Wreck of the RMS Titanic of the film, made using a model of "Titanic", it would not have been physically possible. At the time of the book's writing, it was still believed that she sank in one piece. Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had long been interested in finding "Titanic". Despite early negotiations with possible backers being abandoned when it emerged that they wanted to turn the wreck into souvenir paperweights, more sympathetic backers joined Ballard to form a company named Seasonics International Ltd. as a vehicle for rediscovering and exploring "Titanic". In October 1977 he made his first attempt to find
Sinking of the RMS Titanic sight the awful spectacle ... Then, with the deadened noise of the bursting of her last few gallant bulkheads, she slid quietly away from us into the sea." "Titanic"s surviving officers and some prominent survivors testified that the ship had sunk in one piece, a belief that was affirmed by the British and American inquiries into the disaster. Archibald Gracie, who was on the promenade deck with the band (by the second funnel), stated that ""Titanic"s decks were intact at the time she sank, and when I sank with her, there was over seven-sixteenths of the ship already under water,