8 p.m. — We're underway. After slipping the lines and leaving the wharf in St. John's, Newfoundland, behind, the Russian research vessel
Keldysh makes her way through an eerie bank of fog rolling into the harbor. Barely visible are the rock cliffs on each side of the narrow inlet through which Nordic Vikings arrived in North America 500 years before Columbus ever left Europe. Once in the open ocean, the
Keldysh begins her voyage of 360 nautical miles due southeast of St. John's to the North Atlantic resting place of the RMS
Titanic.
You may recognize the Keldysh from James Cameron's 1997 feature film Titanic. At the beginning of the movie, 100-year-old Rose returns to the wreck site with her granddaughter, arriving on the Keldysh via helicopter to meet Bill Paxton and his treasure-hunting crew. At the end of the movie, when Rose drops the "Heart of the Sea" diamond into the North Atlantic, she drops it over the rail of the Keldysh.
Aboard Keldysh is a Russian crew of 83, running the ship, working the decks and preparing our meals. James Cameron, making his third trip to dive the Titanic wreck, leads our research and film crew of 50 people. Cameron has spent more than a year preparing for this expedition. On the aft deck are three rigid-hull inflatable boats, or RHIBs, fitted out to be positioned above the wreck and spool more than two miles of fiber-optic cable to the bottom of the sea. That cable will bring our video from the wreck to the RHIBs, and then microwave transmitters will beam the signal back to the Keldysh. Deep in the ship, engineers work around the clock to complete the construction of mission control, a complex array of television switching, editing and transmitting equipment that will allow you to join the expedition on Sunday, July 24.
Our mission: To employ the best underwater exploration technology available, some of it still being assembled as we steam out to sea.
Stephen Reverand is Executive Producer and Vice President of Special Projects for Discovery Channel.
More Expedition Logs: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11 | Day 12 |
