They passed down through the moon pool, enclosed on all sides by the hull of the ship, until they cleared the bottom of the hull into open ocean. When they were safely below the ship, a scuba diver wearing a full face mask asked them over the communications system if they were ready to be released from the cable. Jayden responded via radio that they were, and the diver unhooked them from the crane.
Jayden flipped a switch to release air from the sub’s buoyancy tubes. To rise or sink up and down, the sub did not have to rely on its thrusters. In order to conserve power, to sink it released compressed air stored in tanks in the buoyancy tubes, and to rise it either released ballast in the form of lead weights, or added more air to the tubes from the tanks. He informed the support crew of every action over the radio. “Releasing air…” He knew it was of paramount importance to quickly sink below the ship lest a freak upwelling slam them into the hull.
Slowly, the submersible began to drop deeper into the North Atlantic. The four support divers swam around them — one either side, one above and one below — as they began their descent. When they reached a depth of seventy-five feet — safely below the ship — Jayden performed a quick systems check to ensure everything was operational before beginning the long descent to the Titanic. A school of silver fish swarmed past them, temporarily obscuring one of the scuba divers before disappearing into the blue.
“All systems go,” Jayden intoned into the comm system’s microphone. “Commencing descent to the wreck, over.” He vented more air from the buoyancy system and the Deep Voyager sank at a faster rate toward the bottom of the ocean. Even at this pace, it would take them over three hours to reach the seafloor. When they arrived at the 100-foot mark, the dive team performed a final visual inspection of the sub and reported that all looked well. Jayden also completed one last systems check, also verifying that all systems were operating as they should.
Then the scuba team began their slow ascent to the surface, where they would need to decompress for some time at the twenty-foot level before returning to the ship. Jayden and Carter continued on into the depths alone, plummeting toward the RMS Titanic.
Chapter 3
“Topside, this is Deep Voyager, do you copy, over?” Jayden released the transmitter button on the radio mic while he waited for the reply. He and Carter gazed through the sub’s clear acrylic dome at the seafloor below. The wreck was not yet within sight, but the bottom itself was a sight for sore eyes after drifting through literally miles of pitch black water. Even though it was only a flat expanse of grayish-black mud and sand, it was far more interesting than the three dimensional void they had just traversed. And knowing that the Titanic lay just out of sight on this abyssal plain made the bottom all the more alluring.
Johnny’s voice boomed into their submersible cabin through the radio. “Deep Voyager, this is Topside, and we copy you loud and clear. What’s your status?”
Jayden replied into the radio mic. “We just reached the bottom. Not yet within sight of the wreck. Going to run a systems check, then adjust our course. We’re about twenty feet above the bottom, over.”
“Roger that, let me know when you’re done with the checks and before you move out, over.” Twenty feet was far enough up from the seafloor to avoid stirring up the silt and mud that would ruin the water clarity. Jayden ran through the diagnostic checks, occasionally asking Carter to flip a switch here or read a display there. Battery power, oxygen levels and other parameters came back as they should, and so in a few minutes Jayden was back on the radio informing their support ship that they would now be continuing on with the objective portion of their dive, and heading to the Titanic.
“Copy that, Deep Voyager. Adjust compass heading to…” He recited the bearing numbers from the ship’s navigation equipment, and then Jayden swung the sub around in a slow circle without changing their depth until it pointed in the right direction. “You should come up on the bow section, so watch it, because at your current depth it’s going to be towering way above you.”
Jayden replied that he understood and then told Carter, “Here we go,” before setting the submersible into forward motion toward the historic wreck. A few white crabs skittered along the seafloor as they glided over the bottom. Various other invertebrates including sea stars and sea cucumbers dotted the muddy floor. Carter pointed out a tripod fish, its fins strangely modified to be able to stand on the bottom. The water itself was clear, and their real visibility was limited only by the reach of the sub’s lights, both halogen floods for illumination of their immediate surroundings, and LED spotlights for longer-reach targeted light. Carter tested one of the spots now, startling a squid that quickly darted outside of the bright cone of light.
He was sweeping the floodlight along the muddy plains when the far reach of the beam caught something dark and solid above the seafloor. Far above the seafloor, Carter noted. Towering, but also absolutely unmoving, so not a large animal. Carter caught his breath as he realized what he was looking at.
The RMS Titanic, in its final resting place.
In the narrow cone of the spot light, the famed shipwreck appeared simply as a dark wall, but Carter knew they had reached the bow section and were seeing the hull of the ship, below the oft-pictured bow deck with its iron railings. Carter kept the spot aimed at the hull, moving it around here and there to ensure there weren’t other protruding sections they could hit. Jayden slowed the sub’s forward progress while keeping it on the same course, aware that bumping into something with the three-ton craft could cause irreparable damage that could leave them stuck down here for eternity, along with the ship they came to investigate.
Carter and Jayden were not merely randomly exploring the wreck. They had spent many an hour poring over images, videos, architectural drawings and builder’s plans for the ship and the shipwreck so that they knew not only where the purser’s rooms were, but also where the safes in those rooms might have ended up after the ship cracked in two on its way down to the bottom of the Atlantic on that fateful night over a century ago. It was all just calculated guesswork, but they had a game plan, and when you were over two miles deep in the ocean, it didn’t pay to be wandering around.
“So like we talked about,” Carter said, pointing to their left along the once mighty ship’s hull, “our best bet is to take a look first at the gap between the fore and aft sections, which might lead us inside to our Purser’s Room.”
“Roger that.” Jayden eased the submersible to their left, following the gentle curvature of the Titanic’s hull. Once cruising along, their immediate path illuminated before them as obstacle-free, he radioed Topside to report that they were beginning their course around the wreck. He expected a routine acknowledgement by way of a response, but instead heard Johnny’s voice sounding somewhat strained.
“Copy that, Deep Voyager. Be advised, this will not affect you for some time, but we have deep operations activity observed on our unknown visitors’ ship, the Transoceanic.”
Jayden eyed Carter briefly before saying into the radio, “What kind of deep ops activity?”
“Manned submersible. So you have about three hours before you’re going to have company down there, over.”