Decades before Paul-Henry Nargeolet became known as “Mr. Titanic,” he was a French kid growing up in Morocco who would snorkel to watch scuba divers from afar.
At an April exhibit in Orlando, the 77-year-old Nargeolet told a crowd of Titanic enthusiasts that his love for exploring beneath the waves started when the divers caught him spying one day.
“‘Would you like to try?’” Nargeolet said one of the divers asked him. “I said, ‘Yes,’ and that was the beginning for me.”
Nargeolet, called PH by his friends and coworkers, went on to become a renowned diver and expert on the Titanic, completing a record-setting 37 trips to the Atlantic Ocean’s depths to recover some of the sunken ship’s most prized artifacts. Many of those dives were with his current employer, Peachtree Corners-based Experiential Media Group and RMS Titanic Inc.
He embarked last weekend on his 38th voyage to the Titanic’s wreckage — this time as a passenger on the Titan submersible, operated by a company offering excursions two miles beneath the ocean. Contact with the Titan was lost Sunday, triggering an international rescue operation.
U.S. Coast Guard officials on Thursday said the five people aboard the Titan are believed dead after the submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion.” Debris from the Titan was found about a quarter-mile from the remains of the Titanic.
Jessica Sanders, CEO of Experiential Media and president of RMS Titanic Inc., told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday, hours before the Coast Guard announcement, that Nargeolet approached her to ask for permission before taking the plunge for yet another time.
Sanders told him: “I know this is what you love, so yes. Go and live your passion.”
Credit: Experiential Media Group
Credit: Experiential Media Group
“If you were in a crisis situation, that’s who you would want with you,” Sanders said of her friend.
Earlier Thursday, before fate of the Titan was known, Sanders said she and her colleagues were trying to remain optimistic. She said she’s been in contact with Nargeolot’s family, who have asked for privacy during this time.
Sanders urged the public to respect the Titan crewmembers and their families.
“Don’t lose your humanity over this,” she said.
A passion for the sea
Nargeolot was born in Chamonix, France, in 1946 and traveled throughout his childhood.
He lived in Africa for more than a decade, studied in Paris and rose to the rank of commander in the French Navy in his 22 years of service. During that time, he was tested as an aviator, he told the Orlando crowd last April.
But his passions lied below the sea, not among the clouds.
A colleague once asked Nargeolot if he wanted to be a pilot. “I said, ‘No, I want to be a diver,’” he said.
Nargeolot would go on to work as director of underwater search for RMS Titanic Inc. and its parent company Premier Exhibitions, which rebranded to Experiential Media after going through bankruptcy in 2016.
Through RMS Titanic Inc., he worked for the Titanic’s sole legal salvager, meaning it’s the only entity able to recover artifacts from the ship that struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew.
Since 1987, Nargeolot led six salvaging dives for RMS Titanic Inc. to the wreckage, which lays more than two miles underwater. He supervised the recovery of 5,000 artifacts, including a 17-ton section of the Titanic’s hull that is now on display in Las Vegas.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Sanders said Nargeolot “never had a desk job in his life,” adding that he was always brimming with passion for his work. Nargeolot recently wrote a book on the Titanic, which is published only in French.
“Getting him to write the book was painful for the publisher and for him, because he was like, ‘I’d rather just be on a ship,’” Sanders said.
‘This is who he is’
The Titan expedition was led by a different firm, OceanGate Expeditions, a Washington-based company that has been making yearly voyages to the Titanic’s wreckage since 2021.
Nargeolot joined the passengers as a guest, Sanders said, and was not on a salvaging mission. She added that the Titan is not equipped to bring items back to the surface.
The other passengers include the vessel’s pilot, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman. Both Rush and Nargeolot were on the vessel’s maiden voyage in 2021.
Credit: TNS
Credit: TNS
Experiential Media has been in contact with the Coast Guard, providing mapping data to assist the search. Sanders said a proprietary map of the Titanic that her company charted in 2010 was led by Nargeolot and is being used by authorities.
“It’s very ironic that he helped on that mission to create that map and now we’re using that map to try to find him,” she said earlier Thursday.
She said the dangers of the job never stopped Nargeolot from taking another dive.
“There is risk in adventure, and it didn’t stop him,” she said. “This is who he is.”
Credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
Credit: Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images
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