Forty years after Robert Ballard discovered the world’s most famous missing ship wreck, a local businessman is reflecting on the historic event.

The wreck was discovered on September 1st, 1985, using a revolutionary new technology known as side scan sonar imaging.

Larry Daley, who has since played a role in a number of expeditions to the wreck site, and even visited the site himself with filmmaker James Cameron in a Russian sub, says at the time few believed the wreck would ever be found.

Robert Ballard led the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s expedition which made the historic discovery, using St. John’s as their base.

Daley says the team used existing government assets to pinpoint the ocean liner’s location, but very little information in terms of co-ordinates was available at the time. He says they did have an area of the seafloor they were looking at, but at those kinds of depths, it was like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. “So the fact that they were able to find it, using that equipment, was phenomenal.”

The Titanic disaster claimed the lives of an estimated 1,500 people when the massive ship struck an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland in the early morning hours of April 14, 1912.