Titanic 2005 Expedition Photos

[Subfiend]

I wear the Daytona a lot, especially to court and when I need to keep track of my billable hours outside the office.

I wore two watches on the Titanic dive because we were constantly changing tapes on the inside and outside cameras, and the tapes have different durations. I also needed a reliable timer for navigation, and I needed to keep track of Mission Elapsed Time (MEL).

BTW, my nine year old son has swiped my '66 5513 Sub. He likes Daddy's "James Bond" watch.

[dman]

Dave, I give you credit, Ed uses a big digital wall clock in plain sight of his cleints. It doesn't have a make or brand, just dollar signs all over it.

I knew you were gonna give your boy the sub, I did not think it would be for fourth grade graduation, LOL!!

[Subfiend]

Originally Posted by dman

I knew you were gonna give your boy the sub, I did not think it would be for fourth grade graduation, LOL!!

He knows he is getting my original Sub, and he is already referring to it as "My Watch," but he really took a liking to the vintage Sub over the holidays. Probably because it's on a NATO band and he can wear it on his wrist, and also because James Bond wore a 5513 in "Live and Let Die" and that's one of his favorite movies.

[dman]

Originally Posted by Subfiend

He knows he is getting my original Sub, and he is already referring to it as "My Watch," but he really took a liking to the vintage Sub over the holidays. Probably because it's on a NATO band and he can wear it on his wrist, and also because James Bond wore a 5513 in "Live and Let Die" and that's one of his favorite movies.

You are in trouble, because that boy obviously has great taste, LOL!!

[Subfiend]

Taken on Christmas morning. Note the left wrist.

[JJ Irani]

Handsome young lad you got there, David. Must take after BOTH his parents!!

[Rockrolex]

Originally Posted by dman

Dave, I give you credit, Ed uses a big digital wall clock in plain sight of his cleints. It doesn't have a make or brand, just dollar signs all over it.

I knew you were gonna give your boy the sub, I did not think it would be for fourth grade graduation, LOL!!

Please, Daren. I am not that crass. In fact, I have several clocks, all of which are silent, and only I can see them. The one thing you don't want is to have the client watching the clock to see how fast his money is going.

Originally Posted by Rockrolex

Please, Daren. I am not that crass. In fact, I have several clocks, all of which are silent, and only I can see them. The one thing you don't want is to have the client watching the clock to see how fast his money is going.

Jeez Ed, when we spoke on the phone last week, you were bragging about having a digital clock that counts client's money in relation to their billable hours.

Is that the silent clock you're talking about?

[Rockrolex]

Originally Posted by Atomic

Jeez Ed, when we spoke on the phone last week, you were bragging about having a digital clock that counts client's money in relation to their billable hours.

Is that the silent clock you're talking about?

But I never said the client could see it, Johnny!!

[astcell]

I really liked this thread. The pics are not up at explorer consulting any more. :-(

[Subfiend]

Yes they are:

http://www.explorerconsulting.com/hi...eltitanic.html

You scared me for a second. I thought I had not paid my bill for the web site.

Thanks for updating the link. I had not checked my own site in a while. This was a great expedition, which resulted in a lousy TV show. Additionally, two members of the expedition are recently deceased. This brings back memories.

[astcell]

Thanks for the link. You have a fan out there and I wanted to share the pics!

[JBat]

Great shots, David. That's an exciting and interesting life you are leading.

[Subfiend]

No problem. You're landlocked. so enjoy the water shots.

[astcell]

More of our ColdWar history revealed...


London Times
May 24, 2008
Titanic Search Was Cover For Secret Cold War Subs Mission By Lewis
Smith, Environment Reporter

The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the
discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting
the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines.

When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in
1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened
to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.

Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing
more than 200 men and giving rise to fears that at least one of them,
Scorpion, had been sunk by the USSR.

Dr Ballard, an oceanographer, has admitted that he located and inspected
the wrecks for the US Navy in top secret missions before he was allowed
to search for the Titanic.

Only once he had used his new underwater robot craft to map the
submarine wreck sites was he able to use it to crisscross the North
Atlantic seabed to pinpoint the last resting place of the luxury liner.
It meant he had only 12 days to find the Titanic.

'I couldn't tell anybody,' he said. 'There was a lot of pressure on me.
It was a secret mission. I felt it was a fair exchange for getting a
chance to look for theTitanic.

'We handed the data to the experts. They never told us what they
concluded - our job was to collect the data. I can only talk about it
now because it has been declassified.'

Dr Ballard said what he had seen during the inspection of the wrecks
gave him the idea of finding a trail of debris that would lead to the
main sections of theTitanic. Thresher, had imploded deep beneath the
surface and had broken up into thousands of pieces and Scorpion was
almost as completely destroyed. 'It was as though it had been put
through a shredding machine. There was a long debris trail.' Dr Ballard
developed a robotic submarine craft in the early 1980s and approached
the US Navy in 1982 for funding to search for the Titanic, which sank in
1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives after hitting an iceberg.

He was told that the military were not willing to spend a fortune on
locating the liner, but they did want to know what had happened to their
submarines.The military were anxious to know how the nuclear reactors
had been affected by being submerged for so long.

During the 1980s the nuclear submarine fleet was reduced after the Salt
II (strategic arms limitation talks) agreement and one option was to
sink unwanted reactors at sea. Dr Ballard said that samples taken from
the reactor sections of both submarines showed that there was little
risk to the environment from radioactivity.

The oceanographer was given the funding to embark on two expeditions,
one to find the wreck of Thresher in 1984 off the eastern coast of the
US and another to find Scorpion in the eastern Atlantic.

Thresher , the US Navy's most advanced attack submarine at the time,
sank with all her 129 crew in April 1963 while undergoing seaworthiness
tests after dockyard repairs.

A surface ship, Skylark , was in contact when the submarine's crew
reported that a high-pressure pipe supplying the nuclear reactor with
cooling water had blown. The accident 1,000ft down, caused the vessel to
lose power. It then sank so deep that the pressure hull imploded.

Scorpion disappeared with 99 crew in 1968, and there had been
speculation that it was sunk by Soviet forces. Dr Ballard's visual
examination of the wreck site showed that the most likely cause of its
destruction was being hit by a rogue torpedo that it had fired itself.

[Subfiend]

This story was told almost 10 years ago in a documentary that aired on UK Channel 4. I think the name was "The Battle for Titanic." The Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Admiral John Lehman, was interviewed and he let the cat out of the bag.

There are a lot more of these "back stories" regarding the Titanic. They could fill several books.

[seantk]

David,

Thanks for the link. I enjoy the expeditions and the behind the scenes stories you have told me

Sean

[Subfiend]

Some of the best stories are absolutely unbelievable. Like the story of one expedition I was on, which was plagued by hurricanes, food poisoning, a mutiny, a corporate takeover back on land, an injunction, bad press, one suicide attempt and an alleged rape. I resigned in the middle of it, before the lawsuits began in earnest.

[seantk]

Originally Posted by Subfiend

Some of the best stories are absolutely unbelievable. Like the story of one expedition I was on, which was plagued by hurricanes, food poisoning, a mutiny, a corporate takeover back on land, an injunction, bad press, one suicide attempt and an alleged rape. I resigned in the middle of it, before the lawsuits began in earnest.

Some interesting stories indeed - might make for a good book someday

Sean

[Subfiend]

Originally Posted by seantk

Some interesting stories indeed - might make for a good book someday

Sean

There is a book coming out this fall about my last expedition in 2005. I must admit this is causing me some angst. It is very possible the book will be a puff piece for certain members of the expedition, rather than a true account what happened on the expedition. It always worries me when somebody who wasn't there writes a book based on people's memories after the fact. I have cooperated with the author to some extent by answering his questions and providing documents to prove and/or corroborate certain facts, but the questions themselves have really worried me. The focus seems to be on selling the sizzle instead of the steak.