Modern in-person tourism at the Titanic is still in its infancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The submersible that disappeared Sunday near the Titanic wreckage was on only its third trip since the company OceanGate Expeditions began offering them in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
OceanGate had been promoting the third dive for months on its website and in Facebook posts, offering the chance to \u201cfollow in Jacques Cousteau\u2019s footsteps and become an underwater explorer\u201d \u2014 for the price of $250,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecome one of the few to see the Titanic<\/a> with your own eyes,\u201d the tour company said on its website. The ticket comes with a title: \u201cmission specialist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Participants have included a chef, an actor, a videographer and someone who worked in banking, according to a Facebook post from the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the customers said on Instagram last year that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that lived up to her expectations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy lifelong dream of seeing the Titanic has come true!\u201d Chelsea Kellogg, a chef, wrote in an Instagram post. \u201cI am still trying to process the whole experience. I\u2019m still crying. Still overwhelmed by all the emotions.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kellogg, who did not respond to an interview request Monday, said that she saw the ship\u2019s bow, crows nest and grand staircase. <\/p>\n\n\n\n OceanGate seems to be the only company currently offering dive tours to the Titanic wreckage, underscoring the practical difficulty of reaching the site 12,500 feet down in the cold North Atlantic where the ship sank in 1912. About 1,500 people died. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The resting place of the Titanic was unknown for decades, eluding several groups<\/a> of researchers racing to find it, until a team led by explorer Robert Ballard<\/a> succeeded in 1985. Visits \u2014 including by artifact-hunters \u2014 continued off and on for two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don Lynch, the Titanic Historical Society\u2019s historian, said that there was some tourism in the 1990s and early this century when there were both artifacts to find and Russian-made submersibles capable of reaching the site\u2019s depth. A Los Angeles artist went down in 2000, and produced watercolors<\/a> from the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynch, who went down in 2001, said that eventually, the visits trickled off as Russian-made submersibles were retired and fewer artifacts remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was a lot of salvage going on prior to that, and I think it reached the point where they weren\u2019t bringing up anything that was increasing the museum visits,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Until now, no submersible at the Titanic site had ever gone missing, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beginning in 2005, there was a 14-year dry spell<\/a> with no human visits. Then, in 2019, another group visited the wreckage site<\/a>, and reported its rapid deterioration. The pace of visits has picked up since. <\/p>\n\n\n\n RMS Titanic Inc., the company that owns the ship\u2019s salvage rights, once tried to stop tourist visits to the site, hoping to use pictures and tourism operations of its own to raise money for salvage operations, but in 1999 a federal appeals court ruled that tourists could visit<\/a>, The Washington Post reported. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynch said he thinks the site should have been treated as an archaeological site with careful documentation of all artifacts. He said he has no objection, though, to tourist visits, especially if they help to pay for research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGo down. Take a look. That\u2019s great. It doesn\u2019t damage the ship,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Past participants with OceanGate praise the experience in a video<\/a> that OceanGate posted to YouTube in October. The video does not give their names. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a remarkable event in my life,\u201d one person in the video says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot many people have done it, and that\u2019s part of the appeal, too, right?\u201d another says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Customers travel to the Titanic area from St. John\u2019s, Newfoundland, Canada, aboard a ship \u2014 this year, the research vessel Polar Prince. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On dive days, five people can fit into the submersible, named Titan, and the descent from the surface takes a couple of hours,<\/strong> OceanGate\u2019s website<\/a> says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou may assist the pilot with coms and tracking, take notes for the science team about what you see outside of the viewport, watch a movie or eat lunch,\u201d it says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a small toilet in Titan\u2019s front dome, the website continues. It \u201cdoubles as the best seat in the house. When the toilet is in use, we install a privacy curtain between the dome and the main compartment and turn the music up loud.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n OceanGate\u2019s website promises \u201chours of exploring\u201d before a two-hour ascent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is required safety training for everyone on the research vessel, the website says. Beyond that, training depends on how much customers want to do, such as assisting with navigation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Stockton Rush, the founder of OceanGate, told the travel website Frommer\u2019s<\/a> in 2020 that about half of his customer pool were Titanic obsessives, while the other half were big-spending travelers also drawn to space tourism and other big-budget ideas. The original price back then was $125,000, or half this year\u2019s price. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t write a better story,\u201d Rush told the website. \u201cYou have the rich and the poor. You have opulence. You have hubris. You have tragedy. You have death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The company initially planned to have six expeditions in 2021, Frommer\u2019s reported, but it ended up running one that year and one in 2022. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Before then, getting a close-up view of the Titanic\u2019s wreckage meant visiting one of several museums where there are artifacts \u2014 including at the Luxor hotel<\/a> in Las Vegas \u2014 or perhaps visiting one of the replicas in Pigeon Forge<\/a>, Tennessee, or Branson<\/a>, Missouri. <\/p>\n\n\n\n OceanGate\u2019s website laid out various details of this year\u2019s expedition, including a minimum age of 18. The price included training, gear and meals on board the ship, but not airfare, hotels before departure or insurance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynch, the historian, said the tours demonstrate the lasting curiosity about the Titanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe movie really brought it to a younger audience and created a lot of new Titanic enthusiasts,\u201d he said, referring to director James Cameron\u2019s 1997 film. \u201cEvery couple decades, something happens that puts it back in the public eye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n