Titanic 2012: Curse of RMS Titanic

THREE

Before David Ingles could find and stow his own gear aboard Scorpio, a call for divers to find the briefing room and report to Commander of Divers Lou Swigart came over the PA system. Ingles rushed to join the other divers to report to the tough-minded, former naval captain, now head of the away team on Scorpio. It’d been Swigart who had hand-picked David from hundreds of applicants for this mission. Although David felt that Swigart, some fifteen years his senior, respected him, even liked him, Lou had told David early on that there would be no ‘headline-grabbing crap’ as he put it. He didn’t mind repeating it for the group now where they sat in a cramped operations room.

“Nothing in the way of news or reports is going out to the press about this mission to Titanic; that means nothing about you either—no interviews, no phone calls—nothing. Consider it top secret. Got it”

Lou, a big man, filled the space where he stood beside a lectern. “Nothing said that isn’t cleared by the Woods Hole Institute PR machine. I put it to you now… simple and direct—and I repeat: there’ll be no freaking headline-grabbing cowboys here. Not on my dive team!” He’d warmed to it, pacing now, adding, “It’s a purely scientific expedition on the face of it—for the media and the public, but we all know it is a salvage operation this… this expedition, ladies, gents… and so to all who’ve signed on go the spoils—whatever’s dredged out of the belly of that wreck down there, we all have a share in. But make no bones about it, the entire structure is unstable, and what we’re proposing… well it could easily—easily turn into a suicide mission.”

He let this sink in but David knew divers; he knew it wasn’t sinking far.

“You need to know that going in, and if anyone decides here and now that it’s this back-out time, your replacement is waiting in the wings. Mr. Fiske, stand up so that all the others know your face.”

Fiske leapt to his feet, a muscular, square-jawed young man filled with energy and a keen eye as he took in the others, saying, “I want this as much as any of you; should anyone fall ill or have an accident, I’m here to fill in.”

“That’s comforting,” muttered Will Bowman, getting a snicker out of the others.

Lou silenced them with an upraised hand. “So it’s a lot cheaper for the expedition if you decide now, else you’ll be flown out by chopper once we’re at sea and Mr. Kane and company will be up my ass about it, understood?”

“I do… completely, sir,” David replied, feeling certain that Lou was talking about him the entire time thanks to the press that he and National Geographic had gotten on the botched salvage operation in the Sea of Japan. Despite David’s plea that National Geo not air the program, the producers had overruled him and other divers who felt as David did that it should not air, given the dire turn it had taken, costing Wilcox—who figured heavily in the program—his life.

“You don’t go into this thinking you have something to prove, people,” continued Swigart, ignoring David Ingles. “This is now, and it’s hardly the Sea of Japan. Trust me, this is great depths we’ll be working at, beyond anything anyone has ever withstood before—and the real reason I suspect you’re all here, willingly…” He let this sink in while taking up a position along the side of the podium where he now leaned in a casual manner. “And this series of dives will prove the new technology right or wrong.”

“In other words,” said Will Bowman, grinning, “live or die.”

The room erupted in a quiet chorus of murmurs.

“I need the bread, Lou,” David assured his boss. “No one’s here to prove anything.”

“Not even you—David Ingles?” came a female voice at the rear, making David look back. It was the second female diver, Lena Gambio, a weight-lifting Italian with an overlarge nose for her petite face.

“I signed on for the hundred thou.” Ingles’ blunt reply caused a wave of muttering about the small meeting room.

“The going rate for a suicide dive.” Swigart didn’t miss a beat.

“The money has been put up by a private donor working through the institute, working through Luther K—”

“Hold on!” said Kelly Irvin, suddenly standing. “I thought Kane was footing the bill.”

“Luther Warren Kane is a rich man because he doesn’t gamble his own money on risky ventures, and nothing gets more risky than undersea salvage.”

“Kane is just fronting?” Kelly persisted.

“What’s it matter?” asked Jacob Mendenhall, the closest diver to her. “Who cares where the money comes from so long as we get paid?”

Swigart waved them all down. “Said donor has managed to ignore decades of objections from those who support the belief that Titanic should not be disturbed any more than it already has been.”

“The poor dear, she’s looted from the outside by various nations around the world,” added Lena. “But we get a shot at her insides!”

“No one’s had the technology we have,” countered David.

“Or the corporate and government backing that Scorpio is now equipped with,” began Kelly, palms raised. “We have the Navy involvement, our training, and some of the largest corporations in the US behind us.”

“Far cry from just having National Geographic support,” said Bowman with a smirk.

Mendenhall laughed and added, “I saw the spread NG did on you, Ingles.”

“We all saw it!” countered Bowman. “So what, Jake.”

“Please, it’s Jacob or Mendenhall if you like, Bowman. “I am just saying that I’d worry less about where the money is coming from and more about with whom we are diving alongside—I mean at these depths!”

“Mendenhall makes sense,” agreed Lou who continued, pointing to the rear of the room. “Confine your concerns to the dive and your teammates. Your life and the success of this mission depend upon it.”

David glanced over his shoulder to where Kelly Irvin sat at the back of the room. From her expression, she had known who he was all along. He heard Swigart’s continuing rant again in his ear. “That Geographic episode made quite a splash. Just be damned sure we have no g’damn accidents here, and that the wreck you and your friends worked in the Sea of Japan is in the past and out of your system—got that Ingles? Are you hearing me?”

“Yes sir! Heard and taken to heart, sir.” David gave a thought to his best friend whose body had never been recovered, at eternal rest inside the hull of a World War II Japanese submarine; quite the expensive coffin. How many eulogies had he given to Terry Wilcox? “Lou, I swear to you it’s behind me,” he wanted to believe it as firmly as he’d said it.

“Good… good. Can’t have you down there with any damn ghosts, emotional baggage—all that shit. And that goes for all of you in this room.”

“Understood, sir… yes, sir…” came a chorus of affirmations.

“Have to be focused like a laser, stay on camera and audio. No place for idle thoughts or daydreaming.”

Swigart was right of course, and right to call him on it a final time today. “I won’t let you down, Lou. Promise.”

Others muttered and nodded to indicate the same sentiment. Ingles took in the faces of the seven other divers—Team Aft Section Titanic: Lena Gambio, former Navy diver, Lt. William Bowman, former Navy Seal, Steve Jens, a career man retired from the Navy. Lt. Kyle Fiske, another navy man. He’d be acting as second only to Swigart as, in theory, he’d be Swigart’s right-hand man overseeing the safety of the aft section away team, working out of the control room with Forbes and the ship’s physician, a man named Entebbe.

Meanwhile, Team Bow Section Titanic was comprised of David Ingles, Kelly Irvin, and Jacob Mendenhall, oceanographer and experienced diver, while Lou Swigart would be at the submersible controls below with this team.

“All I ask, all I ask,” repeated Swigart, “and thanks for dropping by!” he tried and failed at sounding a bit friendlier. “Now get your gear stowed and ready yourself for the voyage out to the Sea of Sacrifice.”

“Haven’t heard it called that in a long time,” muttered Kelly Irvin as they all recognized the phrase—a title on one of Alandale’s books that went into some detail about all those he could find records on who went down with the Titanic on the night of April 14^th 1912.

“Aye, Commander of Divers!” shouted Steve Jens, a stalwart looking, handsome fellow with the requisite seaman’s tan. The others followed suit, saluting Swigart as most were ex-Navy.

Swigart was pleased to see this; he obviously wished to run his operations by US Navy standards despite—or rather due to its highly experimental nature—and despite the fact that none of them were any longer connected to the Navy.

At least Swigart had set the tone for ‘open and aboveboard’ about everything that goes on—and on a ship, that was important, and David Ingles consoled himself on this point even as he felt that Swigart had been unnecessarily rough on him. Still, what with too many people packed in too small a space, everyone really did need to be honest and up front. Besides, it was the unspoken stuff that seeped into Ingles’ mind that might make him paranoid about how others viewed him and his recent failures. A disciplined work ethic aboard following naval protocol felt right and proper.

These thoughts followed David out of the debriefing, and while others were introducing one another, he rushed past them and was soon in search of his cramped semi-private quarters belowdecks. He soon felt the familiar sense of being home, even if it was in a metal box with poor lighting. The narrow passageways, the shoulder-to-shoulder sized archways led him to his cabin, marked No. 4 where he opened the hatch on a small area as cramped as any rolling RV. Two bunk spaces and a single locker with small mirror to each man. Any shaving or other toiletry needs meant additional shared facilities down the hall.

It all looked like that damned sub in the waters near Japan. It made him wonder about where precisely Terry Wilcox’s skeletal remains had become a permanent resident, but he quickly rushed from that path of thought, knowing he could not go down that road again if he wished to remain sane.

As a balm, his thoughts moved to the thoroughfares inside the Titanic a mile and a half below the Atlantic surface, to where he would be diving in the near future. From all he had ever read of the ship, it was spacious—outlandishly so, at least before it sank. Now to be sure, ceilings in particular would be crushing and walls and bulkheads tight indeed, but he imagined it would be more spacious than a WWII vintage Japanese sub.

Ingles and the other divers had been working with the Navy for a year after their initial recruitment, but oddly enough, they had been trained at different locations and had not worked as a team. It was part of the overall strategy put forth, ironically, by a team of psychiatrists on Kane’s payroll. According to Swigart; from his understanding the ‘bosses’ wanted it that way, believing that too much familiarity among team members in such a high-risk, high-stress situations as they faced guaranteed slip ups, that a dive team too closely aligned by fidelity, friendship, and loyalty were less likely to follow protocol in a negative event—the latest euphemism for foul up. In essence, that was what had happened to Ingles’ buddy in Japan. Perhaps it would not have happened had absolute protocol been followed, but then again who knew for sure? Certainly not the commission put together to study the mishap, whose thousand-page report made for sleep-inducing prose suited only for the toilet. They hadn’t overlooked admonishing Ingles for failing to follow protocol when things went south, yet the commission praised him for saving the others, all but Terry Wilcox.

David stared into the small mirror on his compartment locker and told himself, “You can do this.” He had worked hard on getting this right, diligently and long, to the exclusion of everything else in his life. Lou Swigart had made himself clear. “A good dive team is a tool, Ingles—another arm for the scientists to utilize. No one under my command is going to be some hot dog. First sign of such shit, and you’re on a chopper outta here.”

Reacting to a loud kick at his door, David snatched it open to find his roommate, hands filled with his duffel and a couple of huge biscuits piled with jam and butter balanced on a paper plate. “Need a hand—Bowman, isn’t it?”

“Got it… got it… OK maybe if you took the plate… thanks.”

“So you guys drew straws and ‘the black guy’got to share a room with me, eh?” David joked.

“You know how it goes; black dude always gets the shaft,” Bowman immediately shot back, laughing good-naturedly as he worked himself and his bag into the cramped quarters. “I see you’ve staked out your claim.”

David placed Bowman’s biscuits onto his small desk. “First come, all that.”

“Help yourself to a biscuit,” offered Bowman who then extended a hand to shake, adding, “Name’s Will… Will Bowman.”

“Yeah, I’ve studied your bio. Wanted to know who I’m working with.”

“Need to know who’s got your back—agreed.” He lifted the paper plate with biscuits precariously balanced toward David, again offering him a bite.

“No thanks—not hungry. Too nervous to eat in fact.”

“I know… exciting times.” Bowman looked pleased that David hadn’t taken half his food, and he quickly began to devour what was on the flimsy plate, and was soon licking his fingers of butter and unpacking when he heard a strange noise, followed by a woman’s voice cursing outside their door, sending David investigating. He swung open the inward hinged hatchway to find Dr. Kelly Irvin stooped over and picking up a spilled fanny pack she’d dropped; she’d spilled all manner of feminine items, and among the debris two pill bottles.

David went to his knees to help her pick up her runaway items.

“Hello, Dr. Ingles,” she said from her kneeling position, hardly able to turn and twist in the narrow passageway. “I heard there was breakfast in the galley,” she continued as she replaced everything in her pack.

“No one calls me Doctor, Dr. Irvin,” he countered. “It’s David. As to breakfast? Sounds good.”

Her eyebrows lifted, her smile widened, and she offered her hand but quickly realized she needed it back before he could take it. “Kelly then it is, David. I didn’t know you were—well you—unitl I saw you in the debriefing room with the other divers.”

“Oh yes, well I read your file sometime back and assumed you were Dr. Irvin when I saw you topside. Remembered you from your photo.”

“I should hope not! Oh my God, that mug shot? Say, David, why don’t you join me for ham and eggs?”

“I’ve just begun unpacking,” he lied, noticing that Bowman smirked at this, “but I am hungry… so what the hell, sure.”

Bowman closed the door on the couple with a little shake of the head. With the door closed, they could not make out his final remark, but the laughter was clear.

“Thought we oughta get to know one another to some degree,” she said. “This notion we should have absolutely no concern for one another—to act like, I dunno, cyborgs on the job—I just don’t fully agree with those damn shrinks. Do you?”

“Have you told that to Lou?”

“Course not, but you’re dodging the question.”

A pair of crewmen squeezed past them, which gave David time to consider this question in more depth. “It’s probably a good policy—to be honest.”

“I suppose so.” Still she frowned, started to add a word, hesitated, and put hand to mouth as if to stop herself.

“Up to a point, you mean?” he said and laughed. “They haven’t been able to completely brainwash the idea into your head, eh?” He opened his cabin door and gestured for her to lead the way.

She moved along the tight corridor and spoke over her shoulder. “Well, you of all people, Dr. Ingles—David—you can’t completely agree with the notion, can you? That to be efficient in our jobs, we have to give up being human?”

“Well it is 2012, you know, and any ahhh… human foul up could bring on the earth falling off its axis and a collapse of the entire world according to Vice President Reardon and Wall Street insiders. I mean now that we’re no longer as ready to believe ancient Mayan beliefs and that fellow Nostradamus.”

This got a laugh out of her that reverberated up and down the corridor, and he reacted with a smile. “There… there it is, a human moment between us. Frankly, I don’t think even Lou Swigart can enforce what they’re talking about to begin with, but that’s just me.”

David nodded. “There is that little thing called trust; kinda necessary and absolutely human.” They continued along the corridor single file, when he asked, “So how do you like sucking down liquid air?” He used the crude Navy term for the use of oxygenated perflourocarbons. Cutting edge applied research, the end result of experiments and failed attempts at finding breathable liquid for divers, research begun in Jacque Cousteau’s day.

“That stuff may not taste like Champaign, but damn it’s miraculous once you get there.”

“But getting there is hell.”

“Yes—no matter how many times I do it,” she confessed, “I’m sure it’s my last breath. How ’bout you?”

“It sucks—literally! But miraculous, it is. Makes me feel like Aquaman or Cousteau’s dream of a race of fish-men!” It was not entirely a lie. But each time he used the OPFC back-pak of breathable liquid, which had replaced failed heavy oxygenated liquids of previous years, results of which had given a diver less than an hour and made movement and work underwater nearly impossible. The problem had always come down to failure to ventilate carbon dioxide, and to marry the oxygen levels in the bloodstream with temperature and pressure levels—and using humans in experimentation.

For generations, the US Navy had kept such experiments under wraps.

David thought of Terry Wilcox, and how this new technology—had they had it in Japan—would have saved his life, and he wondered too, how many anonymous sailors had given their lives for this step in human evolution that would return mankind to the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean.

His friend Terry had suffocated in his suit as his air ran out, and David had been unable to get to him in time on the return down after getting Peterson and DeVries out and up. Although David had risked his own life doing a second dive too soon, leaving him with the bends, it simply had not been enough. Time itself killed Terry.

Nowadays, with the new technologies at hand, the bends were no longer a worry during a dive. No matter how fast one descended or ascended. The new lightweight tanks and what they carried did indeed return a man to his origins once the ‘death grip’ was reached and suppressed and gotten past. With ‘liquid air’ as it was called, your mask filled with liquid that covered mouth, nose, eyes, and ears. You were literally ‘drowned’ inside your Cryo-suit, your every pore and orifice in the “pour” house, taking in the liquid oxygen.

Many a rat and monkey before human experiments had also given their lives in the effort to get the formula right—413 attempts since the 1960’s in an on-again, off- again set of trials. Years of tests went into OPFC-413 even after proven until now that divers using the stuff confidently knew they’d be coming out on the other side with eyes open, heart beating, brain functioning, while the skin crawled. But you were alive, and soon your eyes cleared, brain fog lifted, and your heart rate sought its rhythm. And that horrible feeling that you were being turned inside out like some sort of garment, finally dissipated, replaced by a sense of power that reflected the simple notion of normalcy in one’s bodily functions. The huge surprise too was the freedom—absolute freedom in the salt water.

But it had to be harnessed and controlled. Thus the 4-hour OPFC-413 square-pak had been developed with the backing of the US government, and now it was being tested by private industry and expeditions such as the Titanic 2012 Expedition.

“Frankly,” Kelly said to him, “I’m more worried about the drugs they have us on in order to endure breathing that 413^th cocktail.”

David nodded, understanding. “Steroids can have strange side-effects.”

“Not just steroids, hell—the leukotriene blockers, anticholinergics, the beta antagonists.”

“Gotta dilate those air passages and ventilate the lungs of carbon dioxide buildup every way possible.”

They had all been fitted with custom Cryo-suits, much like HAZMAT suits with built-in venting of the deadly gases that would otherwise build up in the lungs to poison the diver. “Truth is,” she confessed, “I’m off those damned drugs.”

“What? Are you crazy? You’ll need that extra edge below.”

David knew that working and moving would be as much of an effort as any faced by astronauts in space.

“Those bloody drugs mess with my thinking, and I’ve got to be one hundred percent clear, David, for reasons that are my own.”

“You’re not likely to find much in the way of biological specimens in or around that shipwreck, Dr. Irvin, if that’s what you mean.”

“You might be surprised,” she mysteriously replied. “I’m going for the galley; you coming?”

David watched her saunter away, again somewhat mesmerized by her beauty. He looked about after a moment to see if anyone noticed him noticing her as she disappeared below decks. He rushed after, trying to convince himself he was hungry so as to have a reason to chase after this woman.

If David expected an intimate moment at breakfast with the lovely Dr. Irvin, he was immediately disappointed when she opened the galley entryway. There they found some dozen or so members of the crew, a few other divers, a number of the scientists, and a cook, a ship’s dog that looked a mix of lab and shepherd, and a galley boy who looked from his day’s old beard to be perhaps eighteen. Rather than doing introductions at this time, everyone just cheered in a group welcoming of the two newcomers.

That is, all but one fellow had cheered.

At the far end of the tight galley room, a sullen fellow kept his own counsel, eyes on his food, fork pushing scrambled eggs around on his plate. A big man with huge hands, this fellow had looked up at David and Kelly for the briefest moment, averting his eyes, which to David appeared silver grey with the intensity of lightning. He recalled Jacob Mendenhall from the earlier meeting, another member of the dive squad.

While he seemed cold, Mendenhall might simply be taking to heart the planned protocol to have as little contact as possible with fellow members of the dive assigned to. It would explain his seeming rudeness. David noticed that Kelly also seemed disturbed by the silver-eyed fellow the other end of the table.

“Sit, eat!” said the cook like a captain giving orders.

“Sit where?” asked Kelly, shrugging when two of men in the room rushed to their feet, saying they’d finished, and rushed off topside with their dishes still half full.

David and Kelly sat side by side in the noisy atmosphere unconsciously pulling in their shoulders to make room for themselves. They were soon eating and listening to the talk. Someone had brought up how few funds went into ocean exploration and the safety of aquanauts as opposed to space and astronauts. David quickly agreed, punctuating with his fork to say, “Take the mid-ocean ridge, a 40,000 mile long seam that goes around the globe like a baseball seam—biggest geological feature on earth—the oceans—and it’s ignored while people need to be made aware of it—just how big it is and how little exploration’s been done.”

“Exactly what I’ve been saying for years. People don’t know for instance there’re more volcanoes under the sea than on land—active volcanoes.” This fellow introduced himself as Steve Jens—one of the other aquanauts.

“It’s sad how little we know about the ocean,” agreed Will Bowman, who was paired with David as a roommate but not for the upcoming dive to and through Titanic.

Kelly piped in, adding, “I’ve read where the volume of water our oceans are made up of has, over the last eight million years, seeped down into the Earth’s crust and returned through hydrothermal vents—and that, gentlemen, is a lot of water.”

“Yeah, and what about all those new life forms Robert Ballard discovered at the East Pacific Rise—life forms that exist on sulfides instead of sunshine and chlorophyll?” asked Bowman. “All that life needs to be studied.”

“That kind of life form… damn alien to us,” added Steve Jens, his baritone voice filling the room. “Could, you know… could be out there in space on another planet for all we know.”

“Who knows,” said David, smiling. “Maybe our little mission to Titanic will revive interest in oceanic exploration—get up some funds and fans.”

“Fans? You mean groupies? I hope you’re not in this for glory, Ingles,” said Will Bowman, eyeing his dive partner and leaving more unsaid than said.

“Fans of oceanography, Will; that’s all I meant.”

“Eat, eat!” shouted the head cook, a fellow everyone called Cookie. Then before Kelly knew it, the men were talking first about how the Air Coast Guard plied the North Atlantic to safeguard ships from icebergs since Titanic’s demise. But soon their talk turned to guns that might or might not be found on Titanic, and what sort of weapon would Will Murdoch have used to mercy kill a passenger and then shoot himself in the head?

“In 1912 semi-automatics were rare as hell,” David replied to someone who suggested such a thing. “The Browning Colt 1911 .45 automatic was only manufactured the year before—1911.”

Mendenhall added, “Ingles is right. I mean, a handful of the original prototypes were available in 1911, but not to the public—and surely they weren’t likely to be available to the Titanic crew in 1912.”

“No, the British would’ve been using a Webley MKIV break top revolver in .455 Webley caliber,” added David and displaying with his fingers in pinch-fashion the size of the bullet, he added, “Big chunk of lead throwing 6 shooter—that mother.”

A crewman named Ford got into the fray, saying, “They would have had a lot of weapons being transported from one side of the pond to the other in her cargo holds—no telling what prizes are still down there.”

“Packed alongside ammo and caps, no doubt—I mean for the breach loaders like the Sharps rifles.”

“According to the cargo manifest no, but sometimes in those days they had a code for weaponry onboard,” put in Alandale. “Calling it crates of wine instead, and according to the manifest, there was a boatload of crated up wine going to New York.”

Kelly had too much on her mind to listen to this. She wanted another cup of coffee though and Cookie had promised more eggs, so she suffered through.