The submersible vessel that went missing on an expedition to the Titanic’s final resting place in the Atlantic Ocean has deep connections to the University of Rhode Island.
In October 2021, OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan vessel came to visit the URI campus. The event was arranged in part by URI associate professor Bridget Buxton, who has been involved in OceanGate’s scientific efforts.
URI professor Rod Mather has also worked with OceanGate, and was quoted in a CBS News “Sunday Morning” piece on one of its recent expeditions.
Buxton and Mather, along with URI Applied History Laboratory archaeologist Chris McCabe, are listed on the OceanGate Foundation’s website as participating researchers for its Titanic explorations.
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The OceanGate Foundation is the “primary philanthropic partner” for OceanGate Expeditions.
“This series of expeditions is a chance to dismantle a lot of the cultural myths of the Titanic disaster that were used, both then and now, to define Anglo-American ideals of heroism, gender, and class,” Buxton is quoted as saying on OceanGate’s website.
Buxton said via e-mail that no URI faculty or students were on the current mission. “We’re all following the Coast Guard updates and hoping for the best for our friends,” Buxton said.
According to media reports, the Titan vessel went missing sometime Sunday with five people aboard. People can pay $250,000 to join the expeditions to the Titanic wreck. But OceanGate and its supporters say the expeditions advance research along the way, and several URI experts have been at the center of that.
When Titan came to URI’s campus, Newport residents Mike and Beth Cullen were among those who came out to see it, spending a few minutes inside the vessel. Mike Cullen, a US Air Force veteran, said it felt like a theme park ride. A staffer held a game controller while a computer monitor displayed a sonar screen.
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“I had a hard time imagining myself being sealed up and being part of a five person crew and diving deep for many hours,” Cullen said. “I definitely preferred my two-person jet with wings, engines, lots of gauges, instruments, and an ejection handle.”
Few institutions are more closely associated with Titanic discoveries than URI. PhD recipient Robert Ballard discovered the wreck in the 1980s. He returned as a faculty member in 2001 and is now professor of oceanography.
URI has also been involved in maritime exploration and research closer to home, but ended up crosswise with an influential and controversial local figure named D.K. Abbass, a subject we explored last year for a lengthy feature in the Boston Globe Magazine.
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44.