Titanic Discovery At The Bottom Of The Ocean

This morning the news media released pictures of significant parts of the wreck of the Titan submersible, recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. It is now for the experts to investigate what might have happened to cause the devastating implosion that took the lives of the five explorers on board.

The Independent newspaper has also revealed that recognizable human remains have also been recovered from very close to the Titanic wreck. How ironic it is that in death, the aspirational occupants achieved their life ambition to get as close to the wreck of the Titanic as possible. What a pity it is that they never lived to tell the tale and enjoy their life-ending legend.

In a way, the souls lost are now and forever a very significant part of the shattering history of RMS Titanic. Their names must now be added to the long list of deceased victims of this maritime tragedy. One wonders if destiny or fate had this planned all along.

At least one of the occupants had a link back to the original tragedy. Stockton Rush, entrepreneur, and CEO of OceanGate and pilot of the Titan, through his wife, had a surprising connection to the Titanic and two of its wealthiest passengers, Ida and Isssidor Strauss.

Stockton's wife, Wendy Rush, is the great-great-granddaughter of the Strauss family who became known for their tragic love story. Issisdor Strauss refused to climb into a lifeboat as the Titanic was sinking, whilst women and children continued to wait to be rescued. His wife Ida refused to get in a lifeboat, declaring that she would not abandon her husband. They were both apparently seen standing arm in arm as the Titanic sank.

How ironic a twist of fate, that such a close relative of two of the original victims of the sinking of the Titanic, should also fall prey to the tragic history to one of the world's most legendary losses of life at sea. This goes far beyond anything Hollywood scriptwriters could dream of.

In another ironic twist, according to the BBC, they have copies of emails between Rush and fellow Oceanographer Rob McCallum in which Rush defended attempts to suspend deep sea dives until appropriate testing had been undertaken. Rush wrote...

"We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult." (BBC). How tragically hollow a rebuttal that must sound in the light of what has happened.

At least two of the other occupants were not exactly novices in deep-sea exploration. Hamish Harding had set records for going to the bottom of the ocean on previous dives. He has broken world records for the longest duration and the longest distance traveled at the deepest part of the ocean.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was well-known as a leading expert on the Titanic. Indeed, the man was respectfully known as 'Mr. Titanic'. He reportedly led the first recovery dive to the wreck of the Titanic in 1987.

Over the course of his career, he went on to complete a total of 37 dives to the Titanic in a submersible and successfully supervised the recovery of 5,000 Titanic artifacts, which included a 20-ton section of the hull.

Yet another twist of irony is that the man who helped to recover parts of the wreck of the Titanic, should himself be recovered, along with parts of the wreck of the Titan he perished on, exploring the legendary Titanic, one last time

The other two occupants of the lost vessel were the wealthy investor Shahzada Dawood and his nineteen-year-old student son, Suleman.

As far as human remains are concerned, it was doubtful any would be in any sort of recognizable condition to recover, due to the powerful release of explosive energy when the Titan imploded. At least one writer expressed the grim possibility that all that would remain would be some sort of liquified goo.

One has to respect the recovery experts charged with searching the seabed in the knowledge that what they find might well not be for the faint-hearted. It really must be a heart-wrenching task for anybody, let alone experts a little accustomed to gruesome discoveries.

Hopefully, the remains will serve some purpose in discovering what happened as well as giving the families of the victims the opportunity to dispose of their loved one's remains in a dignified and respectful manner.

Post script:

Every day yet more incredible revelations about the loss of the Titan come flooding in. The latest news I have read is that problems with the carbon fiber hull were noted some time ago.

A submersible expert and friend of Rush, named Karl Stanley, had experienced alarming cracking noises in the hull as far back as 2019! In an email to Rush, Stanley had suggested that such noises two miles deep might panic the paying customers and that Rush ought to attend to the problem and do more testing before continuing with any more dives. It would appear that these comments were ignored.

Meanwhile, movie Director and submersible expert James Cameron has said that, for now, we do not know if the Titan had reached its endpoint. He has also speculated that the hull was already beginning to delaminate and the Titan had begun to react.

(Delamination; carbon fiber is made up of many layers of material, laid one on top of another. Delamination is when those layers begin to peel apart).

Cameron speculated that the passengers probably knew the hull was "starting to crack" due to sensors OceanGate had installed in order to detect such an incident. He goes on to say that the submersible community has suggested that the Titan had dropped its ascent weights in an attempt to execute an emergency resurface.

If that is the case, then it is all the more tragic that on the point of making good an escape, all hell let loose. It might also suggest that the Titan had in fact reached its endpoint and the primary objective of viewing the Titanic had been achieved.

At this point, nothing is certain until we have definitive evidence as to how the events unfolded. That, of course, may well be something we can never know with any degree of certainty. Watch this space for any further news.