Titanic: the incredible discovery of a wreck hunter on a mystery passenger of the mythical liner

A hundred years have passed since the sinking of the titanicbut the “unsinkable” liner is far from having revealed all its secrets. Guest on the set of It starts today this Wednesday, June 8, 2022, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, wreck hunter, came to tell how an object found on the wreckage of the boat allowed him to trace the story of a mysterious passenger from the Titanic. At the end of the 1980s, this ex-officer of the French Navy joined the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea, which allowed him to dive 35 times on the wreck of the giant of the seas.

On one occasion, in 1993, the wreck hunter pulled a leather suitcase out of the water, in which he discovered a clarinet, playing cards, but also and above all letters of a grieving girlfriend. “He was a young boy who was 22 years old and who had left with a friend to go around the world, explains Paul-Henri to Faustine Bollaert. (…) She wrote to him a little around the world, she said to him ‘You should still come back’, we feel in the letters that she was tired of him being out for a walk.”

The mystery passenger was not on the Titanic

With the help of curators and historians, Paul-Henri managed to find the owner of the mysterious suitcase. And incredible thing, it was not on the boat at the time of the sinking. “They were two friends and the day before departure, they were in a hotel room. One said ‘I’m tired, I’m going to bed’, the other went for a drink. He was in some dodgy bars in Southampton and eventually there was a fight, he got hit on the head. The next day, her boyfriend woke up and said to himself, ‘As usual, he’s going to be late’, so he took his suitcase and left on the Titanic. And when the other woke up, he was on a boat, but not on the Titanic. They had kidnapped him to work on another boat. It saved his life because his boyfriend did not survive.” Research revealed that the mysterious non-passenger was named Howard Irwin. His traveling companion, who died aboard the Titanic, was named Henry Jr Sutehall.

A few years later, thanks to a documentary aired on the Discovery Channel, the story of Howard’s suitcase was traced to the family of his girlfriend, Pearl Shuttle. An unbelievable ending.