A pair of hurricanes wreaked havoc with a young couple’s plan to marry aboard a research ship that is mapping the wreck of the Titanic.

Maryann Morin, a Messalonskee High School graduate from Oakland, and Evan Kovacs are underwater three-dimensional imaging specialists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

They’re working aboard The Jean Charcot as part of a team of marine archaeologists, maritime engineers, technicians and explorers who are documenting each inch of the debris field where the famous vessel sank on April 15, 1912.

Morin and Kovacs were married Sunday on the bow as the ship raced away from two hurricanes — Danielle and Earl — bearing down on Atlantic Canada.

The captain of the research vessel felt uncomfortable with Danielle’s track in the North Atlantic, Morin said, so he decided to return the ship to port.

Earl came on Danielle’s heels and threatened to bring damaging weather along the Atlantic coast through Labor Day.

Maryann Kovacs said some people may say it was “gimmicky” to get married on a ship to the Titanic expedition, but if you ask anyone who was there, it was the most natural and fitting thing to do.

“It seemed like all the stars, planets, and even the weather was pulling us in this direction,” Maryann Kovacs said in an e-mail. “We were running from two hurricanes, but you wouldn’t know it from the pictures because the fog cleared and sun came out just before I stepped on deck. It was beautiful.”

Kovacs didn’t give her much time to prepare for the wedding. He asked her to marry him the prior evening, on the ship’s upper deck as the sun set.

Kovacs, 35, said he was ready to propose to Morin, 31, a year ago but held on to the ring, waiting for the right moment.

“I was planning on doing it out at sea, maybe over the site or something; but the hurricane chased us off, and now we start going separate directions — so it’s now or never,” he said.

Maryann and a fellow researcher stayed up all night making paper flowers and fashioning a wedding gown out of a sheet.

Scenes from the expedition, including the wedding ceremony, were broadcast on MSNBC on Monday, she said.

Morin and Kovacs met in 2005 during another expedition to the Titanic site, about 400 miles south of Newfoundland. They now live in Pocasset, Mass.

Morin said her crew is creating a mosaic of the wreck site. The bow and stern have been filmed many times, but other parts of the wreck are largely unexplored.

No full map of the wreck exists, she said.

After The Jean Charcot docked in St. John’s, Newfoundland, the couple had a quick honeymoon before they had to separate.

“I have to leave to do another job with the National Park Service: filming shipwrecks in Lake Superior,” she said.