While shoes, boots, and other personal items have been found in the debris, there are very few human remains to speak of. Out of the 337 bodies recovered, 119 were buried at sea, while 209 were returned to Halifax.
“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of Titanic, who has visited and explored the wreck 33 times and claims to have spent more time on the ship than its captain, told the New York Times in 2012. “We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”
So, what happened to the many bodies?
The truth seems to lie in the fact that the Titanic wreckage lies deep in the ocean—far deeper than most people realize. At depths of over 12,000 feet, the water temperature hovers just above freezing, and the pressure is immense.
Over time, these conditions have led to the bodies being consumed by bacteria and sea creatures. The only remains that seem to survive are items like shoes and boots, as these materials are not edible to marine life.
The role of seawater in the disappearance of bones
But the absence of skeletons isn’t just about sea creatures.
Robert Ballard, the deep-sea explorer who first discovered the Titanic wreck, explains that at these depths, the seawater actually has the ability to dissolve bones. The water is under-saturated in calcium carbonate, which is a key component of bones. As the soft tissue is consumed, the bones themselves slowly dissolve, leaving no trace behind.
Ballard even noted a stark contrast with the Black Sea, where no such critters exist to devour bodies, and where the bones are preserved in a mummified state due to the lack of marine life to break them down.
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