2023-06-22 21:08:00
The ex-soldier and enthusiast of the famous Titanic died during his thirty-eighth mission, in the submersible Titan which had been missing since June 18.
By Alice Pairo-Vasseur Born March 2, 1946 in Chamonix (Haute-Savoie), Paul-Henri Nargeolet, in love with the depths, quickly responded to the call of the open sea and joined Cherbourg, where he worked as commander of a group of divers – deminers, for the national navy. © JOEL SAGET / AFP Published on 06/22/2023 at 9:06 p.m. – Modified on 06/22/2023 at 9:28 p.m.
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He was an enthusiast and one of the most advanced connoisseurs of the Titanic. Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet was one of the five participants in the mission of the submersible Titan, missing since June 18 off the North American coast, and whose debris was found near the wreck of the Titanic. It was his thirty-eighth mission, aiming to approach the famous liner.
Born on March 2, 1946 in Chamonix (Haute-Savoie), Paul-Henri Nargeolet, in love with the depths, quickly responded to the call of the open sea and joined Cherbourg, where he worked as commander of a group of clearance divers for the navy. national. Before joining, after twenty-two years in the service of the army (1964-1986), the French research institute for the exploitation of the sea (Ifremer).
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Then in charge of deep intervention submarines, it was with one of them, the Nautile, that he accomplished, in 1987, his first and long descent towards the wreckage, discovered two years earlier.
“The emotion was such…”
Until then responsible for the underwater operations of RMS Titanic Inc, the company that owns the rights to the wreck of the Titanic, the ex-soldier confided regularly about his passion for the ocean liner stranded in the North Atlantic in 1912. In an essay, published in 2022 and titled In the depths of the Titanic (Harper Collins) he said in particular that he was the first, in 1993, to bring up objects from the ship.
Last February, he remembered in the columns of the Point, his first encounter with the Titanic: “We arrived by the front part, the best preserved and the most symbolic. The emotion was such that for ten minutes we did not exchange a word. His passion will have led him to the end of the trip. He died at the age of 77.
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