British man saved in deepest rescue ‘frightened’ for crew of missing Titanic sub

LONDON - A British man who spent more than three days trapped in a vessel on the seabed said on Wednesday he was “very frightened” for

those on board a submersible missing near the wreck of the Titanic.

Mr Roger Mallinson and Mr Roger Chapman were saved in the deepest sub rescue in history after their small vessel became trapped on the Atlantic seabed off the coast of Ireland at a depth of 480m in 1973.

“It sounds very, very dangerous, I’m very frightened for them,” Mr Mallinson, now aged 85, said of the five on board the missing Titanic submersible.

“If they are waiting to be rescued, I think everyone wants to get into one area and make as much noise as they can,” he said.

“I can’t understand how these people have been left abandoned out in the middle of the Atlantic without any communication, it just doesn’t make any sense,” he said, from his home in the Lake District, in north-west England.

Rescue workers raced to beat a rapidly closing oxygen window on Wednesday as they hunted for the submersible after

noises detected by sonar raised hopes those onboard are still alive.

Mr Mallinson recalled feeling pessimistic during his own ordeal, saying that “once everything goes wrong, it goes wrong, and everybody that comes down seems to do wrong.

“It was very stressful, very cold and you just had to try and keep warm, you didn’t want to burn oxygen.

“You got dressed up properly. I had a big woolly jumper, so I got my woolly jumper on and then my overalls back on top,” he added.

“Roger Chapman didn’t have a woolly jumper, so we had a lot of white rags and we ‘mummied’ him.”

Mr Mallinson said he did not feel relief until the hatch opened, and a pod of watchful dolphins had left.

“When the dolphins disappeared, then you realised you’re safe. They stayed with us the whole 84 hours, thousands of dolphins arrived to look after us, they knew there was a problem.

“You couldn’t talk to the surface on the underwater phone because thousands of dolphins chattered every time you spoke,” he said.

Former Royal Navy officer Chapman died in 2020, having been awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to shipping.

“I’ve lost my mate,” said Mr Mallinson.

“One wonderful thing was that, when he died, I was able to go to his funeral and play the organ for him.” AFP