A man who survived after spending 84 hours trapped in a tiny sub that sank off the coast of Ireland has sent a message to the loved ones of the missing Titan crew, telling them: “After what we went through, there is always hope.”
In 1973, Roger Mallinson was laying cable in the Atlantic in a 6ft-diameter steel ball submersible when it sank 1,600ft to the seabed.
He and his fellow submariner Roger Chapman had just 12 minutes of oxygen left when they finally surfaced after the deepest underwater rescue in history.
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As the desperate search for the Titanic tourist sub continues in the Atlantic, Mr Mallinson, 85, urged people to pray for the five men on board. He told the Mirror: “There’s always hope. It’s amazing what can happen.
“They need to keep warm so they don’t freeze, and to conserve the oxygen.”
He and Mr Chapman, who died in 2020, were submerged 150 miles off the coast of Ireland when the aft sphere of their vessel, Pisces III, flooded and caused it to sink.
The rescue mission was coordinated by Commander Peter Messervy, boss of Vickers Oceanics, and a former Royal Navy rescue diver.
One rescue submarine was flown in from Canada, and another was shipped from the North Sea.
A remote-controlled miniature submarine was also flown in by the US Air Force.
There were four failed rescue attempts before a repaired Pisces II, which had been damaged in the first rescue attempt, was piloted down to the ocean floor and helped lift its namesake to the surface.
The two men had sunk with only a cheese and chutney sandwich and can of lemonade to sustain them, but both were unharmed when they emerged.
Mr Mallinson, a former Royal Navy engineer from Troutbeck, Cumbria, said: “We were OK when the hatch opened, it was a great relief. We felt lucky to be alive, it was amazing.
“There wasn’t much chance of a rescue. We didn’t think we were going to survive.
“It was fairly obvious we weren’t going to survive because our oxygen was running out and every time anyone came to help, it went wrong for some daft reason.” Speaking in 2013, Mr Chapman said: “If you switch off, you use one quarter of the oxygen. You don’t talk or move.
“We hardly spoke, just grabbing each other’s hand and giving it a squeeze to show we were all right. It was very cold.”
Mr Mallinson said he hoped the crew of the missing Titanic sub were making every effort to contact rescue teams.
But he said: “The thing I worry about is why there have been no messages from the vessel. It makes me seriously worried that there’s no one alive.
“I imagine they will be hitting the hull of the vessel with a hammer so that if there’s someone in the area they may hear it. It carries a hell of a long way, a lot of miles.”
In the deadliest naval incident in post-Soviet Russia, the Kursk nuclear submarine sank after an explosion in 2000, killing all 119 crew on board.
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