Because I have always been a lover of cemeteries and eerie things, the Titanic has always been very close to my heart. Long before the blockbuster movie, I was reading books and studying the wreck site that was only discovered a decade before. The Titanic wreckage founder Robert Ballard, has some interesting ideas on how to save the decaying ocean liner. One of those ideas includes giving it a new coat of paint.
The paint to which he is referring is called "antifouling" paint and it has been used on liner hulls for well over a century. The paint combats corrosion and helps to keep the hull intact while under water. The Titanic set sail on her 1912 maiden voyage with a beautiful red hull painted with this same kind of paint, and when Ballard found the ship in 1985 the hull was almost completely free of corrosion. Ballard suggests that the Titanic be completely painted in this antifouling paint to halt the speedily decay that is currently going on.
The questions proposed included:
- What color? - Ballard says that the original black-and-white color scheme would be inappropriate so he says that they will continue with its current color scheme of rust red, burnt orange, and brown.
- How to paint it? - The painting will be done by robots that attach themselves magnetically to the ship and apply the paint as they move along.
- Who will pay for it? - Not the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that's for sure. Ballard says that he will be able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars among private investors when the time comes.
- Do we paint the entire thing right away? - No. Ballard proposes testing the paint's effects on a small section of the ship before dedicating themselves to the massive painting of the entire liner.
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