UK man saved in deepest rescue ‘frightened’ for Titanic sub crew

A British man who spent more than three days trapped in a vessel on the seabed said Wednesday he was “very frightened” for those on board a submersible missing near the wreck of the Titanic.

Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman were saved in the deepest sub rescue in history after their small vessel became trapped on the Atlantic seabed off the coast of Ireland at a depth of 1,575 feet (480 meters) in 1973.

“It sounds very, very dangerous, I’m very frightened for them,” Mallinson, now aged 85, said of the five on board the missing Titanic submersible.

“If they are waiting to be rescued I think everyone wants to get into one area and make as much noise as they can,” he told AFP.

“I can’t understand how these people have been left abandoned out in the middle of the Atlantic without any communication, it just doesn’t make any sense,” he said from his home in the Lake District, northwest England.

Rescue workers raced to beat a rapidly closing oxygen window Wednesday as they hunted for the submersible after noises detected by sonar raised hopes those onboard are still alive.

Mallinson recalled feeling pessimistic during his own ordeal, saying that “once everything goes wrong, it goes wrong, and everybody that comes down seems to do wrong.

“It was very stressful, very cold and you just had to try and keep warm, you didn’t want to burn oxygen.

“You got dressed up properly. I had a big wooly jumper, so I got my wooly jumper on and then my overalls back on top,” he added.

“Roger Chapman didn’t have a wooly jumper so we had a lot of white rags and we mummied him.”

Mallinson said he didn’t feel relief until the hatch opened, and a pod of watchful dolphins had left.

“When the dolphins disappeared then you realized you’re safe. They stayed with us the whole 84 hours, thousands of dolphins arrived to look after us, they knew there was a problem.

“You couldn’t talk to the surface on the underwater phone because thousands of dolphins chattered every time you spoke,” he said.

Former Royal Navy officer Chapman died in 2020, having been awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to shipping.

“I’ve lost my mate,” said Mallinson.

“One wonderful thing was that when he died I was able to go to his funeral and play the organ for him.”

© 2023 AFP