It`s the last great adventure left on Earth,” concluded John Pierce. He had been talking about plans to raise the wreck of the Titanic from the bed of the Atlantic.
This would have been a curious subject for an informed discourse in a remote 14th-Century farmhouse in the Welsh hills under any circumstances, but the knowledge that these plans were largely his own made it extraordinary.
”Now that the Admiralty Court has cleared away all the legal obstacles
(declaring the British government has no claim to the wreckage),” he continued, ”and assuming that surveys show that the hull of the Titanic is in one piece–as we believe it is–she can be lifted. I know of nothing that can stop us bringing the ship back to the surface in about three years` time.”
John Pierce is an alert, talkative Welshman of 44, living far from the sea and, until half a dozen years ago, devoting his engineering skills to the rebuilding of antique aircraft. The only child of a farmer, he lives on the land he inherited near Wrexham, itself a preoccupation as it is currently under threat by plans for both mining and a highway.
The depths of the Atlantic seem even farther away until you notice in his sitting room, among the polished brass ornaments, a slab of steel plate.
”That is part of the hull of the Lusitania,” he explains. Then, passing a scrap of patterned paper, adds: ”And this is Chinese wallpaper from her, too.”
Salvage from this wreck–without any attempt to raise her–was a trial run for the Titanic salvage and enabled John Pierce to prove his theory that underlines his confidence.
”Engineering can always find the answer to a problem,” he maintains.
”Nature has a way of doing things, so the secret is to work with nature and not against it.”
This applies to the deep sea as much as to the air, as he sees it.
While still in his teens he became a qualified pilot, and a flair for engineering led him into the business of restoring vintage aircraft. It was a hard day`s work on rebuilding a light airplane that started a chain of events leading him to the Titanic.
”I had had a tiring day, the children were just home from school and in order to get away from the hassle and relax I decided to have a beer and a bath,” he recalls. ”I had recently watched a television program about the sinking of the Titanic and the talk of raising her and was thinking about that as I ran my bath.
”I had balanced the can of beer and the glass with ice cubes in it on the edge of the bath and I was so preoccupied that I knocked them into the water. The beer and the glass sank but the ice floated. I thought, I`m seeing something! Ice floats, so if I could freeze the beer in the can would that float, too?
”I put the can in the freezer and, although it buckled a bit, it froze
–and it floated! I thought, if the beer can can be made to float, so can the Titanic.”
Water freezes at a much lower temperature than normal at the depth of two-and-a-half miles where the Titanic lies, where the water pressure is two- and-a-quarter tons to the square inch. Studying ways of achieving this, Pierce discovered that liquid nitrogen would not only freeze the water but would itself expand so rapidly that it would expel water from a submerged hull.
Trials with liquid nitrogen led to experiments with gas: Hydrogen seemed suitable. Compressed air had been used to raise the German battleships scuttled in Scapa Flow at the end of the World War I by pumping it into their capsized hulls. But this was unsuitable for the Titanic.
”They had been armoured battleships and were upside down,” explains Pierce. ”But a huge liner could not contain such pressure and would be blown apart.”
So, he thought, lifting bags, great balloons filled with hydrogen, might be the answer. Trials, first with a small wooden ketch and then with a 130-ton steel barge, were successful, and bigger stronger bags and lifting hooks were developed.
”Much of the initial work was done here in my workshop,” he says. ”But now we have to keep a lot of it secret–the material used for the bags, which can withstand a shotgun blast at five yards, and the means of introducing hydrogen into the bags when they are in place.”
This work has been expensive, but John Pierce has the backing of several large British and American corporations and the Royal Navy and United States Navy.
”The main value in raising the Titanic would be a technical one,” he says. ”The means of lifting a 46,000-ton ship from a depth of 13,000 feet and the design of the manned submersible used to explore at that depth are of immense interest to the navies of the world.
”Can you imagine what would happen if one of those giant Russian submarines of the Typhoon class–they displace 29,000 tons–sank and the Americans were able to raise her? Or vice versa, and the Russians were able to salvage an American Ohio-class submarine of 18,000 tons?”
Such speculation is not as far-fetched as it might sound.
”When the Russians heard about my plan for the Titanic, they invited me to the Soviet Embassy and asked me about it,” he says. ”About 10 years ago, one of their submarines sank in the eastern Atlantic with 16 nuclear warheads on the board. The Russians are concerned over the possibility that some dangerous people, perhaps from the Middle East, might be able to salvage those nuclear weapons. The Russians are behaving most responsibly over this.”
Defense interest apart, what of the question of disturbing the mass grave of more than 1,500 people who drowned when the liner hit the iceberg and sank in 1912?
”The ship is not a mass grave,” he says. ”We would expect to find the remains of about 30 people on board, mostly in the engine room, but no more. She took time to sink and there was plenty of time for everybody to come on deck in the hope of rescue. Their remains are lying somewhere on the bed of the sea.”
The next step is a thorough survey of the wreck; then the building of the submarine and lifting equipment, which have already been designed. Finally, the lift itself, which he expects to take place during the summer of 1988. What then?
”The Titanic would be towed to Belfast, where she was built. Her raising will have been primarily a British triumph, so she should come home to a British port.”
John Pierce is a romantic as well as a technological innovator.
”When she is finally back in dock, the ship should be completely restored to her appearance on her maiden voyage in 1912. It will be enormously expensive but this was done to the Orient Express and it can be done to a ship.
”The ultimate dream is that, once her engines are running again, she will make a second voyage from Southampton and this time reach New York. I would like to see her sail on the same day of the year, at the same time of day. Well, why not?”
