Leo To Go Deep?

Leonardo DiCaprio could be following his Titanic character Jack to the frigid depths of the North Atlantic.

The Hollywood actor is rumored to be among 20 wealthy tourists who will visit the site of the Titanic wreck this month.

They will apparently pay 35-thousand dollars U-S each to drop to the bottom of the sea in a submersible.

The party, which will include three Maritime experts, will leave St. John's harbor on August 30th.

The well-to-do adventurers will drop three at-a-time to the seabed in a cramped sub built to withstand extreme water pressure.

DiCaprio's agent contacted the Seattle-based adventure tour company, Zegrahm Expedition, in the spring.

The Titanic hit an iceberg early in the morning of April 15th, 1912, killing two-thirds of those on board.

Explorers based in Norfolk, Virginia, meanwhile have hit a new snag in their efforts to salvage inside the Titanic wreckage this summer in the hopes of finding diamonds, gold, coins and currency.

The salvage company said Wednesday that a technical dispute with the submersible crew - and not an order from U.S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. preventing the company from cutting into the wreck - forced the company to abandon hull salvage before it began.

Arnie Geller, president of R.M.S. Titanic Inc., the salvage company, said Wednesday that he fired the submersible crew on July 31, four days after it arrived at the shipwreck.

The company plans a one-month salvage expedition. But without the recovery ship Ocean Intervention and its two small, unmanned submersibles, or remotely operated vehicles, the expedition cannot enter Titanic's hull to recover artifacts.

Geller would not say why he fired the recovery ship, except to cite technical problems. The ROV "wasn't fully operational," he told The Virginian-Pilot. "It couldn't stay down and it couldn't work."

In Maryland, the company that supplied the recovery ship and ROVs disputed Geller's version.

"From our perspective, the ROV was then, and is now, fully operational," said Craig Bagley, an operations manager for Oceaneering International Inc. He confirmed that Geller fired the crew but would not say more.

The dispute sheds new light on R.M.S. Titanic's decision not to salvage from inside the Titanic.

On June 29, the company announced "the most ambitious deep-sea exploration and recovery venture ever mounted." For the first time, the company said, a submersible would enter the ship through the cargo hold to retrieve "valuable artifacts and historic items."

The company has retrieved more than 5,000 artifacts in five expeditions, but those items were retrieved from the ocean floor.

But on July 28, as the salvage crew was nearing the wreck site off the coast of Canada, Clarke issued a ruling ordering them not to cut into the Titanic or sell anything from the wreck.

Salvage leaders said that killed their plans to salvage inside the Titanic, even though Clake's order didn't address that issue.

"Whoever gave Judge Clarke the idea for this order has effectively sealed the fate for the artifacts inside to be lost forever," expedition leader G. Michael Harris said Aug. 1.

Geller now acknowledges that technical problems are the real stumbling block on this particular salvage mission.

"Unfortunately, part of the equipment wasn't operating properly. That's why we haven't gone into the ship to recover anything," he said.

Judge Clarke has supervised the Titanic's salvage since 1992 and gave R.M.S. Titanic sole salvage rights in 1994.

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