Watch: Titanic Submersible: New Clip Reveals OceanGate Implosion Moments Before Its Final Message Received
More details about the Titan submersible tragedy have come to light.
Nearly two years after the OceanGate Expedition’s vessel imploded with five people onboard—including CEO Stockton Rush—new footage shows the moment when the sound of the catastrophe reached the ocean’s surface.
As Wendy Rush, the director of OceanGate and Stockton’s wife, monitored data and text communications at a computer alongside employee Gary Foss on June 18, 2023, they heard a muffled thump as the submersible reached 3,300 meters. She asked Foss in the footage released by the U.S. Coast Guard on May 22, “What was that bang?”
The USCG—which used the footage as evidence to the Marine Board of Investigation as for the 2024 case into the incident—wrote alongside the clip that the sound heard “later correlated with the loss of communications and tracking” and explained that it “is believed to be the sound of the Titan’s implosion reaching the surface of the ocean.”
Moments after the bang, Wendy received a message at 9:17 a.m. ET (10:47 a.m. NDT) from the submersible that it had “dropped two weights,” which helps the vessel change buoyancy and either descend or surface.
She appeared relieved as the message came in after the sound. However, contact with the Titan—which imploded 90 minutes into the voyage—was lost almost immediately after the messages were sent, the agency confirmed in a model animation viewed by E! News.
EyePress News/Shutterstock
Just 30 minutes before, while the Titan—carrying Stockton, Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood—descended to 2,178 meters, the team in the accompanying ship asked three times whether the vessel could see them on their navigation system. The Titan responded, “Yes, lost system and chat settings.”
Among its final messages was, “all good here” as the team made it to 2,288 meters, almost 1,000 meters before the implosion.
EyePress News/Shutterstock
While there was a race to locate the submersible above water, four days after the voyage, OceanGate shared in a statement that they believed those on board, who were headed to view the crash site of the Titanic, had all died.
“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 company’s June 22, 2023 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.”
For more about the five passengers who died during the voyage, keep reading.
Courtesy of the Dawood family
On June 18, 2023, a deep-sea submersible Titan, operated by the U.S.-based company OceanGate Expeditions and carrying five people on a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic, was declared missing. Following a five-day search, the U.S. Coast Guard announced at a June 22 press conference that the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion” that killed all five passengers on board.
Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, both British citizens, were also among the victims.
Their family is one of the wealthiest in Pakistan, with Shahzada Dawood serving as the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, per The New York Times. His son was studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
Shahzada’s sister Azmeh Dawood told NBC News that Suleman had expressed reluctance about going on the voyage, informing a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, but ultimately went to please his father, a Titanic fan, for Father’s Day.
The Dawood Foundation mourned their deaths in a statement to the website, saying, “It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGagte’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was the pilot of the Titan. The entrepreneur—who founded the research company in 2009 in Everett, Wash.—had long been interested in exploration. Rush, 61, previously said he dreamed of becoming the first person on Mars and once said that he’d “like to be remembered as an innovator.”
In addition to leading voyages to see the remnants of the Titanic, Rush had another surprising connection to the historic 1912 event: His wife Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of a couple who died on the Titanic, Ida and Isidor Straus.
British billionaire Hamish Harding confirmed he was a part of the mission in a June 17 Instagram post, a day before the submersible went into the water and disappeared.
“I am proud to finally announce that I joined @oceangateexped for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic,” he wrote. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Harding—the chairman of aircraft company Action Aviation—said the group had started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada and was planning to start dive operations around 4 a.m. on June 18. The 58-year-old added, “Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do.”
His past explorations included traveling to the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench, telling Gulf News in 2021, “It was an incredibly hostile environment. To travel to parts of the Challenger Deep where no human had ever been before was truly remarkable.”
The Dubai-based businessman also circumnavigated the Earth by plane with the One More Orbit project and, last year, took a trip to space on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Harding shared his love for adventure with his son Giles, described as a “teen explorer” on his Instagram.
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
As for the fifth member, a representative for French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet told the New York Times that he was a passenger on the Titan, with Harding also referencing him on Instagram as a member of the team.
The Times described him as a maritime expert who was previously part of the French Navy. The 71-year-old was a bonafide Titanic specialist and has traveled to the wreckage 35 times before. Nargeolet served as the director of RMS Titanic, Inc., a company that researches, salvages and displays artifacts from the famed ship, per the outlet.
Alongside fellow passenger Hamish Harding, he was a member of The Explorers Club, founded in 1904.
OceanGate Expeditions via AP
As Harding noted in his post, the submersible—named Titan—was a part of an OceanGate Expeditions tour that explores the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which infamously sank in 1912.
The company expressed its sympathies to the families of the victims. “These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “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.”
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