Decisions, Decisions

Titanic Decision

By Dr. Joe MacInnis

We had piloted our 18-ton research sub two-and-a-half miles into the depths of the North Atlantic and landed gently on the rusting remains of the wreck of the Titanic. We were on the navigation bridge and our sister sub was parked directly in front of us. In the near-freezing water between the two subs stood the bronze telemoter, the mystic ship’s five-foot high, steering device.

More than 250 hours without an accident

It was the last dive of the six-week long expedition and we’d come down to leave a memorial plaque at the base of the telemotor. There were three of us, including the pilot, inside the sub’s pressure sphere. Within easy reach were dozens of dials and gauges for the sub’s life support, propulsion and communication systems. With the sub sitting quietly on its pipe-frame skids, we looked out the view ports and talked about the astonishing footage we had taken for our giant-screen Imax film. Someone mentioned how lucky we’d been to have made 17 dives and spend more than 250 hours on the bottom without an accident.

An abrupt stop

At the end of the dive, the other sub lifted off the navigation deck and we watched it disappear into the darkness. Then it was our turn. We pumped ballast, rose about four feet off the deck, and came to an abrupt stop. The pilot looked out the view port, eased back on the control stick and put the sub back on the deck. No one spoke. We’d all spent enough time in subs to know that we were hung up on something.

Running out of time and oxygen

The pilot was an old friend of mine from Moscow, a marine engineer who had designed the subs for the Russian Academy of Sciences. He used the sub’s small thrusters to move us sideways. Then he tried to ascend. Once again, we got half a fathom off the deck and stopped. He tried it three more times without success

Ten hours had passed since we left the surface and we were running out of time and oxygen. We had to make a life or death decision. If we were right, we’d get back to the surface. If we were wrong, we’d end up as a permanent fixture on the Titanic.

Listing assets and options

The first thing we did was to list our assets and options. We scanned the deck below us and checked every system in the sub. We thought hard about different courses of action. We made a number of critical decisions. The most important was to not try to escape alone. We would call the other sub back to assist us.

As soon as they came into view, we got them to circle us twice and look us over. The news on the intercom was brief. “Your port side landing skid is hooked under a snarl of industrial wire. Don’t sweat it. You’ve got six extra eyes to help you.”

Sweating palms and racing hearts

They positioned themselves so they could see us clearly and we tried again. The words on the intercom between the two subs were descriptive and clipped: “Come right…Move left…Dip your skid…How am I doing?… Back up two feet…Should I give it more side thrust?… You’ve almost got it.”

It took us more than thirty minutes to clear our skid from the lethal embrace of wire. Thirty minutes of sweating palms and racing hearts. All of us knew that if we hadn’t made the right decision and asked our teammates to help us, we would have created a two-inch headline that said: THREE MEN DIE IN SUB TRAPPED ON TITANIC.

The sudden flash of streaming sunshine

It took us four hours to ascend from the depths and be lifted out of the ocean onto the mother ship. Four hours of cold, black water followed by the sudden flash of streaming sunshine. Time enough to reflect on the importance of making the right decision, especially when your work takes you into the pressure-packed junction between life and death.

About the Author:

Dr. Joe MacInnis is a physician-scientist, deep-sea explorer and motivational speaker. He has written numerous articles for magazines including National Geographic, Scientific American and Wired. He is the author of ten books including the recent Breathing Underwater: The Quest to Live in the Sea (Penguin Canada) and James Cameron’s Aliens of the Deep (National Geographic Books).

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