An Ohio real estate mogul is planning an underwater voyage to the site of the Titanic's wreck, where a year ago a submersible imploded while approaching the ocean floor, killing all five passengers and crew.
According to The Wall Street Journal, shortly after the Ocean Gate disaster, Larry Conner, 74, a real estate investor and amateur adventurer, contacted Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey, pleading with him to build a submarine that could safely and repeatedly reach the Titanic's deep waters.
The pair aim to use a two-person submersible being designed by Triton to explore and conduct scientific research at the site, 12,500 feet below the surface of the ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, in the summer of 2026.
“Our journey is not just a journey to the Titanic,” Conner said in an interview Tuesday. “This is a research mission.”
“Another objective is to build the first revolutionary submarine and demonstrate to the world that it is possible to dive to great depths safely and reliably,” he added.
The custom submarine, which Connor will call “Explorer – A Return to Titanic,” is still in the design stage and will be based on an existing submarine design that Lahey has been working on for years. Described on Triton's website as an “Abyssal Explorer,” the acrylic hull will be able to dive to depths of 13,000 feet, making it “the perfect submarine for repeated deep sea voyages.”
“Once beneath the ocean's surface, the hydrodynamic shape of the submersible with its folded wings allows for a rapid descent to 13,000 feet,” the company says on its website. “The voyage was completed in under two hours, significantly faster than previous years.” Connor said the submersible will be the first with an acrylic hull to reach such depths, expanding the deep-sea submersible's visibility from its small windows and cameras to a 320-degree field of view.
“Frankly, this technology didn't exist six or eight years ago,” Conner said. “It's only with the advancements made in the last five years that we're able to make this happen.”
An interview request for Lahey was referred to a spokesman for Connor, who said only Connor would speak about the trip.
Connor said his interest in heading to the Titanic on a new ship stems from his interest in advancements in ocean exploration, in this case innovations in the field's premier tool: submersibles.
“In my limited experience, the best way to explore the ocean is in a submersible,” he said.
The final cost of the submarine has yet to be determined, but Connor said it will be in the millions of dollars.
Connor went to great pains to compare the submersible he would use to dive into the Titanic with the one used on the death-risking voyage to the sunken ship a year earlier.
Following the Titan disaster on June 18, 2023, there was criticism from leisure and professional underwater explorers about the ship's cost-cutting design choices.
An hour and 45 minutes into the voyage, the ship lost contact with the Canadian expedition ship MV Polar Prince on the surface about 400 miles south of St. John's, Newfoundland, and disappeared into the dark waters of the North Atlantic.
On board were Stockton Rush (61), founder and chief executive of Ocean Gate Expeditions, who was the ship's pilot, British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding (58), French marine expert Paul-Henri Narjolet (77), British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood (48) and his son Suleman (19).
Six days later, a multinational search effort was ended after finding no evidence of a catastrophic explosion with no survivors.
Until the Titan disaster, no one had ever died operating or aboard a submersible, and its safety record had stood for almost a century, despite thousands of dives by explorers.
Connor argues that the OceanGate scandal has damaged the submersible industry and tainted public perception of attempts at innovation in the sector.
“I am concerned that some people associate submarines, particularly new and conventional submarines, with danger and tragedy,” Connor said.
Connor said he wanted to reiterate the safety of the well-built submersible, which he said has been certified (secretly classified in the industry) by a reputable organization that performs rigorous testing. Once certified, the submersible will take two and a half to three years to build, he said.
Ocean Gate's experimental Titan design had not been certified, but Rush touted it as evidence of cutting-edge submarine technology, despite concerns from industry experts about the vessel's safety.
Meanwhile, Connor said he has a reputation for never taking “unacceptable risks.”
“If we can't do what we call the 's' and 's' safely and successfully, then we just don't do it,” Connor said. “We're not thrill seekers. We're not big risk takers.”
Connor is a record-holding skydiver, astronaut and deep-sea explorer who in 2021 made three deep dives over five days with Lahey in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Guam. Their vessel, the Triton DSV Limiting Factor, reached the bottom of the ocean about 35,000 feet below sea level, higher than Mount Everest.
In April 2022, Connor, along with two other paying customers and a retired NASA astronaut, will join SpaceX on a flight to the International Space Station, marking the first all-privately crewed mission and NASA's first foray into space tourism.
During the eight-day mission, which cost Conner and two other clients $55 million each, Conner and his team conducted a series of research experiments in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic and other medical institutions.
