Over the past two weeks, the Coast Guard has held hearings into how the Titan, a privately owned submarine ship that exploded on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean 15 months ago, resulted in the deaths of the five people inside.
The Coast Guard has posted video of the Titan’s wreck 2 miles below the water’s surface, as well as a detailed log of communications between the ship and its parent ship, numerous documents and recorded testimony from more than two dozen witnesses, including former employees. Also posted. of the creator of sub, oceangate,
Emerging evidence has provided answers or tentative answers to six questions that have haunted this unique tragedy.
Did Oceangate staff raise any alarms?
Many, it turns out. David Lockridge, former director of marine operations at Oceangate, testified that the company’s ethos focused on making money. Oceangate charged adventurers up to $250,000 to get a close-up look at the Titanic wreck, but offered little serious engineering for safe products. “It was all smoke and mirrors,” Lockridge said of the company’s operations. He said he was fired in 2018 after raising safety concerns.
Tony Nissen, the company’s former engineering director, said he told OceanGate founder Stockton Rush in 2019 that the spacecraft “wasn’t performing as well as we thought.” As a result, engineers stopped submersibles from diving to the Titanic ruins that year. Then he was fired from the job.
Phil Brooks, who became the company’s engineering leader in 2021, said that Oceangate’s financial crisis a few months before the Titan and its crew were lost contributed to his decision to leave the company. “The company was very stressed financially,” he testified. He further said that, as a result, security “is being compromised.”
What did the recovery teams find?
Four days after the Titan’s disappearance, the controller of a tethered robot was scanning the muddy ocean floor when a web of debris – including the submersible’s rear dome and part of its broken fiber hull – came into view.
“This video provides conclusive evidence of the catastrophic loss of the Titan and the death of all five aboard,” the Coast Guard wrote.
Search teams proceeded to map a massive debris field approximately 1,000 feet long and 450 feet wide. Its large size suggests that Titan’s explosion – a rapid collapse caused by the crushing pressure of the deep ocean – caused an extraordinary explosive rebound.
A terrifying second video showed the submersible’s tail cone intact on the seabed. Unlike the hollow main hull, the interior space of the tail was open to seawater and thus did not burst.
A preliminary report from the hearing said the presumed human remains were taken to a military base, which “identified positive DNA profiles for five victims.”
Did passengers understand the risks of travel?
Yes and no. Oceangate’s four-page liability waiver had no effect. The word “death” occurred nine times, “injury” 10 times and “risk” 17 times. The disclaimer warned of “pain, suffering, disease, disfigurement, temporary or permanent disability (including paralysis), economic or emotional loss, and death.”
“I knew how much risk I was taking, and decided to go anyway,” Renata Rojas, an experienced scuba diver who traveled to the Titanic in 2022 to see the Titanic, testified at the hearing.
But other witnesses said the public at large does not understand the significance of Titan’s lack of safety certification, which makes it unique among deep submersibles. Thousands of other ships, submarines and offshore rigs have received such accreditation from maritime groups that set industry standards, including proven ways to withstand sea pressure.
Did the passengers realize that something was wrong?
No, according to preliminary reports from the hearing and subsequent testimony. The report said crew members “did not send any transmissions indicating any distress or any emergency.” This contradicts a fake communications log that circulated online last year and described a heartbreaking crisis in which five passengers struggled in vain to return to the surface.
News and social media outlets also quoted top experts who argued that the last-minute drop in Titan’s weight indicated that crew members knew they were in mortal danger. The claim also appears in a $50 million lawsuit brought in August against Oceangate by the family of Paul-Henri Nargiolet, one of the five victims.
Tim Catterson, a former contractor for Oceangate, testified that he was convinced that only two dropped weights of 70 pounds, out of hundreds taken by Titan, were dropped enough to achieve neutral buoyancy – that is, smoothly under water. Ability to float, not sink or rise. He said the state of weightlessness helped the craft better control its movements near the ocean floor, rather than launching an emergency run to the surface.
Catterson said the deep travelers “had no idea” they faced an imminent explosion. “There were no victims there,” he said.
Why did Titan explode?
This is the hardest question, and probably won’t be fully answered until the Coast Guard makes its official accident report public, which may not be until next year.
Critics had long faulted Titan’s design as a maverick approach that included numerous deviations from proven submersible designs. While other submersibles typically carried only three passengers, the Titan’s pill-shaped fiber hull carried five passengers, a financial advantage for Oceangate.
Catterson presented a crash scenario. The crushing pressure of the ocean would have forced the Titan’s hull to bend ever so slightly in the middle, he said, causing its ends to retract from the metal end domes and weakening the glue joint with each dive. . Ultimately, he said, rising tensions led to the explosion.
Donald Kramer, a materials engineer for the National Transportation Safety Board, testified to a different problem. He said the carbon fiber hull had many flaws, including holes, voids and wrinkles, which weakened the protective structure.
What could be the impact of the hearing?
At a press conference a day before the hearing was to begin, the lead investigator, Jason Neubauer, called the proceedings an important step toward understanding who contributed to the tragedy and, more importantly, “essential to preventing a similar incident.” Action.”
The first disaster of its kind has forced a global rethink about how to safely explore the high seas. This could lead to regulatory reforms, such as the institution of mandatory safety certification for deep submarines.
