The fate of OceanGate’s Titanic tourist submersible, Titan, and the five people aboard, is no longer a mystery. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that a remotely operated submersible vehicle had found a field of debris from the experimental craft not far from the infamous shipwreck it had been diving to visit, indicating the Titan had suffered a “catastrophic implosion.” All aboard were killed: three paid passengers — British billionaire Hamish Harding, British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and Dawood’s teenage son, Suleman — along with a well-respected Titanic expert, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate Inc. CEO Stockton Rush. Below are some key takeaways from the reporting and commentary on the tragedy thus far.
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We still don’t know exactly why the Titan imploded.
But most industry experts are suggesting there was some fatal flaw in the unusual and experimental design of the vessel, which had a unique pressure hull constructed with carbon fiber and titanium and was the first-ever deep-water submersible that could hold five people. It’s not yet clear if or when investigators will be able to determine the specific cause of the disaster. It’s not even clear who will lead the investigation.
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The safety of the Titan submersible had been repeatedly called into question, and OceanGate did not heed requests to submit to oversight.
Soon after the news of the Titan’s disappearance, it became clear that many in the manned submersible industry had long feared OceanGate’s innovative vessel was not safe.
In a 2018, lawyers for OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, alleged in a court filing that he was fired after calling on the company to conduct additional safety testing on the Titan and warning of “potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.” One of the issues Lockridge highlighted was the Titan’s viewport not being certified to work beyond a depth of 1,300 meters.
That same year, several submersible experts confronted OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush over the design of the Titan at a conference of crewed-underwater-vehicle specialists in New Orleans, submersible expert Karl Stanley told the New York Times.
Soon after the conference, 38 members of the Marine Technology Society, a manned-underwater-vehicle-industry group, wrote — but reportedly did not send — a letter to Rush expressing their concerns. “Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” they wrote, alleging that the company’s marketing materials were misleading and insisting Rush obtain an independent safety certification for the submersible before accepting passengers. “While this may demand additional time and expense, it is our unanimous view that this validation process by a third party is a critical component in the safeguards that protect all submersible occupants,” they stressed.
In 2019, Karl Stanley detailed a number of concerns in an email to Rush following a 12,000-foot dive aboard the Titan in the Bahamas during which he heard a cracking noise that became increasingly louder throughout the trip. “Would you consider taking dozens of other people to the Titanic before you truly knew the source of those sounds??” The company eventually scrapped its plan for 2019 expeditions to the Titanic but not because of safety concerns.
The company defended its disregard for rules and regulations in a blog post, insisting that “bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.” Rush had also repeatedly rejected adhering to regulations in interviews, citing the same rationale while insisting the Titan had been subject to extensive internal safety tests.
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The Titan was not subject to any safety regulations, either.
As maritime history expert Salvatore Mercogliano explained to the New York Times and the Washington Post, submersibles are rarely regulated and aren’t required to be registered with a particular country. It was not subject to the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993, which applies to submersibles but only ones that are registered in the U.S. and operate in U.S. territorial waters. The Titan was being operated in international waters, adding an additional gray area when it comes to maritime law.
“There’s literally no requirement out there, because there’s no one out there to enforce that,” Mercogliano told the Post.
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OceanGate exaggerated its industry partnerships regarding the submersible’s design.
In public statements, the company and its CEO Stockton Rush repeatedly name-dropped NASA, Boeing, and the University of Washington when discussing its process designing and engineering the Titan submersible, but those links appear to have been overstated or exaggerated, ABC News reports.
OceanGate claimed on its website that the Titan was “designed and engineered” by the company “in collaboration [with] experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington.” The company frequently mentioned NASA in press releases and thanked the space agency for its design and engineering support and, in one 2021 press release, called Boeing an “industry partner” and thanked it for “design and engineering support” on the Titan. When the CEO Rush was asked about the seemingly ad hoc build of the Titan submersible in 2022 by journalist David Pogue, Rush responded, “The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that’s where we worked with Boeing and NASA [and] University of Washington.”
Officials at the University of Washington told ABC News that the university’s Applied Physics Laboratory had once partnered with OceanGate on a shallow-diving submersible but not the Titan:
Kevin Williams, the executive director of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, told ABC News the school and laboratory were also not involved in the “design, engineering or testing” of the Titan submersible. Victor Balta, a UW spokesperson, added that OceanGate and UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million collaborative research agreement, but the two entities “parted ways” after only $650,000 of work was completed. That research only resulted in the development of another OceanGate submersible, the shallow-diving Cyclops I submersible, according to Balta … Balta added that OceanGate contracted with the school to use testing tanks on a contractual basis for nine tests between 2016 and 2022. “No UW researchers were involved in any of those tests and UW personnel did not provide any verification or validation of any OceanGate equipment as a result of those tests,” Balta said in a statement.
A NASA spokesperson meanwhile told ABC News that it consulted on materials and manufacturing for OceanGate when it was developing and engineering the Titan submersible but that “NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate.” A Boeing spokesperson told ABC News that the company “was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it.”
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The ultrawealthy are increasingly courting death via high-risk “experiential luxury.”
As Molly Osberg notes at Curbed, Mt. Everest is no longer the only destination where the megarich are paying big money to risk their lives in search of novel, exclusive experiences:
There are a number of reasons the ultra-wealthy might be turning toward extreme adventures. A spate of trend stories detailing billionaire’s adventures in the Maldives or Alaskan helicopter snowboarding emerged in the years following the financial crisis of 2008, arguing “conspicuous consumption” had become less popular in the immediate aftermath of a large swath of the country losing jobs or homes because of mismanagement on behalf of a few very nice suits. Others might point to the Instagram effect, where anyone with a web browser and the means wants to telegraph an exclusive experience. But the most natural explanation is that for people for whom the most unimaginable luxuries are within close reach, simply sitting on a yacht unacknowledged isn’t enough: Billionaire status has become significantly more diffuse in recent years. A blood-diamond heir wants to become a space explorer or someone who made his fortune pumping and dumping real estate would rather be known as a philanthropist who also holds the record for the longest duration at full ocean depth. (Plus safari trophies, the original bauble of the intrepid and superrich, are now considered in poor taste.)
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If it happens underwater, the U.S. Navy may be listening.
Soon after the Coast Guard confirmed that debris from the Titan had been found on the ocean floor near the Titanic, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Navy had apparently detected the Titan’s implosion using the network of secret underwater listening sensors it uses to track foreign submarines. “The U.S. 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 Navy official told the Journal, adding that the analysis, which it passed along to the Coast Guard, was not conclusive at the time — which is why the search-and-rescue operation continued until the wreckage of the Titan was found.
