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The debris field that lies between the two sections of the hull is an array of hardware, hunks of steel, lumps of coal and occasional items that speak to the splendor of the ship and the lives changed by or lost in the disaster. I see linoleum tiles, a ceramic sink bowl, plates, a section of brass bench and shoes. I also see a copper pan from the ship’s galley, looking amazingly bright after nearly nine decades in the sea. The shifting sands keep it polished, Genya suggests. I have been told that the debris field looks as if a small city exploded in space and rained down, and it is an apt description.
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 ru
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-ru
CHAPTER SIX
CARPATHIA
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, stu
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.