Famouth, Mass.: The sheer size of the ship and the shoes struck Robert Ballard when he descended to the RMS Titanic wreckage in 1986, a year after he and his crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution assisted in the discovery of the ocean liner that collided with an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic in 1912.
"The first thing I saw coming out of the gloom at 30 feet was this wall, this giant wall of riveted steel that rose over 100 and some feet above us," he said in an interview from Connecticut on Wednesday, the same day the WHOI released 80 minutes of never-before-seen underwater video of the expedition to the wreckage.
“I never looked down at the Titanic. I looked up at the Titanic. Nothing was small,” he said.
When the crew of Alvin, the three-person submersible he was in, began taking water into its batteries, Ballard saw the Titanic's portholes as it rose.
"It was as if people were staring back at us. "It was actually quite haunting," he said.
He saw shoes, including the footwear of what appeared to be a mother and a baby, that looked like tombstones marking the spot where some of the roughly 1,500 people who died came to rest on the ocean floor.
"Those who went into the water without lifejackets died of hypothermia, and their bodies came raining down after the Titanic sank," he said.
The liner sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City after hitting an iceberg in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912.
On September 1, 1985, the WHOI team, in collaboration with the French oceanographic exploration organization Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer, discovered the ship's final resting place in 12,400 feet (3,780 meters) of water using a towed underwater camera.
The newly released footage was from the following year's expedition.
There had been previous attempts to locate the wreck. However, the 1985 discovery and 1986 trip were made possible by sophisticated underwater vehicles that could withstand the harsh conditions, according to WHOI engineer Andy Bowen, who assisted in their development.
“The water is near freezing temperatures, and probably the biggest challenge is the remoteness of the location and, in particular, the harsh environment with regard to the pressure our equipment is exposed to,” he said.
During the 1985 mission, Ballard said he experienced a wide range of emotions.
He was worried that the public would discover he was a Naval intelligence officer on a top-secret Cold War mission funded by the Navy to investigate the wrecks of two nuclear submarines that had also gone down in the North Atlantic. The search for the Titanic came as a bit of a surprise.
"I wasn't a Titanic fan," he admitted. "I was very active in my military program. So I wasn't expecting the discovery to have an impact on me."
The ship went down around 2:20 a.m. The underwater camera discovery in 1985 occurred around 2 a.m.
Ballard recalled one of the crew members glancing at the clock and saying: “She sinks in 20 minutes.”
"We actually stopped the operation and raised the vehicle to gather my thoughts, and I said, 'I'm going to go outside and just get myself back together,'" he explained. "We held a small memorial service for all those who had died. But we were there, at this location."
He described it as "holy ground," similar to the Gettysburg battlefield.
The video, which features haunting and grainy interiors of the ship captured by the remotely operated underwater exploration vehicle Jason Jr., is being released in conjunction with the 25th-anniversary release of the remastered version of the Academy Award-winning film "Titanic" on Feb. 10.
“More than a century after the loss of Titanic, the human stories embodied in the great ship continue to resonate,” James Cameron, the film’s director, said in a statement. “Like many, I was transfixed when Alvin and Jason Jr. ventured down to and inside the wreck. By releasing this footage, WHOI is helping tell an important part of a story that spans generations and circles the globe.”
People are still fascinated by the Titanic story for a variety of reasons, according to Ballard. It was the world's largest ocean liner at the time and was supposed to be virtually unsinkable. Its passengers included some of the world's wealthiest and most famous people. In the aftermath, the world witnessed incredible acts of heroism and bravery by the crew and passengers.
"I think everyone wonders in their own minds, 'If I were there, what would I have done?'" he said.