Robert Ballard, the author of "Titanic: The Last Great Images", will ever be associated with the great, lost ship. It was Ballard who was the driving force behind the 1985 expedition that found the sunken vessel, and since then his voice has been steady in its opposition to the destructive exploitation of the wreck.
"Titanic: The Last Great Images" serves in part as an account of his 2004 return to the site to make further explorations with Remotely Operated Vehicles equipped with high resolution television cameras. Many of the photographs in the book -- "the last great images" -- stem from that mission. They are intensely powerful images, documenting in extraordinary detail the present condition of the wreck. Ballard is sharply, although not stridently, critical of damage done over the previous two decades by other expeditions, perhaps more the result of accidents rather than deliberate intent, but destructive nonetheless. The damage is worst in those areas most frequently visited by such expeditions, but Ballard is quick to point out that even natural processes, left to themselves, will eventually reduce the wreck to a pile of unrecognizable debris (hence, I suppose, the notion of these images being "the last"), perhaps in a century's time. But Ballard does not merely report woe; he notes that the extent of damage is not as great as some have claimed and that the reduced pace of visiting expeditions has meant less damage being inflicted. Ballard's great hope, firmly expressed in this book, is that legal action will be undertaken to protect the wreck from human activity, and that steps might eventually be made towards preserving it from extensive natural decay, so that someday it might serve as an underwater marine museum, visited only through the medium of robot vehicles. It is a great dream.
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