Wreck of the RMS Titanic the debris field was surveyed in Robert Ballard's 1986 expedition, pairs of shoes were observed lying next to each other on the sea bed. The flesh, bones, and clothes had long since been consumed but the tannin in the shoes' leather had apparently resisted the bacteria, leaving the shoes as the only markers of where a body had once lain. Ballard has suggested that skeletons may remain deep within "Titanic"s hull, such as in the engine rooms or third-class cabins. This has been disputed by scientists, who have estimated that the bodies would have completely disappeared by the early 1940s
Wreck of the RMS Titanic previously unseen pieces of wreckage, and led to the documentary "Titanic's Final Moments: Missing Pieces". RMS Titanic Inc. mounted further expeditions to "Titanic" in 2004 and 2010, when the first comprehensive map of the entire debris field was produced. Two autonomous underwater vehicles – torpedo-shaped robots – repeatedly ran backwards and forwards across the debris field, taking sonar scans and over 130,000 high-resolution images. This enabled a detailed photomosaic of the debris field to be created for the first time, giving scientists a much clearer view of the dynamics of the ship's sinking. The expedition encountered difficulties: several hurricanes passed