History of
mechanical problems,
delayed trips
to the Titanic wreckage site
before the Titan submersible went missing
with the five people on board.
Now, court records
show ocean Gate Expeditions,
which operates
a submersible,
have been hit with a lawsuit in 2021
from a London based travel company
representing customers
who had spent
about $850,000 in total
to see the Titanic in 2018.
Now the company said it had to postpone
that trip for safety reasons
they said lightning damage
that affected over
70% of the sub's internal
electrical systems
so they're saying
it was because of safety
and that case was eventually dismissed.
But it comes
as they're growing concerns about
well why what happened here
and what might have caused
this sub
to lose contact
because that's obviously
what first happened here.
About an hour and 45 minutes in.
And raising questions
as to
whether rescue crews now
will be able to rescue
those five human beings.
Tom Foreman is OUTFRONT
with a look at some of the most dramatic
underwater rescues
to this point of all time.
Racing
time, the elements
and an ocean of unknowns.
Those trying to find the Titan face
dwindling odds of success underwater.
Rescues are inherently
complicated, dangerous
and the deep sea makes it all harder.
Author Steven
McGinty knows
it's hard to even imagine that
You know, two miles of water above you,
the immense darkness, no natural light
and the weight of that crushing weight.
Crushing weight.
So you're operating in pitch
darkness
at a depth that many things will fail.
His book,
The Dove, is about the deepest ocean
rescue to date.
In the early 1970s,
the Pisces
three sank nearly 1600 feet
below the surface
while laying an undersea phone
cable off the coast. Of Ireland.
For three days,
ships, submarines and robotic vessels
struggled to get lines attached
and haul up the submersible
with its two experienced sailors.
Finally, success was a stage at all.
And when you
began to wonder
whether you would ever get up slightly.
Not at all.
We had about two days
supply left for our life support
and we knew what was going on.
We could talk to the surface
all the time.
So there was no trouble at all.
Not exactly like the Titan
the Pisces had limited air,
just enough for 72 hours.
The two men
extended it by lying
still and not talking.
And when they finally emerged
after 84 hours,
they had enough for only 12 minutes more.
So how different is
the Titan's predicament?
The Pisces was located quickly.
120 miles offshore.
The Titan is still missing
more than 400 miles from land.
The Pisces had steady communications.
No one has spoken with the Titan
since it vanished.
The Titan is in much deeper water.
And yet,
even when the Pisces was pulled up,
the men inside were terribly battered.
They thought they were going
to be smashed unconscious
and say the subs.
That is rattling
and rolling and spinning.
And at one point
they begged for them
for the list to stop.
There have been other undersea
rescue attempts in 1939
when the USS Scaler
sank off the East Coast
in less than 250 feet of water.
26 men drowned 33 were saved in 2000
when the Russian sub
Kursk suffered a pair of onboard
explosions in the Barents Sea.
Despite early hopes for survivors, the
entire crew of 118 perished
The thing is, these
incidents are so rare
and they are so different
from each other.
Each time one comes along,
rescuers have to both study history
and simultaneously rewrite the book.
Another thing to make it
very tough, Erin.
All right, Tom, thank you very much.
And I want to go to Chris Lemon's now
because he's a deep sea diver.
Two decades of experience
and he has a harrowing tale of survival.
Here's what happened.
He was 300 feet
beneath the surface of the North Sea
in nearly 40 minutes.
No light, no heat. Or breathing gas.
His miraculous story
was the subject of the documentary
Last Breath.
And Chris,
I appreciate your time tonight.
You know, you're looking at this with
a perspective that so few can
know.
We've got video of you.
You were unconscious, underwater.
You didn't have light.
It was too dark under there, right?
No heat or ability to breathe.
You thought you just had a few minutes
worth of breathing gas.
Then it took more than a half
an hour for rescuers to reach you.
What was it like?
What do you even remember
about what that was like?
Yeah, I think today's events
definitely resonate.
My memory was almost twofold,
really, the sort of the panic stage,
which I suspect
these guys have been through as well.
One way
you're really in a sort of fight
or flight mode,
which sort of transcended into a place
where I think I was.
I realized you know,
certainly from my point of view
that the chances of rescue
were extraordinarily slim
and the panic and
the fear subsided almost.
Then it was almost the case of
grieving and, you know,
thinking of the things
we would always think of in that
in that situation,
you know, the people we love and,
you know, the strange, ethereal sense
of being in this alien,
inhospitable place,
which probably seemed very romantic
on the way down.
But, you know, when you're certainly
in that predicament,
seems
very hostile and cold and very lonely,
I would say, more than anything.
Chris, do you have hope?
Given what we know
now for the five passengers on board
the Titan?
I think you have to have I think
I think
despite all that, you know,
the potential pitfalls
they might be facing and,
you know, the potential horrors.
The truth is they have,
you know,
whatever we might think of this
submarine, that's,
you know, submersible
that's gone down there
and the quality of it,
it does have the life support systems
to sustain them.
And those estimates of gas consumption
will be estimates you know,
you know,
even if,
you know,
I hate to relate it to my own, but,
you know, the certainly in my case,
you know, hope
certainly seems to be gone.
And, you know,
my question is do anything else
that's you know,
that is remarkable
what a human human body and human spirit,
I guess, can survive.
So I think there is every hope for them.
But, you know,
I think
as we all
realize in that,
absolutely hinges on them
being being found first and foremost.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
And then they're in there together
just to imagine those interactions
and how that goes.
A very different experiences
at all of this.
You have so much experience here, Chris.
You're a deep sea saturation diver.
I know you work on oil and gas lines
and that that is involved for you
living in a decompression chamber
for up to 28 days at a time,
you've had to work 900 feet
below the surface for 6 hours
at a stretch. Right.
So you've continued to do this
you know, what is that experience like?
And,
you know, we just had a guest on
who'd been on the Titan itself and said
that it was sort of
he almost fell asleep going down,
that there was sort of ethereal
and peaceful in a sense, but.
But how do you see it?
Yeah, I think I mean, for me
it's probably
so slightly different for me
because I
you know, I literally, as you describe,
I do it every day.
So it becomes normalized
but you have to remember
sometimes that that is not a normal
that is not a normal situation.
You know, like
I done in a working capacity.
So it's perhaps slightly different.
But there is
there is definitely that sense of
as I described earlier on,
you know, it romanticism, I guess.
And, you know, that ethereal beauty
I've been underwater,
which is very, very attractive.
But, you know,
I'm also reminded that day
in day out is a very harsh,
inhospitable environment.
And it's one that, you know, particularly
and as you said,
I went down to 30,300 feet.
You know,
sometimes, you know,
900 is probably not on your feet.
But with the deepest we go,
these guys are down at 12,000 feet plus.
You know,
that's just an extraordinary
depth in terms of the sheer pressure
that they're being exposed to.
So and as you say,
they're also not professionals.
You know,
there's a couple of guys in there
who are, you know,
supposedly experienced, but they are
the other three really are
passengers, aren't they?
The other thing is they
are very much
at the mercy of the
of the thing around them, aren't they?
You know,
I think
they probably have got to a point.
There's very little they can do
if they've lost power,
anything like that.
So, yes, it's a scary situation.
But it's also yeah,
it's a place that can seem very peaceful
but can also turn into a very dark
and hospitable place.
Very quickly, I would I would suggest.
Right.
Which, of course,
if they're alive,
they all are dealing with the
the possibility of death
in a way that very
few on the planet
who can truly understand.
Chris, thank you.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.