Photo:Cindy Ord/Getty Images for NYC & Company; EyePress News/Shutterstock
Cindy Ord/Getty Images for NYC & Company; EyePress News/Shutterstock
The editor of a travel-industry publication whoseTitanexpedition was canceled last month is opening up about his experience.
“They were just working on the sub the whole day,” Weissmann recalls. “I did go out on an inflatable dinghy just to see the inside of the sub. The whole time, I had actually not been into the sub."
“I saw the outside of it every day and in the end, we didn’t even do that consolation dive,” he adds. “They were still working on the sub.”
Still, the trip was conducted like a “military operation” and Weissmann says that CEO Stockman Rush and his staff were working around the clock to address the issues.
Arnie Weissmann
As for one specific issue, Weissmann says that on the fourth day of the trip, he woke up and “the whole front of the platform and sub were underwater.” He said staff suspected it had been caught in a fishing line or net.
“There just seemed like there was one thing after another,” he says.
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During the trip, Weissmann got a chance to speak with Rush, who told him that the sub was made from carbon fiber that was not certified to be used on aircrafts — and that he got it at a discount.
“The implications were that the requirements for an airplane were very, very stringent,” the editor-in-chief says, adding that it was his impression that the fiber “was perfectly good even though it was no longer qualified to be used in an airplane."
Yet Weissmann says he was left with the impression that Rush was a “very credible person” who was committed to maintaining the integrity of his company — and that of his five-person submersible. “And I didn’t have reason to doubt his judgment at that point," he adds.
At another point during the mission, Weissmann spoke with Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who also died on theTitan.
In athree-part story he wrote forTravel Weekly, the editor-in-chief said that Nargeolet “told me he wasn’t worried about what would happen if the structure of the Titan itself were damaged when at the bottom of the ocean.”
“‘Under that pressure, you’d be dead before you knew there was a problem,'” he recalls the French explorer telling him, adding that he “said it with a smile.”
“I asked why he kept returning to the wreck; his next dive would be his 38th. ‘Each time is totally different,’ he answered. ‘You always see things you’ve never seen before,'” wrote Weissmann.
Additionally, Weissmann tells PEOPLE that just days before the fateful Titan voyage, he saw Hamish Harding — another passenger aboard the ill-fated Titan expedition — and brought him up to speed on his recent experience.
“I did tell him that I felt, although the official reason for our delay was weather, that there was also that they were working on it constantly still, even at the point I was on,” Weissmann recalls. “And he did raise his eyebrows to that, but was still excited about going.”
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Hamish Harding and Stockton Rush.EVARISTO SA/AFP via Getty; Victoria Sirakova/Getty; OceanGate
EVARISTO SA/AFP via Getty; Victoria Sirakova/Getty; OceanGate
As his three-part series came to a close on Thursday, when officials announced the sad news that the passengers had died in an implosion, Weissmann wrote that when he began the series he “was still hoping for a miracle.”
“The history of exploration has many examples of people who were thought to have perished but survived,” he wrote. “It was my hope that the story of OceanGate and the Titan would add another, similar chapter in the long history of exploration.”
“But as I finish this, search and rescue robots discovered a piece of the Titan on the ocean floor,” he added, going on to remember the passengers he met as “three dedicated explorers.”
source: people.com
