Back about nineteen-ought-eighty, somewhat before Robert Ballard actually located the Titanic, there was a novel written by Clive Cussler called Raise the Titanic!. The movie made from Cussler's novel, an attempt at a Hollywood blockbuster, turned out to be a real stinker and sank much more quickly than the Titanic itself did. I haven't read the book, nor did I see that movie, but I have read a few of Cussler's novels, and his technical details are generally pretty well thought out and often possible, or at least feasible. This thread got me curious about what method Cussler devised to do the job. Googling through cyberspace for this information didn't prove productive; there were brief reviews of the book and the movie, and much discussion of how imaginative (but cluttered with detail) the book was and how putrid the movie was and how great the musical score was despite the fetidness of the movie itself—but zero, naught, nuttin' about what I was really looking for. I assumed he probably did something like reinforce the hull integrity, then fill the ship with big balloons filled with air or some other gas (in a different medium, helium-filled balloons worked much too well for Lawn Chair Larry). If anyone has read the book, or seen the movie (and not repressed it), maybe they could explain Cussler's method.

In my perambulations through the ether, I did find this, however (lots of links at the bottom of the article).

Don Firth