Adventures of a Sea Hunter (11 page)

RMS
Titanic Inc. is seeking to cover the costs of its dives through public displays of these artifacts, as well as film deals and souvenir sales that include small pieces of coal from
Titanic’s
bunkers. Recently, the company, which has no museum or permanent home for the collection, raised the possibility of selling the artifacts. While that sale idea has been blocked, for the time being at least, by the U.S. courts, there is a risk, whether through nature or by human activity, that the opportunity to explore the ultimate
Titanic
museum—the shipwreck site itself and the associated artifacts—is at risk.

We assemble in the lab at 9:30 a.m.
Mir 1
is loading, and we watch as the huge crane picks up the submersible, swings it over the side and then, timing the waves, lowers it into the water. As the support boat
Koresh
(“friend” in Russian) comes alongside, a Zodiac roars up and a wet-suited diver leaps out from it onto the partially awash
Mir.
After unhooking the huge umbilical that connects
Mir
to the crane, he fastens a towline and straddles the sub, riding it as
Koresh
pulls it clear of
Keldysh.
Then he unhooks the towline, and, as the Zodiac quickly swoops in, he makes a flying leap into it as
Mir 1
starts her dive.

Now it’s our turn. My dive partner is Scott Fitzsimmons, president of Zegrahm. After a quick chat with Anatoly Sagalevitch, the senior scientist, and our pilot, Evgeny “Genya” Chernaiev, we climb up the ladder one by one, at 9:45 a.m. At the top, two technicians take our shoes (no shoes are allowed inside in order to keep the sub’s delicate electronics dust-free) and hand us our gear as we lower ourselves through the narrow hatch. A thick rubber O-ring is positioned on the hatch’s tapered rim to make a watertight seal. Looking at it, I can’t help but think about the explosion of the space shuttle
Challenger.
Faulty O-rings doomed
Challenger and
her crew in a disaster caused by an over-reliance on technology—and many observers have compared
Challenger to Titanic.
I take a hard look at the O-ring but am reassured by the careful inspection that the Russian crew give it.

Scott follows me in, and we take up positions on either side of Genya as he preps the sub for launch. We lie, half-flexed, on narrow padded bunks that have me tucking my feet into a crowded corner between cables and stowed gear. The crew lowers the hatch and Genya secures it, then he folds up the internal ladder and locks it over the hatch. He switches on life support, and as the air gets richer with oxygen, the muffled bumping above us signals the arrival of the crane. Peering out the tiny view ports, we watch the deckhands unshackle the cables that hold
Mir 2
to the deck, then we rise up and over the gunwale. It is a smooth ride, and not until we hit the water do we feel any movement. We roll with the waves as
Koresh
tows us clear of
Keldysh.
Genya reaches overhead and floods our ballast tanks with 3,300 pounds of sea water, then suddenly, just 9 feet beneath the waves, the sub stops rolling. We’re dropping now, at a rate of about 105 feet a minute, slowly picking up speed as we free-fall all the way down to the ocean floor. The slow spin of the sub’s compass shows we’re spiraling, just the way that water does when it goes down a drain.

It’s hot inside the sub—about 75° F—and as we fall, Genya rechecks the systems. Only one small light is on, and Genya is playing light jazz on the
CD
player. In two minutes, we pass 213 feet, the maximum depth I’ve reached as a scuba diver. Scott exchanges a grin with me—we’re looking forward to hitting bottom in a couple of hours. The feet click away on the electronic display behind me, and we both watch at 492 feet as the last light disappears from the water. Light blue gave way to dark magenta, but now it is pitch black outside. The light from inside the sub dimly outlines the manipulator arm and video camera mounted near my view port, and as I watch it, I notice the occasional flash of a bioluminescent sea creature as we continue to fall.

At 10:50 a.m., we reach 6,560 feet. Genya switches on the powerful external lights for a check and examines the motors of Sergeytch, our small remotely operated vehicle (
ROV
), in its external “garage.” The
ROV
is a small robot camera linked to
Mir
2 by a cable. It has not worked all week, and technicians spent long hours fixing a thruster problem so that we can get some close-in interior photos of
Titanic.
All systems are “go” as Genya fires up Sergeytch and tries the thrusters. At 11:17,
Mir
2 reaches 9,840 feet, and Genya turns on the sonar and pings the seabed below us. At 11:42, Genya starts
Mir 2’s
thrusters, and we slow to lightly touch down at 11:45.

The deep-sea submersible
Mir 1
being lowered to dive on
Titanic.
James P. Delgado

We’re at a depth of 12,465 feet. That’s 2 % miles down, the average depth of the world’s oceans, and the deepest I’ve ever been. The pressure outside the sphere is 6,000 psi. If we spring a leak, we won’t live long enough to worry about it. Outside
Mir 2
, in a net bag lashed to a sonar, we carry some forty Styrofoam cups as souvenirs for the crew and passengers on
Keldysh.
The intense pressure collapses and shrinks the cups, complete with the written inscriptions and decorations people have added to them, to less than half their original size. But this environment, though perpetually dark and crushing, does support life. The seemingly barren, yellow-white clay and silt bottom is the habitat for some species, including a large, ashy gray rattail fish that slowly swims before us as Genya lifts the sub off the bottom and we start moving forward. The sonar, reaching ahead of us, clearly shows the sharp angle of
Titanic’s
bow 1,640 feet away in the dark.

We start to climb a mound of tumbled clay. Suddenly, without warning, a wall of rusting steel looms out of the darkness. It fills the view ports as our bright lights pick out the edges of the hull plates and the rivers of rust bleeding from them and onto the seabed. The mound we have climbed was created when
Titanic’s
bow slammed into the seabed and ploughed it up as she slid along, until the thick clay arrested the motion of its long fall from the surface. Genya slowly pilots
Mir 2
up past the huge anchor, still in its hawse pipe, then here we are, at the tip of the bow made famous by Leonardo DiCaprio’s “king of the world” exuberance and his lingering kiss with Kate Winslet in the movie
Titanic.
The size of the massive spare anchor nestled atop the bow stuns me. It is bigger than our sub, and despite seeing numerous photos and videos of it, nothing has quite prepared me for the scale of the anchor—or the ship.

We pass over the bow, the anchor chain, the capstans with their brass covers, the No. 1 cargo hold and the anchor windlass. We stop for an hour at the cargo hold, latching on to the edge of the hatch with one of Mir’s arms. Genya switches on the tiny
ROV
Sergeytch and sends it down into the hold. Despite working perfectly earlier, the
ROV
now has a problem. One of its thrusters is not working, and try as he can, Genya cannot easily maneuver Sergeytch. But we do get a view of the inside of the wreck. It is a rust-filled cavern, with dangling rusticles everywhere. We cannot penetrate far in without fear of losing Sergeytch, though, so finally Genya slowly backs it out and returns it to its small “garage.” We fire up our motors, unhook from the hatch and continue our dive.

Forward of the windlass rests the broken base of the ship’s mast, and we follow the steep angle of the fallen mast up into the gloom. An open oval hatch in the mast marks the location of the crow’s nest. We shine a light in, and see the rungs of the ladder that the lookouts once climbed to reach this perch. I think of the opening act of the drama that started here at 11:40 on that long-ago evening—“Iceberg, right ahead!” Then we pass over the folded arms of the cargo cranes and stop, hovering, over the bridge deck.

The ship’s bridge is gone, either smashed by a falling funnel or swept away by the sea as
Titanic
sank. Captain Smith was last seen here,
and I think of the scene in the film where he locks himself in and gazes in horror as the cold green sea presses against the windows, with just the creaking of the dying ship to keep him company before the glass shatters and the sea engulfs the bridge. Now, all that remains is the brass telemotor, or steering gear, the wooden sill of the bridge’s bulkheads, and a tangle of electrical wires from the lights and controls. Five brass memorial plaques and a bundle of plastic red roses and ferns, placed here by other expeditions, are a powerful reminder that for a number of people, this ship is a gravesite.

There are other, equally affecting reminders of the tragedy. Lifeboat davits stand at the edges of the boat deck, their empty falls a silent indictment of too few boats and boats lowered in haste only half full. Proceeding along the port-side boat deck, we come to a davit lying over the deck. Up until now, I have been intently observing, shooting photos and focusing on the physical reality of the wreck. But I realize this is not just any davit. This is the davit for lifeboat No. 8. What happened at this exact spot on the deck is one of the great and haunting stories of that night. Isidor and Ida Straus, with their maid, came to this boat. Mrs. Straus and the maid climbed in, but Mr. Straus could not, of course, given the rule of “women and children first.”

The boat was not full, and there were no other women or children to load, but rules were rules. There was also a powerful social convention that would have branded Straus a coward had he climbed into that boat. But Mrs. Straus believed that their place was together. They had been married for more than fifty years, and so, filled with love, Mrs. Straus climbed out of that lifeboat and walked away with her husband, presumably back to their cabin to wait for the end together. In the James Cameron film, they are lying dressed in their coats, on their bed, holding each other and weeping as the cold sea pours in. As we drift over that davit, what happened to the Strauses ceases to be a story. It is real, as real as the deck and that fallen davit from the boat that they did not take to safety.

I have tears in my eyes as we pass over the davit. Some people think archeology is all about science, while others argue that it is about humanity. I tend to agree with the humanists, for though science does
play in a role in what we do, we should never lose sight of the fact that the focus of our work is people. The power of Mrs. Straus’s sacrifice is a reminder of that, and as I cry, I notice I am not alone. The wreck
of Titanic
, down here in the darkness and silence, preserves a sense of immediacy and a link to tragedy, both large scale and individual, that you do not often experience.

We then rise, passing over the gaping doorways and windows of the officers’ quarters. Glass in the panes brightly reflects our lights. Ahead is the skylight that looks down into the Marconi Wireless Room, where the
SOS
was broadcast from the sinking ship. Here, some of the heroes of the disaster, like senior wireless operator Harold Bride, worked to the very end, trying to get help.

We turn around and move aft to where the first-class staircase, in all of its ornately carved splendor, once led below. At the edge of one deck, two chandeliers are visible, hanging from their wiring, a reminder of former elegance in this ruin. We follow the sloping deck to the break in the hull where the ship ripped apart as the stern rose high into the air. For years after the tragedy, some people argued that
Titanic
sank intact, while others insisted that the ship was torn apart. The arguments ended with the discovery of the wreck in 1985.

We descend to the seabed again, turning forward to look into the severed bow section’s boiler room. Here
Titanic
fractured: the torn and crumpled steel, the half crushed and twisted water and steam pipes, and the five massive boilers that rise before us as high as a three-story-tall wall, are impressive not only in their mass but in the gargantuan scale of the damage. The steel is deformed and stretched in some areas like saltwater taffy on a hot summer’s day. Other hull plates have jagged edges like a shattered porcelain plate. Everywhere is a tangled mess of electrical wires. As we edge along this open wound, we look up to see the towering mass of the decks above us. The danger of a sudden collapse and our burial in the debris spurs Genya to pull away at last and head out across the abyssal plain to examine the stern.

The debris field that lies between the two sections of the hull is an array of hardware, hunks of steel, lumps of coal and occasional items
that speak to the splendor of the ship and the lives changed by or lost in the disaster. I see linoleum tiles, a ceramic sink bowl, plates, a section of brass bench and shoes. I also see a copper pan from the ship’s galley, looking amazingly bright after nearly nine decades in the sea. The shifting sands keep it polished, Genya suggests. I have been told that the debris field looks as if a small city exploded in space and rained down, and it is an apt description.