OceanGate passengers tear up as they see Titanic wreckage for first time

Footage from a previous trip on the Titan submersible vessel shows passengers overcome with emotion as they laid eyes on the wreck of the Titanic.

This particular Titan crew were caught on camera for a 2022 BBC documentary, which involved the adventurers travelling roughly 12,500 feet down into the Atlantic to catch a glimpse of the sunken ship.

BBC

The crew travelled on OceanGate's Titan submersible - the same vessel that suffered a catastrophic implosion with five people on board last month.

Among those on the trip in the BBC doc was Renata Rojas, who had want to see the wreck of the Titanic since she was a child.

With a price tag of up to £196,000 ($250,000), Rojas had saved up for 30 years to make her dream come true.

She told the BBC: "I'm not a millionaire. I've been saving money for a long, long time. I made a lot of sacrifices in my life to be able to get to Titanic. I don't have a car, I didn't get married yet, I don't have children. And all those decisions were because I wanted to go to Titanic."

BBC

After boarding the Titan, Rojas added: "I just need to get there. Even if it's just a debris field, I'll be very happy with just paying my respects in the debris field."

As the submersible descended into the ocean, the captain announced that the crew should soon be able to see the Titanic out of a port window.

The iconic bow of the ship then came into view, prompting Rojas to well up.

"I'm just crying," she admitted as she laid eyes on the Titanic. "We made it. We finally made it."

Rojas said it was 'hard to explain' how it felt to have her dream of seeing the Titanic come true, and she wasn't the only one overwhelmed with the view.

BBC

Another passenger, Oisin Fanning, said: "I can't believe it, in real life when you see it. It's so enormous. It's incredible. I'm lost for words actually, to be honest. It's that good."

After the Titan surfaced, both passengers remained in awe of what they had just witnessed.

Rojas said: "She's big. To imagine how big she must have been: there must have been 20ft of wreck inside the sand.

"Even like that, what you're seeing is 20ft high. Amazing to realised that you're at Titanic. It's no longer a myth for me - it's reality, it's right there. You're so close to it that you can actually touch it."