Paul Henri Nargeolet obit

Mr Titanic': The diver who has spent more time at shipwreck than anyone

Paul Henri Nargeolet was part of first expedition to visit the wreck in 1987, just two years after it was discovered by an autonomous sub

 He was not on the list.

Paul Henri Nargeolet, the French diver known as “Mr Titanic”, spent more time than any other explorer at the wreck of the ill-fated liner.

In an interview in 2019, the then 73-year-old was asked whether he ever got scared diving 3,810m to reach the wreck.

“If you are 11m or 11km down, if something bad happens, the result is the same,” the former French naval captain, who is feared to be on board the missing Titan submarine, told the Irish Examiner.

“When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realise that something is happening, so it’s just not a problem.”

After 22 years in the navy in mine disposal, Mr Nargeolet – who specialises in deep-diving and piloting submersibles – had a variety of jobs. He participated in the Five Deeps expedition, exploring the deepest parts of all five of the Earth’s oceans, breaking the record for deepest submersible dive, at 10,928m below surface level.

But for the most part, his career has revolved around the Titanic. He was in the first human expedition to visit the ship in 1987, just two years after the ghostly wreck was discovered by an autonomous sub.

“That’s it, we’ve done it!” he exclaimed when they came across the prow. He was the first to recover a remnant of the wreck – a silver plate. Since then, PH, as he is known, visited the wreck at least 35 times.

Mr Nargeolet and the company he worked for, RMS Titanic Inc, went on to salvage many items from the debris field but not inside the wreck.

In the year of the Titanic’s centenary, 5,000 artefacts from the ship – including personal possessions such as eyeglasses and jewellery, as well as ship’s fittings including a cherub which once adorned the famed grand staircase – were auctioned by RMS Titanic in New York as a single lot, with a value of over $189 million (£148 million).

Beyond salvage, Mr Nargeolet helped to map the site and chart the course of its deterioration.

“At the beginning we were scared to recover artefacts owned by passengers but then we realised we could learn a lot about the passengers,” he said.

“We are resurfacing the history of these families, and for me that’s a good thing.”

He lived in Connecticut, while his adult children live in Cork, Ireland.

As an expert on the Titanic, Nargeolet participated as a creator of two documentaries: Titanic: The Legend Lives On (1994) and Deep Inside the Titanic (1999). In 2022, he published Dans les profondeurs du Titanic (lit. 'In the Depths of the Titanic'), which recounts his expeditions.

Also in 2010, he was involved in the search for the flight recorder of Air France Flight 447, which crashed the previous year while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

On 18 June 2023, Nargeolet was onboard the Titan, a submersible owned by OceanGate, Inc. on an expedition to view the Titanic wreckage. The vehicle lost contact with the above-water ship, MV Polar Prince. Search-and-rescue missions involved water and air support from the United States, Canada and France.

On 22 June, after the discovery of a debris field approximately 490 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic, OceanGate said it believed Nargeolet and the four others aboard "have sadly been lost." A United States Coast Guard press conference later confirmed that the debris lined up with a catastrophic loss of the pressure hull, resulting in the implosion of the submersible vehicle.

He was married to U.S. television reporter Michele Marsh until her death in 2017. Later, "thanks to the Titanic," Nargeolet re-established contact with a woman, a childhood friend, who became his partner after his wife died.