New Straits Times, Malaysia
July 10 2004

ENTERTAINMENT: Ballard revisits `Titanic’ wreck
Faridul Anwar Farinordin

IN the 1997 Academy Award-winning movie Titanic, directed by James
Cameron, a fictional underwater expedition led by Brock Lovett
(played by Bill Paxton) probed the wreck to look for a precious
pendant called the Heart of the Ocean.

Believe it or not, this actually reflects the situation today. Since
the wreck of the Titanic was first discovered by Dr Robert Ballard in
1985 after sinking 3,600 metres into the Atlantic Ocean in 1912, its
watery grave has been visited by people with questionable intentions.

“People have gone down and got married there. Treasure hunters have
been going there and tearing it apart with their equipment. They use
submersibles, land on the the wreck’s deck and bump things down. It’s
like a circus unfolding when it should be a memorial,” said Ballard
in a recent phone interview.

It has been estimated that as many as 8,000 artifacts may have been
ransacked from the liner – everything from porcelain and plates to a
part of its hull.

His increasing concern over the future of the wreck prompted Ballard
to make a bittersweet return to the Titanic – this time, to determine
the factors hastening the deterioration of the wreck and lobby for
international co-operation towards protecting the site from further
desecration.

A documentary of this 32-member expedition called Return To Titanic
will be aired on the National Geographic Channel (Astro Channel 52)
at 9pm tomorrow. There will be never-seen-before footage of the wreck
– inside the passenger cabins, suites and dining room.

“This time, we focus on the human aspect of the tragedy. We hope to
touch people’s hearts and raise awareness that this is a special ship
and deserves more respect. The footages are very moving – we show
where the bodies landed… but we didn’t touch anything,” he said.
The images, said Ballard, a professor of oceanography at the
University of Rhode Island in the United States and director of its
Institute for Archaeological Oceanography, tell many heart-wrenching
stories.

“We saw shoes which could have belonged to a mother and her daughter.
Next to them was a mirror and a comb. Immediately you can imagine
that the mother was probably combing her daughter’s hair when the
tragedy struck. The images are so powerful, as if the ship is
speaking to us.”

The expedition arrived at the site in June on board the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research ship Ronald H.
Brown. It was funded by the National Geographic Society, Mystic
Aquarium & Institute for Exploration (MA/IFE), NOAA, Partisan
Pictures, the JASON Foundation for Education and the University of
Rhode Island.

As the person who discovered the wreck, Ballard feels a strong sense
of responsibility towards its preservation. “Before 1985, I had no
attachment to the ship. I was an engineer and a scientist. Even when
I discovered the wreck, I saw it as a quest, a feat just like
reaching the peak of Mount Everest.

“It was only later that I became more attached to her (Titanic) and
feel that she is special in so many ways. She is to me what Everest
is to Edmund Hillary (the first man to conquer Mount Everest), who
urged people not to turn it into a junkyard,” he said.

An international treaty was recently signed by the US and Britain to
protect the site from further damage. “Hopefully France and Russia
will join in the future,” he said, adding “at the same time, we plan
to carry out preservation work on the ship using modern technology
such as underwater robots which can be employed to clean and repaint
the ship.” Born on June 30, 1942 in Wichita, Kansas, Ballard said he
grew up wanting to be Captain Nemo from the Jules Verne classic
fiction 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Naturally, this adventurer has been nicknamed anything from Nemo and
“oceanography’s answer to Indiana Jones” to “underwater cowboy” (“I
actually view the ocean as a Wide West!” he said with a laugh).

Ballard’s other discoveries include the underwater hydrothermal vents
which shed new light on the origins of life (1977), two ancient
Phoenician ships – the oldest ship wrecks ever found in deep water
(1999) – and four 1,500-year-old wooden ships in the Black Sea
(2000), which suggested evidence of a great flood and ultimately
supported the biblical story of Noah’s Ark. An Armenian newspaper
reported that Ballard is interested in locating Noah’s Ark on top of
Mount Ararat in Turkey, but he claimed it was just a rumour.

“I am more interested in finding evidence of civilisation before the
great flood.” Also an author of 18 best-selling books including The
Lost Ships of Guadalcanal, The Eternal Darkness, Graveyards of the
Pacific and an autobiography Explorations, he received the National
Geography Society’s prestigious Hubbard medal in 1996 for his
accomplishments in the world of underwater explorations.

With the Titanic, he said “she continues to fascinate me because she
is still there. She landed on the seabed in such a way that the mud
was pushed in front of her as if she’s still going to New York City.

“She is an amazingly frozen piece of history, like the pyramids of
the deep. Of course there are the mysteries, the grandeur of the
`unsinkable’ liner, the horror of the disaster and the human stories
of the passengers – the band members who kept playing as she was
sinking, the captain who chose to go down with her and a boy who
turned 17 and refused to board the life boat because he just turned
into a man.”

Will he visit the Titanic again soon? “Perhaps in another 20 years,”
he said.