Robert Ballard
Robert Duane Ballard is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is noted for his work in underwater archaeology and marine geology. He is best known by the general public for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier in 1998. He discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2002 and visited Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who saved its crew.
Ballard discovered hydrothermal vents, undersea volcanic features that emit plumes of hot, nutrient-laden water which support the only ecosystems on Earth entirely independent of the Sun. He was quoted as saying that "finding hydrothermal vents beats the hell out of finding the Titanic". His mother later agreed, commenting "It's too bad you found that rusty old boat... they're only going to remember you for finding ". Ballard also established the JASON Project, and leads ocean exploration on the research vessel E/V Nautilus.
Early life and education
Robert Duane Ballard was born on June 30, 1942, in Wichita, Kansas. He had an older brother, Richard, and a younger sister, Nancy Ann. When Ballard was two years old, his family moved to southern California, where his father worked as a flight test engineer. He has attributed his early interest in underwater exploration to watching the 1954 film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, an adaptation of Jules Verne's 1870 novel. While he was a high school student, his father connected him with oceanographers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and he participated in several short research expeditions. Ballard enrolled at University of California, Santa Barbara, and joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps.Beginning in 1962, Ballard worked part-time with Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation, where his father was the chief engineer of North American's Minuteman missile program. At North American, Ballard worked on its failed proposal to build the submersible Alvin for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In 1965, Ballard graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning undergraduate degrees in chemistry and geology. While a student in Santa Barbara, California, he joined Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and also completed the US Army's ROTC program, giving him an Army officer's commission in Army Intelligence. His first graduate degree was in geophysics from the University of Hawaiʻi's Institute of Geophysics where he trained porpoises and whales. Subsequently, he returned to Andreas Rechnitzer's Ocean Systems Group at North American Aviation.
Ballard was working towards a PhD in marine geology at the University of Southern California in 1967 when he was called to active duty. Upon his request, he was transferred from the Army into the US Navy as an oceanographer. The Navy assigned him as a liaison between the Office of Naval Research and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
After leaving active duty and entering the Naval Reserve in 1970, Ballard continued working at Woods Hole persuading organizations and people, mostly scientists, to fund and use Alvin for undersea research. Four years later he received a PhD in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island.
Military career
Ballard joined the United States Army Reserve in 1965 through the Reserve Officers Training program. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to army intelligence. When called to active duty in 1967, he asked to fulfill his obligation in the United States Navy. His request was approved, and he was transferred to the Navy Reserve. After completing his active-duty obligation in 1970, he was returned to reserve status, where he remained for much of his military career, being called up only for mandatory training and special assignments. He retired from the Navy as a commander in 1995 after reaching the statutory service limit.Marine geology
Ballard's first dive in a submersible was in the Ben Franklin in 1969 off the coast of Florida during a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution expedition. In the summer of 1970, he began a field mapping project of the Gulf of Maine for his doctoral dissertation. It used an air gun that sent sound waves underwater to determine the underlying structure of the ocean floor and the submersible Alvin, which was used to find and recover a sample from the bedrock.Ballard was geologist diver in Alvin during Project FAMOUS, which explored the median rift valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1974.
During the summer of 1975, Ballard participated in a joint French-American expedition called Phere searching for hydrothermal vents over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but the expedition did not find any active vents.
On the Galapagos spreading center east of the islands a 1977 exploration by Alvin found deep-sea hydrothermal vents surrounded by communities of living organisms with energy derived by chemosynthesis. Ballard was a participating diver. While the discovery was of immense biological significance, the expedition's scientists were all geologists, with no biologists, as it was thought certain there would be no life to study, let alone forms unknown to science.
The 1979 RISE project expedition on the East Pacific Rise west of Mexico at 21°N was aided by deep-towed still camera sleds that were able to take pictures of the ocean floor, making it easier to find hydrothermal vent locations. When Alvin inspected one of the sites the deep tow located, the scientists observed black "smoke" billowing out of the vents, something not observed at the Galápagos Rift.
Ballard and geophysicist Jean Francheteau went down in Alvin the day after the black smokers were first observed. They were able to take an accurate temperature reading of the active vent and recorded a temperature of.
They continued searching for more vents along the East Pacific Rise between 1980 and 1982.
Marine archaeology
While Ballard had been interested in the sea since an early age, his work at Woods Hole and his scuba diving experiences off Massachusetts spurred his interest in shipwrecks and their exploration. His work in the Navy involved developing small, unmanned submersibles that could be tethered to and controlled from a surface ship and were outfitted with lighting, cameras, and manipulator arms. As early as 1973, he saw this as a way of searching for the wreck of the Titanic. In 1977, he led his first expedition, which was unsuccessful.RMS ''Titanic''
In the summer of 1985, Ballard was aboard the French research ship Le Suroît, which was using the side scan sonar SAR to search for the Titanic wreck. When the French ship was recalled, he transferred onto a ship from Woods Hole, the R/V Knorr. Unbeknownst to some, this trip was financed by the U.S. Navy for secret reconnaissance of the wreckage of two Navy nuclear powered attack submarines, the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher, which sank in the 1960s, and not for the Titanic. In 1982, Ballard had approached the Navy about his new deep sea underwater robot craft, the Argo, and his search for the Titanic. The Navy, while not interested in funding Ballard's Titanic search on its own, ultimately concluded that Argo was their best chance to locate their missing submarines, and agreed to finance his expedition on the condition that he first investigated the two submarines, assessed the state of their nuclear reactors, and determined if their long submergence had cause any radioactive environmental impact. He was placed on temporary active duty in the Navy, in charge of finding and investigating the wrecks, after which he would be free to use any remaining time and resources to hunt for the Titanic.After their missions for the Navy, Knorr arrived on site on August 22, 1985, and deployed Argo. When they searched for the two submarines, Ballard and his team discovered they had imploded from the immense pressure at depth. It littered thousands of pieces of debris all over the ocean floor. Following the large trail of debris led them directly to the remnants of both vessels and made them significantly easier to locate than if they were to search for the hulls directly. He already knew that the Titanic imploded from pressure, much like the two submarines, and concluded that it too must have left a scattered debris trail. Using that lesson, they had Argo sweep back and forth across the ocean floor looking for the Titanic's debris trail. They took shifts monitoring the video feed from Argo as it searched the ocean floor two miles below.
In the early morning of September 1, 1985, observers noted anomalies on the smooth ocean floor. At first, it was pockmarks, like small craters from impacts. Eventually, debris was sighted as the rest of the team was awakened. Finally, a boiler was sighted, and soon after that, the hull was found.
Ballard's team made a general search of the Titanic's exterior, noting its condition. Most significantly, they confirmed that it had split in two and that the stern was in far worse shape than the bow. They did not have much time to explore, as others were waiting to take Knorr on other scientific pursuits, but his fame was now assured. He originally planned to keep the location secret to prevent anyone from claiming prizes. He considered the site a cemetery and refused to desecrate it by removing artifacts.
On July 12, 1986, Ballard and his team returned on board Atlantis II to make the first detailed study of the wreck. This time, he brought Alvin. It was accompanied by Jason Junior, a small remotely operated vehicle that could fit through small openings to see into the ship's interior. Although the first dive encountered technical problems, subsequent ones were far more successful and produced a detailed photographic record of the wreck's condition.
In 1988, Ballard published a book, Discovery Of The Titanic: Exploring The Greatest Of All Lost Ships, and he later recounted the specifics of the expedition for a National Geographic video documentary released in 1987.
Many of the relics retrieved by various groups, not including Ballard, from RMS Titanic were owned by Premier Exhibitions which filed for bankruptcy in 2016. In late August 2018, the groups vying for ownership of the 5,500 relics included one by museums in England and Northern Ireland with assistance from filmmaker James Cameron and some financial support from National Geographic. Ballard told the news media that he favored this bid since it would ensure that the memorabilia would be permanently displayed in Belfast and in Greenwich. A decision as to the outcome was to be made by a United States district court judge.