Clive Cussler · 1976 · sea

Clive Cussler's 1976 novel. A top-secret American missile-defense project needs a rare element, byzanium - and the only supply on earth lies in the cargo hold of the Titanic, two miles down in the North Atlantic. NUMA agent Dirk Pitt is handed an impossible task: find the lost liner and raise her from the deep, in a race against Soviet spies and the sea itself, and bring her home.

1. 1
   Southampton

   The trail begins where the Titanic did - at Southampton, from which she sailed in 1912 with a fortune in the rare element byzanium hidden in her hold, a treasure now needed to build an American shield against nuclear attack.

2. 2
   The wreck

   Two and a half miles down in the freezing North Atlantic off Newfoundland lies the Titanic, and Dirk Pitt drives his NUMA team and their submersibles to find her, patch her wounds, and blow her to the surface with compressed air.

3. 3
   New York

   With Soviet agents circling and a hurricane bearing down, Pitt fights to tow the resurrected liner to New York - the port she never reached - and deliver the byzanium hidden in her vault before his enemies can seize it.