As rescue crews are calling on all available resources to locate the Titan submersible that vanished with its five passengers while visiting the Titanic Sunday, their efforts are hampered by the lack of vessels capable of reaching the necessary depths at all.
Across the world, there are only a handful of manned submersibles that can reach the 12,500-foot depths where the Titanic’s wreck lies and where the Titan’s crew may be trapped in terrifying total darkness.
Most of those vessels carry no more than three passengers at a time and are used exclusively for rigorously trained research or military purposes– the Titan’s five-person capacity and tourist practices are one of a kind.
One such submersible that may be currently en route to the search mission is the Nautile, a French vessel capable of carrying up to three people to depths of 20,000 feet and has previously visited the Titanic’s wreckage.
The Nautile is housed on the research ship L’Atalante, which is currently racing to the search site to deploy its robotic submersible Victor 6,000 before the Titan’s oxygen supply runs out around Thursday afternoon.
It is unclear whether the Nautile will join in on the search. The vessel is primarily designed for observation instead of manipulating things on the seafloor, though it is capable of staying underwater for eight hours and has an expansive floodlight system.
Another manned vessel is the American-built and privately-owned DSV (deep-submergence vehicle) Limiting Factor, which can bring a pair of passengers to depths of 36,000 feet.
Limiting Factor holds a world record for conducting the deepest manned dives in all five oceans, and has also visited the Titanic before.
DSV Alvin is an American-built submersible that can reach more than 20,000 feet and has previously dived into the Titanic for research. That 1986 expedition to Titanic produced some of the earliest and most iconic images of the famous wreck.
Alvin is currently owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts.
The Chinese-built and operated Striver can carry three crew members, and has dived to the deepest point a submarine can reach — the roughly 35,000-foot depth of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point on Earth.
A second Chinese vessel, the Deep Sea Warrior, can carry three passengers to more than 14,000 feet, and stay underwater for about 10 hours. China has at least a third vessel, the Jiaolong, which is equipped to bring three passengers to a depth of nearly 25,000 feet.
Russia’s navy has at least two DSVs known as Consuls, which are able to dive to 20,000 feet with two passengers.
Whether or not any of those craft have been called on to assist in the search for the Titan is unclear. The builder of Limiting Factor, Triton Submarines, declined to comment. DSV Alvin’s operator, The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, could not be reached for comment.
The window of opportunity for a successful rescue is rapidly drawing to a close.
L’Atalante is expected to arrive at the search site with the Victor 6000 Wednesday evening, which will leave about 12 hours of oxygen remaining in the Titan– if the vessel remains intact at all.
The robotic submersible is more than capable of reaching the Titanic, but unless surface crews have already located the location of the Titan it is unlikely there will be much it can do.
Victor 6000 is equipped with a robotic arm that might be able to jostle the Titan loose from the Titanic’s wreckage if it is found to be trapped there, and it might also be able to attach a tether which L’Atalante would then be able to reel in with its heavy-duty onboard crane system.
