WRECKAGE OF TITANIC REPORTED

WRECKAGE OF TITANIC REPORTED DISCOVERED 12,000 FEET DOWN

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: September 3, 1985

A team of American and French researchers was reported yesterday to have found the hulk of the luxury liner Titanic south of Newfoundland.

After combing the site with new undersea robots, the team was able to verify the ship's identity with cameras and sonar early Sunday morning, according to American and French officials. A French announcement said the wreck was found at a depth of more than 12,000 feet.

The discovery came more than 73 years after the luxury liner, said to be unsinkable, struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage and went down, resulting in the loss of more than 1,500 lives. The ship was the biggest and most luxurious liner of her day.

Dr. Robert D. Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the leader of the joint expedition, said in a ship-to-shore interview that pieces of the ship were found early Sunday.

''To finally put those souls to rest was a very nice feeling,'' Dr. Ballard told the Canadian television network CTV.

The Titanic's wreckage had eluded at least three teams who set out to find it. Researchers have come back with only dim, tantalizing hints.

One account put the wreck at 370 miles south of Newfoundland, but there were conflicting figures.

The American-French team was working in the general area where the Titanic was believed to have gone down, generally put at 41 degrees 46 minutes north latitude, 50 degrees 14 minutes west longitude.

In an announcement, the Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, a French Government organization, said the wreck was positively identified by a French-made submarine sonar system and American-made underwater cameras.

The American part of the expedition, financed by the National Geographic Society, is based aboard the oceanographic survey ship Knorr, built for the Navy. The ship, 244 feet in length, tows Woods Hole's robot submarine Argo, equipped with video and still cameras.

''We went smack dab over a gorgeous boiler,'' Dr. Ballard said.

''We came on it early this morning,'' he said. ''It was just bang, there it was on top of it. Our initial reaction was excitement, then a coming down off that to realize we had found the ship where 1,500 people had died.''

For ''a lot of us who had researched it for so many years, the Titanic has taken on more than a shipwreck,'' Dr. Ballard said, adding that it seemed somehow to have a far larger dimension - ''a true disaster.''

She Stops Taking Calls

After the announcement was made in France, the Knorr was beseiged by ship-to-shore callers, and the ship ceased taking calls. Shelly Lauzon, a spokesman at Woods Hole, Mass., said the institution's own people had not reached their team. ''It's my understanding,'' she said, ''that it was the Argo that made the discovery.''

The French said that the French and American organizations in charge had agreed beforehand to make no public statement on the success of their search ''unless they were absolutely certain of the facts.''

The Titanic sank on her way from Southampton, England, to New York after striking an iceberg April 14, 1912. She took more than 1,500 of her approximately 2,200 passengers and crew to their death.

Great Wealth Was Aboard

She was believed to be ''unsinkable'' because of her double bottom and reinforced bulkheads.

In 1980 an American expediation surveyed the North Atlantic with sonar and announced that it might have traced the Titanic's hulk. But the expedition's leaders were later unable to confirm this.

The French announcement yesterday said that a French research ship, the Suroit, began work in the area on June 28 and was joined on Aug. 5 by the Knorr. It added that the responsibilities of the two teams had been set forth in an agreement signed in June just days before the French ship set out.

''Those on board the Suroit were almost sure they had pinned down the Titantic,'' the announcement said. ''But we had to be certain, and the agreement prevented making any statement. The cameras of the American Argo system came in the past few days and confirmed the discovery.''

Secret Negotiations Reported

The French announcement did not give the site of the wreck, apparently to maintain secrecy.

The American and French research teams are said to have reached their agreement only after long, secret negotiations.

Their final agreement, code-named White Star after the White Star line, the British company that owned the Titanic, specifies the rights to anything recovered from the wreck under both French and American law, according to the French announcement.

A news conference will be held Sept. 13 in Paris and Washington at which the discoverers will describe their findings, according to the French announcement.

Ten millionaires were aboard the Titanic,and the safe storage room was filled with valuables, including diamonds valued at $7 million in 1912.

The Titanic was carrying some of the richest of the world's rich, including John Jacob Astor and his wife, who bore his child after Astor went down with the ship. They were aboard in a suite that cost $4,000 for the one-way voyage.

Isidor Straus of Macy's was lost, as was Mrs. Straus, who refused to leave her husband of many years to enter a lifeboat.

The researchers worked at finding the wreck with advanced robots that use remote-controlled television, photography and sonar-mapping systems that can survive crushing pressure and pierce the darkness miles under the ocean surface.

It Was a Test for the Argo

Finding the Titanic was only a secondary goal of the American expedition, according to researchers at Woods Hole. Its main mission was to perform the first field tests of the new robot Argo, from a new generation of unmanned deep sea submarines and ''swimming eyeballs'' that are expected to extend vastly knowledge of the ocean floor.

Unlike submersibles that can take one or two scientists to a tiny spot of ocean floor for a few hours at most, the new robots can dive deeper, roam across miles of territory and stay underwater for weeks at a time while scientists monitor data from a remote spot.

In contrast with the television cameras of the Argo, the Suroit swept the ocean bottom with a side-scanning sonar to try to pick the location of the Titanic. The Suroit also carries a bottom camera.

Memories of Survivor SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Sept. 2 (UPI)

Ruth Becker Blanchard, who was 12 years old when she escaped from the Titanic on a lifeboat, said today she retained a vivid memory of that night.

''On a ship there's always a rumbling of engines,'' she said in an interview. ''They stopped. Everything was silent and it woke us up.

''That worried my mother and she went out and asked a stewardess. She said there was just a little accident and we would go on in a few minutes.

''Well, it got noisier with people rushing around, and she went out again in the hall and met a cabin steward who said, 'We struck an iceberg. Put on your life belts and come up immediately.' ''

Ruth Blanchard ended up in one lifeboat and the rest of her family -her mother, her 2-year-old brother and 4-year-old sister - in another.

''I was just excited,'' Mrs. Blanchard said. ''I wasn't nervous at all. I didn't think for a minute we would not be saved.

''When we got down to the ocean we could see a great big gash in the Titanic, and the water was running in there,'' she continued. ''We rowed away as fast as we could. All four decks were covered with people all looking from rails with nothing to get into.

''Ice water was rushing into the boat, and it exploded when it got into the boilers. That was a terrible time. That's when they started screaming and jumping off the decks into the water. It was terrible to see that.

''It seemed to us, in our boat, that the ship broke in two,'' she said.

''Then the stern seemed to stand up for about a minute or so, and then it went down very quietly.''