Word: ballard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...videotape and nine photographs, all in color and shot 12,500 ft. under the North Atlantic, were a tiny sample of the 60 hours of video and 60,000 stills garnered during the twelve-day exploration. They were released at a Washington press conference conducted by Marine Geologist Robert Ballard, 44, who led the teams from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution that found the Titanic last September and revisited it this July...
Recounting the highlights of what has already become the most celebrated feat of underwater exploration, Ballard revealed some startling new information. His deep-diving craft failed to find the 300-ft. gash that, according to legend, was torn in the Titanic's hull when the ship plowed into the iceberg. Instead, he suggested, the collision had buckled the ship's plates, allowing water to pour in. He also brought back evidence that the ship broke apart not when she hit bottom, as he had thought when viewing the first Titanic images last September, but as she sank: the stern, which...
Between the pictures shot by cameras aboard the submersible Alvin, the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) J.J. and the towed sled Angus, Ballard said, "there is not a square inch of the Titanic that has not been photographed in beautiful detail." Woods Hole scientists plan to create a photomosaic of the entire ship, a project that will take several months. But Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, whose department financed the expedition, had already seen enough. Delighted with the spectacular outcome, he declared Ballard the Navy's "Bottom Gun" and presented him with a duly inscribed navy blue baseball...
...that Robert Ballard has proved that artifacts from the Titanic can be salvaged ("It would have been easy to retrieve those things," he said last week), the great ship may become a target for treasure hunters. Texas Oil Baron Jack Grimm, who between 1980 and 1983 spent a total of $2 million on three failed missions to find the Titanic, announced last week that he plans to use a submersible next summer to retrieve Titanic relics. "The selling of them I'm not particularly interested in," he says. "I'll probably donate them to different museums or put them...
...worldwide activity in the deep, last week nothing could compete for attention with the trove of photographs, videotape and lore accumulated during the Titanic mission. Each of Alvin's 100-ft.-per-minute descents from the mother ship Atlantis II required 2 1/2 hours, during which Ballard tried to relax by listening to the recorded music of Edvard Grieg. On the first dive, the submersible, carrying J.J. down with it, approached the Titanic's 60-ft.-high starboard midsection. "That was the first thing we came in on," recalls Ballard. "We were putting our nose right up against this massive...