By Dr. Robert Ballard

THE DISCOVERY OF THE TITANIC  by Dr Robert D. Ballard  Introduction by Walter Lord  On a cold April night in 1912, the magnificent  new liner R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg and  sank beneath the icy waters of the north Atlantic.  The following day the words “TITANIC LOST” shocked the world. Seventy-three years later, on September 1, 1985, the headlines would proclaim “TITANIC FOUND.” For on that morniing, Dr. Robert Ballard and a joint French/ American expedition had located the legendary lost  ship and had photographed her standing  proudly upright on the ocean floor.  In the summer of 1986, Dr. Ballard returned to the Titanic and descended 21/ 2 miles in a tiny three-man submarine to explore the ghostly  wreck. Actually landing on the deck of the ship, Ballard sent the Jason Junior, his robotic “swimming eyeball,” down the Grand Staircase to  “see” glass chandeliers still hanging in place,  unseen for three-quarters of a century. During  eleven separate descents to the Titanic, Ballard  and his team explored the entire ship — including  the artifact-strewn debris field and severed stern  section - and photographed her in remarkable  detail.  THE DISCOVERY or THE TITANIC is the compelling, first hand account of Dr. Ballard’s twelve year quest to find the sunken liner. With the help of dozens of never-before-seen photographs, rare archival pictures, charts, paintings  and a 25-inch “photo-mosaic” of the ship, Dr.  Ballard recounts the Titanic’s fateful last night  and describes the moment-by-moment drama of  the expeditions that found and explored her. For the first time, the exact location of the Titanic is revealed and, finally, many of the mysteries that  have surrounded her tragic fate are laid to rest.  Here is the fascinating concluding chapter to a  story that has captured imaginations for almost a  century, the dramatic account of the most exciting underwater discovery of our time.