An expert has shared the horrifying reason no human remains have ever been found inside the wreck of the Titanic.
More than 100 years after its sinking, the Titanic still holds a particular fascination for many.
And now, a bizarre story from the 1912 wreck has taken social media by storm.
Despite over 1,500 casualties, no human remains were ever found on board the sunken ship…
The fact came to light in a strange Reddit thread …
“Have any actual human remains ever been seen/recovered from the wreck since her discovery?” one inquisitive Redditor asked.
And people were quick to supply the fact that there has actually never been a confirmed sighting of human remains within the wreck.
“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of Titanic, who has visited and explored the wreck 33 times and even clocked more hours on board the ship than the captain, told The New York Times in 2012.
“We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”
Redditors echoed Cameron’s sentiment, with one writing: “Closest thing Ballard had seen at the wreck were pairs of shoes that landed close together as if the body they belonged to decayed and that’s all that’s left.
“Although, I have also heard that the shoe cleaners would tie them together and leave them outside the stateroom for the passengers overnight and it could have just been a pair of those kind.”
Another added: “During one expedition there was a leather raincoat found on the ocean floor with two boots poking out of it, and a conspicuous bulge in the middle of the coat.
“In the interests of good taste, they didn’t pick it up to see what was underneath, but I can imagine a similar scenario leading to a plausible situation where human remains may have survived in some capacity.”
While this may all sound like the beginnings of a crazy conspiracy theory, there’s quite a simple explanation for the lack of human remains aboard the doomed ship.
And now, experts have revealed all…
Essentially, the conditions were just not able to preserve corpses for the years the Titanic remained undiscovered on the floor of the Atlantic.
“The issue you have to deal with is, at depth below about 3,000 feet [914 meters], you pass below what’s called the calcium carbonate compensation depth,” Titanic explorer Robert Ballard explained to NPR.
“And the water in the deep sea is under-saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of.
“For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve.”
Or, as another Redditor simply put it: “She was discovered in 1985. Any human remains (if any) would be long gone. Flesh doesn’t last long 2.5 miles underwater.”
According to Titanic Universe, experts have also argued that a storm on the night of the tragedy scattered the ship’s underwater bodies of those in life jackets across a huge radius, meaning it’s unlikely they came to rest anywhere near the wreckage.