Titanic Submersible Implosion: Things You Need to Know

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush emerges from the hatch atop the OceanGate submarine Cyclops 1 in the San Juan Islands, Wash., on Sept. 12, 2018. Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP

Here are the latest updates on the Titanic submersible that the U.S. Coast Guard said suffered a “catastrophic implosion” and the company that operated the craft confirming that the five people onboard are dead.

The submersible, called “Titan,” was reported overdue on Sunday afternoon about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the Titanic sank more than a century ago.

OceanGate Expeditions, the tour company leading the trip, has been chronicling the decay of the iconic ocean liner and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

After days of frantic searching for the missing craft, the company released a statement saying it believes all of Titan’s five passengers have lost their lives.

Coast Guard Admiral John W. Mauger told a press conference on Thursday that the submersible had suffered a “catastrophic implosion.”

This photo combo shows from left, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, and Hamish Harding, who were aboard the small submersible that went missing in the Atlantic Ocean and was later found to have suffered a catastrophic implosion. AP Photo/File

‘Sadly Been Lost’

“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

“We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew. This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss,” the company added.

Before OceanGate released the statement, the company’s co-founder expressed optimism on social media that there would be enough oxygen on board the submarine and that “the time window for their rescue is longer than what most people think.”

When the craft launched on Sunday, it had about a four-day supply of breathable air.

The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of the sunken Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, dives in an undated photograph. OceanGate Expeditions/Handout via Reuters

OceanGuard’s tragic announcement came hours after the Coast Guard confirmed it had found a “debris field” near the Titanic though it initially did not specify whether it believed it was connected to the submarine.

Then, in a 3 p.m. press conference, the Coast Guard said it had positively linked the wreckage to the submersible, which had suffered a “catastrophic” event.

Mauger described what happened to the submarine as a “catastrophic implosion” that sent debris as far as 1,600 feet away from the bow of the Titanic, which he said was “consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” inside the craft.

“On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families,” Mauger said.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger speaks to the media in Boston, Mass., on June 19, 2023. AP Photo/Steven Senne

The Search

After the submarine disappeared on Sunday, rescuers rushed ships, planes, and other equipment to the site to search for the missing craft.

Coast Guard officials at one point said that underwater noises were detected in the search area on Tuesday and Wednesday, raising hopes that there would be survivors.

On Thursday, an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot equipped with cameras, lights, and arms also joined the effort.

During Thursday’s press briefing, the Coast Guard said that teams had all the gear needed to mount an adequate search effort for the sub.

The rescue teams were able to “mobilize an immense amount of gear to the site in just really a remarkable amount of time,” Mauger said, especially “given the fact that we started without any sort of vessel response plan for this or any sort of pre-staged resources.”

Ultimately, it was a robot operated by Cape Cod-based Pelagic Research Services (PRS) that found the debris field.

“The Pelagic Research Services ROV Odysseus 6K, was deployed from Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic within the rescue window early Thursday morning,” the company said in a statement.

“Odysseus was the subsea asset that found the debris field referenced by the U.S. Coast Guard,” it added, noting that the robot was rigged “specifically for rescue.”

A US Coast Guard vessel sits in port in Boston Harbor across from the US Coast Guard Station Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 19, 2023. Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

The company expressed gratitude to all involved in the search and rescue mission.

“Our focus right now is on the families of those from the Titan and for their tragic loss,” the company added.

The search area for the Titan covered thousands of miles, an area about twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2.5 miles deep.

‘Kamikaze Operation’

One of OceanGate’s first customers, when the company launched its offer of exploring the wreck of the Titanic several years ago, characterized the dive he made as a “kamikaze operation.”

Arthur Loibl, a 61-year-old retired businessman and adventurer from Germany, told The Associated Press that he went on a voyage down to the Titanic in 2021 in a submersible operated by OceanGate.

On the dive, Loibl was joined by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and two men from England.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” Loibl told the outlet. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

Loibl’s dive was delayed several times to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights, with the overall voyage lasting 10.5 hours.

He said that during the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, with only a fluorescent glow stick to see by.

Loibl described Rush as a tinkerer who tried to make do with what was available to carry out the dives, but in hindsight, he said, “it was a bit dubious.”

“I was a bit naive, looking back now,” Loibl said. “It was a kamikaze operation.”

Whistleblower Flagged Safety Issues

A whistleblower who worked for OceanGate said he had raised a number of safety concerns ahead of the craft’s maiden voyage, but was ignored and later fired.

David Lochridge once served as the director of marine operations at OceanGate.

He was fired in January 2018 after flagging concerns about the craft’s carbon fiber hull and other systems, according to a lawsuit brought by Lochridge against OceanGate after his dismissal (pdf).

Lochridge was asked by OceanGate executives to carry out a quality inspection on the experimental craft, although the lawsuit states that he was stonewalled when requesting key documentation while his verbal concerns over safety and quality control issues were ignored.

Lochridge would later go on to issue an inspection report on Jan. 18, 2018, in which he identified “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns.”

One of the safety concerns flagged in the report was that “visible flaws” in the carbon fiber used in the hull of the submersible could expand into bigger tears under “pressure cycling,” or changes in pressure as the craft descended to extreme ocean depths.

The whistleblower’s biggest concern, according to the lawsuit, was that the hull of the Titan hadn’t been subjected to nondestructive testing.

“Lochridge was repeatedly told that no scan of the hull or Bond Line could be done to check for delaminations, porosity and voids of sufficient adhesion of the glue being used due to the thickness of the hull,” the complaint reads.

Instead of nondestructive testing methods, OceanGate would instead rely solely on an acoustic monitoring system that was meant to detect the start of a hull breakdown when the Titan was about to fail.

But Lochridge expressed concern that acoustic analysis wouldn’t be able to detect any existing flaws in the hull prior to it being subjected to pressure and that it would “only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion.”

OceanGate didn’t respond to a request for comment.