The Titanic is overrated, deep-sea explorers say. The wealthy keep venturing to it anyway.

23.06.2024 - 03:03 / insider.com

The Titanic may be one of the most popular and identifiable wreckage sites in the history of sea travel.

It also may be one of the most overrated, deep-sea explorers told Business Insider.

More than a century after the ocean liner sank to the bottom of the Atlantic, the Titanic has proven the staying power of its lore, not least in part due to James Cameron's 1997 film, which became the first billion-dollar box office success. The film reignited interest in the ship and created a fandom that lives strong to this day. Titanic-themed birthday, anyone?

Then, in 2023, five people died in OceanGate's Titan submersible during a dive to the wreckage site, once again placing the iconic ship at the forefront of the news cycle.

Despite the wreckage's thorough documentation and the recent fate of the OceanGate submersible, the wealthy and well-resourced continue to pour efforts to venture 12,500 feet into the ocean just to see the siteof the 1912 sinking.

Passengers on the Titan paid up to $250,000 for a seat inside the submersible. Now, billionaire real estate investor Larry Connor said he will voyage to the Titanic.

Deep-sea explorers are left wondering: Why?

"The wreck is well-documented," Karl Stanley, a submersible expert, told BI in a recent interview. "That's probably the best documented deep-water wreck there is."

Stanley, who owns a submersible tourism company, Stanley Submarines, was one of many colleagues who warned OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush about the dangers of rushing to produce a vessel that could take people to the Titanic.

For him, the wealthy's desire to visit the shipwreck has less to do with a genuine passion for deep-sea exploration and more to do with namesake recognition.

"I think whatever market exists for tourism to the Titanic is extremely analogous to the kind of clientele that pays Sherpas to drag them up Mt. Everest," Stanley said, referring to the Nepalese ethnic group that dwells in the Himalayan mountains. Some climbers pay up to $15,000 per expedition to have a Sherpa guide, BI previously reported.

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Since the early 1900s, more than 330 people have died on the mountain, and 107 of them were Sherpas, according to The Himalayan Database.

Stanley said there are more dangerous but less traveled mountains and shipwrecks that are less deep but better preserved, such as the HMHS Britannic, Titanic's sister ship, which lies in a relatively shallow grave of about 400 feet,near the Greek island of Kea.

"People are trying to impress people," he said.

Guillermo Söhnlein, the cofounder of OceanGate who left the company in 2013, agreed with Stanley.

While he doesn't want to discourage anyone's genuine passion for the iconic ocean liner, Söhnlein told BI in an interview that