A new voyage to the site where the Titanic sank is being described as a “scaled-back version” of a trip planned after the OceanGate Titan submersible disaster that killed five explorers in 2023.
A team including “imaging experts, scientists, oceanographers and historians” from RMS Titanic, Inc. headed out to sea Friday, where their ship, the Dino Chouest, will sit above the wreckage of the Titanic for about twenty days gathering data on the ill-fated ship, CBS News reported.
This will be the first expedition to the Titanic site since the June 2023 Titan trip manned by 61-year-old Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, ended in death for him and all four passengers: French submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48; and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.
The crew members of RMS Titanic’s program, Titanic Expedition 2024, are from Rhode Island, according to USA Today.
Unlike last year’s deadly mission, the engineers will not be sending any manned vessels down to observe the remains of the Titanic. “[T]wo remotely operated vehicles – called ROVs –” will dive “12,500 feet into the Atlantic to scan the wreck.”
“No crewed visits are planned,” USA Today stated, noting that the current expedition “is a scaled-back version of a Titanic visit it announced after the Titan’s loss in 2023.”
The company said its cameras will take photos to “preserve the existing state of the site digitally,” and will compare them to images taken on their last voyage in 2010 to see how the ship may have deteriorated.
Nargeolet, one of the men aboard the Titan when it imploded shortly after it descended into the sea, was the director of research at RMS Titanic Inc. and was set to lead this new mission.
CBS News reported:
“It’s tough but the thing about exploration is that there’s an urge and a drive to keep going. And we’re doing that because of that passion P.H. had for continuous exploration,” historian Rory Golden, Nargeolet’s friend and chief morale officer of this mission, told BBC News.
The Titanic ocean liner, which sank on April 15, 1912, lies on the ocean’s floor at about 12,500 feet deep.
OceanGate charged $250,000 per ticket for the fateful 2023 journey, a tragedy that led to the company suspending all explorations and commercial operations.
A memorial service will be held aboard the Dino Chouest both for those who died in the Titan and the 1,500 men, women, and children who perished when the Titanic sank.