Titan submersible implosion

Titan submersible implosion

Date	18 June 2023
Location	North Atlantic Ocean, near the wreck of the Titanic
Coordinates	41°43′32″N 49°56′49″W / 41.72556°N 49.94694°W / 41.72556; -49.94694
Type	Maritime disaster
Cause	Failure of the pressure hull
Participants	5 passengers
Outcome	Submersible destroyed by implosion
Deaths	5 (see fatalities)

On 18 June 2023, Titan, a submersible operated by American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, imploded during an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Onboard the submersible were Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French deep sea explorer and Titanic expert, Hamish Harding, a British billionaire businessman, Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British billionaire businessman, and Dawood's son Suleman.

Communication with Titan was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive. Authorities were alerted when it failed to resurface at the scheduled time later that day. After the submersible had been missing for four days, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) discovered a debris field containing parts of Titan, about 500 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic. The search area was informed by the United States Navy's (USN) sonar detection of an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion around the time communications with the submersible ceased, suggesting the pressure hull had imploded while Titan was descending, resulting in the instantaneous deaths of all five occupants.

The search and rescue operation was conducted by an international team led by the United States Coast Guard (USCG), USN, and Canadian Coast Guard.^[1] Support was provided by aircraft from the Royal Canadian Air Force and United States Air National Guard, a Royal Canadian Navy ship, as well as several commercial and research vessels and ROVs.^[2][3]

Numerous industry experts had raised concerns about the safety of the vessel. OceanGate executives, including Rush, had not sought certification for Titan, arguing that excessive safety protocols hindered innovation.^[4]

Background

OceanGate

OceanGate is a private company, founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein. Since 2010, it has transported paying customers in leased commercial submersibles off the coast of California, in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Atlantic Ocean.^[5] The company is based in Everett, Washington, U.S.^[6]

Rush realised that visiting shipwreck sites was a way to get media attention. OceanGate had previously conducted trips to other shipwrecks including its 2016 dive to the wreck of the Andrea Doria aboard their other submersible Cyclops 1. In 2019, Rush told Smithsonian magazine "There's only one wreck that everyone knows ... If you ask people to name something underwater, it's going to be sharks, whales, Titanic".^[5]

Titanic

The Titanic was a British ocean liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg. More than 1,500 people died, making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship at the time.^[7][8] In 1985, Robert Ballard located the wreck of the Titanic on the ocean floor, around 400 nautical miles (740 km; 460 mi) from the coast of Newfoundland.^[9] The wreck lies at a depth of about 3,810 metres (12,500 feet; 2,080 fathoms).^[10] Since its discovery, it has been a destination for research expeditions and tourism. By 2012, a century after its sinking, 140 people had visited the wreck site.^[11]

Titan submersible

Formerly known as Cyclops 2,^[12] Titan was a five-person submersible vessel operated by OceanGate Inc. The 6.7-metre-long (22 ft), 10,432 kg (23,000 lb) vessel was constructed from carbon fibre and titanium.^[13] The entire pressure vessel consisted of two titanium hemispheres with matching titanium interface rings bonded to the 142 cm (56 in) internal diameter, 2.4-metre-long (7.9 ft) carbon fibre-wound cylinder.^[14] One of the titanium hemispherical end caps was fitted with a 380 mm-diameter (15 in) acrylic window.^[15] In 2020, Rush said that the hull, originally designed to reach 4,000 m (13,000 ft) below sea level,^[16] had been downgraded to a depth rating of 3,000 m (9,800 ft) after demonstrating signs of cyclic fatigue. In 2020 and 2021, the hull was repaired or rebuilt.^[17] Rush told the Travel Weekly editor-in-chief that the carbon fibre had been sourced at a discount from Boeing because it was too old for use in the company's airplanes.^[18] Boeing stated they have no records of any sale to Rush or to OceanGate.^[19] OceanGate had initially not sought certification for Titan, arguing that excessive safety protocols hindered innovation.^[4] Lloyd's Register, a ship classification society, declined OceanGate's request to class the vessel in 2019.^[20]

Titan could move at up to 3 knots (5.6 km/h; 3.5 mph) using four electric thrusters, arrayed two horizontal and two vertical.^[21] Its steering controls consisted of a Logitech F710 wireless game controller with modified analogue sticks. The University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory assisted with the video game controller control design on the Cyclops 1 using a Sony brand Playstation 3 controller, which was carried over to Titan, substituting with the Logitech controller.^[22] The use of commercial off-the-shelf game controllers is common for remote-controlled vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles or bomb disposal robots,^[23][24][25] whilst the United States Navy uses Xbox 360 controllers to control periscopes in Virginia-class submarines.^[26]

OceanGate claimed on its website as of 2023 that Titan was "designed and engineered by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration [with] experts from NASA, Boeing, and the University of Washington" (UW).^[27] A ⅓-scale model of the Cyclops 2 pressure vessel was built and tested at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at UW; the model was able to sustain a pressure of 4,285 psi (29.54 MPa; 291.6 atm), corresponding to a depth of about 3,000 m (9,800 ft).^[28] After the disappearance of Titan in 2023, these earlier associates distanced themselves from the Titan project. UW claimed the APL had no involvement in the "design, engineering, or testing of the Titan submersible". A Boeing spokesperson also claimed Boeing "was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it". A NASA spokesperson said that NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center had a Space Act Agreement with OceanGate, but "did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities".^[27]

According to OceanGate, the vessel contained monitoring systems to continuously monitor the strength of the hull.^[13] The vessel had life support for five people for 96 hours.^[13] There is no GPS underwater; the support ship, which monitored the position of Titan relative to its target, sent text messages to Titan providing distances and directions.^[29]

Titan had seven backup systems intended to return the vessel to the surface in case of emergency, including ballasts that could be dropped, a balloon, and thrusters. Some of the backup systems were designed to work even if all aboard the submersible were unconscious, such as sandbags held by hooks that dissolve after a certain number of hours in saltwater. Ideally, this would release the sandbags, allowing the vessel to float to the surface.^[30][31] An OceanGate investor explained that if the vessel did not automatically ascend after the elapsed time, those inside could help release the ballast either by tilting the ship back and forth to dislodge it or by using a pneumatic pump to loosen the weights.^[32]

Dives to the

Titan dives to Titanic took place during multi-day excursions organized by OceanGate. According to reporter David Pogue, OceanGate did five Titanic excursions during the summer of 2021 and five excursions during the summer of 2022.^[33]

Passengers would sail to and from the wreckage site aboard a support ship and spend approximately five days in the ocean above the Titanic wreckage site. Two dives were usually attempted during each excursion, though dives were often cancelled or aborted due to weather or technical malfunctions.^[33]

Each dive typically had a pilot, a guide, and three paying passengers on board.^[34] Once inside the submersible, the hatch would be bolted shut and could only be reopened from the outside.^[35] The descent from the surface to the Titanic typically took two hours,^[36] with the full dive taking about eight hours.^[34] Throughout the journey, the submersible was expected to emit a safety ping every 15 minutes to be monitored by the above-water crew.^[9] The vessel and surface crew were also able to communicate via short text messages.^[37]

Customers who travelled to the Titanic with OceanGate, referred to as "mission specialists" by the company,^[38] paid US$250,000 each for the eight-day expedition.^[34][39][40]

OceanGate intended to conduct multiple dives to the Titanic in 2023, but the dive in which Titan was destroyed was the only one the company had launched that year.^[34][36]

Safety

Because Titan operated in international waters and did not carry passengers from a port, it was not subject to safety regulations. The vessel was not certified as seaworthy by any regulatory agency or third-party organization.^[41] Reporter David Pogue, who completed the expedition in 2022 as part of a CBS News Sunday Morning feature,^[42] said that all passengers who enter Titan sign a waiver confirming their knowledge that it is an "experimental" vessel "that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death".^[43] Television producer Mike Reiss, who also completed the expedition, said the waiver "mention[s] death three times on page one".^[44] A 2019 article published in Smithsonian magazine referred to Rush as a "daredevil inventor".^[5] In the article, Rush is described as having said the U.S. Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation".^[5][45] In a 2022 interview, Rush told CBS News, "At some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Don't get in your car. Don't do anything."^[46] Rush said in a 2021 interview, "I've broken some rules to make [Titan]. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon fiber and titanium, there's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."^[47]

OceanGate claimed that Titan was the only crewed submersible that used RTM, "an integrated real-time health monitoring system".^[48] The proprietary system, patented by Rush,^[49] employed acoustic sensors and strain gauges at the pressure boundary to analyse the effects of increasing pressure as the watercraft ventured deeper into the ocean and to monitor the hull's integrity in real time. This supposedly would function to give early warning of problems and allow enough time to abort the descent and return to the surface.^[48][50]

Prior concerns

In 2018, OceanGate's director of marine operations, David Lochridge, composed a report documenting safety concerns he had about Titan. In court documents, Lochridge said that he had urged the company to have Titan assessed and certified by an agency, but OceanGate had declined to do so, citing an unwillingness to pay.^[51] He also said that the transparent viewport on its forward end, due to its nonstandard and therefore experimental design, was only certified to a depth of 1,300 m (4,300 ft), only a third of the depth required to reach the Titanic.^[52] Lochridge was also concerned that OceanGate would not perform nondestructive testing on the vessel's hull before undertaking crewed dives, and alleged that he was "repeatedly told that no scan of the hull or Bond Line could be done to check for delaminations, porosity and voids of sufficient adhesion of the glue being used due to the thickness of the hull".^[52][17][53]

OceanGate said that Lochridge, who was not an engineer, had refused to accept safety approvals from OceanGate's engineering team, and that the company's evaluation of Titan hull was stronger than any kind of third-party evaluation Lochridge thought necessary.^[51] OceanGate sued Lochridge for allegedly breaching his confidentiality contract and making fraudulent statements. Lochridge countersued, stating that he had been wrongfully terminated as a whistleblower for bringing up concerns about Titan's ability to operate safely. The two parties settled a few months later.^[54][52][55]

Later in 2018, the Marine Technology Society wrote a letter to Rush expressing "unanimous concern regarding the development of 'TITAN' and the planned Titanic Expedition", indicating that the "current experimental approach ... could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry".^[56] A signatory of the letter later told The New York Times that Rush had called him after reading it to tell him that he believed industry standards were stifling innovation.^[51]

In March 2018, Rob McCallum, a leading deep sea exploration specialist, emailed Rush to warn him he was potentially risking his clients' safety and advised against the submersible's use for commercial purposes until it had been independently tested and classified: "I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative." Rush replied that he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation ... We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult". McCallum then sent Rush another email in which he said: "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: 'She is unsinkable'". This prompted OceanGate's lawyers to threaten McCallum with legal action.^[57]

In 2022, the British actor and television presenter Ross Kemp, who had previously taken part in deep sea dives for the television channel Sky History, had planned to mark the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic by recording a documentary in which he would undertake a dive to the wreckage using Titan. Kemp's agent Jonathan Shalit said that the project was shelved after checks by production company Atlantic Productions deemed the submersible to be unsafe and not "fit for purpose".^[58][59]

Previous incidents

External video
CBS Sunday Morning / David Pogue report on OceanGate, broadcast November 27, 2022 (YouTube)

In 2022, reporter David Pogue was on board the surface ship when Titan became lost and could not locate the Titanic during a dive.^[60][61] Pogue's December 2022 report for CBS News Sunday Morning, which questioned Titan's safety, went viral on social media after the submersible lost contact with its support ship in June 2023.^[62] In the report, Pogue commented to Rush that "it seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyvery jerry-rigged-ness". He said that a $30 Logitech F710 wireless game controller with modified control sticks was used to steer and pitch the submersible, and that construction pipes were used as ballast.^[63]

In another 2022 dive to the Titanic, one of the thrusters on Titan was accidentally installed backwards and the submersible started spinning in circles when trying to move forward near the sea floor. As documented by the BBC documentary Take Me to Titanic, the issue was bypassed by steering while holding the game controller sideways.^[64][65] According to November 2022 court filings, OceanGate reported that in a 2022 dive the submersible suffered from battery issues and as a result had to be manually attached to a lifting platform, causing damage to external components.^[66][67]

Incident

The voyage was booked in early 2023. Rush approached Las Vegas businessman Jay Bloom with two discounted tickets, intending for him and his son to be on the trip. The billionaire was offered a price of $150,000 per seat, rather than the full price of $250,000, with Rush claiming that it was "safer than crossing the street", but Bloom turned down the offer over safety concerns. At that time the trip was scheduled for May, but bad weather delayed it to June.^[68][69]

16–17 June, preparations

On 16 June 2023, the expedition to the Titanic departed from St. John's, Newfoundland, aboard the research and expedition ship MV Polar Prince.

The ship arrived at the dive site on 17 June. One of the occupants, Hamish Harding, posted on Facebook: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only crewed mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow." He also indicated the operation was scheduled to begin around 04:00 EDT (08:00 UTC).^[70]

18 June, dive and disappearance

The dive operation began on 18 June at 9:30 a.m. Newfoundland Daylight Time (NDT), or 12:00 UTC.^[70][71] For the first hour and a half of the descent, Titan communicated with Polar Prince every 15 minutes, but communication stopped after a recorded communication at 11:15 a.m. (13:45 UTC).^[70] The submersible was expected to resurface at 4:30 p.m. (19:00 UTC).^[70] At 7:10 p.m. (21:40 UTC) the U.S. Coast Guard was notified of the missing vessel.^[72] Titan had up to 96 hours of breathable air supply for its five passengers when it set out,^[73] that would have expired on the morning of 22 June 2023 if the submersible had remained intact.^[74]

A U.S. Navy acoustic detection system designed to locate military submarines detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion hours after Titan submerged.^[75] This information was discovered after the submersible was reported missing, which caused the Navy to review its acoustic data from that time. The Navy passed the information to the Coast Guard.^[76]

18–22 June, search and rescue efforts

The United States Coast Guard, United States Navy, and Canadian Coast Guard led the search and rescue efforts.^[77] Aircraft from the Royal Canadian Air Force and United States Air National Guard, a Royal Canadian Navy ship, and several commercial and research ships and remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROVs) also assisted in the search.^[78][79][80] The search involved both a surface search and an underwater sonar search.^[43]

Crews from the Northeast Sector of the United States Coast Guard, based in Boston, launched search missions 900 nautical miles (1,700 km) from the shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.^[81][82] Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax reported that a Royal Canadian Air Force Lockheed CP-140 Aurora aircraft and CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752 were participating in the search in response to a request for assistance by the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Boston made on 18 June at 9:43 p.m. (00:13 UTC).^[78][83] The search on 19 June involved three C-130 Hercules aircraft, two from the United States and one from Canada;^[84] a P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine warfare aircraft from the United States, and sonobuoys.^[85] Search and rescue was hampered by low visibility weather conditions, which cleared the next day.^[86]

The U.S. Coast Guard indicated that the search and rescue mission was difficult because of the remote location, weather, darkness, sea conditions, and water temperature.^[87] Rear Admiral John Mauger said that they were "deploying all available assets".^[39] While many submersibles are equipped with an acoustic beacon that emits sounds that can be detected underwater by rescuers, Titan did not have such a device.^{[87][failed verification]}

The pipe-laying ship Deep Energy, operated by TechnipFMC, arrived on site on 20 June 2023, with two ROVs and other equipment suited to the seabed depths in the area.^[80] As of 10:45 a.m. (13:15 UTC), the U.S. Coast Guard had searched 10,000 square miles (26,000 km²).^[88] The New York Air National Guard's 106th Rescue Wing joined in the search and rescue mission with a HC-130J, with plans for two more to join by the end of the day.^[79]

According to an internal U.S. government memo, a Canadian CP-140 Aurora's sonar picked up underwater noises while searching for the submersible.^[89][90] The U.S. Coast Guard officially acknowledged the sounds early the following morning, but reported that early investigations had not yielded results.^[89] Rear Admiral John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard said the source of the noise was unknown and may have come from the many metal objects at the site of the wreck.^[91] A Canadian CP-140 Aurora plane had previously spotted a "white rectangular object" floating on the surface. A ship sent to find and identify the object was diverted to help find the source of the noise.^[92] The noises were later described by the U.S. Coast Guard as being apparently unrelated to the missing vessel.^[93]

CCGS John Cabot arrived on the morning of 21 June, bringing additional sonar capabilities to the search effort. Commercial vessels Skandi Vinland and Atlantic Merlin also arrived that day, as did a Coast Guard C-130 crew.^[94] As of about 3:00 p.m. (17:30 UTC), five air and water vehicles were actively searching for Titan, and another five were expected to arrive in the next 24–48 hours.^[95] Search and rescue assets included two ROVs, one CP-140 Aurora aircraft, and the C-130 aircraft.^[95]

The U.S. Navy's Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS), a ship lift system designed to lift large and heavy objects from the deep sea, arrived in St. John's, though no ships were available to carry the system to the wreck site.^[96][97] Officials estimated it would take around 24 hours to weld the FADOSS system to the deck of a carrier ship before it could set sail to the search and rescue operation.^[97]

Despite rising concerns about the depletion of air supplies on Titan if it were intact, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson said at a press conference that "This is a search and rescue mission 100%", rather than a wreckage recovery mission.^[98]

An Odysseus 6k ROV from Pelagic Research Services, travelling aboard the Canadian-flagged offshore tug MV Horizon Arctic, reached the sea floor and began its search for the missing submersible.^{[99][100][101]} The French RV L'Atalante also deployed its ROV Victor 6000, which can reach depths of up to 6,000 m (20,000 ft) and transmit images to the surface.^[102]

22 June, discovery of debris

At 1:18 p.m. (15:48 UTC) on 22 June the U.S. Coast Guard's Northeast Sector announced that a debris field had been found near the wreck of the Titanic.^{[103][104][105]} The debris, located by Pelagic Research Services' Odysseus 6k ROV five hours into its search, was later confirmed to be part of the submersible.^[106][107] At 4:30 p.m. (19:00 UTC) – at a U.S. Coast Guard press conference in Boston – the Coast Guard said that the loss of the submersible was due to an implosion of the pressure chamber and that pieces of Titan had been found on the sea floor about 1,600 feet (about 500 metres) from the bow of the Titanic.^{[108][109][110][111]}

The identified debris consists of the tail cone (not part of the pressure vessel) and the forward and aft end bells – both part of the pressure vessel intended to protect the crew from the ocean environment.^[112] According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the debris field was concentrated in two areas, with the aft end bell lying separate from the front end bell and the tail cone.^[113][106]

Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard said that the debris was consistent with a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber".^[114] Mauger stated that he did not have an answer as to whether the bodies of those on board would be recovered, but he did say that it was "an incredibly unforgiving environment".^[115]

Fatalities

The implosion killed all five occupants:

• Shahzada Dawood (48), a Pakistani-British businessman of the Dawood Hercules Corporation^[116] and philanthropist,^[117] a grandson of Pakistani industrialist Ahmed Dawood.
• Suleman Dawood (19), the son of Shahzada Dawood. He was a student at the University of Strathclyde.^[118][43]
• Hamish Harding (58), a British businessman, aviator, and space tourist.^[119][39] He had previously descended into the Challenger Deep, broken the Guinness World Record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth,^[120] and flown into space in 2022 on Blue Origin NS-21.
• Stockton Rush (61), an American submersible pilot, engineer and businessman. He was the chief executive and co-founder of OceanGate.^[121]
• Paul-Henri Nargeolet (77), a former French Navy commander, diver, submersible pilot, member of the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea,^[36][39] and director of underwater research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic Inc.,^[122] that owns salvage rights to the wreckage site.^[123] Nargeolet led more than 35 expeditions to the wreck,^[124] supervised the recovery of thousands of artifacts, and was "widely considered the leading authority on the wreck site".^[122]

Recovery operations

23 June, new mission to debris field

Pelagic Research Services confirmed on 23 June that a new mission to the Titan debris field was already underway and that it had taken the Odysseus 6k ROV one hour to reach the site to continue searching and documenting debris.^[125][126]

It was further reported that the debris from Titan was too heavy for Pelagic's ROV to lift and that any recovery would need to take place at a later stage.^[127]

24 June, support ship returned

On 24 June, the Polar Prince returned to St. John's harbour. In their bid to understand what caused Titan's catastrophic loss, investigators boarded the support ship. Another boat was seen in the harbour towing the launch platform which Titan used.^[128]

28 June, arrival of debris and remains

On 28 June, Horizon Arctic returned to St. John's Harbour with the remains of Titan that were recovered from the debris field.^[129] Photos and video showed the titanium covers on both ends of Titan intact, with the single viewport missing, mangled pieces of the tail cone, electronics, the landing frame and other debris. The debris was to be transported to the U.S. as evidence in the investigation.^[130] The Coast Guard confirmed that presumed human remains were found within the debris, and that American medical professionals would conduct an analysis.^{[130][131][132][133]}

Pelagic Research Services, which was operating the Odysseus 6K ROV from Horizon Arctic, confirmed that its team had completed their mission.^[134]

On 30 June, Insider published an analysis of the recovery photos by Plymouth University professor Jasper Graham-Jones. The analysis concluded that a failure of the carbon-fibre hull was the most likely cause of the loss, given that no large pieces of carbon fibre are known to have been recovered. However, Graham-Jones found that that the acrylic viewing window may have failed, noting that the lifting strap for the window's bell housing went through the porthole. While the salvage team might have removed the window before salvaging the bell end, the team more likely would have left it in place and raised the part with a bag. However, if the window had failed first, Graham-Jones said he would expect larger pieces of carbon fibre to have been recovered.^[135] He stated he did not know whether the hull failed first, blowing out the window, or vice-versa.

Investigations

On 23 June, both the Canadian and the United States federal governments announced that they were launching investigations into the incident.^[136][137] They were joined by authorities from France (Bureau d'Enquêtes sur les Événements de Mer, BEAmer) and the United Kingdom (Marine Accident Investigation Branch, MAIB) by 25 June; the final report will be issued to the International Maritime Organization (IMO).^[138] It is not certain that lasting reforms will result from the investigation, as the IMO does not have regulatory authority.^[139]

United States

The United States investigation is being led by the Coast Guard (USCG) with support from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB); the Coast Guard is taking the lead because it declared the incident a "major marine casualty."^[137][140] USCG Captain Jason Neubauer has been named the chief investigator for a Marine Board of Investigation.^[138][141]

Canada

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is investigating because Titan's support vessel, MV Polar Prince, is a Canadian-flagged ship.^[137] A team of TSB investigators headed to the port of origin, St. John's, Newfoundland, to "gather information, conduct interviews and assess the occurrence", with other agencies also expected to be involved.^{[136][140][142]} The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) also announced that it was performing a preliminary examination of the incident in order to determine whether to launch a full investigation, which will occur if the RCMP determine criminal, federal, or provincial laws were broken.^[137][143]

Financial costs of operations

Numerous assets from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Coast Guard were deployed to search for the submersible, and to subsequently retrieve the victims' remains. On 23 June 2023, a Washington Post analysis made by Mark Cancian, a defence budget expert, estimated the costs of U.S. Coast Guard operations alone at about 1.2 million USD of taxpayers' money as of June 2023, with the additional operations to recover the submersible's debris not included. Cancian said that while the Titan search operation is funded by money already in the federal budget, the U.S. military will assume some unexpected costs, since personnel and equipment were used in an unforeseen way. Canada, which helped carry out the operations along with France and the U.K., is likely to have deployed more assets than the U.S.^[144]

Chris Boyer of the National Association for Search and Rescue said the search for Titan likely cost millions of dollars of public funds; however, the USCG declined to give an estimate, saying they "do not associate cost with saving a life". According to U.S. attorney Stephen Koerting, the USCG is generally prohibited by federal law from collecting reimbursement related to any search or rescue service.^[145]

The incident renewed past debates about whether taxpayers should bear the cost of search and rescue missions involving wealthy persons engaged in high-risk adventuring, such as incidents involving Steve Fossett and Richard Branson.^[146] By comparison, it is a commonplace in North America that private persons and/or their insurers must defray a large part of the costs of ambulance services provided to them, for example, even public ones.^{[147][148][149]}

Immediate reactions

Discussing the scale of the search and rescue response, Sean Leet, co-founder and chair of Horizon Maritime Services, the company that owns Polar Prince, said, "I've been in the marine industry since a very young age and seen a lot of different situations, and I've never seen equipment of that nature move that quickly ... The response from the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Military, folks at the airport, the people here, various companies who were involved in the mobilization of that equipment ... it was done flawlessly."^[150]

Parks Stephenson, director of the USS Kidd Veterans Museum and Titanic researcher, made an early comment about the disappearance of Titan: "No matter what you may read in the coming hours, all that is truly known at this time is that communications with the submersible have been lost and that is unusual enough to warrant the most serious consideration."^[151] Stephenson is experienced in deep-sea explorations such as Titan's, having previously dived to view the Titanic on five occasions.^[151][152]

The scale of the search and rescue efforts and media coverage compared to those for the Messenia migrant boat disaster days earlier has sparked criticism.^[153][145] In the Ionian Sea off the coast of Pylos, Messenia, Greece, a fishing boat sank while carrying an estimated 400 to 750 migrants, resulting in nearly 100 people confirmed dead,^[154] another 100 rescued,^[155] and hundreds more missing and presumed dead.^[156][157] Search and rescue efforts for the migrant ship were conducted by the Hellenic Coast Guard and military.^[158] Ishaan Tharoor of The Washington Post wrote that Pakistani Internet users compared and contrasted the Pakistani victims in both incidents, who were on opposite sides of Pakistan's large socioeconomic divide.^[159]

According to David Scott-Beddard, the CEO of White Star Memories Ltd, a Titanic exhibition company, the likelihood of conducting future research at the Titanic wreck has decreased due to the loss of Titan.^[160]

James Cameron, who directed the 1997 film Titanic, visited its wreckage site 33 times, and piloted the Deepsea Challenger to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, said he was "struck by the similarity" between the submersible's implosion and the events that led to the Titanic disaster. He noted that both disasters seemed preventable, and were indirectly caused by someone deliberately ignoring safety warnings from others.^[161] Cameron criticized the choice of carbon-fibre composite construction of the pressure vessel, pointing out that such material has "no strength in compression" when subject to the immense pressures at depth.^[50] Cameron said that pressure hulls should be made out of contiguous materials like steel, titanium, ceramic, or acrylic, and that the wound carbon fiber of Titan's hull had seemed like a bad idea to him from the beginning.^[162] He further elucidated that it was long known that a composite hull such as Titan's was vulnerable to microscopic water ingress, delamination, and progressive failure over time.^[162] He also criticized Rush's real-time monitoring of the submarine's hull as an inadequate solution that would do little to prevent an implosion.^[50] Cameron expressed regret for not being more outspoken about these concerns before the accident,^[162] and criticized what he called false hopes being presented to the victims' families, when he and his colleagues realized early on that for communication and tracking (the latter housed in a separate pressure vessel, with its own battery) to be lost simultaneously, the cause was almost certainly a catastrophic implosion.^[163]

The Logitech F710 game controller used to steer Titan sold out on Amazon shortly after the incident,^[164] which was described as "a more benign form of disaster tourism" in a post for the New York magazine blog the Cut.^[165]

In social and mass media

The submersible became widely discussed on social media as the story developed and has been the subject of "public schadenfreude",^[166] inspiring darkly humorous Internet memes that ridiculed the submersible's deficient construction, OceanGate's poor safety record, and the victims, as well as interactive recreations of Titan in the form of playable vehicles for Grand Theft Auto V^[167][168] and Roblox.^[169] The memes were criticized as insensitive,^[169] with David Pogue commenting that they were "inappropriate and a little bit sick". Some have felt the negative reaction to the victims may be a response to past news coverage of other extreme expeditions carried out by billionaires with their own companies, such as SpaceX or Blue Origin.^[170] Molly Roberts wrote in The Washington Post that those joking about the incident were demonstrating Internet users' impulses to be ironic, provocative, and angry with each other, combined with an "eat-the-rich attitude".^[171]

Other attention was given on social media to Brian Szasz, the stepson of passenger Hamish Harding, who tweeted about attending a Blink-182 concert and flirting with an OnlyFans model during the search.^[172][173]

According to psychologist Pamela Rutledge, an American expert in social media and mass media, the incident involving the Titan submarine, both tragic and captivating, was turned into entertainment on social media, disregarding compassion and truth. Key elements include the allure of disasters, fascination with the wealthy, conspiracy theories, uncertainty, and the mythology surrounding the Titanic, as well as the romance of rescue operations. Rutledge opined that the trend lacks accountability and empathy, and highlights the need to rethink how people use social media.^[174]

See also

• List of shipwrecks in 2023
• List of submarine and submersible incidents since 2000

References

External links

• "Titan Submersible". - U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation
• "Marine transportation safety investigation M23A0169". 23 June 2023. - Transportation Safety Board of Canada