Inside the submarine that will dive to view Titanic wreck
- Ohio billionaire Larry Connor owns Triton Submarines
- The 74-year-old plans to travel down to the Titanic wreckage
- He will carry out the voyage in the $20 million Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer
Published on Jun 04, 2024 at 12:00 PM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Jun 04, 2024 at 4:18 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
US billionaire Larry Connor – the owner of Triton Submarines – plans to plunge 12,400 feet to visit the Titanic shipwreck site in a specially-built two-person submarine.
Connor, who will travel with Triton Subs co-founder, has reportedly invested $20 million (£15.7 million) into the company to create a submersible that can safely travel down to the wreckage.
Safety is, of course, of paramount importance – most people will remember that a similar expedition last year ended in tragedy for those onboard.
READ MORE! Billionaire says he’s taking a $20 million submarine to view the wreckage of the Titanic
OceanGate’s Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion shortly after it set off to explore the Titanic wreckage on June 18, 2023.
Five people were on board and sadly lost their lives in the tragedy – OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French maritime expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, and his son Sulaiman.
Connor told The Wall Street Journal that he wanted to prove that deep-sea exploration can be ‘life-changing’ and ‘wonderful’.
“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” he said.
To carry out Connor’s plans, Lahey has designed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer – a vessel the billionaire says is capable of carrying out the voyage repeatedly.
The 74-year-old said: “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology.
“You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
Triton Submarines say Triton 4000/2 is ‘the world’s deepest diving acrylic sub’. The ‘4000’ in the submersible’s name comes from the fact it can travel 4,000 meters into the sea – for context, the Titanic wreckage site is at 3,800m.
Lahey told The Wall Street Journal: “[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’”
On the company’s website, a page for the submarine explains: “The Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer features large vents, a streamlined launch profile, and simplified launch procedures, allowing you to spend the bare minimum amount of time on the surface before diving and getting on with your work.
“Once subsurface, the submersible’s hydrodynamic shape – with wings folded – speeds the descent to 13,000 ft. The journey takes less than two hours – significantly faster than previously possible.”
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Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Across her career she's covered a wide variety of topics, including celebrity, cryptocurrency, politics, true crime and just about everything in between.
