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
Linois's expedition to the Indian Ocean Linois's expedition to the Indian Ocean Linois's expedition to the Indian Ocean was a commerce raiding operation launched by the French Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Contre-Admiral Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois was ordered to the Indian Ocean in his flagship "Marengo" in March 1803 accompanied by a squadron of three frigates, shortly before the end of the Peace of Amiens. When war between Britain and France broke out in September 1803, "Marengo" was at Pondicherry with the frigates, but escaped a British squadron sent to intercept it and reached Isle de France (now Mauritius). The large distances between naval bases in