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No Survivors: Missing Titanic Submersible Imploded

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  June 22, 2023 3:25 PM

The search and rescue mission for the missing Titan submersible seems to be a recovery effort. OceanGate, the company that charters these deep-sea expeditions to the Titanic wreck, declared that all five members of the seacraft have perished. The craft went missing Sunday, and there’s been a scramble to find the submersible before they ran out of oxygen. The Titan has life support systems that can last up to 96 hours. They ran out of oxygen at 7 am this morning. Some medical professionals gave interviews about how you could technically survive a few hours more in this now-oxygen-deprived environment, but you can put the kibosh on those discussions. A debris field was found earlier this morning, as it becomes clear that the Titan likely imploded as they made the 12,500-foot journey to the wreck (via ABC News): 


All five aboard the missing submersible are believed to be lost amid a search for the vessel, OceanGate said. 

"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. 

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans," the statement continued. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew." 


On Tuesday night, there were hopeful signs that a rescue might be possible after banging noises were detected on sonar in 30-minute intervals. Yet, the darkness and vastness of the search area made it hard to locate the noise source. The debris field changed the assessment, especially when the tail cone of the craft was discovered. Coast Guard confirmed today that this is the submersible. 


OceanGate offered these trips at $250,000 per head. In the coming days, I’m sure the media will report on the safety concerns that were present with the ship’s craft, with internal documents showing its engineering staff wanted to test the Titan more in withstanding these extreme depths (via Associated Press): 

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The company whose submersible vanished in the North Atlantic on a tourist dive to the wreck of the Titanic was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed, documents show. 

With five people aboard a vessel that if still functioning would have a dwindling amount of oxygen, an expanding international fleet of ships and airplanes is searching for the Titan, operated by OceanGate Expeditions. The undersea exploration company based in Everett, Washington, has been making yearly voyages to the Titanic since 2021. 

In the first piece of good news since the search began, a Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises, though the vessel has not been found, the U.S. Coast Guard reported early Wednesday. 

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle. 

“Death” was mentioned three times on the waiver. More people have been to space than traversing the seafloor at these depths. The only solace here is that the families have closure. These men were probably killed almost instantly.