Why were no human remains found on the wreck of the Titanic ?

The Titanic sank on April 14, 1912, and only 700 passengers survived. Around 1,500 people disappear in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Find out why no human remains were found on the wreck.

Once the rescue of the Titanic shipwrecks was completed, a cable ship, the CS Mackay-Bennett, was sent to the area to fish out the bodies. After a few days of searching, three boats took turns and recovered 328 bodies in total. But no human remains were ever found on the carcass of the famous ship. Director James Cameron, who visited it 33 times, told the New York Times in 2012 that he only saw pairs of shoes and clothes, suggesting the presence of bodies. Problem: at 3,800 meters depth, the underwater corpses are beyond the “carbonate compensation threshold”. Calcium carbonate, a component of bones, is dissolved under pressure. This is the reason given by researchers to explain the absence of human remains on the wreck of the Titanic.

What happened to human bodies after the sinking of the Titanic?

Of the bodies recovered by CS Mackay-Bennett, only 59 were identified. 116 were thrown overboard, due to lack of space on board and embalming equipment. Higher class passengers were given priority. After the Titanic sank, approximately 200 human bodies were transported to Halifax. We will undoubtedly still be asking questions long after the wreck has disappeared. Discoveries regularly revive interest. We found the wreck of the Carpathia in 1999, a boat which recovered the survivors, sunk in 1918, like the Mesaba, a ship which tried to warn the Titanic, found in 2023. In 2005, an expedition discovered two important parts of the wreck of the Titanic, constituting the hull. The Titanic was huge, 269 meters by 28 meters, but that's not much compared to the largest ship in the world today.

What happened to the survivors of the Titanic?

The last survivor of the Titanic died in 2009, at age 97. Millvina Dean, the "Titanic baby", has given numerous interviews and received help from James Cameron, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Other famous survivors of the Titanic include tennis player Karl Howell Behr, Molly Brown, Archibald Gracie IV, the controversial director of the White Star Line, Bruce Ismay, Madeleine Astor, Eva Hart, Violet Jessop, Lucy Noël Leslie, Harold Lowe , member of the crew.

What found objects were brought up from inside the wreck of the Titanic?

In 2023, all that remains is a field of debris from the Titan submarine which visited the wreck with Paul-Henri Nargeolet on board. The oceanologist was the first to find objects in the 1980s. Several objects made it possible to identify passengers of the Titanic. Around 5,000 objects were brought back, such as well-preserved clothes in suitcases. Some are on display at the Titanic Belfast Museum, such as the last first class passengers' lunch menu, a life jacket or the violin of the musician who played during the sinking and two letters to his fiancée.