Titanic Tour Anyone?

It’s something I never would have expected or predicted:

If you have the cash, you can board a small submarine and descend almost 13,000 feet into the frigid Atlantic ocean and view the submerged Titanic.

Of course, you remember the Titanic: The “unsinkable” ship that sank on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg.

More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard died when the massive ship sank on the night of April 14-15, 1912.

The ship lay at the bottom of the ocean for 73 years until it was finally found in 1985.

The public’s fascination for the Titanic sinking peaked in 1997 with the release of the iconic Titanic movie.

Now I read that – since July 2021 – rich tourists can now book a seat on a tiny submarine and get an up-close look at the rotting, barnacle-encrusted remains of the ship.

Yes, if you have an extra $100,000 laying around in the bank or in a drawer in your mansion, you can go down, down, down to see what’s left of the Titanic and snap a few pix to share back at the country club.

The author of a story about these first underwater cruises said “about half” of those booking deep-sea cruises also signed up for space flights aboard Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

(Another elitist fun ride costing about $100K per passenger)

God, I’d like to see their “here’s what WE did in 2021” Christmas card!

But here’s a couple fun facts I learned while researching this blog:

• The ship, designed to carry up to 3,300 passengers and crew, had only 20 lifeboats. Each lifeboat could hold up to 65 people, but with only 20 boats that was a maximum of 1,300 people. It underscores how “unsinkable” the builders and owners actually believed the Titanic was.

• The 23-year-old lookout who first spotted the iceberg that tore a football field-sized gash in the ship’s hull told authorities he might have seen the iceberg sooner if he’d had his binoculars that night. The binoculars were locked in a cabinet and the keys were lost at the time, he said. The lookout suffered guilt the rest of his life, dying in 1965 at the age of 78.

But getting back to tours of the wreckage…

I KNOW it’s something I would NEVER want to do, even if I had the moolah to spare. For one thing, I’m pretty claustrophobic – even on airplanes. I can’t imagine crawling into a vessel the size of a large propane tank and dropping down to the bottom of the ocean.

Guess I’m just not a “let’s go for it!” thrill-seeker type…

Exploring the bottom of the ocean or zooming into space are activities definitely NOT on my Bucket List. And you just know that – anything built by man – is eventually going to have a bad day.

Or night.

Just consider the Titanic.