El-Khouri’s study of the rusticle flower video revealed three relevant trends: El-Khouri, letter to author, Apr. 25, 2011; Cullimore, letter to author, Apr. 26, 2011. Cullimore’s observations pointed Occam’s razor toward a “rust flower” kinship with the anoxic microbial reeds growing on (and protecting) the Titanic’s mail bags, and his photos show rusticles growing up, in the laboratory. The nutrient base was ferro-rich narrow-spectrum fatty acids. Cullimore relied on iron-reducing bacteria (from rusticles) to start the oxidative-reductive cycle and switched to ferrous as required.
Cullimore’s observations about bacterially produced iron deposits having been made into Titanic’s steel, being returned now to the earth as iron ore again, by microbiology: Pellegrino and Cullimore, video log, Expedition Titanic VIII, 1996.
Humans repeat history again. In Masabumi Hosono’s generation, large stone tablets were erected warning of the heights reached by tsunamis: J. Alabaster, “Tsunami-Hit Towns Forgot Warnings from Ancestors,” Associated Press, Apr. 6, 2011; A. Revkin, “Limits of Disaster Memory, Even Etched in Stone,” New York Times, Apr. 8, 2011.
Guglielmo Marconi, whose apparatus was largely responsible for saving those who escaped the Titanic in lifeboats, noted how often the lessons of the past tended to be ignored, and he was much distressed by the sinking of the Titanic and by subsequent avoidable repetitions: Gioia Marconi Braga (his daughter), letter to author (with family memoir and letters), Aug. 10, 1995; Degna Marconi, My Father Marconi (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), 198.
Marconi was originally invited by the White Star Line as a special guest for the maiden voyage, but his work required him to be in New York three days ahead of the Titanic, so he booked earlier passage on the Lusitania instead. Although he was never involved in a shipwreck himself, his daughter Gioia noted that ships her father changed his mind about sailing on sank when he would have been on them, and ships on which he actually sailed sank later.
Captain Arthur Rostron’s and Madeline Mellinger’s closing thoughts about the Titanic: Rostron, The Loss of the Titanic (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 1931), 27; Mellinger letter to Walter Lord, 1961, L/P file, p. 595.
The Titanic is launched on April 10, 1912, from the dock at Southampton on its first and last voyage.
The bend in the base of the foremast shows the forces that were operating when the Titanic’s bow section broke away from the stern and began its 2.5-mile fall, during what evidently began as a steep, nose-down plunge.
William Murdoch and Charles Lightoller at a portside gangway door during the Titanic’s brief stop to pick up additional passengers at Queenstown, Ireland. Most of the crew standing behind them did not survive.
The Turkish baths on the Titanic.
Almost all of the wood trim and other organic furnishings in Captain Smith’s quarters have disappeared, leaving behind only a bathtub and other plumbing fixtures. In the lower left corner of the photo, rusticle branches are growing up from the edge of the captain’s bath.
Stewardess Violet Jessop serving as a nurse aboard the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, shortly before she became a double survivor.
By 2001, the prow of the Titanic was completely enclosed by a living rusticle reef. Georgyj Vinogradov’s “gorgon” can be seen growing like a flower mounted on the stem and anchored to the reef. Like the rusticles, the gorgons were recording a recent history of perplexing growth surges—literally a sea change.
Field notes by James Cameron and myself from the September segments of the 2001 expedition, illustrating the column-collapse, down-blast, and surge-cloud effects and explaining how objects from the middle of theTitanic’s bow section ended up being carried in front of the bow.
Though it resembles a rose, this tunicate, living on the rusticle reef that covers the Titanic’s prow, is closely related to ancestral vertebrates. Like a Venus flytrap, this organism closes whenever a small animal ventures too near. The stem was sprouting secondary colonies of Vinogradov’s Gorgon when it was photographed in 2003.
In August 2001, Mir-1 surfaces from one of Expedition Titanic XIII’s first dives.
Aboard the Keldysh in September 2001, James Cameron presides over a dive-planning session, with a properly scaled Mir submersible at center.
At 7:30 a.m., New York time, on September 11, 2001, the two rusticle substrates brought up for study were being returned by Mir-1 to their original location near boat 8. After the first sample broke into the shape of a cross and a cross-shaped davit bit came up with a section of rope draped over its arms, a Russian scientist eerily lamented that the objects were a bad omen and that a third cross would soon be seen.
While inch-thick steel was disappearing year by year before our eyes, newspapers and other delicate organic materials often exhibited greater survival power. Howard Irwin’s racing sheets from Australia were still readable after more than eighty years under the sea. During the 1996 expedition, after a child’s shirt was found, a moratorium was declared against landings near a burst point in the stern.
One of the strangest organisms observed inside the Titanic was the mahogany-dwelling “white worm,” discovered in 2001. This animal, notable for the rows of glowing portholes on its sides, was finally identified as a sea cucumber, a cousin of the common starfish, in 2005, when one of them was seen resting on a pantry shelf. These photos were taken by Jim Cameron.
Rusticle flowers growing up through the floor of the Titanic’s Turkish baths were photographed by Jim Cameron moments before the mini-bot Gilligan flamed out a battery and became a permanent resident of the lost liner.
Daniel Buckley’s gate still remains locked against third-class passengers even though the foremast came crashing down to one side of it and the rusticle reef has been metabolizing its iron.
