Titanic sub: Investigations under way after five die in ‘catastrophic implosion’

Investigations are under way into the loss of the Titan submersible, which is thought to have imploded on its dive to the Titanic wreck site on Sunday, killing all five crew members, as questions grow about the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification.

On Thursday, after days of aerial and underwater searches, a robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian ship discovered a debris field from the submersible Titan on the seabed about 488m from the bow of the Titanic.

“The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle,” rear admiral John Mauger of the US coast guard said.

The Titan, operated by the US-based company OceanGate Expeditions, had been missing since it lost contact with its surface support ship on Sunday morning about an hour and 45 minutes into what should have been a two-hour dive to the world’s most famous shipwreck. Thursday’s developments in the search mission and discovery are here.

Summary of developments:

• Tributes have been paid to the five men who were on board the Titan when it went missing
• The US navy first heard the sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, according to reports
• The US coast guard said on Thursday the found debris is “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” in the submersible
• The debris was found close to the wreck of the Titanic at a depth of some 3.8km below the ocean’s surface
• A family member of the British billionaire Hamish Harding, who was on-board the submersible when it went missing, has said it took OceanGate, the operator of the sub, “far too long” to report its disappearance

Rear admiral John Mauger of the US coast guard said investigators would first attempt to find out why the vessel imploded.

“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when did this happen. Those are questions we will collect as much information as we can about now,” Mauger said, adding it was a “complex case” that happened in a remote part of the ocean and involved people from several different countries.

Ryan Ramsey, a former submarine captain in Britain’s Royal Navy, told the BBC the investigation would not be dissimilar to that into an airplane crash, aside from the absence of a flight recorder.

The broadcaster also reported that there is little precedent for this type of investigation, so it is unclear who will do what. - Guardian

William Kohnen, chair of the Marine Tech Society’s submersible committee has said that the Titan submersible was a “novel concept”.

Speaking to Sky News, Kohnen said: “It is very different, it is very large, it is for five people to go 4,000m, it needs space. That adds a lot of complexity ... it does push the envelope and you’ve got to do the numbers right.”

“Father Neptune has absolutely no patience for humanity. If we get it wrong, we get it wrong and we pay the price. If we play in this game we have to absolutely be sure of ourselves.”

US investor Jay Bloom has shared text messages between himself and Stockton Rush, saying he had expressed safety concerns about a potential expedition to the deceased OceanGate founder.

In a Facebook post, Bloom shared screenshots of texts from Rush, who offered Bloom two places on expeditions in May for the “last minute price” of $150,000 per person.

Bloom expressed safety concerns he and his son had and Rush replied: “Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it’s real or imagined.”

Rush said in a follow-up message: “While there’s obviously risk it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving. There hasn’t been even an injury in 35 years in a non-military subs.”

Bloom said when the pair met in person that Rush “was absolutely convinced that [the dive] was safer than crossing the street”.

Read more about the risk-taking entrepreneur behind doomed Titan mission

Stockton Rush’s vision ends in tragedy for Titan submersible

The co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, which owned the submersible that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck, defended on Friday the chief executive’s commitment to safety and risk management after he died with four others on the craft.

Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush in 2009, left the company in 2013, retaining a minority stake. Rush was piloting the Titan submersible on the trip that began on Sunday. Debris from the vessel was found on Thursday.

“Stockton was one of the most astute risk managers I’d ever met. He was very risk-averse. He was very keenly aware of the risks of operating in the deep ocean environment, and he was very committed to safety,” Söhnlein told Reuters.

“I believe that every innovation that he took ... was geared toward two goals: One, expanding humanity’s ability to explore the deep ocean. And secondly, to do it as safely as possible,” he said in video interview from his home in Barcelona.

Söhnlein said the public should refrain from speculating about the cause of the disaster and wait for the release of any official report after data had been collected and analyzed.

Questions about Titan’s safety were raised in 2018 during a symposium of submersible industry experts and in a lawsuit by OceanGate’s former head of marine operations, which was settled later that year. This incident has prompted further debate.

“There’s going to be a time for (making assessments), and I don’t think right now is the right time to do that,” he said. - Reuters

VIDEO: “It’s probably a mercy”: Titan sub would have imploded instantly, says expert

Will Kohnen, a manned submersibles expert, has said that the implosion of the Titan sub would have happened “in a matter of a thousandth of a second”.

Liability waivers signed by passengers on the Titan may not shield the vessel’s owner from potential lawsuits by the victims’ families, legal experts said.

The passengers, who paid as much as $250,000 (€229,600) each are believed to have signed liability waivers. A CBS reporter who made the trip with OceanGate Expeditions in July 2022 reported that the waiver he signed mentioned the possibility of death three times on the first page alone.

Waivers are not always ironclad, and it is not uncommon for judges to reject them if there is evidence of gross negligence or hazards that were not fully disclosed.

“If there were aspects of the design or construction of this vessel that were kept from the passengers or it was knowingly operated despite information that it was not suitable for this dive, that would absolutely go against the validity of the waiver,” said personal injury attorney and maritime law expert Matthew D Shaffer, who is based in Texas.

OceanGate could argue it was not grossly negligent and that the waivers apply because they fully described the dangers inherent in plumbing the deepest reaches of the ocean in a submersible the size of a minivan.

The degree of any potential negligence and how that might impact the applicability of the waivers will depend on the causes of the disaster, which are still under investigation.

OceanGate is a small company based in Everett, Washington, and it is unclear whether it has the assets to pay significant damages, were any to be awarded, but families could collect from the company’s insurance policy if it has one.

Families could also seek damages from any outside parties that designed, helped build or made components for the Titan if they were found to be negligent and a cause of the implosion.

OceanGate could seek to shield itself from damages by filing a so-called limitation of liability action under maritime law, which lets owners of vessels involved in an accident ask a federal court to limit any damages to the present value of the vessel. Since the Titan was destroyed, that would be zero.

But OceanGate would need to prove it had no knowledge of potential defects with the submersible and would carry the burden of proof, which legal experts said is a difficult burden to meet.

If OceanGate were to fail in such a case, families would be free to file negligence or wrongful death lawsuits.

Another maritime law, the Death on the High Seas Act, allows people who were financially dependent on someone who died in a naval accident to seek only the portion of that person’s future earnings that they would have otherwise received. Plaintiffs cannot recover losses for pain and suffering in those cases.

What OceanGate knew about the vessel’s safety and what the passengers were told about it would be the central questions during discovery, a process during which parties share information about a case. – Reuters

The president of the Titanic International Society has said it is time to consider ending trips to the wreck of the Titanic in the wake of the Titan disaster.

The Titanic International Society is an American non-profit organisation founded in 1989 to preserve the history of the Titanic. In a lengthy statement, its president Charles Haas has called into question the need for “human trips” and called for an “extensive, detailed investigation” into the sinking of the Titan submersible, which he added was “avoidable”.

He said: It is time to consider seriously whether human trips to Titanic’s wreck should end in the name of safety, with relatively little remaining to be learned from or about the wreck. Crewed submersibles’ roles in surveying the wreck now can be assigned to autonomous underwater vehicles, like those that mapped the ship and its debris field in high-resolution, 3D detail last summer.”

Calling for an investigation, Mr Haas said: We believe that an extensive, detailed investigation by the US coast guard, the National Transportation Safety Board and/or their Canadian counterparts clearly is warranted.

“It should deeply inquire into the submersible’s design, structure, communication and safety systems, owners’ policies and emergency preparations and procedures, and the proximity, state of readiness and deployment of deep-sea rescue systems to the site.”

Mr Hass also paid tribute to Paul-Henri Nargeolet, saying his “consummate knowledge of the wreck and wreck site was unique and unparalleled”.

He added: “Commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet brought to this expedition more than a quarter-century of expertise, making more dives to Titanic’s wreck than anyone on earth.

“His willingness to share that information kept the world informed about Titanic’s deteriorating condition and helped to rewrite significant parts of the ship’s history. Sadly, that irreplaceable knowledge has been lost.”

The Titan was on its third visit to the wreck, having previously made trips to the site in 2021 and 2022.

Investigations are under way into the loss of the Titan submersible as questions grow about the craft’s experimental design, safety standards and lack of certification.

Experts in the industry and a whistle-blowing employee raised alarms in 2018, criticising OceanGate for opting against seeking certification and operating as an experimental vessel.

In 2019, OceanGate said it was concerned the certification process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said.

On Thursday, director James Cameron – who has made 33 dives to the Titanic wreck – appeared on ABC News and said many people in the submersible sector had been concerned by Titan.

“A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified and so on,” he said.

However, Stockton Rush’s former business partner, Guillermo Söhnlein, pushed back at such claims, insisting that the pair had put safety first when they cofounded OceanGate. – Agencies

The co-founder of the Titan submersible’s parent company has said the regulations surrounding visits to the Titanic wreckage are “tricky to navigate”.

Guillermo Söhnlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, said there are regulations in place surrounding submersibles but they are “sparse” and “antiquated” as he defended the firm from critics including Titanic film director James Cameron.

Mr Cameron, who is himself a submersibles expert and has completed deep sea dives, told the BBC: “We now have another wreck that is based on, unfortunately, the same principles of not heeding warnings.”

But Mr Söhnlein defended the safety of the submersible, saying he and his co-founder Stockton Rush, who was on-board Titan, were committed to safety during expeditions.

He told Times Radio: “He was extremely committed to safety. He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment. So that’s one of the main reasons I agreed to go into business with him in 2009.”

Mr Söhnlein, who no longer works for the company, continued: “I know from first-hand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture.”

Explaining the regulations surrounding visiting the Titanic wreckage, he said: “The regulations are pretty sparse. And many of them are antiquated, or they’re designed for specific instances. So it’s kind of tricky to navigate those regulatory schemes.”

Mr Söhnlein added on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “Anyone who operates in that depth of the ocean, whether it is human-rated submersibles or robotic submersibles, knows the risks of operating under such pressure and that at any given moment, on any mission, with any vessel, you run the risk of this kind of implosion.”

The University of Strathclyde in Glasgow has said it is “shocked and profoundly saddened by the death of Suleman Dawood and his father in this tragic incident”.

“The entire Strathclyde community offers our deepest condolences to the Dawood family and all those affected by this terrible accident,” the university said in a statement.

“Our student wellbeing team remains on hand to offer appropriate support to Suleman’s classmates and the wider Strathclyde community at this difficult time.”

The British Asian Trust said it is “deeply saddened” by the death of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who were on the Titanic-bound submersible. The Pakistani businessman and his son were two of five passengers killed in the implosion.

“The British Asian Trust is deeply saddened by the tragic news that our supporter Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman have passed away. They were on board the missing submarine that set off to see the wreck of the Titanic,” they said on Twitter.

“Shahzada was a wonderful and generous man who supported our work in South Asia for many years, while his son was just emerging into adulthood with a promising future ahead.”

It added: “Our hearts and prayers are with family and friends at this unimaginable time of grief and loss. Our deepest condolences to them and everyone else who lost loved ones in this terrible incident.”

Guillermo Söhnlein, a co-founder of OceanGate, the company behind the Titan submersible, has rejected some of the criticisms directed at the company over safety and certification.

Mr Söhnlein, who left the company 10 years ago but still retains a minority stake, said people commenting on the Titan’s safety were not fully informed.

“People keep equating certification with safety and are ignoring the 14 years of development of the Titan sub,” he told the BBC.

“Any expert who weighs in on this, including Mr [James] Cameron, will also admit that they were not there for the design of the sub, for the engineering of the sub, for the building of the sub and certainly not for the rigorous test programme the sub went through.”

Mr Söhnlein described the death of those on-board as a “tragic loss for the ocean exploration community”. However, he said that anyone who operates in the deep ocean “knows the risk of operating under such pressure and that at any given moment ... you run the risk of this kind of implosion”.

A UK naval expert and former submarine commander has called for the ending of trips to the wreck of the Titanic.

Ryan Ramsey told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland the site was essentially a location where many people had died and as such tourism trips should stop.

Mr Ramsey said: “I’m torn with this because in essence, lots of these events, commercial or otherwise, test the limits of human endurance, pushes our limits a bit.

“But in this particular case, the Titanic was a graveyard, lots of people died when the ship went down. And I think trips to the Titanic in particular should probably stop.”

When asked about the possible reasons for the catastrophic implosion of the OceanGate submarine, Mr Ramsey said there were two potential reasons for the implosion – that there had been a catastrophic failure of the pressure chambers or that the hatch failed – which tied in with the fact there had been constant communications until they stopped suddenly.

The only positive aspect of finding of debris close to the wreck of the Titanic was that the families of the five men on board would now get some form of closure as would the rescue forces, he said. “But it’s a tragedy and this is the conclusion of that tragedy.”

The debris found at the site would now have to be analysed in an effort to discover what happened, he said.

However, it was very unlikely that the bodies could be recovered, Mr Ramsey added. “They [investigators] probably just need to focus on why this happened and hopefully give closure to the families that way.”

The investigation could offer lessons for the wider maritime community, many of whom questioned why such a trip had been allowed to happen, he said.

“Most submersibles and definitely submarines are regulated. They go through really thorough safety checks – very, very stringent maintenance and all that ... just from the literature that’s available and footage it [Titan] appears to have been less regulated than many others.

“And I think that will be the question, not to find blame because that’s pointless but actually to turn around and go ‘right, what more can we do to make sure that this is regulated and is safe?’”

The White House said the loved ones of the five men had endured a “harrowing ordeal” over the past week. “Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” it said in a statement. “They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”

Condolences came from Pakistan’s foreign ministry and government officials, with TV stations halting their routine broadcasts to share the news about Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood, who was the vice-chairman of the country’s largest conglomerate, Engro Corporation, and his son Suleman (19).

In profile: The victims of the Titan sub tragedy:

Hamish Harding

Mr Harding (58) was the chairman of the private plane firm Action Aviation. He was married, with two sons, a stepson and a stepdaughter.

He was a student at Cambridge and left with a degree in natural sciences and chemical engineering.

Harding was an aviator, holding an airline transport pilot’s licence and business jet type ratings, including the Gulfstream G650. He was also a skydiver, was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation in 2022, and was a trustee of the Explorers Club.

He also previously worked with the Antarctic luxury tourism company White Desert to introduce the first regular business jet service to Antarctica.

Harding made many trips to the south pole and, in 2016, accompanied the former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the oldest person to reach there, aged 86. Harding also went into space last year with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company.

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood

Shahzada Dawood (48) was the UK-based vice-chair of the Pakistani chemicals-to-energy conglomerate Engro Corporation.

Engro, best known for its fertiliser and petrochemicals factories, as well as engineering projects, is Pakistan’s largest listed conglomerate.

Shahzada Dawood was a board member of King Charles’s charity Prince’s Trust International.

The charity said Dawood has been an adviser to its international arm in “various capacities”, including the global advisory board, with a focus on its work in Pakistan.

It is understood the Dawood family, who live in Surbiton, southwest London, are in Canada for a month.

His son Suleman was 19. The University of Strathclyde confirmed that he was one of its students with Strathclyde business school, and had just completed his first year.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet

Mr Nargeolet was a 77-year-old former French navy commander known as ‘Mr Titanic’.

He had been studying the Titanic for 35 years and had been involved in several submarine expeditions to the wreckage and hundreds of hours of observation.

In 1987 he was part of the team that brought up a series of objects from the wreckage. In an interview with Le Parisien last year, he described the first time he saw the wreck, which lies in total darkness, covered with coral.

He said he glimpsed it from inside his submarine, detected with sonar and lit by projectors and said he and the team were left speechless. “For 10 minutes, there was no sound on the submarine.”

Mr Nargeolet, who had been based in Connecticut in the US for many years, has described the wreckage as a “time capsule” where life suddenly stopped, endlessly fascinating to so many people for different reasons. “Some are interested in its construction, others in the history of immigration to the US, others are interested in the millionaires on board, the stars of the era.”

He told Le Monde last year of the vast number of species of marine life living around the wreck, saying: “The Titanic is an oasis in an immense desert.”

Stockton Rush

Mr Rush (61) was the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, the company behind the mission to the Titanic.

According to the company website, Rush oversaw OceanGate’s financial and engineering strategies and provided the vision for development of 4,000m (13,123ft) and 6,000m-capable crewed submersibles.

He became the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world when he obtained his DC-8 type/captain’s rating at the United Airlines jet training institute in 1981 at the age of 19.

Over the past 20 years, he oversaw the development of several ventures, including BlueView Technologies, a manufacturer of small, high-frequency sonar systems, Entomo, a software developer and Remote Control Technology, a manufacturer of wireless remote-control devices.

He had a degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Titanic director and submersible expert James Cameron has told the BBC he predicted Titan’s fate days before the debris from the missing submersible was found.

“I felt in my bones what had happened,” Cameron said.

“For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone.

“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it.”

He added: “(It) felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.

“I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres.

“We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings,” he said.

Cameron said he wished he had sounded the alarm earlier about the submersible Titan, saying he had found the hull design risky.

Cameron became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching and making his Oscar-winning blockbuster Titanic, and is part owner of Triton Submarines, which makes submersibles for research and tourism.

When he heard, as many in the industry had shared, that OceanGate was making a deep-sea submersible with a composite carbon fibre and titanium hull, Cameron said he was sceptical.

“I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face,” Cameron told Reuters.

The cause of the Titan’s implosion has not been determined, but Cameron presumes the critics were correct in warning that a carbon fibre and titanium hull would enable delamination and microscopic water ingress, leading to progressive failure over time.

Other experts in the industry and a whistle-blowing employee raised alarms in 2018, criticising OceanGate for opting against seeking certification and operating as an experimental vessel.

OceanGate has not addressed queries about its decision to forgo certification from industry third parties such as the American Bureau of Shipping or the European company DNV. – Agencies

The family of British adventurer Hamish Harding has also paid tribute to their “dedicated father”.

Mr Harding was described as “a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a living legend” following the news of his death on Thursday.

In a short statement, Mr Harding’s family said: “He was one of a kind and we adored him.

“He was a passionate explorer – whatever the terrain – who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure.

“What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved.”

Mr Harding’s family said his death has left a “gap in our lives that can never be filled”, and that they were “united in grief” with the families of the others who had died.

“We know that Hamish would have been immensely proud to see how nations, experts, industry colleagues and friends came together for the search and we extend our heartfelt thanks for all their efforts,” they said. – PA

The family of Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman has paid tribute after they died in the Titan submersible’s catastrophic implosion.

The Dawood family released a statement on Thursday night, mourning the loss of the father and son.

“Our beloved sons were aboard the OceanGate’s Titan submersible that perished underwater,” the statement said.

“Please continue to keep the departed souls of our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.

The family statement said they are truly grateful to those involved in the rescue operations and the “untiring efforts” brought strength to the family.

“We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues and wellwishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need,” the statement said.

“We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the other passengers on-board the Titan submersible.”

The sister of Shahzada Dawood and aunt of Suleman, Azmeh Dawood, told NBC News in the US that the 19-year-old was terrified about going on the trip.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that a “top secret US navy acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission”.

According to the WSJ: The US navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a US defence official. Shortly after its disappearance, the US system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, US defence officials said.

“The US navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior US navy official told the Wall Street Journal in a statement.

“While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

Officials say that now the fate of the Titan is known the search operation will be wound down though some vehicles will still be deployed to continue to gather evidence.

US coast guard rear admiral John Mauger told reporters on Thursday that robotic craft on the seabed will continue to gather evidence but it was not clear whether gathering remains will be possible given the nature of the accident and the extreme conditions.

“We will begin to demobilise personnel and vessels from the scene over the course of the next 24 hours,” he said.