What would encourage five people to seal themselves into a 22-foot experimental submersible bolted from the outside? By the same token, what would encourage anyone to be first to reach the North Pole, the South Pole, fly solo across the Atlantic, summit Everest, or stand on the moon?
All of these famous firsts were accomplished by members of The Explorers Club, the 119-year old multidisciplinary exploration society based in New York, with over 34 chapters worldwide, including here in the Front Range.
You likely know our members, who have secured a place in the history of exploration. Robert E. Peary. Roald Amundsen. The Kon-Tiki’s Thor Heyerdahl. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. And currently, James Cameron, Jane Goodall, and Buzz Aldrin.
Earlier this month, Explorers Club members British explorer Hamish Harding, 58, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, a French deep sea explorer and Titanic expert, both perished aboard the Titan submersible along with three others: OceanGate co-founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, 61, and Pakistani business executive Shahzara Dawood, 48, and his son, Suleman, 19.
It was a sad day for exploration but loved ones can take comfort in knowing it’s unlikely these intrepid pioneers suffered. Former Navy nuclear attack submarine commander Capt. Alfred Scott McLaren, USN (Ret.) Ph.D., a veteran of more than twenty Cold War missions and three Arctic expeditions, and president emeritus of The Explorers Club, tells the New York Times (June 23), “They really wouldn’t have even known they would have died, they would have been dead before they knew it.”
While all were men, taking risks in the pursuit of knowledge is hardly gender specific. Within the last 100 years, women adventurers and explorers such as aviator Amelia Earhart, marine biologist Sylvia Earle, and astronaut Kathryn Sullivan, have demonstrated that the spirit of exploration is an inbred trait among all humankind determined to push dragons off maps and learn what’s on the other side of the hill.
In their own inimitable way, uneducated armchair explorers online have denigrated this as a risky adventure for thrill-seeking billionaires. Risky? Yes. But as Stockton Rush tells CBS Sunday Morning in an interview with David Pogue taped last year and recently aired, “If you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get into your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk and it really is a risk/reward question.”
One little-known fact about the submersible’s 14th fatal mission was its ongoing study of the complex marine life around the Titanic wreck. According to the Wall Street Journal (June 22) the plan was for Titan’s crew to collect water samples to analyze tiny bits of floating genetic material left behind by organisms feeding off the ill-fated luxury liner. Environmental DNA (eDNA) was to be collected for researchers looking for powerful compounds produced by marine organisms that might have medicinal properties.
As Sylvia Earle told a meeting of explorers at Club headquarters in New York earlier this month during World Oceans Week 2023, “The deeper we go, the less we know and the more discoveries we’re finding.”
But that fact doesn’t neatly fit into the playbook of naysayers who reveled in “eat the rich” crass humor and snarky, insensitive memes.
Former Explorers Club president Richard Wiese believes Explorers Club members are often likened to a tribe whose members forge a special connection. “As new explorers join this illustrious group, they express a profound sense of belonging, proclaiming, ‘I have found my tribe.’ It is a community where kindred spirits unite, sharing a common ardor for discovery and adventure.
“Their unquenchable curiosity about life and the mysteries that lie beyond compels them to explore uncharted territories.”
To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy speaking at Rice University in 1962, explorers choose to do these things, “not because they’re easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills …”
Indeed, exploration is hard, very hard and the second-guessing will likely continue for years. But let’s remember the five who perished on the Titan submersible were pushing the extremes of technology, and seizing every moment of life with, as Wiese posted last week, “an insatiable curiosity, unquenchable thirst for experiences, and a passion to surpass limits.
“In the wake of recent events, it is vital to remember that explorers are not fueled by a desire for death but rather by a profound zest for life.”
Jeff Blumenfeld, a resident of Boulder, is the chairman of the Rocky Mountain chapter of The Explorers Club (explorers-rm.org). He is also editor of Expedition News which has covered the exploration field for 29 years. (expeditionnews.com) (editor@expeditionnews.com)
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