Woman recalls her dive to the Titanic, 111 years after it sank

Renata Rojas was 11 years old when her father, a diving instructor, decided to take her with him one day.

“I loved it,” she recalled.

That lifelong attraction led to dives off Long Island, in caves off Florida’s coast, and finally to the biggest journey of her life: Last year she was able to join an expedition to the North Atlantic to see the Titanic.

The famous ship sank on its maiden voyage from Britain to New York City in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, or 111 years ago Saturday. More than 1,500 people died.

To see the wreck, Rojas, a diver with the Long Island Divers Association, said she got aboard a submersible designed and built by the company Oceangate Expeditions.

“The story of the Titanic just kind of pulled me in,” Rojas said. “The fact that it had not been found, that it was lost, it was a tragedy that changed maritime history.”

Rojas said it was not easy to land a spot on the submersible.

“I knew that if I was not a scientist I had to somehow get myself into an expedition to go,” she said. “There were setbacks and decisions that one has to make. I knew we were going to make it happen at some point. I didn’t know when, but it was going to happen.”

Finally, she reached an agreement with Oceangate and made the trip last year. It was unforgettable, she said. The wreckage is about 370 miles south/southeast of the coast of Newfoundland.

“It’s hard to get there. It’s not easy,” she said. “It’s not a cruise ship. It’s not renting a boat and going fishing. It takes a lot of work and effort and you are at the mercy of the weather.”

But once down deep — more than 2 miles — the experience was almost mystical, she said.

It “is an eerie feeling because you are limited to the lights of those submersibles 10, 15 feet ahead of you, but you are searching for that bow, for that moment that you are going to be able to see it,” she said.

“And once you see it, at least for me, the emotion was, ‘wow ... the shock of the sheer size’” of the sunken vessel, she said. “To be able to accomplish something like that is really unbelievable. It’s still unbelievable.”

With Meredith Garofalo