"It's An Awful Feeling" - Titanic Reporter Breaks Down Talking About Missing Submersible

fewer than 40 hours of oxygen remaining so could this be a rescue mission impossible well the remains of a Titanic where some are speculated in the sub could be stuck rests 12 and a half thousand feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic at that depth no light from the Sun reaches the ocean floor it's pitch black temperatures are near freezing around 0 to 3 degrees Celsius water pressure is 380 times greater than on land that's the equivalent of being trapped under 100 Story Tower made of lead and to illustrate just how deep it is twelve and a half thousand feet is about nine Empire State Building stacked on top of each other well joining me now are Explorer and friend of British businessman Hamish Harding uh Yannick Mickelson retired U.S Navy submarine Captain David Markey and Dr Michael yeen who's a journalist who became the first TV correspondent in the history to report from the wreck of the Titanic well welcome to all of you um Jenny let me let me start with you Yannick if I may obviously a devastatingly difficult time for you and everybody who knows any of the these five people on board how are you feeling about this because obviously Hamish great Explorer done many very risky things in his time but this as time goes on does look to be potentially like a real tragedy unfairly it's looking Bleak I'm terrified for the worst news now it's um I have a little bit of Hope but they have all the odds against them at this point and it will be a miracle if they can recover the summary they're submersible with a crew that's alive what kind of man is Hamish for those who don't know him is larger than life he loves exploration he's been to space he's been to the deepest point of the planet he's been to the South Pole and he's also mentored me a lot in my career as a Explorer and this is why I'm living close to the North Pole to train to be a polar Explorer and survive in a Polar climate there are videos of I think Hamish and others talking about this this vessel the submersible the thing that struck me was that for people who were so wealthy it doesn't seem a particularly sophisticated piece of Machinery that the risks are pretty high actually something was to go wrong would that be a fair assessment I myself haven't seen this submersible but with any Expedition there's a large amount of risk involved if you want to be the first person to do something today on planet Earth or in space you have to accept risk because if it was easy it wouldn't have been done um David you've been a retired United States Navy submarine Captain so an expert in this field I want to play a little bit of what I'm just talking about a little clip of some of the people who are on board talking before about it including Hamish an experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury disability emotional trauma or death where do I sign I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised we can use these off-the-shelf components I got these from uh Camper World We Run the whole thing with this game controller [Music] so today they're sort of been quite jokey about it obviously this is now a very serious situation um did they underestimate perhaps the dangers or is that just always part of the risk you think of this kind of expedition no I think you could do a better job mitigating the risk we know from a long history of operating submarines in the Royal Navy the American Navy I've been underwater for 87 continuous days what it takes to keep a submarating operating safely underwater we have first of all starts with the design and the building of the submarine we track a bolt from when it was manufactured and say it's chromium magnesium alloy two when it's installed on the submarine every step of the way because we want to make sure that the exact right Bolt but the right material is installed in a right bolt hole this all costs money and then when we operate the submarine if we were in Port for a while we don't just go out and submerge in deep water and see how it goes we we test everything at the pier then we go deliberately 100 feet 200 feet 300 feet walk around with flashlights checking things it is daunting and this is why these submarines cost so much money so I admire people pushing the boundaries and throughout the human race these people have contributed a lot hey man some risk is unavoidable but I think you should try and do everything you can to minimize avoidable risk what David what do you think is the most likely scenario that's happened here well uh for the families and friends prepare yourself for bad news the communications abruptly ended and the submarine has not shown up on the surface so to me that signifies the likely that the crew has been incapacitated it could be simply that the batteries die but in this case I would expect to hear someone banging a wrench for example against the titanium and bells of the submarine but we're not hearing anything so I worry that there's something there could have been a fire on board they could have somehow depleted their oxygen way early and not realize that they could have flooded somehow A fitting corroded and ruptured and water came in and when you're that deep you said 380 times the pressure at air that's just the number it's hard to conceive how that happens like this the water would come in so fast they wouldn't experience anything they would be crushed they would be drowned they'd be asphyxiated and they would feel no pain what is the difference between a submarine and a submersible a submarine has a big motor a big engine and a propeller that drives it out of port so it's on its own leaves Port uh leaves Norfolk goes out to sea drives a Thousand Mile submerges and and operates a submersible has small maneuvering propellers so it's towed out to the side of the Titanic it's released by the mother ship it can drive down hover around the wreck uses those propellers because there's currents down there so it uses those propellers to make sure it doesn't get swept into the Rack or entangled in the wreck and then when when they're done sightseeing and the time's up then they come back up to the surface well thank you for the expert uh guidance too because I think a lot of people are a little bit confused Dr Michael you know better than most the difference you've been honest submersible in 2000 you went down there for ABC News you were the first TV correspondent in history to report from the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean we've got a little clip of this I think as we approach the stern of the ship we're suddenly caught up in a strong underwater current that pushes us towards one of the gigantic 21 ton propellers oh my God look at the size of these things oh my gosh so are we stuck or what as this graphic shows we appear to be somehow wedged beneath the wreck of the stern a scary moment for you uh does this bring back pretty awful memories of what happened to you and what could have happened yeah I'm feeling pretty sick right now and uh agree with that Lieutenant the two things that um come out at me right now is the loss of communications because even when we were stuck down there our pilot so it was a former Russian Nick pilot was piloting our three-man sub much smaller than the one that's currently in its situation and uh he was able to communicate with the surface ship the research vessel the academic kelvish on the surface I couldn't understand what they were saying it was all in Russian but nevertheless and then the second thing that stands out to me Pierce is um as a lieutenant pointed out if it had just been a failure of communications then that pilot would have brought that thing up to the surface immediately so I mean uh we can speculate endlessly I hate doing it because lives are at stake utterly hopeless it's not easy to get out of there I can see the emotion there in you that this is obviously and and indeed also for you uh Yani um because Dr Michael I guess you must have had a moment when you were in a similar situation where you thought you may not get out of it right yeah more than a moment uh the better part of an hour and uh being a scientist of course I'm a professional Problem Solver so my first instinct was number one to hope nobody in the cabin would panic because we had been told uh by the captain of our ship before we went down that he told us a story a true story of a gentleman who has found himself in that situation and in his Panic went for the escape hatch to open it up it's right above your head and of course that was the end of it because it's the cap as the lieutenant said the pressure's down there enormous uh I filed a story for 2020 and then Good Morning America and just to illustrate how this powerful the pressure is down there we took some styrofoam cups and the cup came back about that small and all the air had been squeezed out of it from the pressure down there that brings it home it's a very hostile environment very cold very high pressure um so uh yes for the better part of an hour I kept thinking well how can we get out of this there was another Russian sub in the vicinity and I thought perhaps it could tell us out but of course it's not feasible it's not AAA comes to you out of the month um and I just ran through the checklist of things in my mind and I finally came to that moment that brick wall that utter sense of uh hopelessness and the words that came into my mind were this is how it's going to end for you and you have to understand I've been to the North Pole the South Pole I've covered the Persian Gulf War for 14 years ABC news I've been all over the world I've Been In Harm's Way everywhere but those words came into my mind and I'll never forget it this is how it's going to end for you and I thought of my wife Laura thought I'd never see her again just by the grace of God Victor and his skill managed to weasel her way out of that big propeller it's a big propeller our ship was very small you have to understand it's a huge propeller our ship is small in comparison we just got trapped in the blaze but if it weren't for Victor's hero efforts of I wouldn't be here today to tell you about this but it's just terrible it makes me sick well incredibly emotive uh description there from someone who really does know what they may I mean look you had a miracle Escape we can only hope and pray that something may turn up here we don't know obviously what's happened until we know for sure there's hope and they they would still have enough oxygen left if indeed they're still alive and we can only hope and pray that does happen and Yannick for you and for everyone who's a friend a family member our hearts go out to all of you and we just hope and pray that there is a miraculous ending to this but thank you all very much indeed for joining me I appreciate it thank you peers

Channel: Piers Morgan Uncensored

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Id: -rQBVbmwSbI

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023