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IT is not always easy to under- stand (or agree with) how the public reacts to certain news. Certainly, this week's major global headline, that a submers- ible had disappeared off the radar and lost all contact, was made more intriguing because of the nature of the actual voy- age, and who the passengers were. The missing vessel, named Titan, was a tourist submarine, which is a truck-sized sub that holds five people and usually dives with a four-day emergen- cy supply of oxygen. It takes passengers to the depths of the sea to view the wreckage of the infamous Titanic at a depth of 3,800 metres. The tickets cost $250,000. On board the Titan were a bil- lionaire Pakistani businessman and his son, Shahzada and Sule- man Dawood, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet who was an expert on the shipwreck and its artefacts and Stockton Rush, the CEO of the vessel's opera- tor, OceanGate Expeditions. One hour and 45 minutes into its dive, all contact was lost and despite a massive search and rescue mission being launched in the Atlantic Ocean, we now know that the Titan had im- ploded, and no one survived. The story is undeniably a trag- ic one for all the families and friends of the deceased, but to read certain online comments one would think that the lives of these four men and a 19-year- old boy do not really matter because, "who cares? They're wealthy, this was a frivolous pursuit and they brought it on themselves". I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was the gist of a lot of the commentary. There were also a lot of com- parisons with those refugees who drown while trying to flee their war-torn countries on ramshackle boats, with some asking why should so much ef- fort be made to rescue five peo- ple while hundreds of migrants are regularly left to die. This is a valid point which the respective governments should be made to answer, because after all, all lives should matter in equal measure (even though the ine- qualities and social injustices of this world have proved time and again that this is a mere pipe dream). But when it comes to wheth- er we should feel compassion is another story. After all, it is possible to feel sorrow for the poor and desperate and to feel equal sorrow for the rich and mighty, both of whom have met their fate out at sea. It is true that one group is dying in order to reach another country in the hope of a better life, while the other group died in an attempt to visit what is basically a rich man's tourist attraction. But to me it just underscores the ul- timate bitter irony of extreme wealth - one could say that the watery graves of both groups prove that no matter how much money one has, it really does not matter in the end. For others, however, it is clear that it is the extreme wealth which rankles; they are rubbed the wrong way by people who are so obscenely rich that they have literally done everything and been everywhere on land, so they have to come up with new ways to get their thrills. Both Richard Branson (Virgin Galac- tic) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) set their sights on outer space and have travelled on their own spacecraft themselves. In fact, one of the deceased, Hamish Harding, described as a noted explorer, had also flown on a Blue Origin flight, further con- firming how the playgrounds of the rich have extended beyond the cliched destinations of the past. Until the news of the missing Titan emerged this week I had no idea that there was such a thing as a submarine which takes you down to view the wreckage of the Titanic but, like outer space, it seems that the bottom of the ocean is another new frontier. Of course, this begs the ques- tion, should a tragedy which claimed thousands of lives even be considered within the realms of a 'tourist attraction'? That, too, is debatable. What I do not get, however, are the jokes and memes about the five deaths on the Titan. Whereas there are times when the powerful are directly re- sponsible for the misery and suffering we see all around us and should be taken to task (we have enough local examples at our fingertips) it is not fair to make the correlation with these rich men who died and global poverty. I could sense a feeling of grim satisfaction - best described by the word schadenfreude - as if these billionaires embodied all that is wrong with the world to- day and that they "had it com- ing". When these tragedies oc- cur, it is so easy to come out with quick, glib statements, rather than taking a beat before saying anything. There are times when cynical quips are misplaced and unjustified… and I believe this is one of those times. All week long, all I could think about was the thought of being in a confined space with oxy- gen running out by the hour, thousands of metres under the sea - a nightmare scenario and a horrible way to die. When I read that the catastrophic im- plosion caused by the loss of the pressure chamber would have killed the five men crew in mil- liseconds, and that they proba- bly died on Sunday shortly after contact was lost, I was relieved for their sake that it was a mer- ciful death, rather than a slow and agonising one. And, as if to continue to un- derscore the terrible, twisted irony of this whole saga, it was reported that the Titan implod- ed just metres away from the Titanic. The best quote which en- capsulates this whole tragedy comes from Dr Michael Guillen, a scientist, journalist and au- thor who was the first TV cor- respondent to report from the Titanic, who himself survived a close call in 2000 when the sub- mersible he was in got caught in an underwater current, causing a collision with the propeller of the Titanic wreck. In an inter- view to CNN, he explained: "Number one, the sea is dan- gerous. This is not a play- ground. The ocean is rest- less and I think of it when I was looking at the North At- lantic waters. They're dark, they're cold; they just want to swallow you up if you make the tiniest little mistake. Second of all, what I took away from my trip down there was that this isn't just a shipwreck. I went down there thinking I'm just going to report on a shipwreck, but what hit me — especially in that moment of prayer, and it came home to me — that peo- ple lost their lives. Men, women and children. More than 1,000 of them. This is their final rest- ing place. This is sacred ground. I think we should pause, fig- ure out what happened so we can fix it in the future, but also think of the danger and think of the sacredness of this site. It's not a joyride. It's not a Disney- land destination." 6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 25 JUNE 2023 OPINION Josanne Cassar Titan tragedy: Why the schadenfreude just because they were billionaires? OPINION The Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five men on board instantly