Finding Titanic in the Deep
For more than seventy years, the wreck of the ocean liner Titanic lay hidden beneath the North Atlantic. People knew approximately where the ship had sunk, but the ocean floor was miles below the surface. In 1985, a joint Franco-American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard finally located the wreck. The discovery depended on international cooperation, careful searching, and equipment designed to work where humans could not easily go.
A disaster and a difficult search
Titanic left England on its first voyage in April 1912, carrying passengers and crew toward New York. Late on April 14, the ship struck an iceberg. It sank in the early hours of April 15, and more than 1,500 people died. The disaster led to changes in maritime safety, including rules intended to improve lifeboat capacity and emergency communication.
Finding the ship was not simply a matter of sailing to the location reported during the emergency. The North Atlantic is vast, and the reported position was not precise enough to point searchers directly to the wreck. Titanic had also sunk through a great depth of water before reaching the bottom, so its final position could not be assumed from its location at the surface.
- expedition:
- A journey organized for a particular purpose, such as research.
- precise:
- Exact or clearly defined.
- immense:
- Extremely large or great.
- expertise:
- Special knowledge or skill in a subject.
- debris:
- Scattered pieces left from something broken or destroyed.
- deteriorated:
- Became worse in condition over time.
- preservation:
- The act of protecting something from damage or loss.
- fragile:
- Easily damaged or broken.
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Preview questions from this passageShowHide
- 1Why was Titanic's reported emergency position not enough to locate the wreck?
- 2How did searching for debris improve the expedition's chances of finding Titanic?
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About this explanatory article passage for Middle School
“Finding Titanic in the Deep” is a explanatory article reading passage about Titanic shipwreck exploration, written for Middle School. It takes about 6 minutes to read (887 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.