Cameron had given a curious name to this kind of real-time telepresence, the sense that one inhabits a machine that is deep within the wreck and not part of oneself, yet at the same time it is somehow part of the self. He dubbed this the “avatar effect.”
Fifteen years earlier, all of this technology was the substance of pure science fiction. Even being here in 2001, aboard a Russian ship, was like something out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel. The Keldysh and the two Mirs were built during the Cold War—a spasm in history that probably qualified as the greatest waste of human brain power since advertising and chess. Ocean explorer Robert Ballard’s deep submergence machines were, like the Mirs, funded to serve Cold War purposes.
Within that same time frame, at Brookhaven National Laboratory, physicist James Powell had formed brainstorming sessions devoted to the design of Valkyrie rockets (antihydrogen propulsion feasibility studies), and nuclear melt-through probes to explore seas hidden under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Titan. These sessions became, for Powell, welcome breaks from the Strategic Defense Initiative (then popularly known as Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” program). Along the way, Senator Spark Matsunaga had invited our brainstorming team to join his Space Cooperation Initiative.
Microbiologist Johnston and I had agreed to name some of the equipment we would be planting on and around the Titanic after the late Senator Matsunaga and his Russian counterpart, Roald Sagdeev. Together they had proposed that their two adversarial nations should work together toward a joint space rescue capability, perhaps even an international space station, and a joint exploration of the deep ocean (a prelude, perhaps, to Europa). They believed that by working together and learning to survive together, all alone in the cold and the dark, adversaries might discover their common humanity and in at least some small way diminish what Matsunaga and Sagdeev feared most: the possibility of annihilation by nuclear weapons, humanity’s Pandora.
It was all turning out a little different from what Matsunaga and Sagdeev had anticipated, and much of it had occurred a lot faster than any of us dreamed possible. Yet, here we were, with the old “duck and cover” nightmares and fears of global nuclear winter a thing of the past. Civilization had earned its complacency the hard way. For nearly a decade, now, the world had been breathing a collective sigh of relief—and yet, although Johnston and I were working together with Russian scientists and engineers aboard the Keldysh, there still existed a thin, residual membrane of the Cold War standing between us.
The membrane would eventually break—it would be gone in an instant and gone seemingly forever—but not for another three weeks.
Cameron had shown Johnston and Abernathy the bronze plaque he made, questioning whether he should place it on the bottom, somewhere near the Titanic’s stern. It was not the calling-card type of plaque left on the bridge by so many prior expeditions, naming an institution, a society, or some dot-com millionaire on an expensive submersible camping trip, memorializing the date of each dive. It was only a simple, nameless, and timeless plaque, and on it these words appeared: “The 1500 souls lost here still speak, reminding us always that the unthinkable can happen, but for our vigilance, humility, and compassion.”
5
Trinity
At a quarter past midnight, most passengers seemed to think they had all the time in the world, but not a certain Japanese efficiency expert.
On the stern, Masabumi Hosono had managed to navigate around the officer who was blocking the path to his own second-class quarters and the lifeboats beyond. When he returned to his cabin, Hosono grabbed the wallet with his identification papers and his ticket, vowing not to repeat the mistake of stepping out on the deck without the proper papers. This time, he pulled a woolen blanket from his bed, but he forgot to grab a shirt before he hurried out. He also left behind his watch, his glasses, and a wealth of gold coins representing many different countries.
Despite Hosono’s attention to carrying the proper papers, his race against the rising water to the imagined safety of the boat deck was blocked once again, this time by a crewman who ordered him to remain behind and below the second-class promenade, ostensibly because the boat deck was for first-class passengers only.
As crowds began to gather on the increasingly cold upper decks, the first class congregated near the center of the ship—between the third smokestack and the two wing bridges. This was a stretch of deck space along which twelve lifeboats and rafts were available to them. The second-class passengers—those who, unlike Hosono, easily reached the promenade space just behind the third smokestack—had immediate access to eight lifeboats. The third-class passengers, along with many of the firemen and coal trimmers, who came up from below, were segregated on the two well decks in front of and behind the boat deck, where they milled about, generally following orders and awaiting permission to proceed toward the boats. They expressed various degrees of confidence and skepticism about the repeated insistence of the crewmen that there was no cause for worry.
Violet Jessop believed she saw the lights of another ship on the horizon—a savior that stood agonizingly near yet did not move.
A little after 12:15, as the water rose halfway toward the two-story ceiling of the racquetball court, Jessop descended to her cabin and folded her nightgown, putting it neatly into a drawer. She began tidying up the rest of the room—for despite Annie Robinson’s description of the floating mailbags in a front compartment, the linen rooms and the Turkish baths nearby were still perfectly dry and apparently safe, even though abandoned.
The ship seemed to Jessop to be as steady as rock-solid land, so she continued folding clothing—until her friend Stanley, a bedroom steward, stopped at her door, glaring at her as though she had just joked during a eulogy.
“My God!” he swore, grabbing her by the arm. “Don’t you realize that this ship will sink?”
Suddenly there seemed nothing else to say, except perhaps to ask what to wear. “I brought no warm coat,” Jessop complained. “It’s springtime. Who thinks of coats to meet icebergs?”
Agitatedly, Stanley grabbed the first spring outfit he saw hanging in her closet that appeared to provide some multilayered protection from the cold.
“No, Stan, that won’t do,” Jessop said. The outfit’s multilayering was the result of ornate flowery frills. “That’s no rig for a shipwreck,” she protested—trying to joke, trying to say that the outfit was more appropriate for the Easter parade, trying to distract herself from crying.
“You’ll need a hat,” Stanley said, in what Jessop was not yet prepared to accept as a last gesture of fatherly advice. He withdrew a hat from one of her boxes—it was even more ornate than the dress.
“No, Stan—you would not wish me to go up in that, even for precautionary measures.” She borrowed one of Robinson’s scarves, stepped out into the corridor, and locked the door. Stan escorted Jessop to the E-deck landing of the grand stairway, motioned for her to leave, then stood back and did not follow.
“Stan, come up soon yourself, won’t you?” she asked. Two flights up, she looked down and waved to him. He did not move, “but rather stood,” Jessop would write later. “He was standing with his arms clasped behind him in the corner where he usually kept his evening watch. He suddenly looked very tired.”