Visitors Can Soon Visit Titanic Wreck – Part Two

THGImage4April 15th, 2017, marked the 105th anniversary of when the great ship, the RMS Titanic sank into the very bottom of the North Atlantic. The ship was traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City, and the ship had been celebrated as being the safest ship in the world and had been deemed unsinkable.  There had been news reports about the ship, and the public was very envious of those lucky men and women who were able to get onto the boat.  The Titanic was watched closely from the moment the keel was laid in Belfast, to her launching in May of 1911, to her maiden voyage that took place on April 10th, 1912 from England.  The White Star Line office reported that it would take as much as a week for the ship to cross the North Atlantic. However, it was J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star Line, who was on the ship for the crossing, that insisted that the Titanic would not take that long, and that the voyage would make headlines. Little did Ismay know just how right he was, but the headlines the ship would make would be the worst ever, and it would end up costing people their lives. Now, 105 years later, people are going to be offered the chance to see the Titanic as she sits on the bottom of the ocean. However, with an over $149 thousand dollar price tag, would people be willing to pay such a huge fee for something special, but also extremely dangerous? 

image-oceangate-67963OceanGate – The Company Offering Titanic Dives In 2018

OceanGate INC started back in 2009 by tw0 men named Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein, two men who had made a name for themselves in the aerospace and technology industries.  Rush and Söhnlein wanted to start a company tht would make use of the oceans resources, and had an idea to send manned submersibles into the seemingly unknown depths of the world’s oceans. During the first two years of operations, Rush and Söhnlein spent both time and money looking into just how underwater exploration was achieved, and their first major purchase, was Antipodes, which were two robotic submersibles. After the purchase of the submersibles, the rest of the supportive equipment was purchased, and from there, the two men were looking for support to see their vision come to fruition. The one parter of OceanGate INC, that finally made their dream a reality is Teledyne BlueView Technologies, which helped get multi beam sonar systems for the two submersibles, and all underwater exploration equpiment. Now, after so many years of trial and development, OceanGate INC is ready to take on its biggest challenge yet, diving to the RMS Titanic. 

OceanGate Explores the Andrea Doria

andrea-doria-patchOn July  25th, 1956, the Andrea Doria, an Italian cruise ship, ran into fog and collided with a Swedish line passenger liner, the MS Stockholm.  While the number of passengers that died was only 46, the accident made international headlines  because it was considered the largest, and safest ship, ever to set sail, and the fact was her safety features did allow for the ship to stay  afloat for over 11 hours, which allowed for all of the passengers and crew to be rescued. 

In 2016, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the sinking of the Andrea Doria, OceanGate INC was hired by Argus Expeditions , to use their technology to sonar technology to surgey the wreck of the famous ship, and to document what her condition was. The goal of the dives was to not only document the status of the Andrea Doria, but to better understand what the ocean was doing to the wreck over the past six decades.  The first expedition to the Andrea Doria took place from June 2nd through the 9th 2016, and a total of eight expeditions are planned, which will also take the exploration into 2017.

OceanGate Explores the RMS Titanic  in 2018

OceanGateINCMapOceanGate INC has planned a series of dives to the RMS Titanic to begin in 2018. With a pricetag of $149,000, OceanGate INC has announced that a total of 54 trips to the famous wreck site have been planned, which will cover 2018 and the first part of 2019.  OceanGate INC took into consideration every application that was received, and 54 were chosen to take this very special trip. However, if those 54 people who were lucky enough to be going think this is a luxury trip to the bottom of the ocean, they are in for a surprise. In order to be prepared to go down so deep into the water, there will be special training, and once training is over, they will be dubbed mission specialists. OceanGate INC wlll then take these specialists aboard the Cyclops 2, a special 5 person submarine that will be used to explore the remains of the most famous ship in the world. However, whether there will be more trips to the Titanic, OceanGate INC has not said, but there will be an official announcement if and when, Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein make a final decision.