Timeline of United States discoveries four days into the ship's maiden voyage, "Titanic" struck an iceberg and sank two hours and forty minutes later, early on April 15, 1912. The sinking resulted in the deaths of 1,517 of the 2,223 people on board, making it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. After nearly 74 years of being lost at sea on the bottom of the ocean floor, a joint Franco-American expedition led by American oceanographer Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discovered the wreckage of the RMS "Titanic" two miles (3 km) beneath the waves of the North Atlantic on September 1, 1985. Ballard
Sinking of the RMS Titanic 1912, "Titanic"s radio operators received six messages from other ships warning of drifting ice, which passengers on "Titanic" had begun to notice during the afternoon. The ice conditions in the North Atlantic were the worst for any April in the previous 50 years (which was the reason why the lookouts were unaware that they were about to steam into a line of drifting ice several miles wide and many miles long). Not all of these messages were relayed by the radio operators. At the time, all wireless operators on ocean liners were employees of the Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company and