<P> In later years, numerous proposals were put forward to salvage Titanic . However, all fell afoul of practical and technological difficulties, a lack of funding and, in many cases, a lack of understanding of the physical conditions at the wreck site . Charles Smith, an architect from Denver, proposed in March 1914 to attach electromagnets to a submarine which would be irresistibly drawn to the wreck's steel hull . Having found its exact position, more electromagnets would be sent down from a fleet of barges which would winch Titanic to the surface . An estimated cost of $1.5 million ($35.5 million today) and its impracticality meant that the idea was not put into practice . Another proposal involved raising Titanic by means of attaching balloons to her hull using electromagnets . Once enough balloons had been attached, the ship would float gently to the surface . Again, the idea got no further than the drawing board . </P> <P> In the mid-1960s, a hosiery worker from Baldock named Douglas Woolley devised a plan to find Titanic using a bathyscaphe (like Trieste, used to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960) and raise the wreck by inflating nylon balloons that would be attached to her hull . The declared objective was to "bring the wreck into Liverpool and convert it to a floating museum". The Titanic Salvage Company was established to manage the scheme and a group of businessmen from West Berlin set up an entity called Titanic - Tresor to support it financially . It fell apart when its proponents found they could not overcome the problem of how the balloons would be inflated in the first place . Calculations showed that it could take ten years to generate enough gas to overcome the water pressure . </P> <P> A variety of audacious but equally impractical schemes were put forward during the 1970s . One proposal called for 180,000 tons of molten wax (or alternatively, Vaseline) to be pumped into Titanic, lifting her to the surface . Another proposal involved filling Titanic with ping - pong balls, but overlooked the fact that the balls would be crushed by the pressure long before reaching the depth of the wreck . A similar idea involving the use of Benthos glass spheres, which could survive the pressure, was scuppered when the cost of the number of spheres required was put at over $238 million . An unemployed haulage contractor from Walsall named Arthur Hickey proposed to turn Titanic into an iceberg, freezing the water around the wreck to encase it in a buoyant jacket of ice . This, being lighter than liquid water, would float to the surface and could be towed to shore . The BOC Group calculated that this would require half a million tons of liquid nitrogen to be pumped down to the sea bed . In his 1976 thriller Raise the Titanic!, author Clive Cussler's hero Dirk Pitt repairs the holes in Titanic's hull, pumps it full of compressed air and succeeds in making it "leap out of the waves like a modern submarine blowing its ballast tanks", a scene depicted on the posters of the subsequent film of the book . Although this was an "artistically stimulating" highlight of the film, made using a 55 ft (17 m) model of Titanic, it would not have been physically possible . At the time of the book's writing, it was still believed that she sank in one piece . </P> <P> Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution had long been interested in finding Titanic . Despite early negotiations with possible backers being abandoned when it emerged that they wanted to turn the wreck into souvenir paperweights, more sympathetic backers joined Ballard to form a company named Seasonics International Ltd. as a vehicle for rediscovering and exploring Titanic . In October 1977 he made his first attempt to find the ship with the aid of the Alcoa Corporation's deep sea salvage vessel Seaprobe . This was essentially a drillship with sonar equipment and cameras attached to the end of the drilling pipe . It could lift objects from the seabed using a remote - controlled mechanical claw . The expedition ended in failure when the drilling pipe broke, sending 3,000 feet (910 m) of pipe and $600,000 worth of electronics plunging to the sea bed . </P>

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