If you’ve never seen the Titanic in person, you’re not alone. But you can become part of that small coterie soon.
As part of a trip with OceanGate Expeditions, you can visit the wreck of the Titanic next year alongside a crew of dive experts, scientists, and filmmakers. The caveat: it costs a quarter of a million dollars.
Still, the experience promises to be a singular one. Scuttled under about 4,000m of North Atlantic Ocean water, the RMS Titanic rests about 600km off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The ship sank in 1912, taking about 1,500 souls with it. Divers first found its wreckage in 1985.
OceanGate started bringing tourist expeditions to the wreck in 2021. The limited group will get the opportunity to check out the Titanic from inside a five-person submersible called the “Titan” as part of the 10-day mission.
Tour visitors are called “mission specialists”. That could register as amusing but actually, the company requires its clients to train for some mission-specific tasks while at sea. Submersible navigation, piloting, tracking, communications, maintenance, and operations all make the checklist. Mission specialists make one submersible dive during the voyage and assist on the surface when other teams dive.
There’s room for six such positions on the mission, the brochure adds.
NASA tapped for sub design
NASA helped design OceanGate’s submersible, which relies on constant cabin pressurization to eliminate the need for decompression during the descent.
Mission specialists will see the wreck on any of the Titan’s screens, or on their own tablet, depending on their preference — that or with their own eyes. Based on the brochure, the ship has at least one porthole.
“With the click of a button, Mission Specialists can select a camera, monitor the sonar, or view preloaded images of deep-sea species and the Titanic as they experience an entirely foreign world that only a handful of people have had the privilege to experience,” the company says.
The crew will spend three to five hours exploring the wreckage in the Titan. Once OceanExpeditions assembles the 2023 team, it will leave St. John’s, Newfoundland, aboard the support ship “Horizon Arctic.” From there, secrets of the deep await.
The news arrives in the wake of the first-ever 8K footage of the Titanic — which OceanExpeditions recorded.
To learn how to take your first steps toward visiting the “unsinkable” ocean liner, go to OceanExpeditions’ “how to join” page.
