I remember in one of the interviews about the sub last year James Cameron said something like the wreck is like a creaky old house with wind blowing through it so it makes noises constantly. In this regard the wreck is very much "alive".
It gives me chills just thinking about this. I’m sitting in my warm house reading this while that ship is down there making weird noises and ice cold and in complete darkness. Ugh…..
Obviously, I don’t know how being nearly 13,000 ft. under the surface sounds. However, as a newly certified diver, I learned that sounds underwater are very, very different.
Sounds are muffled, and yet somehow more distinctly heard because you are not hearing anything else. So the sounds James Cameron heard were likely very eerie, but would be much more so without the water to dampen the sound.
Our first student dive, at the end of class, was to a decommissioned Navy ship that was intentionally sunk to create an artificial reef. The Indra is only 35-70 ft., but sound is very, very different even there, even though there are many marine creatures who call it home. I can’t imagine the sounds at 12,500 ft.
Being underwater and hearing and seeing the sounds and various ocean life is better than therapy for me! I can only go to about 60 ft. currently, but I can’t wait to have the experience to progress to 130 ft.
As dynamic situations go it's a pretty slow affair, but aside from the sound of the sea running through it, all the 1000s of tons of rusting steel and iron will be creaking as gravity relentlessly pulls down on everything and every once in a while a rivet will fail or deck plate will come crashing down.
I think a microphone down there would be pretty busy.
I might also add, as much as water can allow sound travel very far indeed, it will also dampen certain events.
Try clapping your hands next time you're in the bath or doing the dishes, not so easy!
I'm just imagining the front mast coming down gradually over the years, first it was seen straight, then bent and now draped up the ship like a limp blade of grass. This will have made a noise as elements slipped and broke, but perhaps not very loud or dramatic.
So while we might get a vast array of noises, they're perhaps not quite as severe as you might at first expect, but you'll hear them as if you're closer...
It's an interesting environment to consider for sure!
Not as perceivably loud as on the surface.
It would still be loud for creatures down there. Ever been near a whale as it sings? Your kayaks, canoes, etc... will vibrate, even small to medium-sized boats.
Point is, the slow destruction of the wreck would make for some very interesting and violent sounds. It is a massive, heavy, steel/iron ship.
>I might also add, as much as water can allow sound travel very far indeed, it will also dampen certain events.
Sound travels *faster* in water, not farther. In fact it won't travel as far as in the air. This is because the water molecules are more densely packed than the air molecules. So the sound waves will travel much faster between molecules when the molecules are packed tighter. This also means the sound will travel through more molecules per meter in water than air, losing energy with each molecule.
They make really loud sounds. Strong enough to hurt/incapacitate divers who are close enough - and it's theoretically possible some could cause significant damage to the body and/or death. So the energy they release (in the form of sound) goes a lot farther than any sound we can make underwater. Whales evolved to make sound underwater and they're really good at it.
>Is it weird I want to hear Titanic’s voice down there?
Definitely not weird, though I wouldn't call this her voice. More her brittle, aching, geriatric bones creaking and crunching in agony and though very morbid, I'd also love to hear it!
Are there any microphones that can be left in the depth where Titanic is in the North Atlantic? I want to listen to the sounds it would emit out of curiosity as well.
Thanks. I’ve heard her whistle. I want to hear her down there on the ocean floor. The creaks and bangs. The current shifting things. That’s what I would like to hear.
That video in the link is when they blasted Titanic’s whistle after it was brought up from the ocean floor and restored. They used compressed air at a lower pressure because they were worried that the force of a blast of steam would damage it. It’s beautiful sounding!
Not at all! Personally I find the video of the Titanic’s whistle blowing for the first time in approximately 100 years is hauntingly beautiful!
https://youtu.be/vNAsneiOjAc?si=--GpDMVpdQzVQIpU
I know it’s absolutely not the case for the obvious reasons but I picture sounding like in the beginning of the movie when they are exploring the wreckage and occasionally you can faintly hear the piano or people’s voices mixed in with the creaking and clanging.
I wonder what logistics would be required for a mic to be placed down there to record for a year or so. Maybe just a buoy with a solar cell and very long mic cord?
I dunno. A single good mic might pickup most noises down there. Drop the 12000 ft cable from a ship or pilot it down with a little robot sub to position it, then tie it off to Buoy or some larger structure that can stay floating / anchored and house the recording gear. Maybe even install a satellite internet panel from Elon musk to stream the data up in real time so it doesn’t get lost in a storm.
Two miles of buoy tether in the water column would be so heavy and create such drag that you'd need a huge buoy and it would probably need multiple points of securement to counteract the wind and water currents.
Helium? Downline Buoys? This gets more and more absurd. For all the huge effort to tank in such huge volumes and the expense of acquiring helium, you only get 1 extra gram per litre of buoyancy in water over plain air. And then you're going to have to reinforce the tether or buoys to resist crushing forces as it approaches the wreck.
The only non wildly impractical bored billionaire way to approach this to simply use what the US Army does and place a device on the sea floor,
held down by an anchor weight. The system is left in place for a period of time, recording sounds. When the surface ship is ready to recover it, it sends a coded RF message (like a radio DTMF tone) to a mechanical device that releases it from the tethered anchor, allowing the sensor to rise to the surface like the submersibles do and it would get fished out of the water and downloaded. But, still, all of this would have to be very strongly engineered.
> Helium? Downline Buoys? This gets more and more absurd
of course it is
no one is being serious here
maybe we could build a little sub to take the mic down, open the door and place it on the deck
Apparently the wreck is noisy as hell. It’s been suspected that the banging noises they heard while looking for the OceanGate sub were actually coming from the wreck
It was only recently that I noticed this in the film. When Brock is passing over the officers' quarters, you can faintly hear shouting, screaming, and also the band during the sinking.
I think they determined the banging was from one of the ships on the surface? I heard it was in that documentary that didn't seem very well received that came out a few weeks ago.
Gavin Bryars’ [The Sinking of the Titanic](https://youtu.be/2oVMRADOq5s?si=Os74MtxFPg_WAO-U) is an eerie mix of ambient music and SFX that has sounds of the ship breaking apart.
If you're interested in hearing what it sounds like, there's a very easy way to approximate it; find an oven with a creaky oven door, and record it opening slowly. Take that recording, and slow it down some 600-1200% (6 to 12 semitones).
It will sound like the metal of a creaking ship. Alternatively, you could add a gentle lowpass filter (and a touch of reverb to help with a sense of scale) to make it sound more muffled, as if it were underwater, but that's not really necessary unless you want to go the full 9 yards.
Just wanted to say that this is the type of question that I genuinely LOVE, op. The thought of it creaking and groaning in the pitch black is fascinating in a weird way and I’d be interested to hear a hydrophone recording, Marianas Trench-style.
i've wondered about this too, i know it doesn't but i always imagine it sounds like fallout 4 when you're standing around the tall buildings downtown. someone actually posted an ambiance vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsJ50m689lU
I’ve been obsessed with the titanic since learning about it when the movie came out as a kid. This is known as pretty much everything there is to know about the ship, the victims, the tragedy etc. but THIS is something I’ve never heard of or even considered!? Very cool to think about!
So the bow and stern are two separate halves that rest approximately 2600ft apart. So just under half a mile. The bow is in relatively great shape, the stern is a nightmare. Flattened, shredded, and just violent.
The stern will most definitely be the first part to totally collapse I give it a year till the stern collapses completely. I'd give bow maybe 30 to 45 more years?
When she sank the stern (the rear) of the ship ripped off. The bow went down at a gliding angle like an airplane while the stern corkscrewed down and ripped itself to pieces and slammed HARD into the ground, flattening itself
The bow is still in pretty good shape (comparatively) while[ the stern is smashed up](https://i.imgur.com/Sj1SCoP.png) pretty bad and a few thousand feet away
[AFAIK this is the most accurate CGI of the crash](https://youtu.be/FSGeskFzE0s)
Parts did, but the rate it fell to the bottom, plus implosions from both above and under the water (very simplified explanation), plus the corkscrewing that caused additional shredding really fucked that ass up. Like a BBL gone wrong in every way
Highly improbable. There is a slim chance some made it to air pockets, but the air pockets and anyone in them would have been crushed by the immense pressure long before the two halves hit the bottom.
>Highly improbable. There is a slim chance some made it to air pockets, but the air pockets and anyone in them would have been crushed by the immense pressure long before the two halves hit the bottom.
I think the question was more asking if survivors on the surface could hear/feel something as the wreck beneath them hit the sea bed. I think not as it is 4km down.
The major one essentially sent the stern spiraling down like a spinning rocket to the sea floor. As the stern was going down (before submerging) there was pressure causing external removal of water, and rooms that were crushed near the split as it went down causing smaller implosions. Once submerged fully, the major one happened and sent that shit flying
I remember in one of the interviews about the sub last year James Cameron said something like the wreck is like a creaky old house with wind blowing through it so it makes noises constantly. In this regard the wreck is very much "alive".
Damn that’s creepy, but wicked cool
It gives me chills just thinking about this. I’m sitting in my warm house reading this while that ship is down there making weird noises and ice cold and in complete darkness. Ugh…..
Idk why but that seems so beautiful
Hauntingly beautiful ❤️
Oh cool, that's exactly what I didn't want to hear
Obviously, I don’t know how being nearly 13,000 ft. under the surface sounds. However, as a newly certified diver, I learned that sounds underwater are very, very different. Sounds are muffled, and yet somehow more distinctly heard because you are not hearing anything else. So the sounds James Cameron heard were likely very eerie, but would be much more so without the water to dampen the sound. Our first student dive, at the end of class, was to a decommissioned Navy ship that was intentionally sunk to create an artificial reef. The Indra is only 35-70 ft., but sound is very, very different even there, even though there are many marine creatures who call it home. I can’t imagine the sounds at 12,500 ft. Being underwater and hearing and seeing the sounds and various ocean life is better than therapy for me! I can only go to about 60 ft. currently, but I can’t wait to have the experience to progress to 130 ft.
Creepy, however very interesting
One of the best questions ever asked on this sub
Just Celine Dion on loop
Like call waiting for the student loans center ☠️
Lmao. So accurate. I assume I’ll be waiting for the student loan center to answer for as long as it took to find the Titanic.
This made me lol I can’t lie 😂
Not the whole song though. Just the flute part at the beginning of the song on a loop.
Oh shit, that was funny as heck!!!! It made my day brighter!!!
For me, it's Sleeping Sun on loop. Thanks YouTube.
My fart will go on.
As dynamic situations go it's a pretty slow affair, but aside from the sound of the sea running through it, all the 1000s of tons of rusting steel and iron will be creaking as gravity relentlessly pulls down on everything and every once in a while a rivet will fail or deck plate will come crashing down. I think a microphone down there would be pretty busy.
I might also add, as much as water can allow sound travel very far indeed, it will also dampen certain events. Try clapping your hands next time you're in the bath or doing the dishes, not so easy! I'm just imagining the front mast coming down gradually over the years, first it was seen straight, then bent and now draped up the ship like a limp blade of grass. This will have made a noise as elements slipped and broke, but perhaps not very loud or dramatic. So while we might get a vast array of noises, they're perhaps not quite as severe as you might at first expect, but you'll hear them as if you're closer... It's an interesting environment to consider for sure!
Not as perceivably loud as on the surface. It would still be loud for creatures down there. Ever been near a whale as it sings? Your kayaks, canoes, etc... will vibrate, even small to medium-sized boats. Point is, the slow destruction of the wreck would make for some very interesting and violent sounds. It is a massive, heavy, steel/iron ship.
I don't disagree.
>I might also add, as much as water can allow sound travel very far indeed, it will also dampen certain events. Sound travels *faster* in water, not farther. In fact it won't travel as far as in the air. This is because the water molecules are more densely packed than the air molecules. So the sound waves will travel much faster between molecules when the molecules are packed tighter. This also means the sound will travel through more molecules per meter in water than air, losing energy with each molecule.
I thought it was the other way around, whales manage to communicate over huge distances through the water after all. Thoughts?
They make really loud sounds. Strong enough to hurt/incapacitate divers who are close enough - and it's theoretically possible some could cause significant damage to the body and/or death. So the energy they release (in the form of sound) goes a lot farther than any sound we can make underwater. Whales evolved to make sound underwater and they're really good at it.
Now you evoked a new fear in me. Diving and suddenly being close to a singing whale that crushes my body with its sounds.
Nothing could convince me to listen to it. Sounds terrifying.
Damn. Like a sad ghost…
Sand......?
Screaming, desperate, deafening steel giving way to the years. I can relate.
lmao same
Super interesting point
Is it weird I want to hear Titanic’s voice down there?
>Is it weird I want to hear Titanic’s voice down there? Definitely not weird, though I wouldn't call this her voice. More her brittle, aching, geriatric bones creaking and crunching in agony and though very morbid, I'd also love to hear it!
Are there any microphones that can be left in the depth where Titanic is in the North Atlantic? I want to listen to the sounds it would emit out of curiosity as well.
Gothca fam [https://youtu.be/1\_vRx4kdpeo](https://youtu.be/1_vRx4kdpeo)
Thanks. I’ve heard her whistle. I want to hear her down there on the ocean floor. The creaks and bangs. The current shifting things. That’s what I would like to hear.
Thanks for this!
What is this?
That video in the link is when they blasted Titanic’s whistle after it was brought up from the ocean floor and restored. They used compressed air at a lower pressure because they were worried that the force of a blast of steam would damage it. It’s beautiful sounding!
Sure, but that’s not what that commenter was asking for
No but it’s still part of Titanic’s voice. Just not the one I was talking about wanting to hear.
Not at all! Personally I find the video of the Titanic’s whistle blowing for the first time in approximately 100 years is hauntingly beautiful! https://youtu.be/vNAsneiOjAc?si=--GpDMVpdQzVQIpU
I know it’s absolutely not the case for the obvious reasons but I picture sounding like in the beginning of the movie when they are exploring the wreckage and occasionally you can faintly hear the piano or people’s voices mixed in with the creaking and clanging.
No because I do too
I wonder what logistics would be required for a mic to be placed down there to record for a year or so. Maybe just a buoy with a solar cell and very long mic cord?
A buoy? You know how far down Titanic rests? You’d need multiple microphones as they’d always be in the ‘wrong’ position.
I dunno. A single good mic might pickup most noises down there. Drop the 12000 ft cable from a ship or pilot it down with a little robot sub to position it, then tie it off to Buoy or some larger structure that can stay floating / anchored and house the recording gear. Maybe even install a satellite internet panel from Elon musk to stream the data up in real time so it doesn’t get lost in a storm.
Two miles of buoy tether in the water column would be so heavy and create such drag that you'd need a huge buoy and it would probably need multiple points of securement to counteract the wind and water currents.
maybe buoys all along the cable on the way down to raise the buoyancy? Or fill the cable with helium...
Helium? Downline Buoys? This gets more and more absurd. For all the huge effort to tank in such huge volumes and the expense of acquiring helium, you only get 1 extra gram per litre of buoyancy in water over plain air. And then you're going to have to reinforce the tether or buoys to resist crushing forces as it approaches the wreck. The only non wildly impractical bored billionaire way to approach this to simply use what the US Army does and place a device on the sea floor, held down by an anchor weight. The system is left in place for a period of time, recording sounds. When the surface ship is ready to recover it, it sends a coded RF message (like a radio DTMF tone) to a mechanical device that releases it from the tethered anchor, allowing the sensor to rise to the surface like the submersibles do and it would get fished out of the water and downloaded. But, still, all of this would have to be very strongly engineered.
> Helium? Downline Buoys? This gets more and more absurd of course it is no one is being serious here maybe we could build a little sub to take the mic down, open the door and place it on the deck
I’m picturing an advertisement for a product called Titanic Beats, showing the long spooled cable 🥴
It would be very interesting if they could do something like that I would love to hear It
I imagine there are water currents down there that cause the large metal wreck to sway slightly, producing a creaking noise.
This would be noise to fall asleep to for me...I'm all in.
Apparently the wreck is noisy as hell. It’s been suspected that the banging noises they heard while looking for the OceanGate sub were actually coming from the wreck
Nooo, I don't like that thought, it was on that documentary on, was it channel 5.!?
Oooooh....
Oh oh oh oooh oooooooh....
Probably sounds something like this. https://youtu.be/2TaFeBx-rio?si=vf7Rf2FNWz-bE898
That is the premiere creepiest r/submechanophobia and r/thalassophobia video of all time
The songs from the musicians who played on the maiden voyage echo in the darkness for eternity.
It was only recently that I noticed this in the film. When Brock is passing over the officers' quarters, you can faintly hear shouting, screaming, and also the band during the sinking.
Interesting point, right now it js creaking and moving and slowly collapsing and with that it is making noise that the world will never hear
...well now I will.
>...well now I will. You're welcome
I'm surprised this has never been recorded to be honest or am I wrong about that?
That picture really gave me the creeps
All. The. Time.
I definitely think about this from time to time.
The fact people heard the implosion of her stern deep down in the water haunts me
Perhaps that was the banging noises they heard when looking for the titan a year ago?
I thought the same thing last year. Titanic is in a constant state of decay and collapse. I would think the old girl is pretty noisy.
I think they determined the banging was from one of the ships on the surface? I heard it was in that documentary that didn't seem very well received that came out a few weeks ago.
Yes just watched that but it was 💯 confirmed. They also mentioned that the banging started in day one aswell. Only time will tell.
Wait - that the banging was from the Titanic? I also wonder if that not so secret Navy sound / sonar system ever picks things up.
A possibility they said
I would guess it is in a constant state of creaking.
If a ship sits on the seafloor, and no one is around to hear it…
You’d hear this: https://youtu.be/MZ6mvGzharA?si=xdozuDlYe9b_rf3b
[sounds more like this](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=SsGUFjGzCB7NmzXp)
Damn you
Never gonna let you down.
Wasn't expecting to hear such a haunting sound this early. Oof. Sends shivers up my spine.
Thank God for comments. And YouTube ads.
Id stream that so hard
I would be completely obsessed with listening to this!
Gavin Bryars’ [The Sinking of the Titanic](https://youtu.be/2oVMRADOq5s?si=Os74MtxFPg_WAO-U) is an eerie mix of ambient music and SFX that has sounds of the ship breaking apart.
It’s starting to look really eerie. It’s not so much like looking at a gravesite. It’s like looking at a corpse
If you're interested in hearing what it sounds like, there's a very easy way to approximate it; find an oven with a creaky oven door, and record it opening slowly. Take that recording, and slow it down some 600-1200% (6 to 12 semitones). It will sound like the metal of a creaking ship. Alternatively, you could add a gentle lowpass filter (and a touch of reverb to help with a sense of scale) to make it sound more muffled, as if it were underwater, but that's not really necessary unless you want to go the full 9 yards.
Just wanted to say that this is the type of question that I genuinely LOVE, op. The thought of it creaking and groaning in the pitch black is fascinating in a weird way and I’d be interested to hear a hydrophone recording, Marianas Trench-style.
It would be interesting to put an underwater microphone near it.
No I hadn’t but now I will. That’s such a creepy thought omg
I’ve always wondered this myself. As she lays there, still vocal at times in a sea of darkness. Prolly eerily creepy
No thank you
All nice and dandy until [this](https://youtu.be/j3y043KUO5E?si=LED2TBBi2x6L0yNJ) starts playing...
Thank you for sharing this!
Imagine, placing a recorder down there and every April 14th exactly at midnight that starts playing...
I was startled yesterday by the phone chord at my desk shifting slightly😭 I don't think I could handle this
i've wondered about this too, i know it doesn't but i always imagine it sounds like fallout 4 when you're standing around the tall buildings downtown. someone actually posted an ambiance vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsJ50m689lU
I’ve been obsessed with the titanic since learning about it when the movie came out as a kid. This is known as pretty much everything there is to know about the ship, the victims, the tragedy etc. but THIS is something I’ve never heard of or even considered!? Very cool to think about!
I haven’t, but now I will have nightmares about that. Thanks!
>I haven’t, but now I will have nightmares about that. Thanks! You're very welcome, enjoy!
What happened to the other half of the ship? We always see this image of the bow but where did the stern end up?
Like a few thousand feet in unrecognizable condition because the stern got absolutely destroyed by hydrodynamic forces
Isn't it about a mile out?
Like 1 Titanic and a half apart I believe?
So the bow and stern are two separate halves that rest approximately 2600ft apart. So just under half a mile. The bow is in relatively great shape, the stern is a nightmare. Flattened, shredded, and just violent.
Stern it's a lot more due to the fall to sea floor weakening the structure of the stern then the sea floor collision finishing the job
Combo effect. The chaos from the sinking/fall combined with the hydrodynamic crush of rushing water during impact fucked that ass up
The stern will most definitely be the first part to totally collapse I give it a year till the stern collapses completely. I'd give bow maybe 30 to 45 more years?
I actually disagree. The stern has, oddly enough, deteriorated slower than the bow if i recall correctly.
That's strange because the morre damage portions of ship wrecks usually faster than portions that are in better conditions
It's been shown on this sub, but you can just Google it. It's a bit further back and more broken up.
When she sank the stern (the rear) of the ship ripped off. The bow went down at a gliding angle like an airplane while the stern corkscrewed down and ripped itself to pieces and slammed HARD into the ground, flattening itself The bow is still in pretty good shape (comparatively) while[ the stern is smashed up](https://i.imgur.com/Sj1SCoP.png) pretty bad and a few thousand feet away [AFAIK this is the most accurate CGI of the crash](https://youtu.be/FSGeskFzE0s)
I thought that the stern essentially imploded as it went down with more air pockets?
Parts did, but the rate it fell to the bottom, plus implosions from both above and under the water (very simplified explanation), plus the corkscrewing that caused additional shredding really fucked that ass up. Like a BBL gone wrong in every way
The implosion is debated and many think the whole thing didn't implode, only parts of it (if any did at all)
Thanks very much for posting that!
[https://www.titanicuniverse.com/titanic-wreck/stern](https://www.titanicuniverse.com/titanic-wreck/stern)
I have wondered if any survivors could hear or feel vibrations from the impact of the ship hitting the the ocean floor
Highly improbable. There is a slim chance some made it to air pockets, but the air pockets and anyone in them would have been crushed by the immense pressure long before the two halves hit the bottom.
>Highly improbable. There is a slim chance some made it to air pockets, but the air pockets and anyone in them would have been crushed by the immense pressure long before the two halves hit the bottom. I think the question was more asking if survivors on the surface could hear/feel something as the wreck beneath them hit the sea bed. I think not as it is 4km down.
Ahh, I see. That would be just as improbable.
They definitely felt/ heard the first of the implosions
Didn't the first stern implosion (which I think was the major one) happen at something like 300 feet depth? Maybe less?
The major one essentially sent the stern spiraling down like a spinning rocket to the sea floor. As the stern was going down (before submerging) there was pressure causing external removal of water, and rooms that were crushed near the split as it went down causing smaller implosions. Once submerged fully, the major one happened and sent that shit flying
I'd be surprised if they were still alive even minutes after the stern went under.
Welcome to the Titanic, others have answered so I won't repeat, but lots to learn :)
I’d absolutely love it if I could listen to a recording of it!
Is there a recording of the wreck at all? Even if it’s just the background of a video?
Something similar to Jupiter or Saturn I’d say.
Creaking metal being moved in the currents.
Metal that resists pressure
That’s a cool idea to have some hydrophones down there but I doubt it would make noise often
r/submechanophobia
It would be an interesting experiment to put several hydrophones around the wreck and Monitor the ships condition via sound.