[HN Gopher] Titanic's sister, Britannic, sank in 1916. Divers ha...
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Titanic's sister, Britannic, sank in 1916. Divers have recovered
artifacts
Author : pseudolus
Score : 57 points
Date : 2025-09-26 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| belorn wrote:
| Britannic has long been one of the major bucket-list dive that
| many deep wreck sport divers pursue. Diving there require quite a
| few things to get permission from the owner and the Greek
| government, among which are a quite heavy fee (and more fees
| depending on what you are going to do while down there),
| requirements that each group brings their own licensed doctor
| that is specialized in diving, and hire a guide. The price tag
| per diver (not including equipment or travel) that I got from a
| group who is planning a trip next year put it at around $6k per
| diver for a 2 week trip, with a plan of total of 4 dives at the
| wreck. Each dive will have a bottom time (time spent at the
| wreck) of about 20-30 minutes, and then 3-4 hours of
| decompression hanging in blue water.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I'm curious how much renting rebreathers instead of tanks would
| add to the cost?
| belorn wrote:
| They do no longer grant permission for open circuit so its
| mostly a philosophical question. Helium is very expensive
| currently because of Russia, so it would possible be cheaper
| to buy a rebreather than do four 100m dives with open
| circuit.
|
| I do not know many people who would rent a rebreather, as
| those tend to become fairly personal to the diver when doing
| that kind of dives, and the required dive training is based
| on specific brands and units.
| avar wrote:
| > Helium is very expensive currently because of Russia
|
| It's expensive (in Greece) because the EU added helium to
| its 14th package of sanctions in September 2024[1].
|
| I'm aware of the ultimate reasons for those sanctions, but
| it seems weird in this narrow context to say it's "because
| of Russia". No, it's expensive _because of the EU_ , which
| decided to make it expensive, unilaterally.
|
| 1. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qa
| nda_...
| belorn wrote:
| Technically it expensive because demand exceed supply.
| Russia was just one of the larger producer, as it is a by
| product from natural gas extraction, so with the war that
| source was cut off.
|
| In combination, US military decided to sell a large
| portion of their stored helium to a single private firm
| around the same time, rather then sell it off in smaller
| chunks, and that seems to also have decreased the global
| supply.
|
| As a semi-new idea people are experimenting with hydrogen
| as a replacement for helium, which could become much
| cheaper and renewable compared to helium. Time will tell
| how bad idea it is to mix high pressure, oxygen and
| hydrogen while under water.
| bombcar wrote:
| If the $6k is for the whole trip that sounds a deal (ignoring I
| assume airfare).
|
| Of the fees alone are $6k that's moderately high but not
| unreasonable.
| bowmessage wrote:
| > owner
|
| What a strange concept, owner of a shipwreck... But, indeed,
| TFA links to a Q&A with the British owner who purchased the
| wreck in 1996:
|
| https://thehistorypress.co.uk/article/qa-with-simon-mills-ow...
| lesuorac wrote:
| It's a pretty clever life hack.
|
| If I own a ship on land I have to pay property taxes but if I
| just sink it to the bottom of the ocean I have people pay me!
|
| Maritime laws just seem overly weird though. If I lost a car
| in the woods then after 100 years it seems pretty reasonable
| that any scrapper could take it and salvage what they want
| ...
| pessimizer wrote:
| You still have to have laws about it, or else I could take
| your car when it's been sitting in the street for two days.
| ttfvjktesd wrote:
| > Britannic has long been one of the major bucket-list dive
| that many deep wreck sport divers pursue.
|
| There were less people non-commercial diving below 100m, than
| people reaching the top of the everest. If someone has
| Britannic on his list, then he's ether an extremely talented
| very serious technical diver with 500+ logged dives or it's
| just a pipe dream.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Fascinating!
|
| In the header image, the interesting gray-bar informational panel
| placed on the wreck caught my eye. I wonder what it's for?
|
| I assume it's to calibrate scale and color for the underwater
| photography equipment, but would be interested to learn more from
| someone who knows for certain.
| kbutler wrote:
| Yes, looks like ground control points for photogrammetry.
| https://www.pix4d.com/blog/diving-into-underwater-photogramm...
| mikestew wrote:
| And why does it have a U. S. National Parks Service logo on it?
| throwup238 wrote:
| It's a photogrammetry scale card made for the National Park
| Service, probably the Submerged Resources Center which often
| assists with this kind of stuff.
|
| The NPS has a few different ones for paleontology, underwater
| archaeology, etc.
| mikestew wrote:
| Informative answer, thanks.
| suprjami wrote:
| For some reason I read this as "Tritanic" and "Bitannic" and
| thought there was a cool series of ships with a mathematical
| naming convention. Oh well.
| type0 wrote:
| As far I understand Brittanic never operated as a luxury cruise
| ship.
|
| Olympic was the first of this trio, was damaged and retired in
| 1935 and some artifacts from it is in White Swan Hotel
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Swan_Hotel,_Alnwick#Gall...
| dhosek wrote:
| Man, they were so close to naming the trio Unitanic, Bitanic
| and Tritanic.
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