Though plenty of people had plenty of ideas (both sensible and strange) about how to find and salvage the Titanic over the years, the shipwreck went undiscovered for many decades after its 1912 sinking. Ultimately, professor and oceanographer Bob Ballard was the one who, along with his team, was able to claim credit for finally locating the Titanic in 1985, per Britannica. But that wasn’t without some struggle of his own, as Ballard had already attempted to find the wreck in the ’70s and had come up with nothing.

Still, if anyone was going to find the Titanic, it would likely have been someone like Ballard. By the 1980s, according to ThoughtCo, he was already a serious scientist and explorer who had served in the Navy and, more specifically, had worked with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Research Institution in the organization’s Deep Submergence Group. As if that weren’t enough, he also earned two doctorates in marine geology and geophysics and designed a submersible, the Alvin, which was made to take humans far beneath the surface of the ocean.

Prior to his 1985 achievement, Ballard had already taken part in expeditions that uncovered deep sea vents and proved that life there could survive without sunlight. Yet, in his words, he was always focused on finding the Titanic. “That was a Mt. Everest in my world,” he said.

Ultimately, there was no real way that someone was going to find the wreck of a single ocean liner in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic without some serious assistance from technology. Or, as Ballard and his team were betting, a lot of assistance from technology.

According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the group — which was actually co-led by Ballard and Jean Louis Michel of the French National Institute of Oceanography — first began its search with sonar. A system built by Michel was deployed to “mow the lawn,” meaning that a ship was tasked with making its way across the search area in regular strips, towing side scan sonar equipment in order to get a glimpse of the ocean floor. After 31 days, they still hadn’t found the Titanic, but had managed to eliminate a whopping 75% of the search area.

Ballard’s team (accompanied by three of Michel’s scientists) then used the Acoustically Navigated Geological Underwater Survey (ANGUS) to start looking for the ship’s debris field. Per History, they also deployed an unmanned submersible with a camera, known as the Argo. If the Titanic really had broken into two pieces, it would have left a considerable swathe of bits and pieces scattered across the seafloor. Looking for evidence of the debris field would hopefully be easier than searching for the ship itself. And, given that this is exactly how the team found the wreckage, it clearly worked.

Going off eyewitness reports, many had guessed that the Titanic had split in two. According to Encyclopedia Titanica, that wasn’t necessarily a consensus, however. A minority of eyewitnesses, including officers of the Titanic’s White Star Line, claimed that the ship had sunk intact. However, it’s possible that they were biased, given that there were other White Star ships and the idea that any more could split into two parts could have damaged the company’s credibility and ticket sales.

Many more testimonies didn’t specify exactly in what shape the Titanic had been when it finally sank beneath the water after a couple of hours of sinking. Given the confusing evacuation, the dark night (the Titanic sank with only a sliver of moon in the sky, according to The Speed of Creativity), and the trauma of the accident, it’s no wonder that those details were confused.

The two-piece theory was proven by Ballard’s team’s discovery of the wreck, as the bow and stern were clearly separated by over 1,000 feet. But how did such a large ship break into two pieces that night in 1912? According to Scientific American, it’s all about physics. As the bow took on water, the stern began to lift, putting pressure on the ship. Specifically, pressure on its riveted hull sections caused the liner to unevenly break apart into two large sections.

Though some euphemistically call it “salvage,” Bob Ballard has stronger words for the prospect of people snatching up bits and pieces of the Titanic: looting. And, given that the wreck is the final resting place of an estimated 1,500 people, according to Britannica, many have concluded that salvage operations are little more than grave robbing. Ballard has certainly spoken of the site with the sort of reverence reserved for gravesites, once saying “It is a quiet and peaceful place – and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest. Forever may it remain that way” (via The New York Times).

According to CNN, Ballard says that he certainly understands the fascination that so many people have with the Titanic. The dream of finding and documenting the wreck is one that’s been following him since he was young, after all. But, in his words, “It’s being loved to death by visitors more than mother nature is attacking it.”

It’s true that salvagers have been picking apart the wreck, says NBC News. Some have obtained legitimate licenses to do so, while others have surely been working illegally (it’s hard to have enforcement officers at the ready in international waters). And it’s very possible that, while some artifacts may have fallen deeper into the wreck as the ship deteriorates, some pieces of the Titanic’s history have been plucked up by those salvagers and are sitting in someone’s private collection.

What do you do after you accomplish one of your greatest dreams? For Bob Ballard, that was no reason to stop exploring. Though he acknowledges that he’ll probably always be remembered as one of the co-discoverers of the Titanic wreck, that’s no excuse to rest on one’s laurels.

Not that having such a reputation is necessarily a bad thing. “In many ways it’s sort of freed me up to dream other dreams. So I feel emancipated in many ways,” Ballard told CNN. In the years since his 1985 achievement, he estimated that he’s found about 100 shipwrecks in all, a pretty considerable number for a single person (especially when you factor in the amount of funding pitches he’s likely had to do, too).

In 2019, Ballard even put in one of the more extensive efforts to find evidence of Amelia Earhart’s fate. Earhart, a renowned aviator, disappeared during a round-the-world flight attempt in 1937. According to the New York Times, some believed that she may have survived a plane crash and made it to Nikumaroro atoll, a remote island in the Republic of Kiribati. Ballard and his team weren’t able to find evidence of her plane around the atoll, but it was an illuminating trip nonetheless, using advanced sonar technology to scour the nearby ocean floor. And, as Ballard reminded everyone on the team, it’s worth remembering that he had missed the Titanic by a mere 500 feet in a pre-1985 expedition.