As marine experts and Coast Guard officials continue investigating the tragic implosion of the Titan submersible, we spoke with a local man who took that same submarine voyage two years ago.
Local adventurer Bill Price, who now lives in Cayucos, says two summers ago, he accompanied his friends, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and dive expert Paul Henri Nargoleot, to photograph the wreckage of the Titanic.
“We came down to it from the side, which was really impressive. We saw this massive wall and then we motored over it and we got some fabulous pictures of the front of the bow,” Price recalled.
He says he was one of the first to dive in that same vessel that imploded in the Atlantic Ocean.
“When I first heard that the sub had went missing, the first thing I searched for was, who was on board,” Price told KSBY.
Following the fatal implosion of the Titan submersible last week that killed two of Price’s friends as well as three others, he says he had serious concerns about his trip to the Titanic, too.
“There was a situation where the normal weights that are designed to release, that release mechanism when we activated it, it did not work,” Price explained. “There was a workaround Stockton suggested that we tilt and roll the sub to get it at a vantage point where these weights were in a rack and were able to release from the top, and that allowed us to rise back up to the surface.”
Meanwhile, Price’s daughters, Kristin Price and Nikki Travis, say they have been hugging their dad a little tighter knowing that just two years ago, he was aboard the same submersible that took the lives of five adventurers.
“It was really hard to watch, having been so close to that. There was a lot of sadness for my dad. When I found out that his buddies were down there, that was when it really hit me,” Travis said.
“It was such a pivotal and once-in-a-lifetime experience for him which is interesting, but at the same time, that whole thing is blanketed with this sadness,” Price added.
As the news of the search for the Titan sub has taken the world by storm, Bill Price says he is counting himself lucky.
“I have a bit of survivor’s guilt knowing that I was lucky, and I was able to come back. At the same time, it has been an emotional whirlwind for me,” he told KSBY.
Price says roughly an hour into his voyage, his submarine also lost verbal communication with their support vessel, but they were eventually able to relay messages using a sonar device.
