AN Ohio billionaire planning to take a $20 million sub to the Titanic wreck to prove the industry is safer after the OceanGate disaster has more money than sense, a relative of two Titanic survivors says.
Luxury real estate tycoon Larry Connor announced last week that he and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey are planning to plunge more than 12,400ft to the Titanic site in a two-person submersible.
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The announcement comes almost a year after the private submersible industry was rocked by disaster when a sub operated by OceanGate imploded above the wreck in the North Atlantic last year, killing five, including the company's CEO, Stockton Rush.
Connor called Lahey days after the June 2023 tragedy and asked him to build a better submersible than Rush's.
The pair are setting out to prove the deep dive can be conducted without disaster – but Shelley Binder, a descendent of Titanic survivors Leah and Phillip Aks, has questioned the need to disturb the site any further.
"For generations, people who have the money are going to spend it doing things to prove their machismo and appease their sense of adventure, but does that mean they should?" asked Binder.
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"Fundamentally, I think one could say these people have more dollars than sense.
"And the idea of tourism to a wreck where 1,496 people lost their lives in a truly horrific disaster of epic proportions is offensive.
"What happened aboard that ship was extremely traumatic and harrowing for my great-grandmother and great-uncle.
"This was a devastating and landmark moment in their lives, and it had long-lasting repercussions for my entire family."
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While Binder herself has mixed feelings about Titanic tourism, conceding that other historical disaster sites such as the ruins of Pompeii are frequently visited by curious holidaymakers, she insists that her great-grandmother and great-uncle would've strongly opposed the notion.
Numerous others who lost relatives in the infamous sinking also disagree with Titanic tourism, she says.
Billionaire Larry Connor to visit Titanic wreck in 2-person sub to 'prove trek can be done safely' after Titan tragedy
"When the Titanic wreck was discovered in 1985, my uncle said that he thought they should leave the ship alone.
"There are so many people that see the wreck as a grave site and they're truly offended by it, this idea of commercial tourism [...] they believe it's an abomination.
"I think my great-grandmother would've been offended by it too, this idea of rich people or a bunch of billionaires going down and seeing where a majority of poorer people died trying to immigrate to the United States.
"The majority of the people aboard that ship were in third class, my great-grandmother and great-uncle among them. They survived but they had to fight for their lives to get out of third class and to safety.
"I think my great-grandmother would be thinking, 'How rude. What are you thinking? How is that appropriate?'"
SHOCKING DISASTER
OceanGate's Titan subwas missing for more than four days before remnants of the vessel were found 1,600ft away from the Titanic's bow on June 22, 2023.
All five passengers aboard the vessel were confirmed dead.
They were OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush; British BillionaireHamish Harding; the legendary French diverPaul-Henry Nargeolet; British-basedPakistanitycoonShahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood.
OceanGate had only been providing tours of the Titanic site since 2021, charging guests up to $250,000 per head to catch a haunting first-hand glimpse of the so-called "unsinkable ship".
Its prized Titan vessel was billed by the company as the new frontier of deep-sea exploration and designed with the help of engineers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
However, concerns about the safety of the carbon fiber vessel were raised as early as 2018, and the sub was only certified to dive to 4250ft –far short of the depths of the ocean floor where the Titanic lies.
Rush was posthumously panned for skirting safety practices and balking at third-party classification and certification.
Connor and Lahey have pledged to do things much differently this time around.
OceanGate Disaster: A Timeline
FIVE people were killed when OceanGate's Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion in June 2023. Here's how the tragic incident unfolded in real time:
June 18:
8:00am - The Titan begins its descent from the Canadian research vessel the Polar Prince to the Titanic wreck in a journey that was expected to take two hours
9:45am - Communications between the submersible and the surface vessel are lost an hour and 45 minutes into the trip
3:00pm - The Titan fails to return to the surface as scheduled
5:40pm - The US Coast Guard receives a report about a missing submersible 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod and a search is launched
June 19:
Planes and ships from the US and Canada descend on the area, with some dropping sonar buoys that can monitor to a depth of almost 4,000 meters to help find the vessel
The first 24 hours of the search come up empty
June 20:
10:00am - France joins the search effort, sending the state-of-the-art deep-sea diving vessel the Atalante toward the site
During the second day of searching, sounds are detected by a Canadian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, which is equipped with gear to trace submarines. Reports emerge that banging sounds at 30-minute intervals have been detected
Speculation mounts that the passengers trapped inside may have been banging on the side of the Titan to alert searchers to their location
June 21:
US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard, and OceanGate Expeditions establish a unified command to oversee the search
6:00am - US Coast Guard confirms the existence of underwater noises but the origin was unclear. A remotely operated vehicle was sent to the area but again proved fruitless
1:00pm - Officials say no more underwater noises were detected. The scale of the search by this time was more than two times the size of Connecticut
Later that evening, the Atalante arrived to join the search
June 22:
6:00am - The approximate deadline for when the air in the submersible was expected to run out passed
11:00am - A Canadian navy ship carrying a medical team specializing in dive medicine arrives on the scene
11:48am - The Coast Guard says a debris field was discovered by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) near the Titanic site. It was later confirmed the debris was 1,600ft from the Titanic's hull
4:00pm - Officials announce the five crew members aboard the Titan were likely killed by a "catastrophic implosion". Rear Adm John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, said an ROV discovered the tail cone of the Titan sub and the debris is “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber”
June 25:
The Coast Guard announces its Marine Board of Investigation will lead a probe into the loss of the Titan to prevent similar occurrences in the future
June 28:
Pieces of the Titan are brought back to shore. Officials also announced human remains were "carefully recovered" at the site and would be subject to a "formal analysis"
July 2:
OceanGate officially shuts down, announcing on its website that all operations have ceased immediately
For their dive, the pair will be using a $20 million sub called the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explore, which they say can complete the voyage multiple times.
Triton Submarines is known as an industry leader having already delved to deeper depths than the Titanic site.
Triton's vessels have been to the depths of Mariana Trench, the deepest point on earth at more than 10,900 meters – 7,000 more than the Titanic.
According to the company's website, the Triton 4000/2 is a "high-performance, flexible platform designed specifically for professional applications."
Triton says the sub can dive to 4,000 meters below the sea and that "the world's deepest diving acrylic sub" is commercially certified for dives over 13,000 feet.
A rep for Connor has not yet returned a request for comment regarding Binder's remarks.
Connor and Lahey's Titanic excursion does not yet have a set date.
Speaking about the forthcoming trip to the Wall Street Journal last week, Connor said, "I want 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."
REMARKABLE TALE OF SURVIVAL
More than a century before the OceanGate disaster, after its unveiling, theTitanicwas also considered to be a high-tech marvel and was billed as the safest ship ever built.
Shelley Binder's great-grandmother, Leah, was 18 and a new mother when she boarded the ship in Southampton, UK, on April 10, 1912.
With only her 10-month-old son Phillip for company, Leah, a Polish immigrant, was heading to meet her husband, Sam Aks, in America where they hoped for a better life.
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Sam had left the UK for the US three months earlier on the Cymric, but Leah stayed behind because her family insisted that she had to wait for the Titanic, believingthe ship to be unsinkable.
She bought a ticket for the Titanic's maiden voyage in third-class passage, but within four days disaster would strike: the Titanic struck an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and began to sink.
Somewhere within the frantic melee that erupted that evening, Binder's great-grandmother became separated from her son.
Eventually, she was able to traverse a "human ladder", Binder said, and climb onto a rescue vessel named the Carpathia, believing the whole time her young son was dead.
By some miracle, Phillip survived. He had also been placed onto the Capathia with another woman who was looking after him.
Leah was reunited with baby Phillip in thevessel's hospital ward.
There are so many people that see the wreck as a grave site and they're truly offended by it, this idea of commercial tourism [...] they believe it's an abomination.
Shelley Binder
Along the way, Madelaine Astor—wife of millionaire John Jacob Astor—gave Leah a scarf to use as a blanket to keep the baby warm.
Leah and her son Phillip were among the 712 survivors of the Titanic. 1496 other women, children and men died, freezing to death or downing in the mercilessly cold North Atlantic waters.
After safely arriving in the US, Binder says her great-grandmother had a nervous breakdown and was in and out of the hospital for almost a year, traumatized by the horrors she'd witnessed.
She would continue to be plagued by that trauma right up until she died in 1967, confessing to her son she still had nightmares about the sounds of hundreds of people screaming and freezing to death in the waters around her.
'TACKY AND OBNOXIOUS'
Speaking to The U.S. Sun about Titanic tourism last year, Binder said, "I've met a lot of families of the victims of the Titanic and they, as a majority, feel very much that this is a grave site to them.
"My two relatives survived, and it's a miracle I'm here talking to you today, but some of their families' bodies were never recovered and this is their last resting place.
"For those families [...] they think it's tacky and obnoxious to go there.
"I mean, try to wrap your mind around 1496 human beings - men, women, and children - dying in the most painful way possible, in 28-degree water freezing to death.
"It's horrific. And you can see the wreckage without having to physically go down there yourself.
"Is there really much they were going to see by looking out those windows? Why don't you just get a huge pit in your backyard and burn $250,000 and then watch the 8k footage of the wreck they recently uploaded online?
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"Those images were captured by unmanned subs. Is that not good enough for you, to sit back in your air-conditioned living room and enjoy?"
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