The Titanic Shipwreck Still Intrigues the Public More Than 100 Years Later 

The five people aboard the missing deep-sea submersible Titan are not the first to risk their lives for a chance to glimpse one of history’s most famous shipwrecks.

More than a century after the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic during its first voyage from Britain to New York, the disaster continues to fascinate people like few other episodes in history.

The Titanic, the world’s largest steamship at the time, made headlines when it went down in the early hours of April 15, 1912, killing 1,500 people. It had been packed with glamorous guests and was called “unsinkable” by officials of the company that operated it.

For decades afterward, it was the holy grail of undiscovered shipwrecks and the subject of much storytelling, including “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord’s best-selling 1955 book.

The mystique endured even after the wreck of the Titanic was found on the sea floor in 1985. Two years later, Mr. Lord was a speaker at a Titanic tribute event aboard a chartered yacht in New York that included a five-piece band like the one that had played for doomed passengers on the Titanic’s stern. In 1997, the James Cameron film “Titanic,” starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, introduced the tragedy to a new generation.

Today, young people are watching conversations about the Titanic unfold on social media — including on the short-form video app TikTok, where established facts about the disaster merge with misinformation and manipulated content.

Advances in deep-sea submersible technology have made it possible to travel to the wreck itself. With tickets for the Titan voyage priced at $250,000, the trip is not for everyone, and some critics object to the very idea of visiting an underwater gravesite. Even so, the trips are popular enough to sustain a booming mini-industry.

The company that owns the Titan submersible, OceanGate, has been taking tourists to the Titanic wreck since 2021. It said in a 2019 news release that slots were being booked by “citizen explorers seeking an adventurous, scientific and meaningful experience.”

This year, the company announced that five expeditions, each lasting eight days, were planned for 2023, and another five for 2024.

“This is your chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary,” the company said. “Become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes.”