The captain goes down with the ship The captain goes down with the ship "The captain goes down with the ship" is an idiom and maritime tradition that a sea captain holds ultimate responsibility for both his ship and everyone embarked on it, and that in an emergency, he will either save them or die trying. Although often connected to the sinking of RMS "Titanic" in 1912 and its captain, Edward J. Smith, the phrase precedes "Titanic" by at least 11 years. In most instances, the captain of the ship forgoes his own rapid departure of a ship in distress, and concentrates instead on saving other people.
Wreck of the RMS Titanic D. Michael Harris and Jack Grimm had failed to find "Titanic" but their expeditions did succeed in producing fairly detailed mapping of the area in which the ship had sunk. It was clear that the position given in "Titanic"s distress signals was inaccurate, which was a major expedition difficulty because it increased the search area's already-expansive size. Despite the failure of his 1977 expedition, Robert Ballard had not given up hope and devised new technologies and a new search strategy to tackle the problem. The new technology was a system called "Argo / Jason". This consisted of a remotely controlled