Nargeolet began his career in the French Navy, where he served as an officer specialising in mine clearance, diving, and deep underwater intervention from 1964 to 1986. In the 1970s, he was appointed Commander of the Groupement de Plongeurs Démineurs de Cherbourg, whose mission was to find and neutralise underground mines. In the 1980s, he was transferred to the Undersea Intervention Group (French: Groupe d'Intervention sous la Mer: GISMER [fr]), where he piloted intervention submarines. During that time he travelled the world retrieving submerged French planes and helicopters, including the individuals and weapons upon them. Through this work he found a Roman wreck, located at a depth of 70 metres. He also located a DHC-5 Buffalo that crashed in 1979 with 12 people on board, including several members of the Mauritanian government. Nargeolet retired at the rank of capitaine de frégate (frigate captain).
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Ocean Gate Submarine Freestyle Prod.@WAVEIQ #oceangateexpeditions #titanicsubmersible
In 1986, the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) contacted Nargeolet about diving to the wreck of the Titanic; he heartily agreed to go. With IFREMER, Nargeolet piloted dives to the Titanic wreck site in 1987, 1993, 1994, and 1996. His 1987 expedition was the first to collect artefacts from the wreckage. As part of his IFREMER missions, Nargeolet located various aircraft damaged at sea. On 15 May 1993, Nargeolet made a dive with the Nautile and discovered, by chance, La Lune, which sank in 1664 near Toulon.
Ocean Gate Submarine Freestyle Prod.@WAVEIQ #oceangateexpeditions #titanicsubmersible
Beginning in 1994, Nargeolet was director of Michigan State University's Center for Maritime & Underwater Resource Management (CMURM). From 1996 to 2003, Nargeolet worked with Aqua+, a subsidiary of Canal+, whose objective is to produce underwater films. During his time with the company he directed the underwater missions of two submarines.
The Lune was a 38-gun ship of the line of the French Royal Navy, the first ship of the line to be built at the new state dockyard at Île d'Indret near Nantes, designed by Deviot and constructed by the Dutch shipwright Jan Gron (usually called Jean de Werth in French). She and her sister Soleil were two-deckers, with a mixture of bronze guns on both gun decks.
French ships of the line; la Lune, la Reine, and le Jupiter in 1654
The Lune took part in the Battle of Orbitello on 14 June 1646, as the flagship of Vice-amiral Louis Foucault de Saint-Germain-Beaupré, Comte de Daugnon, in the Battle of Castellammare on 21/22 December 1647, and in the Battle of Pertuis d'Antioche on 8 August 1652. She sailed on 9 November 1664 from Toulon for the Hyères Islands while carrying troops of the 1st Regiment of Picardy, but a half-hour after sailing she suddenly broke apart at the head and sank "like a marble", with only 60 survivors from over 600 aboard. The wreck of Lune was rediscovered by Paul-Henri Nargeolet on 15 May 1993.
In August 2007 RMS Titanic, Inc., a company owned by Premier Exhibitions which organizes travelling exhibitions, commissioned Nargeolet to locate RMS Carpathia, which had rescued survivors of RMS Titanic but was torpedoed in 1918. Nargeolet worked with RMS Titanic to recover artefacts related to the Titanic as the Director of the Underwater Research Program. His work has included utilizing remotely operated vehicles (ROV), as well as piloting dives to the wreck site. His work has resulted in recovering nearly 6,000 artefacts over the course of 35 dives. In 2010, he was part of a mission to 3D map the wreck site and determine levels of deterioration using ROVs and autonomous underwater robots. Also in 2010, he was involved in the search for the flight recorder of Air France Flight 447, which crashed the previous year while en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
RMS Titanic sinks with 1500 lives lost..
RMS Carpathia was a Cunard Line transatlantic passenger steamship built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson in their shipyard in Wallsend, England. The Carpathia made her maiden voyage in 1903 from Liverpool to Boston, and continued on this route before being transferred to Mediterranean service in 1904. In April 1912, she became famous for rescuing survivors of the rival White Star Line's RMS Titanic after it struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. The Carpathia navigated the ice fields to arrive two hours after the Titanic had sunk, and the crew rescued 706 survivors from the ship's lifeboats.
The Carpathia was sunk during World War I on 17 July 1918 after being torpedoed three times by the German submarine U-55 off the southern Irish coast, with a loss of five crew members. The name of the ship comes from the mountain range of the Carpathians in Eastern Europe.
Air France Flight 447 (AF447 or AFR447) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. On 1 June 2009, inconsistent airspeed indications led to the pilots inadvertently stalling the Airbus A330 serving the flight, failing to recover from it and eventually crashing into the Atlantic Ocean at 02:14 UTC, killing all 228 passengers and crew on board.
The Brazilian Navy recovered the first major wreckage, and two bodies, from the sea within five days of the accident, but the investigation by France's Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) was hampered because the aircraft's flight recorders were not recovered from the ocean floor until May 2011, nearly two years later.
The BEA's final report, released at a news conference on 5 July 2012, concluded that the aircraft suffered temporary inconsistencies between the airspeed measurements—likely resulting from ice crystals obstructing the aircraft's pitot tubes—which caused the autopilot to disconnect. The crew reacted to the abnormality incorrectly, causing the aircraft to enter an aerodynamic stall from which it did not recover. The accident is the deadliest in the history of Air France, as well as the deadliest aviation accident involving the Airbus A330.
Titanic: The Story 1993
Olympic (sister ship of Titanic) departure (video 1911).
Titanic departure (real video 1912)
Titanic: The Story 1993
Titanic Real Footage: Leaving Belfast for Disaster (1911-1912) | British Pathé
Titanic Real Footage: Leaving Belfast for Disaster (1911-1912) | British Pathé
![[60 fps, 1080p, stabilized, color] Titanic and Olympic real footage](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LZPJbUU7X4o/maxresdefault.jpg)
[60 fps, 1080p, stabilized, color] Titanic and Olympic real footage
[60 fps, 1080p, stabilized, color] Titanic and Olympic real footage
![[4K, 60fps, colorized] Titanic.1912. Only existent footage.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UghSI0NAO9Y/maxresdefault.jpg)
[4K, 60fps, colorized] Titanic.1912. Only existent footage.
[4K, 60fps, colorized] Titanic.1912. Only existent footage.
Titanic: Into the Heart of the Wreck | Channel 4 Documentary (2021)
Titanic: Into the Heart of the Wreck | Channel 4 Documentary (2021)
On 18 June 2023, Nargeolet was onboard the Titan, a submersible owned by OceanGate on an expedition to view the Titanic wreckage. The vehicle lost contact with the above-water ship, MV Polar Prince. Search-and-rescue missions involved water and air support from the United States, Canada and France. On 22 June, after the discovery of a debris field approximately 490 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic, OceanGate said it believed Nargeolet and the four others aboard "have sadly been lost." A United States Coast Guard press conference later confirmed that the debris was consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure hull, resulting in the implosion of the submersible vehicle.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet on the day he became an American citizen in 2016.Courtesy John Nathaniel Paschall
Nargeolet had two daughters, Chloé and Sidonie; a son, Julien; a stepson, John Nathaniel Paschall; and four grandsons. His wife Michele Marsh, an Emmy Award-winning American television reporter, died in 2017. Later, as a result of his Titanic work, Nargeolet re-established contact with a childhood friend, Anne Sarraz-Bournet, who became his second wife. At the time of his death, Nargeolet lived in Pawling in New York state, United States, having moved there in 2022.
Pawling in New York state
Dutcher House Pawling in New York state
Michele Marsh, an Emmy Award-winning American television reporter
