The debris found at the seafloor was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” the Coast Guard said.
Debris from the Titan submersible was discovered around 1,600 feet from the famous Titanic ruins, bringing a multinational search effort that had been ongoing for days to a close on Thursday. According to US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, military analysts determined the debris was compatible with the tragic loss of the small vessel’s pressure chamber.
On Tuesday, Canadian P-3 aircraft heard sounds under the ocean, but the US Coast Guard was unable to locate their source, the agency reported.
In the meantime, a government internal memo on Tuesday claimed that pounding noises had been detected by search teams at intervals of 30 minutes, and a later update claimed that “acoustic feedback” had indicated “continued hope of survivors.”
OceanGate, the Boston station of the US Coast Guard, and Canadian officials have all been contacted by CNN for comment. The news was initially reported Tuesday night by Rolling Stone.
Here’s what we know so far.
How did they disappear?
The submersible was part of OceanGate Expeditions’ eight-day expedition, which cost $250,000 per person. Participants will depart from Newfoundland and travel 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is approximately 900 miles (1,450 km) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
On Sunday morning, June 18, the submersible began its two-hour descent to the wreck. Officials said it lost communication with the Polar Prince, the support ship that delivered the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent.
It’s still unclear what happened to the submarine, why it lost contact, and how close it was to the Titanic when it vanished.
Who’s on board?
All five passengers on board the missing Titan submersible are dead, the US Coast Guard has confirmed.
Here is what we know about them.
Stockton Rush, 61
Stockton Rush was the chief executive of OceanGate, the firm which runs the Titanic voyages, and the company confirmed he was on board.
He was an experienced engineer who had designed an experimental aircraft and contributed to the development of several compact submersibles.
Mr. Rush established the company in 2009, giving clients the ability to experience deep water travel. In 2021, the company made headlines throughout the world when it started providing journeys to the Titanic wreckage.
His company offers customers to pay $250,000 (£195,600) to obtain a close-up view of the famous ship’s wreckage.
Participants sail 370 miles (595 km) on a larger ship to the area above the disaster site, where they board the Titan, a truck-sized submersible, and do an eight-hour dive to the Titanic.
Hamish Harding, 58
The British adventurer accomplished various exploratory achievements while running Action Aviation, a private jet dealership in Dubai.
He made many trips to the South Pole, including one with retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and entered space in 2022 on board Blue Origin’s sixth human-crewed mission.
He held three Guinness World Records, one of which being the longest period spent at full ocean depth while scuba diving in the Mariana Trench.
He revealed to Business Aviation Magazine in the summer of 2022 that he was raised in Hong Kong, earned his pilot’s licence in the middle of the 1980s while attending Cambridge, and founded his aircraft company after making money in the banking software industry.
Shahzada Dawood, 48
Shahzada Dawood, a British businessman, came from one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families. He boarded the submarine with his student son Suleman.
In Surbiton, southwest London, Mr. Dawood resided with his wife Christine and another kid, Alina. Prior to the dive, the family was staying in Canada for a month.
Shahzada was the vice chairman of the sizable fertiliser company Engro Corporation in Pakistan.
He worked with the SETI Institute, a California-based research organisation that looks for extraterrestrial life, as well as the Dawood Foundation, run by his family.
Shahzada was also a supporter of two charities founded by King Charles III – the British Asian Trust and the Prince’s Trust International.
Suleman Dawood, 19
Suleman had just finished his first year at the university’s business school at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Suleman’s aunt told NBC News that after hearing the news of his and his father’s passing, the 19-year-old had said he felt “terrified” about the trip but wanted to please his father.
The teen was described as a “big fan of science fiction literature and learning new things” in a family statement. He also enjoyed volleyball and Rubik’s cubes, according to the statement.
Reportedly, he just received his diploma from Surrey’s ACS International School Cobham.
Prof. Sir Jim McDonald, the university’s president and vice chancellor, wrote to the students to let them know that Suleman was in the missing sub.
He stated that anyone who were impacted by the news could get assistance from the student welfare team.
Suleman and his fellow travellers’ suffering had been brought up during First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament.
Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77
Mr. Nargeolet, a former diver for the French Navy, was also on board.
He was known as Mr. Titanic and is said to have spent more time at the wreck than any other explorer. In 1987, only two years after it was discovered, he took part in the first mission to go there.
He oversaw undersea research for a business that holds the Titanic wreck’s rights.
Mr. Nargeolet oversaw the recovery of thousands of Titanic antiquities, including the “big piece,” a 20-ton piece of the ship’s hull, according to a corporate description.
Mr. Nargeolet has been referred to as a “super-hero for us in France” by family spokesman Mathieu Johann.
He has scuba dived in all four corners of the globe and is considered the world’s expert on the Titanic, its construction, and the wreckage, according to Reuters.
Director Éric Derrien said that staff members “shared the grief of his family and friends” at Genavir, a division of the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea where Mr. Nargeolet had worked for more than ten years.
What happened when the submersible Titan exploded?
According to physics and submarine experts who spoke with Media, the Titan’s dying minutes would have been quick and unleashed amid a powerful force that was difficult to understand. According to Luc Wille, a professor and chair of physics at Florida Atlantic University, pressure is roughly 380 times greater at the Titanic’s 12,500-foot depth than at the surface.
According to Eric Fusil, an associate professor in the University of Adelaide’s School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and a submarine expert, even the highest-grade military submarines don’t cruise the ocean at maximum depth because it’s simply too dangerous. At those depths, “it would take about 20 milliseconds to crush a hull,” according to Fusil.
Professor Stefan Williams, a marine robotics and underwater vessel expert at the University of Sydney, stated that while the Titan’s composite hull is designed to endure extreme deep-sea pressures, any flaw in its construction might jeopardise its integrity and raise the chance of implosion.
What is Titan submersible?
According to the company website, OceanGate, a submersible corporation, designed, owned, and operated the Titan vessel. The Bahamas-based OceanGate Expeditions runs the Washington state-based OceanGate Inc., which is based in Everett.
According to the OceanGate website, the Titan submersible was roughly 8 feet tall, 9 feet wide, and 22 feet long. According to the corporation, it was built to reach a depth of around 13,000 feet and move at a speed of 3 knots. According to court documents, the boat sported four 10-horsepower electric thrusters and a five-inch-thick carbon fibre and titanium hull.
Titan was operated by ‘gaming controller’
According to CNN correspondent Gabe Cohen, who sat in Titan in 2018 while covering OceanGate Expeditions for CNN station KOMO, “it is operated… by a gaming controller, which is basically looks like a PlayStation controller.”
According to OceanGate investor Aaron Newman, who went down to Titanic on Titan in 2021, the game controller is used for wireless control. Before information about the vessel’s destiny became public, Newman told CNN that if the remote malfunctions, the propellers can be controlled using an internal hard-wire system.
Titan was “Designed to Auto come back .”
According to Newman, Titan was kept underwater by ballast, large weights designed to be automatically released after 24 hours to bring the submarine to the surface. Ballast is used to help a ship maintain its stability.
“It is designed to come back up,” he told CNN.
Before the cruise, the crew was informed that they could remove the ballast by rocking the ship or by using a pneumatic pump to force the weights loose, according to Newman. He claimed that if all else fails, the ropes holding the ballast are made to disintegrate after 24 hours in order to automatically send it back to the ocean’s surface.
According to Newman, Titan’s communications and heater were run by an internal system, while the ship’s thrusters were powered by an external electrical system. He claimed that as soon as he boarded the Titan, the interior of the ship suddenly became heated before turning colder as it sank into the ocean’s bottom.
Deep ocean temperatures are just above freezing.
