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People are just discovering real reason why there are no skeletons in Titanic wreckage

Home> News> Science

Published 15:44 29 Jul 2025 GMT+1

People are just discovering real reason why there are no skeletons in Titanic wreckage

There's over 1,500 dead and not one skeleton remaining

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Ralph White

Topics: Titanic, Science, History

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

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@MrJoeHarker

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Should you ever manage to dive down to the wreckage of the Titanic then we hope you'll do so in a submersible that's been approved safe, and once you get down there, there's one thing you won't find.

Skeletons.

Around 1,500 people died when the infamous ship sank in the Atlantic Ocean after striking that notorious iceberg, but though most of the people on board went down with the ship you won't find their remains at the site.

Take it from someone who has been there plenty of times, Titanic director and submersible enthusiast James Cameron who has visited the wreck of the Titanic dozens of times and claims he's spent more time on the ship and its own captain did.

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Granted, the Titanic's captain only spent a few days there on account of the vessel sinking on its maiden voyage but you see his point.

It's an impressive wreckage, but you won't find bodies there (Ralph White/Getty Images)
It's an impressive wreckage, but you won't find bodies there (Ralph White/Getty Images)

Anyhow, back in 2012 the film director said he'd seen evidence that people went down with the ship but not the bodies themselves.

He told the New York Times: "I’ve seen zero human remains.

"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."

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It does rather beg the question where all the bones went, but fortunately science provides us with the answer.

Deep sea expert Robert Ballard told NPR that once you go down to a depth of around 3,000ft 'you pass below what's called the calcium carbonate compensation depth' which provides the crucial clue as to where the bones from those who died on the Titanic went.

Expeditions to the Titanic have found people's clothes, but not the bodies that used to wear them (Ralph White/Getty Images)
Expeditions to the Titanic have found people's clothes, but not the bodies that used to wear them (Ralph White/Getty Images)

"The water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of," Ballard explained.

"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."

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So there did used to be skeletons, but their flesh is long gone and the exposed bone dissolved into the water as a result.

While that accounts for most of the people who went down with the ship and died on board it as a result, some of those who went into the water and froze to death in their lifejackets may have ended up somewhere else.

Those bodies may have been swept away in a storm and scattered across the ocean until their remains broke down into pretty much nothing and they too were lost.

So now you know what happened to Jack from Titanic, fish at his body and his skeleton dissolved into the sea.

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