Robert Walker - Titanic 2012

From topside, Captain Juris Forbes informed them. “We’re getting this!”

“Astonishing, isn’t it?” Lou shouted like a kid in a playpen.

Lou now brought the sub around to the other side where a huge debris field littered the ocean floor alongside the stern section of Titanic . The cameras continued sending video feed topside as well as to the sub.

The heaviest concentration of debris had settled around the stern section and just to the east of it according to maps created by Ballard on his previous visits to the site. This area included all the smaller single-ended boilers believed to have fallen out of the mid-section of the ship when it tore itself apart at essentially what was her mid-section seams. It’d been surmised that these heavy round objects had careened like giant bowling balls straight down to the bottom and right behind them were three telegraph sets completely intact—museum pieces awaiting the platform on its way down from Scorpio .

The plan was that the dive team here would direct cables and winch hooks and from above these artifacts of Titanic would be hoisted topside. But interior ‘archeological’ activity would go on first. A bird in hand did not apply to treasure hunters. Still among the lighter debris seen here included a space heater in near perfect condition, a cornucopia of dishware, wine bottles both with popped corks and some with corks intact alongside Champagne bottles, crates filled with them, second and third class cups with the White Star insignia on them, torn off yet still framed stained glass windows intact and unbroken, gym equipment lying upside down, spokes and bolts poking upward, countless floor tiles, and a long, huge, wide swath of coal overall looking like spilled India ink.

At this ‘destination’ depth, the total pressure on the crew compartment became—as everyone expected—seventy thousand tons per square inch. No lunar landing could be as dangerous as this. In times past, no human could have withstood these pressures as no airlock or dive suit could withstand it, but liquid air technology had changed the rules of the game if not natural law itself, and had in fact beat nature and the North Atlantic Ridge by in a sense sending evolved man back to the sea from which he came.

“What a vacation spot, hey?” David said into his com-link to ease the tension he felt even here under water inside their protective cockpit. Now both the submersible and the men and women inside it were coming in sight of the major portion of Titanic ’s remains, and David added, “For the first time in history mankind will have “touched” down on Titanic in the manner of free-swimming divers, and Max will document it all remotely from a nearby hovering position while we stood atop Titanic for a photo op.”

Everyone’s eyes now went to the forward bubble to stare at the awe-inspiring ship they had come to plunder—the same one that nearly killed them moments before. As everyone expected, the ship loomed before them in profoundly sad shape—horribly torn and broken apart. And yet it somehow exuded a certain pride and pulled from David a sense of power and prestige he hadn’t expected. Its bow and stern sections were separated by a good mile or more with a scattered debris field all round. In fact, the place looked as Ballard had so aptly described it. From the portals of the sub, all aboard must be feeling the same as David, that they hovered above a cemetery—one without individual headstones but rather one gigantic mausoleum—Ballard’s hollowed ground of his discovery, of Titanic ’s awful remains.

“Thar—Thar’ she blows!” Swigart called out the old seaman’s call for sighting a whale. “That’s a sturdy looking metal roof there on the boat deck. I say we park there. We’ve arrived, everyone. Prepare to board Titanic .”

“From the rivet patterns, I make it out to be a sound surface,” David agreed.

“The top of the bridge would be my guess,” added Mendenhall, looking out from over their shoulders. “Let’s do it, but I’d place her hovering above us. Too risky otherwise.”

Lou began to maneuver the submersible to a perfect position for the group photo to be shot. David stared at him through their snug-fitting helmets and saw Lou smile wide and mouth the word ‘Perfect’. He seemed a man fixated on one thing—this group photo, and David had to wonder how much money he expected to receive from the news hounds for its use alone.

David would have been extremely disappointed rather than just mildly so, had he not much bigger worries to concern himself with, but given their circumstances and the extremes to which Kelly had gone, the photo op business felt like small potatoes.

Everyone readied and steadied themselves for exiting Max for Titanic , dreams of a lifetime filling their minds, the anticipation palpable.

Above on Scorpio , Captain Juris Forbes indeed monitored the vital signs of all the divers, and pictures from the MHD’s mounted cameras were being sent in real time to the screens in the control room. The scientific team, officers, crew, and camera crew from CNN had all crowded round the various monitors, and together they had cheered when Titanic came into view.

“Think of it, people,” Forbes told the others. “Aquanauts will walk on Titanic ’s decks, skim along the promenade, and enter her compartments.” He then spoke to Lou’s divers. “You aquanauts will become a part of Titanic history—a part of ‘her’ very habitat and to completely and wholly sense her; indeed to become one with her. I so envy you people.”

“Enough with the waxing and waning,” replied Swigart to topside.

“No, no, never enough, Lou,” Forbes shot back. “Think of it! Men and women will do the exploration not machines—not robot but human hands will take hold of her secrets. And we are privileged to see and hear it all in real time.”

Another cheer from the appreciative surface team went up for Captain Forbes’ cheerful speech.

From Max so far below came Lou’s reply to this. “Well said, Juris.”

“Still…” began Forbes anew, “armchair exploration from up here… seeing this,” he indicated the wreck image flashing on the screen in the CIS room; another screen displayed the submersible called Max in real time circling, hovering into position. “It just makes me want to dive… to go down there and be a part of it all, people! A part of history, gentlemen.”

Lou got everyone’s attention back to the job at hand. “Now short of one of you keeling over,” he said to his divers, “we go in-step with the topside team and Captain Forbes who has us on camera. Test your cams for Forbes; he wants eyes on everything.”

Each diver had a small camera hooked over a section of their helmet—the helmet itself necessary for full suit coverage and liquid atmosphere to buffer divers against the cold and pressure. The helmet secured about the head for protection against implosion, of course, but also to hold microphone and camera. Built into their suits via electrodes, their vital signs, too, were monitored.

The helmet held the camcorders about the size of a large computer thumb-drive. They sent real-time images up to the surface. “What you divers see, those above will see,” Swigart reminded them.

“Everyone ready? All recording devices on?”

Aside from the camcorders, Dr. Entebbe and others above had monitored each diver’s vital signs as they underwent the small death, and thereafter how they were doing in terms of blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, brainwave activity, down to skin prickles. Swigart was in constant communication with Forbes and Entebbe regarding his divers’ internal ‘attitude’ as it was referred to—and he was concerned with Swigart’s vital signs.