RMS Titanic even head-on collisions had not been disastrous. In 1907 , a German liner, had rammed an iceberg but still had been able to complete her voyage, and Captain Smith himself had declared in 1907 that he "could not imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." At 11:40 p.m. (ship's time) on 14 April, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg immediately ahead of "Titanic" and alerted the bridge. First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship to be steered around the obstacle and the engines to be stopped, but it was too late;
Wreck of the RMS Titanic but have been consumed by other organisms. "Titanic" sank in 1912, when she collided with an iceberg during her maiden voyage. Numerous expeditions tried using sonar to map the sea bed in the hope of finding it, but were unsuccessful. In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The wreck has been the focus of intense interest and has been visited by numerous expeditions. Controversial salvage operations have recovered thousands of items, which have been conserved and put on public display.