Titanic Tidbits

News and info ..................

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Attempt to Raise `Titanic' Hull Fails.

RMS Titanic Inc., a company that owned salvage rights to the Titanic, a

luxury cruise ship that sank some 350 miles (560 km) off the coast of

Newfoundland, Canada in 1912, August 27-30 tried three times to lift a

piece of the ship's hull off the ocean floor. All three tries were

unsuccessful, and the operation was abandoned until 1997. The wreckage

of the Titanic had been discovered in 1985.

Salvagers used balloons filled with lighter-than-water diesel fuel to

lift the 20-foot-by-24-foot (6.1-m-by-7.3-m) section of the hull, which

weighed around 20 tons, from 2.5 miles (four kilometers) beneath the

surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The third try, on August 29, which

raised the hull to within 215 feet (65 m) of the surface, had appeared

to be successful. However, cables holding the hull snapped August 30 as

it was being towed toward land, sending the wreckage back to the ocean

floor.

The expedition was accompanied by two cruise ships, on which 1,700

passengers paid upwards of $1,500 each for a chance to view the

attempted recovery. Three of the eight living survivors of the disaster

were aboard the cruise ships. The expedition was criticized by some as

a violation of the memory of the more than 1,500 people who had died in

the sinking of the Titanic.