OUT TO LUNCH
Being something of a wimp I have tended to avoid any activity that may be perceived as life threatening with the possible exceptions of alcohol consumption, tobacco use and eating red meat. These, I reason, are the sort of flirtations with danger that are more likely to creep up on one slowly rather than, as PG Wodehouse might have put it, the ones that creep up on you from behind with a length of lead piping applied violently to the cranium.
So I would never have even considered entering the ill-fated Titan submersible for a better view of the wreck of the Titanic at some 12 500 feet below sea level. Apart from the fact that I don’t currently have the necessary fare of R4.6 million to hand just at this moment I know that I can get a pretty good idea of what the sunken Titanic looks like for free on YouTube.
Having said that though I was as mesmerised as most people when I learnt a week ago that the submersible had lost contact with the mother ship shortly after launching for its two-hour journey to the ocean bed.
The mainstream media made much of the fact that there was 96 hours of oxygen on board to share among the five passengers but more practical thoughts occurred to me. What on earth was going through the minds of the occupants if they were still alive?
Were they remaining calm as the OceanGate boss man Stockton Rush assured them that this was but a temporary blip with the PlayStation control handset and normal service would be resumed as soon as possible. It’s not as if oxygen masks would be released from the panel above and obliging cabin crew would be dishing out whisky and gin miniatures to business class passengers. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___