A billionaire is planning to descend down to the wreck of the Titanic in a deep-sea submersible in a bid to prove the industry is safer following the catastrophic implosion of the OceanGate vessel last year.
Ohio Real estate investor Larry Connor said he is preparing to plunge more than 12,400 feet to the site in a two-person Triton submersible, with the company’s co-founder and CEO Patrick Lahey.
Connor said he wants “to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way.”
He explained the £15.7 million ($20 million) vessel Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer they plan to use, which was designed by Lahey, is capable of carrying out multiple trips to the ocean’s treacherous depths.
Connor told the Wall Street Journal: “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
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The two men said their aim is to prove the feat can be achieved despite the last attempt by the Titan submersible in June ending in catastrophe, when the vessel imploded, killing all five people on board, including OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush.
The doomed sub had been heading to the same site when the tragedy occurred on June 18.
But Connor called Lahey a few days later urging him to construct a better sub.
Lahey told the outlet: “[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption.”
Connor hasn’t yet revealed when their expedition will take place.
US court documents later showed that Mr Rush had ignored warnings that the submersible was not adequate for dives of that depth.
Rush died when the vessel was crushed under the pressure alongside British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48; his son Suleman, 19; British businessman Hamish Harding, 58; and Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, a former French navy diver.
David Mearns, a rescue expert who knew two of the five men on board, told Sky News at the time: “The only saving grace is that it would have been immediate – literally in milliseconds.
“The men wouldn’t have known what was happening.”
