Editorial
Johannesburg - The world was on tenterhooks this week as an all too human drama played out thousands of metres below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Sadly, the combined hopes and prayers of so many people, transfixed by the drama of the Titan and the five men trapped within, would come to nought.
The five were on the way to visit the wreck of the SS Titanic, the famously unsinkable ship which plunged to its watery grave in 1912 after hitting an iceberg and had remained lost until 1985.
In the beginning, the hope was that a remote operated vehicle could reach the stricken craft before the oxygen supplies ran out. Eventually it would emerge that this consideration had been moot all along – the craft had been destroyed the moment it lost contact with the mother ship on Monday.
The loss of the Titan, while tragic, is both poignant and challenging. It is poignant because five people who wanted to see the last resting place of the Titanic would pay for it with their lives, entombed for all eternity near the wreck itself.
But it is also challenging; both for the apparent lack of regulations governing this kind of adventure tourism and the cavalier business practices of the company which designed and ran the submersible – and whose CEO and founder perished in the tragedy.
But perhaps the greatest issue is that in a world with such incredible inequality and social problems, four people could see their way to buying a ticket for $250 000 (about R4.7 million) each for what would have been a couple of hours’ joyride, to see a wreck at the bottom of the ocean.
There was no scientific gain, no development of new knowledge, just bragging rights. It was an incredible price to pay for vanity – ultimately the highest imaginable.