The Titanic, assailed by rust as well as by hundreds of explorers and moviemakers, salvors and tourists (including a couple who were married in a miniature submarine on its bow), is rapidly falling apart.
The world's most famous shipwreck was found in 1985 resting on the North Atlantic seabed more than 3.2km down, upright but split in two. Its discoverers pronounced it in a fair state of preservation after 73 years in icy darkness and estimated that the wreck would change little in their lifetimes.
But it has the weakest of legal protections to fend off humans who are loving it to death, and no protections at all against rust, corrosive salts and microbes feeding on the hulk.
Divers who have visited the Titanic in the past decade report that its disintegration is accelerating. The crow's nest, where a lookout warned, "Iceberg right ahead!" has vanished. The forward mast has crumpled. The captain's cabin, where the captain was resting when the ship struck the iceberg, has collapsed as has the poop deck where passengers gathered as the liner sank.
Gaping holes have opened up in the Titanic's decks, metal walls have slumped and rivers of rust known as rusticles, which look like brownish icicles hanging from the ship's iron plates, have multiplied so fast that in some places they cover the hull.
"I was shocked," said Alfred S. McLaren, an ocean scientist and retired submariner who dived onto the wreck in 1999 and again last month. "It's much more heavily deteriorated. I expected her to be in about the same shape as 1999. But, God almighty, there's more rusticles everywhere."
Paul H. Nargeolet, a French minisub pilot who has explored the wreck more than 30 times, said each dive revealed new damage.
"Things are going quicker and quicker," he said. Between visits, Nargeolet observed, the roof of the gymnasium had collapsed and a big hole had opened up on the boat deck, where some of the Titanic's women and children climbed into lifeboats and were lowered to safety.
The US government has grown interested in the Titanic's fate and is talking with France, Britain and Canada about how best to preserve what remains of history's most famous luxury liner. In June the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sent six scientists down to survey the wreck and start the process of assessing its condition and its future.
Scientists and maritime experts say the worsening decay is caused by natural forces like the corrosive effect of salt water, as well as human activity, which has increased markedly over the years despite the pleas of Titanic societies to respect the wreck as a grave site.
Perhaps the most surprising theory, advanced by McLaren, is that the overfishing of the Grand Banks, close to where the Titanic sank, has produced an explosion in tiny marine life that is normally eaten but now falls steadily, like a never-ending snow, exacerbating the ship's rusting.
"The snow feeds the rusticles, and they become more active and extract more iron from the ship," said Roy Cullimore, a Canadian microbiologist who has visited the wreck three times, most recently in June.
People are also taking a heavy toll, the visitors say. The surrounding site is littered with beer and soda bottles, pieces of line, weights, chains and cargo nets -- mostly from salvage efforts, which have focused on the ship's extensive debris fields.
RSS