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 was ordered to the South Atlantic. Discovering on 24 December that the French squadrons had broken out of Brest, Barham despatched two squadrons in pursuit, led by Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Strachan and Rear-Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren. A third squadron detached from the blockade of Cadiz without orders, under its commander Rear-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, all three British forces cruising the mid-Atlantic in search of the French. Following a brief encounter with Willaumez, Duckworth sailed to the Caribbean and there discovered and destroyed Leissegues' squadron at the Battle of San Domingo in February 1806. With one of the French