courtesy of Google Photos Free to modify, share, and use commercially
Dr. James Delgado on the Titanic’s Tragic Legacy and Unforgettable First Dive
-
Asia Tabb
courtesy of Google Photos Free to modify, share, and use commercially
Aired; April 15th, 2025.
When Dr. James P. Delgado took his first dive to the Titanic in 2001, he expected awe. What he didn’t expect was tears.
Delgado—one of the world’s foremost marine archeologists—spoke with Asia Tabb for The Spark about what it was like to descend two and a half miles beneath the ocean’s surface and come face-to-face with the wreck of the Titanic, a site as iconic as it is tragic.
“You fall. Into the darkness and into the cold,” Delgado said, describing the two-and-a-half-hour descent in a cramped, six-foot-diameter Russian Mir submersible. “Suddenly, there it was. This huge wall of rusting steel still painted black oozing rust of yellow, orange, and red.”
That first dive, launched from the famed research vessel Akademic Mstislav Keldysh—used by James Cameron in his 1997 film—was transformative. Despite the ship’s well-documented history, Delgado realized the Titanic still had stories to tell.
“It’s a ghost town. It’s a wreck. It’s an undersea museum. And something about being there physically—even separated by that wall of steel—connected me to that site in a way that I hadn’t thought possible.”
He recalled floating above the spot where Lifeboat 8 was launched. It was there, he explained, that Ida Strauss refused to leave her husband, Macy’s co-owner Isidor Strauss. “She says, ‘Where he goes, I go.’ And she steps off. And they died together,” Delgado said. “And you cry.”
Delgado has spent decades exploring shipwrecks from Pearl Harbor to the Arctic, but it’s the Titanic that remains the most emotionally potent. As he puts it:
“If you’ve loved and lost, as so many of us have, it’s a story that resonates.”
In 2010, Delgado returned to the wreck—this time as Chief Scientist of a cutting-edge mapping expedition. Using robotic vehicles and high-resolution sonar, the team created a full photorealistic view of the debris field.
“You’re looking through a keyhole with a light shining on something,” he explained. “The lights suddenly are on in the room and you can see everything.”
The resulting imagery—published in National Geographic in April 2012—was a revelation. It showed not just the Titanic’s famed bow, but the full scale of devastation. “Titanic has spread out over a large area that would roughly be a fair chunk of downtown Manhattan,” he said.
Among the scattered debris were deeply personal artifacts: pairs of shoes, still laced, lying close together—silent evidence of the people who had once worn them. Delgado was struck most by a single trunk recovered from the site, belonging to Franz Pulbaum, a German immigrant en route to becoming a U.S. citizen.
Listen to the podcast to hear the full conversation.
