Looking back on his own 2021 dive to the Titanic, an early OceanGate passenger says one must be “a little bit crazy.”
Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he conceived the idea to see the Titanic while on a 2016 trip to the South Pole. He paid $110,000 for a dive in 2019, but the first submersible didn’t survive testing. Loibl went two years later.
“Imagine a metal tube, a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand, you can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” Loibl said. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
The dive, which was repeatedly delayed to fix problems, took 10 1/2 hours, he said.
Lost aboard the vessel are pilot Stockton Rush, the CEO of the company leading the expedition. His passengers are a British adventurer, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert.
“I was a bit naive, looking back now,” said Loibl.
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