[PSUBS-MAILIST] Titan submersible missing at Titanic site

[Alec Smyth via Personal_Submersibles]

There's an interesting story about cement subs, which I will tell to the
best of my recollection. In the early years we had a PSUBS member whose
name I forget, I believe Swiss or Austrian, who had built a ferrocement sub
that he kept at a mooring in a Swiss lake. The sub was successful, he dived
it for years. But eventually he moved to Colombia due to marriage, and
scuttled the sub in the lake, because the road he had used to take it there
had been re-routed or modified somehow, leaving him without any way of
getting it out. The sub became an attraction for local SCUBA divers.

The second part of the story is that another PSUBS member, Ian Roxborough,
hired the first guy to build him a large cement sub with the intention of
making it an ocean going live-aboard. The project was done completely on
the level, with notification to authorities and in a major port. This was
no drug sub built in the jungle. It got to the point where the hull was
complete, and I think they were about for the first launch. However,
Colombia being plagued by drug subs, the authorities would not sign off on
final paperwork or something (can't remember the exact glitch.) Ian had
sunk a ton of funds into it, and the sub was probably perfectly good, but
approval never came. I'm not sure what happened to the sub. But Ian is
still very much active, so maybe can tell us. I'm not sure if he's on the
email list. If you are, Ian, sorry for bringing up this rather painful
memory!

Best,
Alec

On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 8:35 AM Marc de Piolenc via Personal_Submersibles <
personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:

> That's it. I lost interest when I realized he had built a superstructure
> on a conventional pressure hull.
>
> Very sorry  to hear about Brian Cox.
>
> Marc
> On 6/25/2023 6:11 PM, Jon Wallace via Personal_Submersibles wrote:
>
> Marc, that was probably Brian Cox who passed away a year or so ago.  His
> pressure hull was steel but he did use ferrocement for the superstructure.
> http://www.subdb.info/cgi/database/showvessel/index.cgi?ID=1272980224&VN=Esmae&VT=1
>
> There are no standards for using ferrocement as a manned submarine
> pressure hull and I think anyone attempting it would find little support
> for the project given the Ocean Gate loss.
>
> Jon
>
>
> On Sunday, June 25, 2023 at 04:09:00 AM EDT, Marc de Piolenc via
> Personal_Submersibles <personal_submersibles at psubs.org>
> <personal_submersibles at psubs.org> wrote:
>
>
> I know. I fell in love with FC for yachts, which made me wonder how
> useful it would be for pressure hulls... Turns out there is a 2010
> exchange of messages in my archive with somebody on this list who built
> in FC, Brian Cox. Is he still there?
>
> Marc
>
> On 6/24/2023 8:27 PM, Bernie Hellstrom via Personal_Submersibles wrote:
> > Many boat hulls were made with FC. Even the landing barges in the ww2 ,
> to make piers to in load ships!
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
>
>
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