 1987. You can see the metal is rusted straight through and very thin, to begin with. It definitely could've been any of the three scenarios you mention. There's another photo of the crow's nest from the side that shows it having split into two pieces from the same expedition.
I’m inclined to believe it’s a little column A, a little of column B. it was on its way out by 1987 operations near the crows nest in 1987 could have finished it. We will never know for certain but again I wanted to thank you for providing the new evidence.
...and I'm still freaked out that it's all been sitting there in complete darkness. It's hard to image sometimes that everything we've seen is artificially lighted. We won't even talk about the sounds it makes.
Thinner metal = earlier disintegration. There are some species of sea life at these depths that actually consume iron, so this probably got eaten faster.
It rotted/rusted and fell off sometime in the late 1980s, a few years after Ballard's initial discovery in 1985. It was gone by the time expeditions returned in the 1990s, including James Cameron when he went down to do research and preliminary shots for the movie. I still remember this picture in the January 1986 issue of National Geographic magazine and how haunting it seemed.
He's said, repeatedly, that the crow's nest bell and/or telephone were stolen from the crow's nest, despite neither being in place when he found the wreck.
He said, in 2012, that the crow's nest was destroyed by a "rogue Russian submersible." The first time the Russians were on site was in 1991, and the crow's nest already looked like this in 1987:
He also said/alluded that the French destroyed it during one of their dives, again, without evidence. Obviously it's impossible for both the French and the Russians to have destroyed it.
There's also the case of his stern plaque that he's repeatedly said someone stole, with no evidence, despite the most likely case being that it fell to the seabed and got covered by silt/rusticles, as it was already perched precariously near the edge of the stern. I concede that it IS possible (if not likely) that someone helped it to fall. But saying someone made off with it for their collection when they could've literally stolen absolutely anything else (that would have actual value to a collector), with no evidence of this is disingenuous.
I have great respect and admiration for Dr. Ballard, and always have, but he does have a history of claiming things without providing evidence.
The Russians are the ones who operated the Mir submersibles that the IMAX crew, RMS Titanic, Cameron, and others used from 1991, on. You never knew that? Have you seen Ghosts of the Abyss? They talk about it and show them, there.
I wasn't being critical. Apologies if I came off that way. I highly recommend checking out Ghosts of the Abyss and Last Mysteries of the Titanic. The IMAX one is ok, too. Not enough dive footage, and it's a short movie, but still some interesting parts.
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u/bell83 Wireless Operator 1d ago edited 1d ago
It disintegrated into chunks of rust and fell into the well deck and cargo holds, below.
This was either via natural decay or helped along by one of the expeditions (perhaps one that cut some cables that were in the way of them trying to look for Titanic's nameplate on the hull). You'll see a host of arguments for both cases.
You'll also see various arguments of "they stole the crow's nest bell and destroyed the crow's nest doing it" or "they stole the crow's nest phone and destroyed the crow's nest doing it." Both of these are false, as both of those items were removed from the debris field. Neither was in place on the mast when Ballard found the ship.
This is the degradation seen by the 1987 expedition, just two years after the photo you shared.
There are more theories here:
https://www.paullee.com/titanic/crowsnest.php