Dr Robert Ballard is a genuine badass

This guy has lived an amazing life

LINK

Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is a retired United States Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks. He is most known for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998. He discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2002 and visited Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who saved its crew. He leads ocean exploration on E/V Nautilus.[1]



Most famous for discovering the Titanic but he’s famous for other shipwreck discoveries too.



RMS Titanic

The wreck of the RMS Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet (3,800 m) (2.37 miles (3.81 km)), about 370 miles (600 km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland. It lies in two main pieces about a third of a mile (600 m) apart. The bow is still largely recognizable with many preserved interiors, despite its deterioration and the damage it sustained hitting the sea floor. In contrast, the stern is completely ruined. A debris field around the wreck contains hundreds of thousands of items spilled from the ship as she sank. The bodies of the passengers and crew would have also been distributed across the sea bed, but have been consumed by other organisms.











Bismarck

The wreck of Bismarck was discovered on 8 June 1989 by Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer responsible for finding RMS Titanic. Bismarck was found to be resting upright at a depth of approximately 4,791 m (15,719 ft),[138] about 650 km (400 mi) west of Brest. The ship struck an extinct underwater volcano, which rose some 1,000 m (3,300 ft) above the surrounding abyssal plain, triggering a 2 km (1.2 mi) landslide. Bismarck slid down the mountain, coming to a stop two-thirds down.[139]







RMS Lusitania

The wreck of Lusitania lies on its starboard side at an approximately 30-degree angle in roughly 300 feet (91 m) of water, 11 miles (18 km) south of the lighthouse at Kinsale. The wreck is badly collapsed onto her starboard side, due to the force with which she struck the bottom coupled with the forces of winter tides and corrosion in the decades since the sinking. The keel has an "unusual curvature" which may be related to a lack of strength from the loss of its superstructure. The beam is reduced with the funnels missing presumably to deterioration.[110]









USS Yorktown

On 19 May 1998, the wreck of Yorktown was found and photographed by oceanographer Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discoverer of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck. The wreck of Yorktown, 3 miles (5 km) beneath the surface, was sitting upright on the bottom in excellent condition although she had spent 56 years on the deep-sea floor; much paint and equipment were still visible.[7] As of November 2017, there have not been any follow-up expeditions to the Yorktown's wreckage.











PT-109

The wreckage of PT-109 was located in May 2002, when a National Geographic Society expedition headed by Robert Ballard found a torpedo tube from wreckage matching the description and location of Kennedy's vessel.[33] The boat was identified by Dale Ridder, a weapons and explosives expert on the U.S. Marine Forensics Panel.[33]