The tragedy of the Titanic, immortalised in cinema by James Cameron, has captured the imagination of generations of people. Renata Rojas is one such person. The 50-year-old banker had dreamed of seeing the shipwreck ever since she was a child. Her dream came true in July when she travelled to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean as part of an expedition to explore the wreck.
Rojas was among the three civilians or “citizen scientists” who paid a staggering six-figure sum to see the Titanic, which sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its maiden journey. To fulfil her lifelong dream, she saved for more than three decades, reports the BBC.
Rojas was part of the 2022 OceanGate Titanic Expedition – a commercial initiative to explore the 110-year-old shipwreck with a new type of submersible that took five people to the depths of the ocean.
“When I was a kid, nobody had found it. Nobody knew where it was,” Rojas told BBC. She dreamed of finding the shipwreck after watching a black-and-white film on the Titanic, and even took up oceanography so she could fulfil her dream.
During her first week of college in 1985, however, the wreck of the ocean liner was discovered off the coast of Newfoundland. Rojas eventually switched to banking and went on to have a successful career, but the Titanic continued to dominate her thoughts. She followed news of new discoveries and explorations very closely.
When OceanGate Expeditions began letting civilians participate in trips to see the Titanic for the hefty sum of $250,000, Rojas knew she had her chance. She worked every contact she had, and spent a great deal of her savings to get a seat on the expedition.
“I’m not a millionaire. I’ve been saving for a long, long time,” she told BBC.
In July this year, after extensive training, Rojas travelled to the famous shipwreck with pilot Scott Griffith, research scientist Dr Ross and two other “mission specialists”.
“You’re feeling overwhelmed the entire time, not only because [of] just the fact that you were there ... [but] as we were approaching the wreck, I was wowed. That was the feeling,” she told The Independent.
“I kept it together throughout the ascent,” she said. “When we finally came back, I lost it. That’s when I finally started to sob with everybody there, you know, with the clapping and everything.”
The dive was more than a sightseeing trip, it also served a scientific purpose.
Crew members were tasked with collecting sediment from different sides of the shipwreck without disturbing anything. On the way down, they also trapped water from different levels of ocean water trenches
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