The story so far: On June 18, a submersible named Titan went missing. On board the missing vehicle were one pilot and four crew members travelling to see the wreckage of RMS Titanic, which is nearly four thousand metres under water in the frigid North Atlantic ocean. One hour and forty-five minutes into the journey, contact with Titan was lost.
United States and Canadian authorities have been using airplanes and boats, and are leveraging sonar technology to locate the sub. Titan has 96 hours of life support for a crew of five. Authorities are working round the clock to re-establish contact with the undersea vehicle. One of the crew members is Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Inc., the company that runs these tours to the sunken ship.
What is the Titan submersible?
Titan is a submersible, or an underwater vehicle. It is operated by the privately owned U.S. company OceanGate that organises underwater expeditions for both research and tourism.
The company claims that Titan, which it said was built with “off-the-shelf” components, is lighter and more cost-efficient than other deep diving submersibles. The 6.7-metre-long manned submersible is intended for “site survey and inspection, research and data collection, film and media production, and deep sea testing of hardware and software,” according to the OceanGate website.
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A photo showing Titan’s descent from a past mission | Photo Credit: Cropped screenshot from oceangate.com
The company said its expeditions were meant to document the Titanic and its rate of decay on the ocean floor, and that all expeditions were in line with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Guidelines for Research Exploration and Salvage of RMS Titanic, as well as the UNESCO guidelines for the preservation of underwater world heritage sites.
What do these guidelines say?
It is important to remember that the wreckage of the Titanic is a grave site where victims experienced unimaginable horror and suffering in their final hours. For this reason, international guidelines are in place to protect the now rust-covered wreckage which is scattered across the ocean bed, as well as the visitors who wish to see it.
The UNESCO guidelines stress on the long-term preservation of “underwater cultural heritage” and the need to protect the surrounding waters as well by ensuring “responsible non-intrusive access.”
A screengrab from the OceanGate website, promoting the Titanic tour | Photo Credit: Cropped screenshot from oceangate.com
The NOAA guidelines are similar and insist that recovered material and artefacts must be managed as per professional standards. In other words, taking souvenirs from the wreckage site is strongly discouraged.
What is the difference between a submarine and a submersible?
While the two categories can overlap, a submarine refers to an underwater vehicle that is largely independent and has power reserves to help it depart from a port or come back to the port after an expedition. Meanwhile, a submersible is generally smaller in size and has less power, so it needs to work with a ship in order to be launched and recovered.
The missing submersible Titan was working with a vessel named Polar Prince.
What happened to the people on the Titan submersible?
The five people on the Titan submersible travelling to see the wreckage of the Titanic at a depth of 3,800 metres are OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, billionaire Hamish Harding, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his university-going son Suleman Dawood, and Titanic researcher Paul-Henri Nargeolet. The cost of the tour is reportedly $250,000 per person.
The Titanic tour takes place about 380 nautical miles south of Newfoundland, close to where the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sank on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg. Over 1,500 people died in the tragedy.
Also read: Rescuers make last desperate push as final hours of oxygen on missing Titanic submersible tick down
OceanGate said in a statement that its “entire focus” was on the crew members and their families. While authorities had not yet made contact with the submersible at the time of writing, one aircraft detected “underwater noises” in the search area, the BBC reported.
On June 23, OceanGate said that the five crew members had “sadly been lost”. The U.S. Coast Guard shared in a press conference that a field of debris with fragments of Titan was found, indicating that the submersible had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” which killed all on board.
OceanGate said it had conducted “successful” expeditions to the Titanic in 2021 and 2022.
How was the submersible operated?
Titan is made of carbon fibre and titanium, and weighs 10,432 kilograms, according to OceanGate’s website. It is capable of going 4,000 metres undersea, and moves as fast as three knots per hour (5.56 kph). Based on images from the company website, there is space for the five crew members to sit on the floor, though not stand. A small porthole window is at one end, but below 1,000 metres no sunlight reaches the ocean so the submersible would have to rely on its own lighting. The submersible is dependent on external crew members, as it is bolted from the outside. Titan also has an integrated launch and recovery platform.
A photo of Titan’s interior, with a five-person crew from a past expedition; one member can be seen operating with a game controller. | Photo Credit: Cropped screenshot from oceangate.com
The sub’s interior was filmed when it was on land. In a 2022 video interview with BBC, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said that Titan had only one button inside and that the submersible was run with a “Sony PlayStation-style controller” made by Logitech. The company has explained that “off-the-shelf” technology helped make it easier to replace parts.
While it may sound strange that a submersible on such a high-risk expedition was operated with a gaming-style controller, the fact is that such devices are also used by some drone operators, navy personnel, and robot operators. Game controllers are cheap, easy to buy in bulk, designed to be intuitive, and respond quickly to the users’ hand movements.
Before the expedition, OceanGate also said in a tweet that it was relying on satellite-based internet from the Elon Musk-founded company SpaceX’s Starlink for communication from the middle of the ocean, throughout the Titanic expedition.
Musk is yet to formally address the situation or issue a statement.
Has the Titan submersible experienced problems before?
Titan has experienced problems in the past. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue claimed this week that the submersible “got lost for a few hours” when he was part of an expedition last year as a journalist, though he was on the ship and not the submersible at the time. Pogue tweeted on June 19 that the company could text Titan that day but did not know where the submersible was. Pogue added that internet was shut off to stop those on the surface from tweeting, though he did not report this on the show at the time. He also claimed the submersible did not have a beacon that could be detected by rescuers.
Screenshot of David Pogue describing his experience near Titan last year | Photo Credit: Twitter @Pogue
According to the CBS Sunday Morning video report that his news organisation shared, the surface ship was supposed to lead Titan to Titanic’s wreckage but communications broke down and they did not reach their destination that day.
In 2018, OceanGate fired its employee David Lochridge and sued him after he filed a whistle-blower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration over the safety of the Titan submersible, CBS reported. Lochridge allegedly pushed for better testing of the submersible’s hull before sending it down for dives.
According to Lochridge’s court filings from August 15, 2018, he learned that “the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure that is felt at 1,300 metres, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 metres”.
His other concerns included the “experimental” design, a lack of comprehensive hull testing, and the use of hazardous flammable materials inside the submersible, as per the filings.
While search and rescue operations for Titan’s occupants continue in the North Atlantic ocean, the missing submersible has ignited worldwide debate about the ethics of dark tourism and the need to regulate technological innovation in high-risk sectors.
This article was updated to include the latest findings from the search-and-rescue mission.
Published - June 22, 2023 02:28 pm IST
