In 1985, the wreck was finally located by a joint French–American expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER and Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, originally on a mission to find two nuclear Cold War submarines.

The families of several wealthy victims of the disaster – the Guggenheims, Astors, and Wideners – formed a consortium and contracted the Merritt and Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to raise the Titanic.

Whale falls, a phenomenon not discovered until 1987 – coincidentally, by the same submersible used for the first crewed expedition to the Titanic the year before[4] – demonstrate that water-filled corpses, in this case cetaceans, can sink to the bottom essentially intact.

[8] In the mid-1960s, a hosiery worker from Baldock, England, named Douglas Woolley devised a plan to find the Titanic using a bathyscaphe and raise the wreck by inflating nylon balloons that would be attached to her hull.

Grimm had previously sponsored expeditions to find Noah's Ark, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and the giant hole in the North Pole predicted by the pseudoscientific Hollow Earth hypothesis.

The agency had recently developed a high-resolution side-scan sonar called SAR and agreed to send a research vessel, Le Suroît, to survey the sea bed in the area where the Titanic was believed to lie.

[35] The search required round-the-clock towing of Argo back and forth above the sea bed, with shifts of watchers aboard the research vessel Knorr looking at the camera pictures for any sign of debris.

[52][53][54][55][56][57] Passengers were offered the chance, at $5,000 per person, to watch the recovery on television screens in their cabins[52][53][54][57][58] while enjoying luxury accommodation, Las Vegas–style shows, and casino gambling aboard the ships.

[63] In 2001, an American couple – David Leibowitz and Kimberly Miller[64] – caused controversy when they were married aboard a submersible that had set down on the bow of the Titanic, in a deliberate echo of a famous scene from James Cameron's 1997 film.

On 15 July 2024, RMS Titanic Inc. held their first expedition to the wreck in 14 years, with the objective of examining its status in high-resolution photography for future scientific studies, likewise with identifying and searching for on-site artefacts.

[83] The expedition also gave tribute to Paul-Henri Nargeolet's contributions within the debris field,[84] having made numerous efforts in the preceding years in expanding knowledge over the area; a memorial plaque was placed on the seafloor in his honour.

Most of the Dining Saloon has collapsed because of its proximity to the break-up point midship, but the very forward part is accessible and the rectangular leaded glass windows, table bases, and ceiling lamps are noticeably preserved.

[110] It consists of thousands of objects from the interior of the ship, ranging from tons of coal spilled from ruptured bunkers to suitcases, clothes, corked wine bottles (many still intact despite the pressure), bathtubs, windows, washbasins, jugs, bowls, hand mirrors, and numerous other personal effects.

[107] Prior to the discovery of the Titanic's wreck, in addition to the common assumption that she had sunk in one piece, it had been widely believed that conditions at 12,000 feet (3,700 metres) down would preserve the ship virtually intact.

[96] In mid-2016, the facilities of the Institut Laue-Langevin used neutron imaging to demonstrate that a molecule called ectoine is used by Halomonas titanicae to regulate fluid balance and cell volume to survive at such pressures and salinities.

[127] According to Charles Pellegrino, who dived on the Titanic in 2001, a finger bone encircled by the partial remains of a wedding ring was found concreted to the bottom of a soup tureen that was retrieved from the debris field.

Other damage includes a gash on the bow section where block letters once spelled Titanic, the twisting of the metal of part of the brass telemotor which once held the ship's wooden wheel, and the complete deterioration of the crow's nest.

"[141] However, within only two weeks of the discovery, British insurance company the Liverpool and London Steamship Protection and Indemnity Association claimed that it owned the wreck, and several more schemes to raise it were announced.

[143] Spurred by Ballard's appeals for the wreck to be left alone, North Carolina Congressman Walter B. Jones Sr. introduced the RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial Act in the United States House of Representatives in 1986.

"[148] Public misgivings increased when, on 28 October 1987, a television program, Return to the Titanic Live, was broadcast from the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris, hosted by Telly Savalas.

[148] In front of a live TV audience, a valise recovered from the sea bed was opened, revealing a number of personal items apparently belonging to Richard L. Beckwith of New York, who survived the sinking.

RMS Titanic Inc. excluded from its motion any claim for an award of title to the objects recovered in 1987, but it did request that the district court declare that, based on the French administrative action, "the artifacts raised during the 1987 expedition are independently owned by RMST."

Following a hearing, the district court entered an order dated 2 July 2004, in which it refused to grant comity or recognise the 1993 decision of the French administrator, and rejected RMS Titanic Inc.'s claim that it should be awarded title to the items recovered since 1993 under the Maritime Law of Finds.

[159] On 12 August 2010, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith granted RMS Titanic, Inc. fair market value for the artefacts but deferred ruling on their ownership and the conditions for their preservation, possible disposition and exhibition until a further decision could be reached.

This was overturned in March 1999 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which ruled that the law of salvage did not extend to obtaining exclusive rights to view, visit and photograph a wreck.

[166] The watch was loaned to Haisman "for life"; when she died five years later, it was reclaimed by RMS Titanic Inc.[167] On another occasion, a steamer trunk spotted in the debris field was found to contain three musical instruments, a deck of playing cards, a diary belonging to one Howard Irwin, and a bundle of letters from his girlfriend Pearl Shuttle.

[42] In a particularly controversial episode, RMS Titanic Inc. sold some 80,000 lumps of coal retrieved from the debris field in order to fund the rumoured $17 million cost of lifting the "Big Piece" of the ship's hull.

The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has a collection of wooden fragments and an intact deckchair plucked from the sea by the Canadian search vessels that recovered the victims' bodies.

The 25,000-square-foot (2,300-square-metre) exhibit is the home of the "Big Piece" of the hull retrieved in 1998 and features conserved items including luggage, the Titanic's whistles, floor tiles and an unopened bottle of champagne.

In late August 2018, the groups vying to purchase the 5,500 relics included one by museums in England and Northern Ireland, with assistance from James Cameron and some financial support from National Geographic.