The daughter of French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of five people inside a submersible missing near the Titanic wreck, said on Thursday she held hope they will be rescued but she is comforted by the knowledge that he is in the place he loved most.
Sidonie Nargeolet told Reuters she was living with ‘a lot of stress, very mixed emotions’.
Nargeolet said her 77-year-old father’s vast experience with submarines made him ‘know how to react to problems’ and she was confident he was able to manage the situation well.
‘He is very passionate about the Titanic since they found it 30 years ago and I know now he is at the place he would like to be.
‘So whether he’s in a submarine and whether he’s in the Titanic, I know he likes it.’
Her father’s colleagues have described him as a leading expert on the Titanic with more than 35 dives to the wreck under his belt after a two-decade career in the French navy.
His daughter said she learned about the accident on Monday, when she received a text message from her father’s spouse saying he should have been back at 6 p.m. on Sunday.
‘I cried a lot,’ she said of her reaction to the news. She had last seen her father just before Christmas last year in Andorra.
‘He sent me a message a week before (getting in the submersible) telling me the weather was bad, so they hadn’t been able to go down, but that there was a great atmosphere,’ she said.
‘I sent him a message on Sunday for Father’s Day but he didn’t reply.’
Nargeolet said her father had made his first trip to the wreck in 1987.
On one trip in another vessel operated by U.S.-based OceanGate Expeditions, he told her that he was not sure he would return safely, although he eventually did.
