The Chilling Truth Behind the Missing Skeletons in the Titanic Wreckage Finally Revealed

Ever wonder what awaits you if you ever get the guts to dive down to the Titanic’s final resting place? Spoiler alert: it ain’t a pile of skeletons staring back at you. Yeah, I know—around 1,500 souls perished when that legendary ship kissed the iceberg and sank into the Atlantic, but the eerie truth is, you won’t find their bones down there. James Cameron, the guy who brought Titanic to life on the big screen and has spent more time exploring the wreck than the ship’s own captain, confirms this strange absence. So where did all the remains vanish to? Hang tight—science’s deep dive reveals the underwater magic (or tragedy) behind this bone-dissolving mystery. Ready to unravel it? LEARN MORE.

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.

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)

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.”

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)

“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.”

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.