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the Titanic with Bob Ballard
.
    Andrews noted a few small things in
Titanic’
s brief time at sea, particularly problems with a hot press (a device for heating food) in the First Class galley and the too dark pebbled dashing, or faux stucco, between the half-timbers of the private promenades.
    No doubt the Guarantee Group sprang into action after
Titanic
began taking on water, although details of their work have mostly died with them. Frost was last seen trying to reach the flooded engine rooms. Passengers last spotted Andrews in the First Class smoking room, ignoring a nearby life jacket and staring at a painting of Plymouth harbor. Survivors’ accounts hailed him as a hero, more concerned about getting people into lifeboats than with his own survival.
    None of
Titanic’
s Guarantees survived the sinking.
    A century after
Titanic’
s sinking, Belfast playwright Martin Lynch authored a tribute to Andrews and his handpicked crew,
The
Guarantee Boys
. Strangely, he said, he never heard of them while growing up.

    The eight musicians, who performed until the ship sank, ranged in age from 20 to 33. They traveled as Second Class passengers. All perished; only three of their bodies were recovered
.
    (© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans Picture Library)

    Michel Navratil (three) and his brother, Edmond (two), were traveling under false names because they had been kidnapped by their father, Michel, who went down with the ship. Their mother, Marcelle Navratil, recognized them in a newspaper story in France and traveled to New York to claim them. Michel was the last male survivor of the sinking, and was 92 when he died in 2001
.
    (Library of Congress, #LC-B2-2391-32)

    Chief designer Thomas Andrews of Harland & Wolff, who knew more about
Titanic
than anyone, led a group of nine Harland & Wolff employees known as the Guarantees. The so-called Guarantee Group, whose members were skilled at plumbing, electrical systems, carpentry, and machine fitting, sailed on every maiden voyage to fix any problems they saw. Five of
Titanic
’s Guarantees appear above (clockwise from top left): Anthony Wood Frost, Francis Parkes, William Henry Parr, Thomas Andrews, and Roderick Chisholm. These men and their legacies are the subject of a National Geographic Channel special
, Save the Titanic with Bob Ballard.
    (Clockwise from top left: courtesy Ian Frost; courtesy Fred Parkes; courtesy David Marks; National Museums of Northern Ireland; courtesy Deirdre McIntyre)

    Argo,
the unmanned submersible equipped with video equipment and sonar systems that Dr. Robert Ballard’s team used to find
Titanic
    (Emory Kristof/National Geographic Stock)

    The shelves have disintegrated, but stacks of
Titanic’
s dishes, photographed by a submersible, remain
.
    (Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

C HAPTER 3
Current and Future Exploration of Titanic
    â€œPerhaps in a few generations the Titanic will be forgotten by all but a few—but somehow I doubt it.”
    â€”Dr. Robert D. Ballard, discoverer of the
Titanic
    B odies had yet to be recovered when someone proposed the first plan to find
Titanic
.
    John Jacob Astor’s son Vincent wanted to locate the wreckage and blow it up to free his father’s body, supposedly trapped inside. He abandoned that plan when the
Mackay-Bennett
found his father’s corpse. Instead, his family, along with those of other millionaire victims, considered raising the ship. They had the cash but not the technology, and soon gave up.
    Others imagined they could bring
Titanic
to the surface. Imaginative and impractical proposals included filling the ship with Ping-Pong balls, lifting it with magnets, and, apparently without irony, freezing it in a block of ice to force its ascent like a giant ice cube. None came anywhere near fruition, particularly because nobody knew where or how to find the ship.
    Popular opinion assumed
Titanic
had sunk intact. In a 1976 bestsellingnovel by Clive Cussler,
Raise the