Last spring, Daley was looking forward to a visit with his old friend, the famous French explorer and submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet. They had met in 1998 when Nargeolet dove in the French sub Nautile to recover a 17-tonne section of the Titanic.
PH, as he was known to his many friends around the world, had joined OceanGate’s dives over the last couple of summers.
Titanic had been Nargeolet’s calling since his first dive to it in 1987. He had 37 dives to the wreck. The 77-year-old’s mere presence had a calming effect on OceanGate’s paying passengers as they were bolted into the Titan’s 2.4-metre cylindrical hull before descending nearly four kilometres to the bottom of the ocean.
Thousands of kilometres away, high up in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, in the small principality of Andorra, Nargeolet’s daughter, Sidonie, was messaging with her father.
“He was telling me that the weather was bad and that there was a good atmosphere on the ship, and that they were hoping to have better weather after the 16th of June,” she said in an interview with Enquête.
But while Daley was looking forward to reuniting with his old friend in St. John’s, he was nervous about OceanGate’s operation.
Last spring, he had watched the Titan being towed on its custom dive platform in the harbour behind the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard ship co-owned by Miawpukek Horizon Maritime Service and Horizon Maritime.
In 2021 and 2022, OceanGate had chartered the Horizon Arctic, a large, modern offshore oil service ship that had ferried the Titan on its deck. The Polar Prince was smaller, cheaper and towed the Titan off its stern.
“First thing I said, you know, I won’t repeat it, but, you know, what the hell are they doing? You know, is that how they’re going to get that out to the Titanic site?” said Daley. “If this is what they’re doing, this is going to end poorly.”
But the federal agencies clustered in St. John’s Harbour that are responsible for maritime safety didn’t seem to share Daley’s concern.
For three years, the St. John’s Port Authority, the Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada all watched Titan being ferried and towed in and out of the harbour, in front of their offices. Pilot boats escorted the Titan and its support ship through the iconic narrows that shelter the harbour.
Aside from whether towing the Titan for 36 hours one way over the North Atlantic was advisable, none of those agencies had any say over whether the Titan was fit to take passengers to the Titanic.
