Titanic today.

• Author: Hutchinson, Gillian

TITANIC must be the most famous shipwreck of all time. While the wreck of the great liner lay abandoned in total darkness for more than 70 years, probably not a single day passed without someone mentioning her name. Now, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, England, has opened a new exhibition, taking as its theme the wreck as it currently is and the recovery of objects from the seabed.

By diving in a submersible to a depth of two and a half miles, scientists have been revisiting a lost world to retrieve the evidence of history. No other story about the sea has been told and retold so many times. In fact, Titanic has become so much a part of popular culture that it is in danger of being obscured by fiction. This exhibition puts real objects from Titanic on view--everyday and extraordinary things that can give a firsthand account of Titanic and her people.

The exhibition gives a flashback to the building of Titanic. She and her sister ship, Olympic, were a triumph of engineering, setting new standards in comfort and luxury. The shock of the sinking was devastating not only because more than 1,500 people lost their lives, but because it was so completely unexpected. The exhibition includes newsreel footage showing how reports of the tragedy spread around the world.

Plans to find the wreck were proposed within days of the sinking, and many schemes for raising it were suggested over the years, without much hope of success. The position where Titanic sank was known only approximately, and the wreck was lying at such a great depth. There were many reasons for the longing to bring the ship back. Some felt that its retrieval might help to reconcile the loss and others believed that the wreck contained treasure. Still others regarded it as a scientific challenge, an opportunity to demonstrate the power of modem technology.

By the 1980s, electronic detection equipment had been developed for locating crashed aircraft and submarines on the seabed of deep oceans. It was this new technology that turned the dream of finding Titanic into reality.

Titanic finally was found in 1985, spread across the floor of the Atlantic. A joint French and American team of oceanographers nearly had reached the end of a two-month expedition when the survey ship's video monitor filled with the image of one of Titanic's boilers. This was the first time anyone had caught a glimpse of Titanic in 73 years.

Jubilation and excitement greeted the news that Titanic had been found at last, and millions of people were eager to learn what the wreck was like. The elation was clouded by anxiety, however. Finding the wreck made it vulnerable, as unscrupulous treasure seekers with no respect for the past might ransack the site.

The organization that has won the legal rights to raise objects from the wreck site has a strong sense of historical responsibility, however. RMS Titanic, Inc., is a New York-based company that has been working in partnership with IFREMER, the French Oceanographic Research Institute. IFREMER played a leading role in the discovery of Titanic and has collaborated with RMS Titanic, Inc., in three seasons of recovery operations on the site, in 1987, 1993, and 1994. RMS Titanic, Inc., is committed to maintaining the artifacts from the wreck in a permanent collection for display to the general public. There are plans for world touring exhibitions to follow the premier exhibition at Greenwich.

Photographic exploration of the wreck site reveals how Titanic has been transformed from a sleek liner into scattered e on the ocean floor. The ship tore in half as it sank, and the bow and stern now lie about 650 yards apart. The shapes of the larger sections of the ship appear strangely transformed, but still recognizable. The bow section is relatively intact, although the steel of the hull is covered with trailing rust and the wood of the decks has been eaten away, leaving only an insubstantial shell. The stem section has spun around to face away from the bow. It was so crushed by the great force of hitting the seabed that the decks have folded over each other.

Debris thrown out of the ship as it tore apart and sank is concentrated near the stern, but extends over a huge expanse roughly a mile square. Many thousands of objects lie scattered across the surface of the sediment. Remarkably, many of them are preserved perfectly. The contrasts are astonishing. In some areas, the thick steel plating of the ship has crumpled, while elsewhere, delicate glass and china objects remain completely undamaged. The immense...