Adventures of a Sea Hunter (12 page)

The bow section of
Titanic
is separated from the stern by some 1,790 feet. That distance seems to go on forever down here, but gradually, the pieces of debris get larger. We pass a crank from an engine that seems to be as big as an average family minivan, and then one of the ship’s boilers. Finally, we reach the stern. The stern is a mangled, deformed mass of steel, but in its wreckage we can discern the form of the hull as it swept back to the rudder, the deckhouses, a half-fallen cargo crane, the stub of a mast and the graceful curve of the poop deck. We edge forward to view the massive reciprocating steam engines. The cast iron is fractured because the cylinders, each the size of a large truck, imploded with the pressure of the sea as the stern sank. Nestled between the cracks and broken pipe is a beautiful ceramic teapot; its handle is intact but the spout is broken. Lighter debris, like the teapot, rained down for hours after the ship sank, falling onto the heavier wreckage that had plummeted to the bottom first.

Titanic
is such a part of the mass-media world in which we live that my mind keeps flashing back to the various written stories and films. Here, inside the engine room, as I look at the teapot, I think back to a scene in the 1958 classic movie
A Night to Remember.
The chief engineer is talking to the men who are running the electrical system. The chief is asked, “How are things up top, sir? Any chance for us?” He stops and says, “Whatever happens, we’ve got to keep the lights going. I’ll give the word when it’s time to go, and then it’s every man for himself.” He pauses and goes on. “But it won’t be so bad, they say the
Carpathia
is on her way to us, should be here any time now.” As he leaves, the engineer in charge turns to his men and says, with a slight smile, “Well, let’s hope they’re right, eh boys? If anyone feels like praying, you’d

The bow of
RMS
Titanic
at the bottom of the North Atlantic. James P. Delgado

better go ahead. The rest can join me in a cup of tea.” It’s just a movie, but I remember that scene of understated British heroism as I look at the teapot in the wrecked engine room.

Slowly, we pull back from the engines, past warped walkways, torn pipes and hanging wires. We turn, and Genya pilots us back to the stern. A narrow opening between the sea floor and the overhanging steel mass of the stern beckons us, and as Genya slowly pilots Mir 2 into the gap, we enter a rusting cave. I ask Genya what our clearance is. He glances at the sonar, makes a quick calculation, and answers that we have 20 inches of clearance from the bottom, and the same between us and the steel wreckage above. We edge in without a bump, stopping just ahead of one of
Titanic’s
21-ton bronze propellers, half buried in the silt. Genya not only manages to get us in but extracts
Mir 2
without a scrape, then takes us to the propeller on the other side of the stern. Despite Genya’s skill, the maneuverability
of Mir 2
and the reassurance of looking at hull plates still covered with black paint and with very little rust, Scott and I breath a sigh of relief when we’re out.

Genya nudges the controls and we drift up past the tip of the stern, where the words “Titanic, Liverpool” once were. The edge of the poop deck, with its collapsed railing, marks the last piece of the ship to sink, and we stare silently, thinking of the struggling crowd of people who clustered here, hands grasping that railing, clinging on as the stern climbed higher and higher, then dropped into the deep. I also think of the ship’s baker, Charles Joughlin, who balanced himself on this rail, clad in a thick fur coat and drunk as a lord. He stepped off the rail just as the stern sank and reportedly didn’t even get his head wet. Lubricated by the alcohol and insulated by his coat, he was not killed by the cold water. He was pulled into a lifeboat and survived.

Before we start our ascent, we briefly tour the debris field around the stern, noting huge pieces of hull, a broken-off engine cylinder, a cargo crane, the ornate bronze end of a deck bench, wine bottles and plates. Off to one side is a pair of boots. Small, flat-heeled and calf-length, they are the boots of a working-class woman, perhaps a steerage passenger. They lie side by side and are still laced tight. We pass over
them in respectful silence, for while the body is long gone, consumed by the sea, this is a place where one of
Titanic’s
dead came to rest. It’s much colder now, and I pull on a sweater, wondering as I do if it is really the lower temperature or what we’ve just seen.

My thoughts are on many things as Genya powers the thrusters and we start to rise, pumping seawater out of the ballast tanks all the way as the outside pressure relents, bit by bit, during the two-hour ride to the surface. We’re elated with excitement because of our visit to this undersea museum, historic site and memorial, but we’re also reflective and somber. After years of studying
Titanic
, reading the history books and watching hours of video of other dives, this dive has put all the pieces together for me.

We reach the surface at 6:50 p.m. After thirty minutes of bobbing and rolling on the surface, we rise dripping, out of the sea to land on the deck of
Keldysh.
At 7:25—after nine hours and forty minutes inside
Mir 2
, we step out into the last light of day. It feels good to breathe in the sea air and watch the sun set over the North Atlantic.

This place is more than a memorial, more than a museum. It is a place that, like a battlefield, the pyramids of Egypt, or the Forum in Rome, is a reminder of humanity’s achievements and the price we often pay in our quest.
Titanic
should not be left to the salvagers, nor should it be surrendered entirely to the dark solitude of the deep. We must keep the stories and the lessons alive and ever present.

Back in St. John’s, I pack my bags for a flight home to Vancouver. There, I repack my bags and prepare for a return trip to the east coast of Canada. A new venture I’m involved in, a documentary television series called
The Sea Hunters
, has started what we hope will be a long-running series based on Clive Cussler’s best-seller of the same name. We will search the world’s oceans for famous shipwrecks. While I’ve been out exploring
Titanic
, some of the crew members of
The Sea Hunters
have been searching for
Carpathia
, the ship that rescued
Titanic’s
survivors.

Harold Thomas Cottam’s watch was long over, but the wireless operator of the Cunard liner
Carpathia
was still at his post, listening to the dot-dit-dot-dit Morse transmissions of other ships and the shore. Cottam’s late-night wakefulness was unusual, but he wanted to catch the latest news flashes from the station at Cape Race. As he reached down to unlace his boots, he suddenly stopped, stunned by the message coming in over the airwaves.

The news he heard changed his life—and probably saved those of more than 700 others. The White Star liner
Titanic
, bound to New York on her maiden voyage with 2,224 persons aboard, was calling for help.

As Cottam acknowledged the signal,
Titanic’
s wireless operator, John George “Jack” Phillips called back:
“CQD
—
CQD
—
SOS
—
SOS
—
CQD
—
MGY.
Come at once. We have struck a berg. It’s a
CQD,
old man. Position 41.46 N, 50.14 W”
CQD
was the wireless distress call, and
SOS
was the new call just introduced to replace it.
MGY
was
Titanic’s
call sign. There was no mistaking the news, as much as Cottam could scarcely believe his ears. The new and “practically unsinkable”
Titanic
was going down.

“Shall I tell my captain?” Cottam wired back.

“Yes, quick,” came the reply.

Racing to
Carpathia’s
bridge, Cottam blurted the news to First Officer Dean, who, without knocking, went straight into the cabin of Captain Arthur Rostron. In the 1958 classic movie
A Night to Remember
, the scene, as re-created, has Rostron yelling out, “What the devil!” and sitting up angrily in his bed, but Cottani’s quick explanation stops him from taking the wireless operator to task. In his memoirs, Rostron wrote: “I had but recently turned in and was not asleep, and drowsily I said to myself: ‘Who the dickens is this cheeky beggar coming into my cabin without knocking?’ Then the First Officer was blurting out the facts and you may be sure I was very soon doing all that was in the ship’s power to render the aid called for.”

Rostron, a seasoned master known to his peers as “the Electric Spark,” was both decisive and energetic. He did not hesitate now. Again, as
A Night to Remember
reconstructs the scene, he ordered: “Mr. Dean, turn the ship around—steer northwest. I’ll work out the course for you in a minute.” The film’s script matches the decisiveness of the captain’s published memoirs. Rostron recalled that he asked Cottam if he was sure it was Titanic calling. “Yes, sir.” “You are absolutely certain?” “Quite certain, sir.” “All right, tell him we are coming along as fast as we can.”

Carpathia
was not the only ship to receive
Titanic’s
distress call, but she was the closest of them all. Still, she was 58 miles away. The 13,564-ton, 558-foot
Carpathia
was a ten-year-old veteran of Cunard’s fleet, three days out of New York with 750 passengers bound to Gibraltar and the Mediterranean. As Rostron worked out his position in relation to
Titanic’s
, he realized that at
Carpathia’s
top speed of 14 knots, it would take four hours to reach
Titanic.
That just wasn’t good enough. He knew that many people would not survive in the icy waters unless help arrived soon.

Rostron called for more speed. Every off-duty stoker was roused and sent into the boiler rooms to shovel coal into the furnaces. To squeeze every bit of steam out of the boilers and into the engines, Chief Engineer Johnston cut off the heat and hot water throughout the ship, and pushed his men and machines to the limit.
Carpathia
surged forward at 15, 16 and finally 17 knots, faster than she had ever gone.

RMS
Carpathia,
the ship that rushed to save the survivors of
Titanic.
Vancouver Maritime Museum

As Carpathia
raced northwest towards
Titanic
, Rostron was well aware that he was steaming into danger. Numerous warnings of ice from other ships and
Titanic’s
own collision with an iceberg made him wary. But he couldn’t slow down. Rostron posted extra lookouts, including Second Officer James Bisset, who stood in the open, the frigid wind blasting his face as he stared into the darkness. When Bisset looked back at the bridge, he saw his deeply religious captain, hat lifted, lips moving quietly in silent prayer.

Carpathia’
s crew was at hard at work, clearing the ship’s dining saloons to receive
Titanic’s
passengers, gathering blankets, uncovering the lifeboats and running them out. Stewards manned each passageway to calm
Carpathia’s
passengers and keep them in their rooms, out of the way. The galley staff brewed coffee and made hot soup, while the ship’s doctors readied emergency supplies and stimulants in makeshift wards. The deck crew rigged lines, ladders and slings to bring survivors aboard.

Aboard
Titanic
, the end was fast approaching. At 1:45 a.m., Phillips called Cottam to plead, “Come as quickly as possible, old man; engine room filling up to the boilers.” The last boats had pulled away—many
only half full—as a crowd of some fifteen hundred people raced towards the stern, which was rising out of the sea as
Titanic’
s bow went under.

Cottam kept trying to raise Phillips, but
Titanic’s
faint signals showed that power was failing aboard the sinking liner. At 2:17 a.m., Cottam heard the beginning of a call from
Titanic
, then nothing but silence.