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 conditions and restrictions. RMS Titanic Inc. can profit from the artefacts through exhibiting them. RMS Titanic Inc. has also attempted to secure exclusive physical access to the wreck site. In 1996, it obtained a court order finding that it had "the exclusive right to take any and all types of photographic images of the "Titanic" wreck and wreck site." It obtained another order in 1998 against Deep Ocean Expeditions and Chris Haver, a British Virgin Islands corporation that aimed to run tourist trips to "Titanic" at a cost of $32,000 per person (it now charges $60,000). This was overturned in