Witness to History

Words: Kim Frank.

Photography: Courtesy of Oceangate, David Concannon, Kim Frank.

The Titanic.

I’ll place her name on its own line, such is her weight. What fuels the enduring intrigue? When James Cameron rekindled our collective fascination with the ship, he gave us historically influenced characters to root for, and revealed a parallel theme exploration of the wreck itself. It is a potent combination to imagine that one of us could simultaneously float on the same open ocean coordinates in the North Atlantic, conjuring our inner Unsinkable Molly Brown, and descend 12,460 feet in a submersible to witness the Titanic.

For the first 73 years, Titanic enthusiasts (and there are millions worldwide) had only speculation, passed-down artifacts, swapped stories frst-hand, and later from dog-eared pages of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember, to satiate the appetite. But, in 1985, when the joint FrenchAmerican expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard discovered the wreck site, a race to explore ensued.

At the time, only four submersibles on earth had the technical ability to carry humans to this depth. All of them were spheres made of titanium or steel and could ft three people picture a cannon ball with origami-folded occupants. Two Russian Mirs, the French Nautile, and the American Alvin Deep-sea exploration was severely limited by size, expertise, fnances, and connections. For decades, only a chosen few explorers were granted a dive, fewer than have ventured to space. Among them was David Concannon, an explorer and lawyer, who (at the ripe age of 34) won the Haver vs RMS Titanic, Inc. lawsuit to restore access to the Titanic for exploration and filming. He wrote this account of his first dive in 2000:

“As we glide aft on the starboard side of the boat deck past the officers’ quarters, we notice that the ceiling and wall of Captain Smith’s stateroom have almost completely collapsed. This is significant because the wall was here just 10 months ago. In 1999, the wall was peeled away and hanging precariously. Now, a large section of the wall has disappeared, and I can stare directly down into Captain Smith’s bathtub.”

In 2005, Concannon led the last expedition using the Mir submersibles. Afer that, opportunities to explore the wreck dwindled; the Mirs and Nautile were retired and Alvin underwent a lengthy reft. Eventually, one submersible was commissioned by a private individual for his own use. All dreams to explore Titanic by the rest of us were dashed.

Until...

Once upon a time, a little boy dreamt of being an astronaut, then Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, and from there Han Solo, commanding the Millennium Falcon. That same boy took apart his stufed bear to study the mechanism that made the animal talk. When this boy became a young man, he built his own fberglass plane from a 600-page manual and a kit, starting in his mother’s garage.

Decades later, he envisioned a new kind of crewed five-person submersible in a unique cylinder shape, utilizing carbon fber, a material not yet used for deep ocean exploration. A submersible that would defy convention and have the potential to democratize ocean exploration.

Meet Stockton Rush, founder of OceanGate Expeditions, creator of Titan, a submersible capable of successfully diving to the Titanic with crews that include scientists and ordinary citizens, called “Mission Specialists”.

With an unusually thick shock of blondish-gray hair, chiselled features, and piercing blue eyes, Stockton’s dynamic energy and witty, mad-scientist personality is hardly concealed. Stockton seems more like wild genius seeping out from his foundation of California laid-back cool, with a veneer of Seattle-style suitability tossed in for the sake of business meetings. As I interview Stockton, we are sitting on those open ocean coordinates, two and a half miles above the fabled ship.

“What makes Titan diferent than anything ever built?” I ask.

“Essentially, the difference is the carbon fiber and titanium pressure vessel. Carbon fiber is used successfully in yachts and aviation, but it has not been used in crewed submersibles.”

According to Stockton, this stall in innovation is caused by fear of using new materials. Given how small the submersible manufacturing space is, and how few new subs are made, there is little motivation to stretch the envelope.

In Stockton’s words: “I am so far out of the box, that if you are in the box, outside the box looks like a bunch of maniacs. Out-of-the-box maniacs smashing the box.”

OceanGate Expeditions’ team has made 13 successful dives to the Titanic in Titan over the past two years. They are successfully disrupting the nascent deep-sea submersible space. “One of the criticisms we still get is: ‘the sub isn’t certified,’” says Stockton. “But how can you create something new and get certified through a process that is designed for something wholly different? I think it was MacArthur who said, ‘You are remembered for the rules you break.’ We try to break the rules intelligently and intentionally. A lot has changed in the last fifty years, such as rules for using metal for manned subs. We now know a lot about composites and how to manufacture and test them, making certain they work.”

Assisting OceanGate on this, its first Titanic expedition in June 2021, are experts David Concannon and the legendary P.H. Nargeolet, former commander of the Nautile, who round out an all-star cast to trouble-shoot and test Titan’s first dives to Titanic. Our ship, the Horizon Arctic, navigates a sea comprised of an ever-shifting mix of deep-ocean cerulean blue to charcoal grey and white caps, where the Titanic sank 109 years ago. The dives are difficult, as expected, but successful.

On our last night, I walk on catwalk around the bridge, alone. A wind picks up. Looking out over the endless sea, I can’t help but wonder what it must have felt like to be tossed from the safety of my vessel into the wild water beneath me. In April, with no warm current, among ice floats, in the pitch-black night. I reach for the slim white railing, feeling a sudden surge of vertigo. It is difficult to reconcile the tragedy that took place here more than a century ago with the science and technology laboratory the site has become.

There is something profound about this dance of exploration and innovation. For a week, we were firmly, if not ironically, within its embrace. Below us, the Titanic, whose feats of engineering represented the best minds of its time.

What fuels this enduring intrigue? The Titanic embodies all that captivates our imaginations: tragedy and history, legend and lore, compelling heroes and villains, the intersection of greed and triumph, ingenuity across generations. The story of the unsinkable ship–the fastest, strongest of its kind–and that of Stockton’s Titan –the first submersible of its kind–each speak to our human traits of quest, persistence, and grit. In the moment, we never truly know the meaning of a seismic event. From the limited perspective of a lifespan, what appears to be a failure may become, generations later, the inspiration for a transformational success. I can see one example of this on the deck beneath me: Titan , resting on the surface above the short-lived triumph of a different era, which we can’t seem to forget.