A Titanic enthusiast said he decided against joining a dive expedition to the wreck of the Titanic last month over concerns about the safety of the vessel.

The man, who has spent years immersing himself in the history of the 111-year-old disaster, emailed operator OceanGate Expedition four weeks before the Titan vanished this week.

In the email, sent on 22 May and seen by i, he said he had read that the 22-foot Titan sub, which went missing on Sunday, had previously been “downgraded” to reach a depth of around 9,800 feet (3,000 metres).

The man – who has asked not to be identified – asked the company “will it be safe to travel to the wreck?”, which lies on the ocean bed at a depth of around 12,500 feet (3,800 metres).

The 49-year-old, from the Isle of Wight, had hoped to travel with his girlfriend, but decided not to go ahead with the plan, citing concerns about cost and safety after seeing previous media reports about the Titan.

He described experiencing a “cold shiver down my spine” after hearing that the vessel had vanished at sea just weeks after he contacted the company about boarding the sub.

“I’ve been wanting to go down to the Titanic for a long time. I’ve been following OceanGate and the manufacturer of this Titan submarine. I sent them an email and they never got back to me,” he told i.

“It’s a close shave. It’s heartbreaking. It’s a bit like when a car just misses you when you’ve been crossing the road and you think you’ve had a lucky escape.

“It’s just a massive shock especially when you knew there were concerns about it. I just thought what a disaster which could have been avoided.”

A desperate search and rescue mission continues to save the five people onboard the sub, including three British nationals, with the vessel only holding enough emergency oxygen to last until Thursday.

UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman and British billionaire Hamish Harding were on board when the operators lost contact with the sub about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

In a 2020 article, technology news site Geekwire reported that tests on OceanGate’s carbon-hulled Titan submersible – built for Titanic journeys – that were conducted at the Deep Ocean Test Facility in Annapolis, Maryland, in the US, revealed that its hull at that time “showed signs of cyclic fatigue” at lower depths, with the hull’s depth rating reduced to 3,000 metres as a result.

OceanGate’s website states that the current five-man Titan sub used in Titanic expeditions can now descend to depths of 13,123 feet – or 4,000 metres, with the company stating in a May 2021 court filing that the Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature” that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.

The British man who enquired last month about travelling on the sub, said he first became fascinated with the Titanic story more than 25 years ago.

His father had worked with Frederick Fleet, one of the two men in the Titanic’s crow’s nest on the night it struck an iceberg.

Despite being eager to one day join an Atlantic dive to the bottom of the ocean, he said his concerns outweighed his curiousty.

“That sub has a crush depth of 4,000m, the Titanic is down 3,800 metres,” he said. “So [the vessel] had gone into the red zone. It wasn’t designed to continually go down to that depth.”

The British passenger also raised concerns that there was no “umbilical cord” attaching the Titan to a vessel on the surface that would allow it to rise in case of an emergency.

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A three-person research submersible named Alvin, involved in a 1986 exploration of the site of the Titanic shipwreck, was built with an emergency mechanism that would allow a titanium sphere containing the crew to separate and rise to the surface, he argued.

Instead, he said the search mission currently being launched was like “looking for a needle in a haystack”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was among those to express his “deep concern” as fears grew for those on board the submersible today.

Giving an update on Tuesday evening, US Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said his “crews are working round the clock” during the rescue mission.

The US Coast Guard, US Navy and Canadian Coast Guard are working together during the “complex search effort”, warning there were only about 40 hours of breathable air left on the sub.