Can't get enough of Titanic? How wreck site artifacts are found, preserved and displayed
Can't get enough of Titanic? How wreck site artifacts are found, preserved and displayed
More than 113 years after it sank, the RMS Titanic haunts us like few other tragedies, to the point where many of us want to know every detail about the ship and that awful night on the North Atlantic in 1912.
People who want to learn about the Titanic range from those with casual interest to deeply immersed Titaniacs, a term that connects Titanic and maniac.
Physical items, including passenger belongings, have special appeal, says Tomasina Ray, president and director of collections of RMS Titanic Inc., which has exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic.
Without them, 'most of those passengers would just be a statistic,' Ray says. 'We wouldn't know them or their stories. We wouldn't have any details about them.'
USA TODAY asked RMS Titanic Inc. about items retrieved from the wreck site and prepared for display, including its most recent addition to the exhibit in Las Vegas. Here's what happens at the site of the disaster:
Where – and how – Titanic sank
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The Titanic struck an iceberg at about 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, and sank at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15. More than 1,500 passengers and crew died and about 700 were rescued.
The ship broke in two behind the third of its four funnels as it was sinking. The two sections plunged 12,500 feet into the ocean floor and came to rest about 2,000 feet apart, in a debris field consisting of spilled coal and items ejected from the ship as it sank.
RMS Titanic Inc. retrieves items only from the debris field, Ray says.
'We don't take anything off the ship itself,' she says. 'We don't want to accelerate deterioration or accidentally cause damage. The shipwreck itself, we do not touch.
"We look for components that are easily recognizable and readable, so we can talk to the public about them and why they're important," Ray says.
How are expeditions to Titanic conducted?
The debris field is impressively large. 'It's about 3 miles by 5 miles and the biggest concentration of debris is around the stern because it had a more violent breakup,' Ray says. 'It actually imploded on its way down and sent its contents flying everywhere.'
The Titanic broke apart behind its third funnel, which is 'where you've got the kitchens and most of the dining rooms,' Ray says. That's why many of the dishware and ceramics are on the seafloor near the stern section.
RMS Titanic has conducted nine expeditions to the wreck site since 1987. The last was in 2024. "Seven of our expeditions have been for recovery," Ray says. "Two were for data collection."
Expeditions can last "anywhere from a couple of weeks to a full month," Ray says. "One we just did was 20 days on site, but it takes four days to get out there and four days to get back."
It takes about two hours to descend to the wreck site, and another two hours to return to the surface. Two types of submersibles are used:
◾ROVs: Remote-operated vehicles, submersibles controlled by ships on the surface.
◾HOVs: Human-operated vehicles, subs with human crews.
With remote-operated vehicles, "you're running them as constantly as you can, back and forth over the wreck site, and you're using every moment of every day when you're doing recovery expeditions," Ray says.
Submersibles with humans "don't spend as much time at the bottom, just because we're limited by human capacity and the transit time," she says.
How deep is the Titanic?
Boiler device is latest to be put on display
The break was also in front of the engine room, which held the emblematic boilers of the Titanic.
The boilers are important because 'they're how the shipwreck was first identified,' Ray says. When the Robert Ballard expedition discovered the wreck in 1985, 'they first found one of the boilers sitting in the debris field.' That let them know they'd found the Titanic.
Though the boilers are too large to recover, RMS Titanic has retrieved and put on display two devices used for feeding coal into the boilers:
◾Kilroy stoking transmitter: Recovered in 1994, the transmitter was preserved and exhibited in Las Vegas on April 16, 2025.
◾Kilroy stoking indicator: Recovered in 1987, the indicator was unveiled in Las Vegas in June 2020. It's been part of other traveling exhibits periodically since 1994.
The transmitter was connected to multiple indicators. They alerted crew members, known as stokers, when coal was needed in the boilers. It also powered the ship's lights, water pumps, and telegraph system.
'We're joining these two pieces that were recovered on completely different expeditions,' Ray says. 'They were not recovered near each other, but they were both in the debris field, around the stern.'
Conservators put the 75-pound device through several processes, including desalination to remove salts absorbed by the metal over time. Workers removed corrosion and chemicals were applied to ease removal. Loose internal components were taken out and the device was coated with a clear sealant.
The transmitter is part of the permanent display of Titanic exhibits at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, including what's called "The Big Piece," a 15-ton section of the ship's hull measuring 26 x 12 feet.
Other RMS Titanic Inc. exhibits include a second permanent one in Orlando, Florida, and five touring exhibits in Boston; Jersey City, New Jersey; Wrocław, Poland; Barcelona and Bratislava, Slovakia.
CONTRIBUTING Carlie Procell
SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; RMS Titanic Inc; U.S. Naval Institute; Encyclopedia Titanica; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
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