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Outlook: I found the Titanic during a top-secret Cold War mission

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Collage of images from Robert Ballard's deep-sea expeditions

12/08/2021 GMT

I found the Titanic during a top-secret Cold War mission

BBC World Service - Outlook, I found the Titanic during a top-secret Cold War mission

For 70 years people searched for the wreck of the Titanic. Then came Robert Ballard

For 70 years people searched for the wreck of the Titanic. Oceanographer Robert Ballard found it while looking for sunken nuclear submarines.

For more than 70 years oceanographers and scientists searched for the wreckage of the most famous ship in recent history - the Titanic. Then in 1985, Robert Ballard was on a classified US Navy mission to locate sunken nuclear submarines in the North Atlantic when he made the discovery of a lifetime. But finding the Titanic is just one of Robert’s many astonishing deep-sea expeditions; his discoveries have rewritten the book of life itself. He tells Outlook’s Clayton Conn how he believes his dyslexia has given him an edge to find the things others can’t on the ocean floor. His memoir is called Into the Deep.

South African Paralympian Achmat Hassiem dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, until 2006, when a lifeguard-training exercise with his brother Tariq went horribly wrong. Achmat lost his leg in an encounter with a huge great white shark, but in this astonishing interview from 2015, he tells Jo Fidgen why he now campaigns for their protection. 

Picture: Collage of images from Robert Ballard's deep-sea expeditions
Credit: Emory Kristof/National Geographic Image Collection, Robert Ballard and Martin Bowen/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Gabriel Scarlett/National Geographic Image Collection, Rob Lyall/National Geographic Image Collection

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