“It was not just a submarine pilot who went down on the Titanic, it was much more than that. He went to see the descendants, the survivors”, is moved on franceinfo the underwater archaeologist Michel L’Hour, after the death of his friend Paul-Henri Nargeolet in the implosion of the Titan.
“It was his passion that guided him and this wreck had become a bit his”, testifies Michel L’Hour, underwater archaeologist and member of the Marine Academy, friend of Paul-Henri Nargeolet after his disappearance, on franceinfo this Thursday evening. The scuba diver, a great specialist in the Titanic, died at the age of 77 in the implosion of the submersible which led him, with four other people, to the wreck of the liner.
How did you react when you learned of the sad epilogue of this expedition in which Paul-Henri Nargeolet took part?
Extremely affected. I am one of the people who have kept hope since the first day, admitting moreover that in the hypotheses of the disappearance of the submersible, there was the possibility of an implosion. In this case, the dice were cast, but I could hardly believe that this relatively new machine could have imploded. I told myself all the same that the engineers must have foreseen the possibility that this machine would dive more than ten times in its life. Now, I’m absolutely devastated by all of this. I find it hard to accept the idea that Paul-Henri Nargeolet is no longer and I am obviously also thinking of those passengers who embarked on what, no doubt, was probably a bit of a dream for them, but who ended so abruptly.
The only element that I retain, I tell myself that since nothing had been found for four five days, they were condemned to disappear in the dark without being able to speak in order to save money, and then finally syncopate without realizing it. account. I don’t think they even knew they were going to die.
He was a specialist in deep-sea diving, a maritime archeology enthusiast. A career soldier too, since he was a submarine pilot. Who was he exactly?
I knew him, he was a naval officer. Our careers crossed very regularly. He had become the skipper of Ifremer’s Nautile. Then he managed two submarines, Jules and Jim, which were machines that descended to 1,000 meters, which were owned by a subsidiary of Canal +, Aqua +. Afterwards, he worked in the United States. He was the boss of Titanic operations. He worked with me in the China Sea. We discussed a lot at the time because he had come with submarines on operations.
The last mission I did with him, we worked on the wreck of the Moon, in the harbor of Toulon. The last mission we shared isn’t that far off. It was on the wreck of the submarine La Minerve, lost in 1968, where Paul-Henri had called me to tell me that one of his American friends was ready to provide us with a boat and a submarine. to go down on the Minerve with the children of the Pacha, the Minerve and the chief mechanic. Again on this occasion, we had exchanged a lot both on the techniques and especially how we could make them evolve. He was a little over 75, but in reality, for me, I was talking to a young man because he always had the same state of mind when he talked about his job.
He was passionate about the Titanic. It was his specialty…
The Titanic, he knew it absolutely by heart. I remember discussions with him, It was incredible. He described the wreckage and the operations he had carried out. I felt like I was there. You have to read his book “In the Depths of the Titanic” to understand how this wreck came into his life. It’s quite common, when we search wrecks, we end up appropriating them. And he really had a crazy tropism for this wreck of the Titanic.
He wasn’t just a submarine pilot who went down on the Titanic as part of his job, he was much more than that. He went to see the descendants, the survivors. He had gone to see the last little girl who had witnessed her father’s disappearance. He told me that with a lot of tenderness, a lot of emotion. It was his passion that guided him and this wreck had become a bit his.
Admittedly, there were billionaires who wanted to get off and that paid for the mission, but his interest was to see the state of degradation. Because this boat will eventually disappear. He still had a lot of questions about it and it was therefore, in this kind of mission that he had given himself, that unfortunately, another technology, which is a failure it seems, killed him and killed all its passengers.