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.
Wreck of the RMS Titanic – for the Navy. The Navy commissioned Ballard and his team to carry out a month-long expedition every year for four years, to keep "Argo / Jason" in good working condition. It agreed to Ballard's proposal to use some of the time to search for "Titanic" once the Navy's objectives had been met; the search would provide an ideal opportunity to test "Argo / Jason". In 1984 the Navy sent Ballard and "Argo" to map the wrecks of the sunken nuclear submarines USS "Thresher" and USS "Scorpion", lost in the North Atlantic at depths of up to . The expedition