June 22
Since its disappearance Sunday morning while diving to visit the Titanic’s resting place, the story of the Titan submersible has seemed like a movie we’ve all seen. A group of plucky adventurers or explorers are trapped in a seemingly inescapable situation and running low of air, food, water or whatever they need to survive. Sometimes it’s on a mountain. Sometimes in space. In this case, it’s at the bottom of the ocean. Somehow, due to their own ingenuity, the gang survive, although not all of them, and at the very last minute.
But this is not a movie. And no one is really expecting that miracle rescue. According to official reports, the air would have run out sometime between 6 and 8 AM this morning. That is, if they even survived that long. It’s cold at the bottom of the ocean with an ocean pressure of about 6,000 psi (about two tonnes), and the craft was essentially a cigar shaped vessel the size of a mini-van with a window that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (who is currently on the titan) admits he broke rules to make. He then charged passengers $250,000 dollars to ride in what now seems like a cheap death trap which reportedly uses a Logitech gaming console (retailing for about $50 on Amazon) to pilot it. (The last guy to complain about this was fired by the company)
The Titan is sometimes referred to as a submarine, but that’s like calling a bicycle a Harley and saying you can take it on the highway. Passengers on the craft are required, according to an article in the Hindustan Times To sign a waiver explaining that they are aware it is an “experimental” vessel “that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.” And I’m sure we all shuddered when we read OceanGate also uses Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite technology during its diving operations. Memories of Ron DeSantis’s disastrous presidential campaign launch of Twitter came rushing back.
Make no mistake, this is a terrible death: Freezing in an icy tomb, starved of oxygen while praying for a rescue that is likely never to come. It is inevitable that ghoulish accounts of their deaths will appear (or most likely a movie) As I write this post, reports are beginning to fill my social media accounts of the discovery of a debris field near where the Titanic rests. Maybe it will be revealed in time.
But in stark contrast to these events is the response to the tragedy of a migrant boat carrying hundreds hoping for a better life in Greece or Italy. On June 13, the boat capsized near the Greek coast, and the response was markedly different. Despite the massive loss of life, perhaps in the hundreds, the bodies are still being recovered, much media coverage has carried the unmistakable scent of indifference. Migrants searching for a better life killed as boat sinks, suffocated in container ships, or meeting some other horrible end. Same old, same old.
Migrants are painted as parasites “flocking over here to have the good life.” And why shouldn’t they? More often than not, the countries they are fleeing to are complicit in the misery they were seeking to leave behind.
Instead of compassion, the Greek government and coastguard (on this occasion – other times, it will be others) did not aid the boat claiming it had insisted it did not need aid, seemingly implying they brought about their own fate. No one has suggested the five on the Titan deserved to die (nor should they), yet “adventure tourism” by its own definition is incredibly dangerous. Paying dubious elements for passage on an overcrowded and likely unseaworthy craft is also dangerous. One group because they had the money to experience something few humans could dream of experiencing (much like journeying to space), the other trying to escape something most people would not want to experience. Yet sympathy is only extended one one group.
It’s easy to say that as capitalism continues to cannibalize itself, these kinds of events will occur again and again. It’s easy because it’s true. As the social conditions that produce them remain, so will these tragedies. Only by the establishment of a different, a completely different, social order, will these things cease to happen.
June 23
Reports came that debris from the Titan had been discovered. Initial indications are that the craft suffered a catastrophic loss of cabin pressure leading to an implosion which killed all of the people on board instantly. No doubt more will be revealed, but instant death was surely better than freezing to death or suffocating.
Still, when David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations was fired in 2018, he alleged it was because he had raised questions about the safety of the craft’s shell. He further maintained that while the submersible was designed to go as far as 4,000 metres undersea, the viewport was only certified for 1,300 metres, and that OceanGate was not prepared to pay for a more expensive model.
In a Smithsonian Magazine puff-piece on OceanGate founder Stockton Rush in 2019, it was noted that Rush objected to the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 because it needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation.
You could not ask for a better definition of capitalism’s attitude toward human life and its need for profit. Meanwhile the bodies of the Greek coast still wait to be found.
N. Fischer