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
Wreck of the RMS Titanic which will follow ours." However, within only two weeks of the discovery, a British insurance company claimed that it owned the wreck, and several more schemes to raise it were announced. A Belgian entrepreneur offered trips to "Titanic" for $25,000 a head. Spurred by Ballard's appeals for the wreck to be left alone, North Carolina Congressman Walter B. Jones, Sr. introduced the RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial Act in the United States House of Representatives in 1986. It called for strict scientific guidelines to be introduced to govern the exploration and salvage of "Titanic" and urged the United States Secretary of