passengers.
At the heart of the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh’s operations are two extraordinary submersibles, Mir 1 and Mir 2. “Mother ship” to the two subs, and a floating workshop and scientific platform, Keldysh is the center of Russia’s deep-sea program. The participation of Mir 1 and Mir 2 in the IMAX film and Cameron’s Titanic made both submersibles famous, as well as Keldysh and her crew. Their star status notwithstanding, the men and women of Keldysh are excellent scientists and technicians whose work has advanced the frontiers of science. The ocean covers two-thirds of the planet, yet during the last century of oceanographic research, humans have gained detailed knowledge of only 5 per cent of its depths.
In the nineteenth century, scientists dropped dredges and nets to grab samples from the deep, while divers wearing heavy helmets, thick rubberized canvas suits and lead-weighted boots walked the shallower depths. In 1930, the first submersible to go deep, William Beebe’s round steel bathysphere, made a 3,280-foot dive off Bermuda, suspended on a steel cable from a surface ship. It was followed in the late 1940s and 1950s by bathyscaphes — self-propelled undersea vehicles with tanks for buoyancy and ballast. In the 1960s, the Cold War with Russia inspired the development and construction of deep submersibles, as the ocean depths became a strategic frontier. The famous Alvin, as well as France’s Nautile, both deep-ocean submersibles developed during the Cold War, were involved in the earliest dives on Titanic. Back home, at my own Vancouver Maritime Museum, is another Cold War-era submersible, built in 1968: Ben Franklin is capable of diving to 3,280 feet and staying down for thirty days, the largest deep-diving submersible ever built.
Mir 1 and Mir 2 were built in Finland in 1985–87 at a cost of $25 million each, for Russia’s Shirshov Institute of Oceanology. The builder, Rauma-Repola, was awarded the contract after the United States pressured the Canadian government to block the sale of Vancouver-built Pisces submersibles to the Soviets. Each 18.6-ton Mir is an engineering marvel capable of diving to (and returning from) depths of up to 4 miles. The heart of each sub is a 6-foot diameter nickel-steel pressure sphere 1? inches thick. Inside that small sphere, three persons — a pilot and two observers, as well as life-support equipment, sonars and the sub’s controls — have to fit. It is a tight, cramped workspace.
* * * After we load our gear, Keldysh clears the harbor of St. John’s and begins the twenty-hour cruise to the Titanic wreck site. We arrive in the early morning hours of September 1. The crew of Keldysh prepares for the dive by dropping three acoustic transponders around the wreck to help the two Mirs to navigate and to give mission control aboard Keldysh an indication of where we are 2? miles below them.
Five days of diving — a total often dives, each with two passengers and a Russian pilot — follow. As we slowly circle this famous patch of ocean, I stare out over the dark blue water and then up at the clear night sky, the stars burning brightly, unobscured by city lights. I can’t help thinking about what happened at this very site eighty- eight years ago. Ballard was right when he said this is a spooky spot on the ocean. The power of the human imagination, and the fact that I am exactly where the tragic events happened, bring to mind that ill-fated ship poised on the brink of her final plunge, the silently bobbing bodies, deck chairs, broken wood and steamer trunks. The next morning, some people confess that during the evening they came up on deck, or like me, looked out of an open porthole, and felt the impact of being here—it was an emotional moment. Those of us who will be diving in the subs are wondering how we will feel, how we will react, when we reach the ocean’s floor and see Titanic.
In conversations with the other divers and participants, the motive for their presence on the expedition is a constant and early question. Each of us wants to know why the others chose to do this dive. One motive is historical interest — a British non-diving passenger is a keen student of Titanic’s history, and many others have more than a passing acquaintance with the ship’s famous story. Another is that it is an opportunity to participate in the exploration of a shipwreck and to see a part of our world that few ever visit. There is a powerful intellectual curiosity afoot, stoked not just by this famous shipwreck but also by working with a top team of scientists and technicians to experience first hand these amazing submersibles and to view the ocean depths. By volume, the sea covers 99.5 per cent of our biosphere, with 78.5 per cent of that taken up by deep ocean.
There is probably more diversity of life in the deep sea than on land, and the opportunity to see some of that life, as well as the very real possibility of discovering a new species through observation as the subs drop through the water, interests a few of the diving passengers. For others, there is the rarity of what we are about to do. And for most, if not all, there is the passionate desire to learn more, to connect with the past, by visiting the wreck in person and not just seeing it on film. This is a visit to an undersea museum and graveyard, made all the more powerful by the nature of the tragic event that left the wreck and its scattered contents as a moment in time.
Driving the need to visit the wreck now is a concern over reports that Titanic is deteriorating rapidly. A USA TODAY story, published just before we departed, quoted scientists who think that Titanic will collapse within two years. There is also a concern that the ongoing salvage of Titanic’s artifacts by RMS Titanic Inc., an American salvage firm, is diminishing the “time capsule” effect of the wreck. Since 1987, RMS Titanic Inc. has made over a hundred dives and pulled nearly six thousand artifacts from the sea.
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.
DIVING ON TITANIC: A DAY TO REMEMBER 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
