A clip from a “Jeopardy!” episode last month is resurfacing amid the news that the Titan submersible imploded with five people on board.
“Jeopardy!” champion Sam Buttrey, a popular contestant who competed in the show’s Masters tournament in May, mentioned during an episode that he passed up an opportunity to tour the Titanic wreckage in an expedition similar to the one that has captured worldwide attention in recent days.
“I have a friend who operates a company that will take you out to the wreck of the Titanic,” Buttrey, who is an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, told “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings in a TikTok video that has 1.6 million views. “So you go out in a boat and then you go down in a submersible craft and tour the wreckage. It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but through a miracle of bad timing, my son John and daughter-in-law Caitlyn were getting married that weekend.
“I was very happy to go there,” he continued. “It was a beautiful wedding, and not a shred of regret in my life.”
What happened to the Titan submersible and passengers?
Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate — and one of the five people aboard the Titan — previously told The Guardian that the Titan submersible was custom-made for seeing the Titanic, the Deseret News reported.
“We had to make our own sub. So our sub weighs about half as much as any other deep diving sub, or research sub, that’s been down there,” he told The Guardian. “And because it’s smaller and lighter, it’s much more manoeuverable. And so we can get very close.”
More than three dozen people in the submersible craft industry signed a joint letter in 2018, “warning of possible ‘catastrophic’ problems with the submersible’s development and its planned mission to tour the Titanic wreckage,” The New York Times reported.
“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think is just astonishing,” James Cameron, director of “Titanic,” told ABC News.
The submersible lost contact with its support ship about an hour and 45 minutes after it dove into the ocean on Sunday, the Deseret News reported.
The U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday that a debris field near the Titanic wreckage site had been found on the ocean floor, consistent with an implosion caused by the “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” per Deseret News.
Later that day, OceanGate Expedition released a statement that the five people aboard the submersible — four passengers and the pilot — were believed to be dead.
The search area spanned around twice the size of Connecticut and went down 21⁄2 miles into the ocean, according to The Associated Press.