RMS Titanic, Inc. - 1998 Research and Recovery Expedition

Styrofoam cups awaiting descent to Titanic

Such nostalgia has its risks. Back in 1988, Tom Dettweiler was diving deep in the Atlantic when the submersible he was copiloting failed. Alarms went off, and he had to jettison all his ballast for a dead-vehicle recovery. When the sub finally bobbed up to the surface, it was trailing a mesh bag filled with polystyrene cups. Turns out, the cup bag had gotten all tangled up in the thruster and shut down the submersible’s systems. That’s when Tom started thinking twice about collecting smashed foam souvenirs.

As the day wears on, however, the Magellan engineering team’s still waiting. The ship’s position must be constant while the ROV is on the bottom, and so far, the Ocean Voyager has been moving around too much to launch.

By 10:45 p.m., there’s not much left for the frustrated Ocean Voyager passengers and crew to do but sit down and share some birthday cake with George Tulloch, who has zipped over from the Nadir for a visit. An NBC Dateline producer, Joe Ferullo, passes around plates of layer cake with a caution: "Have some. But the Big Piece has to be for George."

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		Reports written by Susan Wels	Images produced by Matt Tulloch

		Thursday, August 6, 1998 "We had smooth seas, clear, starlit nights, fresh favoring winds; nothing to mar our pleasure." --Mahala D. Douglas First-class passenger The Titanic
		Today is George Tulloch’s birthday. Our expedition leader has just turned 54, and he’s been celebrating with a good cigar and a glass of Beaujolais. It’s a fine day, too. The sea is azure, the sun is shining in a cloudless, pale blue sky, and the Nadir is poised above the successfully relocated Big Piece. Aboard the Ocean Voyager, the Magellan engineers are putting the last touches on their ROV before they launch it for a deep-water test. The crew has been working long days and nights checking the cameras, interfaces and fiber-optic cables. Now, says engineer George Brotchi, "I just want to get on bottom and show everybody that it works." As a final step, they tie a white mesh bag filled with styrofoam cups onto the underwater system’s metal frame. When the equipment reaches bottom, 2.5 miles down, the water pressure—6,000 pounds per square inch—will squash the cups into deep-ocean souvenirs of flattened foam. George Brotchi has personally collected about 200 of them, records of his most memorable dives.
		Such nostalgia has its risks. Back in 1988, Tom Dettweiler was diving deep in the Atlantic when the submersible he was copiloting failed. Alarms went off, and he had to jettison all his ballast for a dead-vehicle recovery. When the sub finally bobbed up to the surface, it was trailing a mesh bag filled with polystyrene cups. Turns out, the cup bag had gotten all tangled up in the thruster and shut down the submersible’s systems. That’s when Tom started thinking twice about collecting smashed foam souvenirs. As the day wears on, however, the Magellan engineering team’s still waiting. The ship’s position must be constant while the ROV is on the bottom, and so far, the Ocean Voyager has been moving around too much to launch. By 10:45 p.m., there’s not much left for the frustrated Ocean Voyager passengers and crew to do but sit down and share some birthday cake with George Tulloch, who has zipped over from the Nadir for a visit. An NBC Dateline producer, Joe Ferullo, passes around plates of layer cake with a caution: "Have some. But the Big Piece has to be for George." Back to the Expedition Calendar

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