The search for the missing submersible lost during an expedition to the Titanic wreckage triggered vivid memories for a D.C. woman whose father was rescued from a military submarine in 1939.
Lorraine Tyler’s dad was the captain on the USS Squalus, a submarine that sank off the coast of New England during a test dive in 1939. Twenty-six men died, but 33 survived.
Capt. Oliver Naquin told them to breathe as little as possible.
“Dad held them firm in the face of death,” Lorraine Naquin Tyler said. “He didn’t want them worried. He reassured them about the help that he knew would be on the way.”
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The men were stuck in the ocean for several days, waiting for a rescue craft to come. Tyler shared the story with News4’s Arch Campbell in 2001 when the rescue was featured in an NBC movie called “Submerged.”
“That was a terrible time in the Navy Yard with all those women who knew they had lost their husbands,” Tyler said.
The USS Squalus was 240 feet down. The wreckage of the Titanic, where the lost submersible Titan was headed, sits at 12,500 feet.
Tyler was only 8 years old, so her mom didn’t tell her what was going on, but some of it still managed to slip through.
“There were men outside in the yard hammering on the windows, saying, ’Little girl, do you have a picture of your daddy?’” Tyler said.
“And an older lad in the playground came up to me and said, ‘Your daddy’s ship has sunk, and they’re all dead,’” she said.
That’s why she urges people to have compassion for the loved ones of those on the Titan.
“For everyone around me, it was harrowing, and I know it’s harrowing for those families today,” she said.
“My sympathies are with the people whose husbands are down there.”
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