At a hearing into the accident that killed five people, the U.S. Coast Guard shared for the first time the records of the submersible after its implosion. The entity also showed the last messages sent by the Titan.
In June 2023, the submersible Titan descended into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to make a private expedition to the ruins of the Titanic the British ship that sank more than a century ago after hitting an iceberg.
However, the ship operated by the company OceanGate Expeditions never reached its destination: Shortly after his descent, he suffered a catastrophic implosion .
The incident resulted in the immediate death of the ship’s five crew members. They are OceanGate director Stockton Rush; explorer Hamish Harding; maritime expert and archaeologist Paul-Henri Nargeolet; businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.
Just over a year after the devastating accident, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) released images of the remains of the submarine near the Titanic.
This, within the framework of a public hearing that the Coast Guard’s Maritime Investigation Commission began this week to clarify the tragedy.
The disc, released to the public for the first time, describes what this would look like the broken section of the submarine’s tail and a piece of carbon fiber located at a depth of 3,775 meters.
The timeline of the Titan tragedy
The Titan was a ship designed with materials such as carbon fiber and titanium. Its most remarkable feature was that it possessed the ability to reach 4,000 meters deep which was enough to travel to the remains of the Titanic, since they are located at a depth of 3,800 meters.
According to OceanGate, it also allowed it to “inspect sites, research and collect data, produce films and media, and test hardware and software overseas.”
Since 2021, the company that owns the submersible has been making trips to observe the site of the ship’s sinking. However, on rare occasions, they have managed to reach this location. To participate in one of these expeditions, travelers had to pay a sum varying between 100,000 and 250,000 dollars. .
On June 16, 2023, the Titan made one of its voyages from the port of Saint John, Newfoundland, Canada. The vessel Polar Prince was tasked with towing it.
On June 18th at around 9am, the ship launched the submarine to begin the dive which would last two hours in total. Once this was achieved, they would spend ten hours underwater. Rush was the submarine’s pilot, while Harding, Nargeolet and the Dawoods were part of the crew.
One hour and 45 minutes after the descent, Polar Prince lost all contact with the Titan. More precisely, the last communication with the surface took place around 11:47.
The US Coast Guard was immediately alerted to the events and a rescue operation was launched, with the assistance of Canadian authorities, to find the submersible and its passengers.
On Monday, June 19, OceanGate made the accident public. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards continued to conduct searches in the deep ocean and on the surface. The work was centered about 1,500 kilometers off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
From the beginning, it was known that every stay underwater represented a great danger for the crew, because as the hours passed, they were on the verge of running out of oxygen inside the submersible.
On Tuesday, June 20, search efforts intensified, including the deployment of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and surveillance aircraft. since then. One of the participants was a Boeing P-8 Poseidon from Canada, which is capable of detecting objects under the sea. Two Lockheed C-130 Hercules from the United States were also part of the rescue effort.
That night, the US Coast Guard reported that underwater noise had been detected in the area under investigation. However, when they searched the area, they obtained negative results.
In addition, it was possible to identify the five passengers who were on board the Titan at the time of its disappearance. All were millionaires or devoted their lives to exploration.
Hopes of finding the travelers alive were fading more and more, since the oxygen supply would definitely be exhausted on the morning of Thursday 22nd.
The first signs of the fatal accident appeared on Thursday afternoon. The U.S. Tanker Guard reported that an ROV found debris in the search area, but it still needed to be analyzed. Authorities later confirmed it was the Titan.
At a press conference, Rear Admiral John Mauger said the underwater robot had found the submarine’s tail cone about 490 meters from the Titanic wreck. Other debris was also found, consistent with “a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
Shortly before the press conference, OceanGate said all five occupants of the Titan had died. “We believe our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, are sadly lost,” they said in a statement.
On June 28, the U.S. Coast Guard said it had successfully recovered “possible human remains” and pieces of the ship. Further remains were found in October.
What is known about the public of the Titan tragedy?
At the Coast Guard Maritime Investigation Board hearing that began September 16, new details were released about the OceanGate tragedy.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, The submersible had experienced several technical problems during other expeditions carried out between 2021 and 2022. . Even in the days leading up to June 18, there were difficulties on the Titan, but the mission was still accomplished.
During the hearing, investigators also revealed the last communications before the accident. In one of these messages, the Titan informed the Polar Prince ship that “everything was fine” and in the one that came later, he indicated “lose weight” At about 3,346 meters deep, they lost contact.
Among those who came to testify about the accident were former OceanGate executives. One of them is Tony Nissen, who was the company’s director of engineering and was fired in 2019. According to Nissen’s account, Rush routinely pressured him to speed up the Titan’s schedule and then enter the ocean.
Source: Latercera
I am David Jack and I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years. As an experienced journalist, I specialize in covering sports news with a focus on golf. My articles have been published by some of the most respected publications in the world including The New York Times and Sports Illustrated.
