Truly not good at all…
A tourist submersible has gone missing while on a diving trip to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a massive search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic.
Driving the news: U.S. Coast Guard officials said five people were on board the submersible when it lost contact with the vessel one hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday afternoon and it was reported overdue some 900 miles off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod.
Full article, HERE from Axios.
The weather is rough out there right now, with a significant seastate working up. The north Atlantic is never really smooth, and this will hamper search efforts.
The Titanic is 12,500 feet down, meaning only deep submersibles have a capability to reach it. These are NOT submarines. They are specially constructed units with a small pressure sphere surrounded by equipment and batteries than can stand that depth.
They also don’t have a lot of power, mainly thrusters to move them slowly at depth. IF, big if, they hooked a floating net or something else, it is possible the submersible got hung up and cannot surface.
There aren’t any rescue vessels that are capable of rescues at that depth, they are limited to 5,000 feet maximum. There are only a few deep submersibles in the world, and they all require a mothership to launch them. The mother ships aren’t fast, probably a maximum of 15-20 kts, so if one is available in the northeast US or Canada, they are 40+ hours minimum away.
Yes, the Coast Guard, the US Navy, Canadian Navy, and CP-140s and P-8s are out searching with buoys and visual/other sensors. But, they are also limited by the seastate, especially on visual searches, and sonobuoys barely get below the thermocline out there, and as far as I’ve heard, no one has had any indication of an EPIRB, float, pinger or anything else that would indicate the submersible is down.
I guess what I’m saying is say a prayer for them…
The sea giveth, and the sea taketh away.
I don’t see any way this ends well.
One of the people reported to be on board is Paul-Henry Nargeolet, who has 30 dives to the Titanic and organized the retrieval of many artifacts from the wreck. If you believe the wreck to be hallowed ground, you might say Titanic got some small measure of revenge on the grave robber.
A prayer has been said.
With such a small submersible, air and power is limited. I don’t see any way that a rescue attempt can be staged before they run out of one or both.
I picked up a book about two divers who found a U-boat wreck at their free-dive limits, on the NJ coastal shelf. The story of finding their wreck is interleaved with stories about hazards that they or former friends encountered on other wrecks. Catching on nets, wires, and pieces falling on divers were common. Every part reminded the reader that the North Atlantic doesn’t forgive.
I wonder if they had some idea of the risk they were taking when they climbed in.
I’ve dove on wrecks as a scuba diver, the deepest was in 120 feet (USS San Diego). Wrecks are by far the most dangerous things to dive on because of the currents around and through them that can literally suck you up, and the debris from the wreck (which is constantly shifting and disintegrating) and the debris that gets hung up on the wreck.
I’m sure all of these folks knew the risks, this isn’t something you want to sugar coat. As to what got them? Who knows? Finding the wreck of something as small as a submersible at those depths isn’t cheap and isn’t easy. You can only hope it was quick, but my experience as a diver tells me it probably wasn’t.
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours…”
– Gordon Lightfoot (RIP)
As soon as I heard about it, I figure everyone is gone. I can’t imagine how they thought they could be safe to do this.
I pray they new Jesus. May God have mercy and comfort the families.
What I find interesting is that they lost comms with the mother ship at about 2 hours. I heard that it takes 8 hours to reach the Titanic, therefore, they were in mid water, not on the bottom. What can SOSUS tell us about noise at that time???? Also, CO2 scrubber efficiency is temperature dependent. If they lost power, the scrubbers have no power for their heaters and they probably stopped working.
All- Thanks for the comments. PE- Supposedly a six hour round trip, but still good questions. Apparently their ’emergency’ O2 is scuba bottles… SOSUS is gone, too.
You know what probably happened.
NPR today interviewed a guy that took the tour last year. He said they all had to sign a “Hold harmless” agreement that specified how dangerous this adventure is.
I’m wagering their death was quicker than instantaneous.
After getting lost last year, they fired their safety head for recommending changes.
https://www.insider.com/lost-titanic-sub-maker-oceangate-warned-hull-safety-2018-2023-6
My prayer is that it was instantaneous. Because, if that sub is on the bottom, even if they locate it, there is no rescue.
Waiting out the hours to die? God grant us the mercy that we never know the hour of our death.
Catastrophic hull failure is the BEST option.
All- Yes, that would be the ‘best’ of a worse set of options.
I spent an hour looking into the Stockton Rush guy who ran the company. He didn’t believe in testing things all that much and was pretty much opposed to safety. This is a guy who got a ‘generic engineering’ degree (BSE) is old money (and lots of it – grandpa was loaded – Standard Oil) and who just waltzed around from company board position to company board position after a 3 year stint at MacDac as a Flight Test Engineer (where it’s apparently his career was very much on a downward trend there – he was not a part of any testing teams – he was a MacDac observer/reporter at best). And he went from THAT to being a board member at companies from then on (that’s not suspicious, not at all).
I’ve actually run into guys like this before and I’ve had them try to hold their BSE degree over my head and claim that ‘they know engineering’ until I tell them that I got a BSEE and I know their degree is shit. They always leave me alone after that.
Oh, and this submersible has been DAMAGED in prior use. It had its depth rating reduced – the titanic was at the limits of it’s NEW estimated depth and it had never been down that far before.
There is also no atmospheric controls as far as anyone knows. There is no way to vent gases, and the 96 hour estimate was pulled out of somebody’s butt. And voice coms did not exist because Stockton didn’t like being interrupted with status checks.
So, either it shattered, or the almost pure O2 atmosphere had a fire. Or the playstation controller died. Or… I’ve also run into people like this who can not be stopped because their force of will guarantees that nothing will break. Or because ‘they know better’ (Remember the two space shuttles we lost because of those people?) I’ve also seen the people that have died because of guys like these, the wrecks, the mayhem.
Yeah, rich assholes like this burn me up, cause one of ’em tried to drop an airplane on my head. OH, he’s dead now. So are 11 other people.
How’s that Daffy Duck line go? ‘Consequences Smosequences, Just as long as I’m rich…’
Someone got a remote-control submersible down there now, and they found a debris field with two clearly identifiable pieces that seem relatively intact – the two hemispherical end-caps, one is titanium and the other titanium with a big window. The rest of the pressure vessel was a cylinder of carbon fiber composite; this seems to have broken into a lot of small pieces. Composites do that when a heavy load finds a flaw.
So it was a hull collapse, presumably much too fast for them to get any message out. From the time when the routine messages went silent, it must have occurred during the descent, not even at the lowest depth. Maybe they’d previously banged the fiber composite into something, and a spot of undetected damage suddenly let go, with the cracks spreading from there all through the composite. An all-metal hull would have failed more slowly and less completely, but I think once a crack ran through the hull and let a jet of water enter, the crew wouldn’t have even have had time to scream.
John/Mark- Thanks for the additional info.