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Reports written by Susan
Wels
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Images produced by Matt Tulloch | |||
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Tuesday, August 4, 1998
"We had no light in our boat and were left in intense darkness save from an occasional glimmer of light from other lifeboats..."
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 At
1:40 a.m. this morning, there was no sky, no waterline, no stars or moon,
as if a black curtain had been dropped on the Atlantic. With my land-dweller’s
eyes, I couldn’t make out anything on the invisible horizon. But out
on the port bridge, our navigating officer, Capt. Tony Foster, and safety
officer Jim James had their binoculars focused on the impossibly faint lights
of a small vessel, the Verna and Gean.The 100-foot boat had sailed out of St. Johns, Newfoundland, to bring the Ocean Voyager a differential global positioning system (DGPS)—navigation gear that would help our ship remain in a fixed position over the Titanic. Without the system, it could be dangerous to launch the ROVs that are tethered to the Ocean Voyager. If the ship drifts beyond a certain tolerance, a crew member explained, it could drag an ROV over the wreck like a dog through a briar batch. |
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 So
several of us came out here in the early hours to watch the mid-ocean
rendezvous, set for 2:00 a.m. As we stood on the bridge deck, heat lightning
flashed over the rough water, and sea birds—stormy petrels, called
wave dancers by sailors—flew like scraps of paper in the rising wind.By 2:13 a.m., the Verna and Gean had drawn close by. Our Zodiac driver, Julien Nargeolet, readied his motorized craft to make the pickup, and the expedition’s webmaster, Matt Tulloch, gamely strapped on his radio transponder and safety vest to ride along. At 2:35 a.m. they roared off into the dark, accompanied by the boatswain, Les Murdoch. Ten minutes later, the Zodiac reappeared, smashing its way back through high black waves to the Ocean Voyager, loaded with crates of navigating gear. Matt, at least, looked happy to be back as he climbed out onto the deck: "That," he said, as the sea crashed over the fantail, "was a scarier trip than I expected." |
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 Thirteen
hours later, a dozen of us are back up on the bridge deck. It’s nearly
4:00 p.m., and we’ve finally reached ground zero, the Titanic. The
sea is lead grey, except for the broken crests of waves. I try to imagine
that the white caps are low-lying ice packs, or growlers— to see,
in my mind’s eye, what the passengers and crew of the Titanic
saw on this same spot in 1912. But the air and sea are warm today, not
frigid as they were that night in April. My imagination can't quite make
the jump. Still, we know that miles beneath us is the wreck of the great
ship, and we drop flowers in the waves. Back to the Expedition Calendar |
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