Titanic sub implosion: OceanGate CEO’s chilling words about Titan revealed as company shutters after disaster
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OceanGate Expeditions, the company that launched the doomed Titan submersible trip to the wreckage of the Titanic, has ceased operations.
A small message in the top-left corner of OceanGate’s website reads: “OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations.”
The announcement comes a full two weeks after the submersible imploded while carrying five people, sparking an international search, rescue and recovery operation.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Suleman Dawood all died in the implosion.
The company has come under scrutiny in the weeks following the tragic accident as former employees, former passengers and experts in the industry have criticised OceanGate for embarking on a potentially dangerous trip in the questionably designed submersible.
OceanGate’s decision to cease operations comes just after the company’s former finance director claimed she quit after CEO Stockton Rush asked her to captain the Titan once he fired the craft’s original chief pilot David Lochridge.
Key points
Titanic sub victim’s wife reveals how crew spent their final moments
US Coast Guard recovers ‘presumed human remains’ from sea floor near Titanic sub debris
Hamish Harding’s friend reveals race to get ROV to site of doomed sub
Why we are obsessed with the missing Titan submarine, according to experts
Subway shop slammed for mocking Titanic sub implosion on billboard
11:00 , Megan Sheets
Sandwich chain Subway has come under fire after making mocking reference to the Titan submersible disaster in its advertising.
A billboard outside one Subway restaurant in Georgia featured the slogan: “Our subs don’t implode”.
But the pun didn’t go down well with customers, with one describing the move as “distasteful” and “sad”, and another adding: “talk about poor taste”.
The Independent reports:
Subway shop slammed for mocking Titanic sub implosion on billboard
What photos of the Titanic sub debris tell us about its implosion
09:00 , Megan Sheets
Images of the wreckage recovered from the Titan submersible at the bottom of the North Atlantic appear to confirm the theory that the vessel suffered a massive implosion under the pressure of the ocean.
Earlier this week, the US Coast Guard brought the debris left by the sub on the ocean floor onto dry land.
Jonas Mureika, a professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” is referring to the intensity and speed of what took place.
“The pressure at that depth (3.8 km) is incredibly high, about 400 times atmospheric pressure. That’s 6,000 pounds per square inch acting on the submarine – atmospheric pressure is roughly 15 pounds per square inch,” he noted in an email.
The Independent reports:
What photos of the Titanic sub debris tell us about its implosion
Head of key Titanic sub recovery team dodges question about OceanGate
07:00 , Ariana Baio
Since the Titan submersible imploded, killing five people aboard, the subject of extreme tourism has been highly debated online and by professionals.
But when the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, the company that helped oversee the recovery mission of the submersible, was asked what his thoughts were on the trips OceanGate took to the Titanic, he claimed he did not have a strong opinion.
“I don’t necessarily have an opinion on that, it’s a strong investigation going on right now,” Edward Cassano said in a press conference last week.
Mr Cassano helped lead the team of people from Pelagic Research Services who used their remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to find the debris from the submersible last week.
Watch: Resurfaced documentary footage shows Titan spinning out of control
04:00 , Megan Sheets
Physicist calls for ‘pause’ on all tourist trips to Titanic wreckage
02:00 , Joe Sommerlad
A physicist has called for an end to all the tourist voyages to the Titanic wreckage after four days of frantic search for the Titan submersible ended and experts said all five people on board died in an implosion.
Michael Guillen, a former Harvard University physics instructor who himself had a near-death experience near the Titanic wreckage, said the ocean is a “merciless beast” and the Titanic’s wreckage is a “sacred ground” where all activities should cease.
“Certainly, we need to stop, pause all trips to the Titanic, I believe, and figure out, you know, what kind of restrictions should we place,” he said in an interview with GB News.
“This is not a joyride. This is a serious business. The ocean is a merciless beast, really. It’s ready to swallow you up.”
Mr Guillen went into the depths of the Atlantic aboard a Russian scientific research vessel in 2000 when he was a correspondent with the ABC network.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush downplayed ‘really loud bang’ on prior Titanic sub trip
01:00 , Joe Sommerlad
OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush dismissed concerns about a “really loud bang” during a previous dive on the doomed Titan submersible.
Rush was filmed speaking to passengers for an episode of BBC’s The Travel Show in 2022 when he mentioned that a crew member had heard a troubling sound come from the sub while it was on the ocean surface.
He said the noise was “not a soothing sound” but downplayed the danger, adding that “almost every deep-sea sub makes a noise at some point.”
It’s unclear what caused the noise, but former OceanGate employees and industry experts have said they repeatedly raised concerns about the Titan’s construction since it imploded on a dive to the Titanic wreckage, killing Rush and four others on board.
The sub’s “experimental” carbon-fibre hull wasn’t suitable for extreme depths in deep-sea exploration, and glue had leaked from the seams of ballast bags, whistleblowers said.
OceanGate touted ‘very safe’ Titanic sub in promo video weeks before doomed trip
Friday 7 July 2023 00:00 , Joe Sommerlad
OceanGate Expeditions released a promo video boasting about its “very safe” submersible two months before the vessel catastrophically imploded in the depths of the Atlantic while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic.
The company’s CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were killed in the ill-fated expedition after the sub lost contact with its mothership on 18 June.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, past passengers who previously went on the 12,000-foot dive aboard the Titan have shared several concerns they had with OceanGate’s safety measures. However, a promotional video posted 10 weeks before the implosion on OceanGate’s YouTube channel advertised the $250,000-a-ticket trip as extremely safe.
OceanGate touted ‘very safe’ Titanic sub in promo video weeks before doomed trip
Watch: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush reveals Titanic submersible built ‘with camping parts’
Thursday 6 July 2023 22:00 , Joe Sommerlad
Watch: Search and rescue company boss visibly emotional describing Titan search
Thursday 6 July 2023 21:00 , Joe Sommerlad
Why did the Titanic sub implode?
Thursday 6 July 2023 20:00 , Joe Sommerlad
In the days after OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush and his four-paying crew members went missing on their dive to the wreck of the Titanic, experts had several theories as to their fate.
On 26 June, those worst fears were confirmed when the US Coast Guard announced that it had found pieces of the Titan submersible scattered across the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the ill-fated ocean liner.
But what exactly caused the Titan to implode? While we don’t yet know the truth of what happened, we do know enough to have some idea of what might have sealed the sub’s fate.
The Independent’s Io Dodds reports.
Why did the Titanic sub implode?
Titan sub victims spent last moments listening to music and watching sea
Thursday 6 July 2023 19:00 , Joe Sommerlad
Passengers on board the sunk Titan submersible likely spent their final moments listening to music in darkness and watching sea creatures in the deep, it has been revealed.
All five onboard the Titanic tourist submarine were confirmed dead on 22 June after the vessel suffered a “catastrophic explosion”.
The tail cone of the submersible was found around 1,600ft from the bow of the Titanic wreck following a frantic five-day search operation in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Father and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19, were among the victims.
Christine Dawood, wife of Shahzada and mother of Suleman, has told of the preparations carried out by Stockton Rush, the pilot of the vessel and founder and CEO of OceaGate, the company that ran the voyage.
“It was like a well-oiled operation - you could see they had done this before many times,” Ms Dawood, said of a briefing given to the passengers, in an interview with The New York Times.
OceanGate Expeditions ceases operations after Titanic sub implosion killed five
Thursday 6 July 2023 18:30 , Ariana Baio
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that launched the doomed Titan submersible trip to the wreckage of the Titanic earlier this summer, has ceased operations.
Five people, including the company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, died when the carbon-fibre submersible imploded due to the extreme pressures of the deep ocean.
A small message in the top-left corner of OceanGate’s in red explains that the company has ceased its operations.
“OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations,” the message says.
Graig Graziosi reports:
OceanGate ceases operations after Titanic sub implosion
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing after 2019 dive
Thursday 6 July 2023 18:00 , Joe Sommerlad
A friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned him against taking customers aboard the company’s Titan submersible four years before it tragically imploded in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Mr Rush, went on a tour aboard the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in 2019, The New York Times first reported. In emails obtained by Insider of an alleged exchange between the two deep-sea enthusiasts, Mr Stanley told Mr Rush that he had heard a large cracking sound while on the 12,000-foot-deep dive.
“I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not,” Mr Stanley wrote in a premonitory email, years before the Titan’s catastrophic implosion that killed all five of its passengers.
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing in 2019
Titanic sub debris and human remains have been recovered. But we still don’t have answers to these 9 questions
Thursday 6 July 2023 17:00 , Joe Sommerlad
The desperate search for the missing Titanic submersible came to a tragic end when debris was discovered deep in the ocean. But, we still don’t know many crucial aspects of the doomed voyage.
The Independent’s Rachel Sharp, Io Dodds, Bevan Hurley and Andrea Blanco report.
These nine questions remain unanswered in the Titanic sub catastrophe
OceanGate CEO said glue holding Titanic sub together was ‘like peanut butter’
Thursday 6 July 2023 16:00 , Joe Sommerlad
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions whose submarine imploded during a trip to see the wreckage of the Titanic, once described the glue holding the vessel together as similar to “peanut butter.”
The Independent’s Graig Graziosi reports.
OceanGate CEO said glue holding Titanic sub together was ‘like peanut butter’
OceanGate suspends all expeditions
Thursday 6 July 2023 15:00 , Ariana Baio
The company has announced on its website that all expeditions are suspended following the tragedy that killed its CEO and four other passengers aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible.
Titanic sub passenger recalls brutal implosion warning
Thursday 6 July 2023 14:00 , Andrea Blanco
A former passenger of the Titan submersible that imploded last month, killing all five people on board, has spoken out about a brutal implosion warning.
Retired California businessman Bill Price, who went on a Titan dive in 2021, recalled discussing the effects of an implosion before the deep ocean expedition started.
Mr Price recalled some of the analogies of what it would be like to be crushed by extreme pressure in the ocean. He said it would be like a Coke can smashed with a sledgehammer. Or like “an elephant standing on one foot with 100 more elephants on top of it”.
The Independent’s Maroosha Muzzafar has more:
Titanic sub passenger recalls brutal implosion warning
OceanGate touted ‘very safe’ Titanic sub in promo video weeks before doomed trip
Thursday 6 July 2023 13:00 , Andrea Blanco
OceanGate Expeditions released a promo video boasting about its “very safe” submersible two months before the vessel catastrophically imploded in the depths of the Atlantic while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic.
The company’s CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were killed in the ill-fated expedition after the sub lost contact with its mothership on 18 June.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, past passengers who previously went on the 12,000-foot dive aboard the Titan have shared several concerns they had with OceanGate’s safety measures. However, a promotional video posted 10 weeks before the implosion on OceanGate’s Youtube channel advertised the $250,000-a-ticket trip as extremely safe.
OceanGate’s ex-finance director claims she quit after being asked to captain doomed vessel
Thursday 6 July 2023 12:00 , Joe Sommerlad
OceanGate Expeditions’ former finance director has claimed she quit the company after CEO Stockton Rush asked her to captain the doomed Titan submersible after firing the craft’s original chief pilot David Lochridge.
The employee, who spoke to The New Yorker on condition of anonymity, said: “It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting, I could not work for Stockton. I did not trust him.”
She added that several of the engineers working for the company were in their late teens and early 20s and were at one point being paid $15 an hour.
WATCH: Resurfaced documentary footage shows Titan spinning out of control
Thursday 6 July 2023 11:00 , Andrea Blanco
WATCH: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush reveals Titanic submersible built ‘with camping parts’
Thursday 6 July 2023 09:00 , Andrea Blanco
Voice recordings under scrutiny in Titanic sub implosion investigation
Thursday 6 July 2023 08:00 , Andrea Blanco
Voice recordings and other data will be reviewed as part of a US Coast Guard-appointed expert board’s probe into the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible last week.
American and Canadian marine authorities have announced investigations into the circumstances that led to the vessel’s malfunction after its chambers were found in a sea of debris 1,600ft from the wreck of the Titanic.
US Coast Guard Captain Jason Neubauer, who is chairing the investigation, said that he has summoned a Marine Board of Investigation, the highest level of investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. The board’s role is to determine the cause of the tragedy in order to pursue civil or criminal sanctions as necessary.
Voice recordings between the Titan and its mothership Polar Prince will be reviewed by investigators. The mothership’s crew is also being interviewed by different agencies.
Investigators with the Coast Guard have mapped the accident site and salvage operations are expected to continue, Cpt Jason Neubauer said. Once the investigation is wrapped — a timeline has not been laid out — a report with evidence, conclusions and recommendations will be released.
WATCH: Search and rescue company boss visibly emotional describing Titan search
Thursday 6 July 2023 06:00 , Andrea Blanco
Why did the Titanic sub implode?
Thursday 6 July 2023 05:00 , Andrea Blanco
In the days after OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush and his four-paying crew members went missing on their dive to the wreck of the Titanic, experts had several theories as to their fate.
On 26 June, those worst fears were confirmed when the US Coast Guard announced that it had found pieces of the Titan submersible scattered across the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the ill-fated ocean liner.
But what exactly caused the Titan to implode? While we don’t yet know the truth of what happened, we do know enough to have some idea of what might have sealed the sub’s fate.
The Independent’s Io Dodds reports:
Why did the Titanic sub implode?
Titan sub victims spent last moments listening to music and watching sea
Thursday 6 July 2023 04:00 , Andrea Blanco
Passengers on board the sunk Titan submersible likely spent their final moments listening to music in darkness and watching sea creatures in the deep, it has been revealed.
All five onboard the Titanic tourist submarine were confirmed dead on 22 June after the vessel suffered a “catastrophic explosion”.
The tail cone of the submersible was found around 1,600ft from the bow of the Titanic wreck following a frantic five-day search operation in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Father and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19, were among the victims.
Christine Dawood, wife of Shahzada and mother of Suleman, has told of the preparations carried out by Stockton Rush, the pilot of the vessel and founder and CEO of OceaGate, the company that ran the voyage.
“It was like a well-oiled operation - you could see they had done this before many times,” Ms Dawood, said of a briefing given to the passengers, in an interview with the New York Times.
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing after 2019 dive
Thursday 6 July 2023 03:00 , Andrea Blanco
A friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned him against taking customers aboard the company’s Titan submersible four years before it tragically imploded in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Mr Rush, went on a tour aboard the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in 2019, The New York Times first reported. In emails obtained by Insider of an alleged exchange between the two deep-sea enthusiasts, Mr Stanley told Mr Rush that he had heard a large cracking sound while on the 12,000-foot-deep dive.
“I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not,” Mr Stanley wrote in a premonitory email, years before the Titan’s catastrophic implosion that killed all five of its passengers.
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing in 2019
Head of key Titanic sub recovery team dodges question about OceanGate
Thursday 6 July 2023 02:00 , Ariana Baio
Since the Titan submersible imploded, killing five people aboard, the subject of extreme tourism has been highly debated online and by professionals.
But when the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, the company that helped oversee the recovery mission of the submersible, was asked what his thoughts were on the trips OceanGate took to the Titanic, he claimed he did not have a strong opinion.
“I don’t necessarily have an opinion on that, it’s a strong investigation going on right now,” Edward Cassano said in a press conference last week.
Mr Cassano helped lead the team of people from Pelagic Research Services who used their remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to find the debris from the submersible last week.
OceanGate employee feared CEO could ‘kill himself and others in quest to boost his ego’ with Titanic sub
Thursday 6 July 2023 01:00 , Andrea Blanco
“I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego,” a former OceanGate employee wrote in a 2018 email obtained by The New Yorker.
The Independent reports:
OceanGate employee feared deadly consequences in CEO’s ‘quest to boost his ego’
OceanGate’s ex-finance director claims she quit after being asked to captain doomed vessel
Thursday 6 July 2023 14:23 , Joe Sommerlad
OceanGate Expeditions’ former finance director has claimed she quit the company after CEO Stockton Rush asked her to captain the doomed Titan submersible after firing the craft’s original chief pilot David Lochridge.
The employee, who spoke to The New Yorker on condition of anonymity, said: “It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting, I could not work for Stockton. I did not trust him.”
She added that several of the engineers working for the company were in their late teens and early 20s and were at one point being paid $15 an hour.
Titanic sub debris and human remains have been recovered. But we still don’t have answers to these 9 questions
Thursday 6 July 2023 00:00 , Andrea Blanco
The desperate search for the missing Titanic submersible came to a tragic end when debris was discovered deep in the ocean. But, we still don’t know many crucial aspects of the doomed voyage.
The Independent’s Rachel Sharp, Io Dodds, Bevan Hurley and Andrea Blanco report:
These nine questions remain unanswered in the Titanic sub catastrophe
Was it an explosion or implosion and how would that have affected the passengers?
Wednesday 5 July 2023 23:00 , Andrea Blanco
“Knowing where the accident occurred, the assumption of an implosion makes sense,” Dr Joerg Reinhold, a professor at the Department of Physics at Florida International University, told The Independent.
“Both an implosion and an explosion need some form of stored energy. In typical explosive materials, the stored energy is chemical and is released through a chemical reaction. In the case of a submerged pressure vessel, the stored energy is mechanical – it is released when the surrounding water fills the space of the vessel.”
“If there is a catastrophic failure of the hull, this energy is first released in an implosion,” he notes. “Eventually, this will be followed by an outgoing shockwave – otherwise, listening devices would not be able to pick up the sound of the event.”
He went on to say that “implosions or explosions in water should behave differently than those in air. Air is a compressible fluid while water is an incompressible fluid. I expect the stored mechanical energy to be vastly bigger than any other source of energy on the submersible”.
“Even if the breach of the vessel would have been triggered by an internal source of energy, the final result will be an implosion,” Dr Reinhold said.
Jonas Mureika, a professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” is referring to the intensity and speed of what took place.
Dr Mureika added that “an explosion results when there is a sudden release of energy that results in a powerful outward pressure wave. Implosions, on the other hand, are due to an inward pressure differential. This was most certainly an implosion”.
“That being said, when the air inside the submarine was rapidly compressed, it most likely ignited and created an explosion – like a piston in a car engine – but this wouldn’t compare in magnitude to the implosive force,” he says.
“As for the passengers, because of the time interval for this to occur, as well as the magnitude of the pressure, it’s very likely they didn’t even know what hit them. It’s also doubtful they had time to process what was happening unless the implosion was preceded by something like a leak,” Dr Mureika adds.
What photos of the Titanic sub debris tell us about its implosion
Wednesday 5 July 2023 22:10 , Andrea Blanco
Images of the wreckage recovered from the Titan submersible at the bottom of the North Atlantic appear to confirm the theory that the vessel suffered a massive implosion under the pressure of the ocean.
Earlier this week, the US Coast Guard brought the debris left by the sub on the ocean floor onto dry land.
Jonas Mureika, a professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” is referring to the intensity and speed of what took place.
“The pressure at that depth (3.8 km) is incredibly high, about 400 times atmospheric pressure. That’s 6,000 pounds per square inch acting on the submarine – atmospheric pressure is roughly 15 pounds per square inch,” he noted in an email.
The Independent reports:
What photos of the Titanic sub debris tell us about its implosion
WATCH: Resurfaced documentary footage shows Titan spinning out of control
Wednesday 5 July 2023 21:08 , Andrea Blanco
OceanGate CEO said glue holding Titanic sub together was ‘like peanut butter’
Wednesday 5 July 2023 20:38 , Andrea Blanco
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions whose submarine imploded during a trip to see the wreckage of the Titanic, once described the glue holding the vessel together as similar to “peanut butter.”
The Independent’s Graig Graziosi reports:
OceanGate CEO said glue holding Titanic sub together was ‘like peanut butter’
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush downplayed ‘really loud bang’ on prior Titanic sub trip
Wednesday 5 July 2023 20:01 , Bevan Hurley
OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush dismissed concerns about a “really loud bang” during a previous dive on the doomed Titan submersible.
Rush was filmed speaking to passengers for an episode of BBC’s The Travel Show in 2022 when he mentioned that a crew member had heard a troubling sound come from the sub while it was on the ocean surface.
He said the noise was “not a soothing sound” but downplayed the danger, adding that “almost every deep-sea sub makes a noise at some point.”
It’s unclear what caused the noise, but former OceanGate employees and industry experts have said they repeatedly raised concerns about the Titan’s construction since it imploded on a dive to the Titanic wreckage, killing Rush and four others on board.
The sub’s “experimental” carbon-fibre hull wasn’t suitable for extreme depths in deep-sea exploration, and glue had leaked from the seams of ballast bags, whistleblowers said.
Titan’s hull ‘subjected to repeated stress over time’
Wednesday 5 July 2023 19:02 , Andrea Blanco
The 22-foot long, 23,000-pound Titan’s larger internal volume — while still cramped with a maximum of five seated people — meant it was subjected to more external pressure.
Elongating the cabin space in a submersible increases pressure loads in the midsections, which increases fatigue and delamination loads, said Jasper Graham-Jones, an associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.
Fatigue, he said, is like bending a wire back and forth until it breaks. Delamination, he said, is like splitting wood down the grain, which is easier than chopping across the grain.
Furthermore, the Titan’s hull had been subjected to repeated stress over the course of about two dozen previous dives, Graham-Jones said.
Each trip would put tiny cracks in the structure, he said.
“This might be small and undetectable to start but would soon become critical and produce rapid and uncontrollable growth,” he said.
Wife and mother of Titan passengers talks about waiting to hear from the doomed sub
Wednesday 5 July 2023 18:09 , Andrea Blanco
Christine Dawood was on board a support vessel when she got word that communications were lost with the submersible carrying her husband and son, to view the Titanic wreckage.
She didn’t initially understand what it meant that the Titan submersible had lost contact with the ship an hour and 45 minutes into its voyage, Dawood told the BBC Monday.
It would be four more days before she would learn the fate of her husband Shahzada Dawood and son Suleman Dawood, when authorities announced the vessel carrying five people had imploded and there were no survivors.
“We all thought they are just going to come up,” she said. “That shock was delayed about 10 hours or so. There was a time ... where they were supposed to be up on the surface. When that time passed, that is when the ... worry and not so good feelings started.”
Christine Dawood said she had “loads of hope” during the international search for the Titan, noting that it was the “only thing that got us through it.”
“There were so many actions on the sub that people can do in order to surface,” she said of believing they may survive. “It was like a rollercoaster, more like a wave ... We kept looking at the surface.”
Christine Dawood said she “lost hope” when they passed the 96 hour mark, sending a message to her family that she was preparing for the worst. Her 17-year-old daughter, Alina, was was still hopeful until the call with the U.S. Coast Guard about finding debris from the Titan.
Physicist calls for ‘pause’ on all tourist trips to Titanic wreckage
Wednesday 5 July 2023 17:19 , Shweta Sharma
A physicist has called for an end to all the tourist voyages to the Titanic wreckage after four days of frantic search for the Titan submersible ended and experts said all five people on board died in an implosion.
Michael Guillen, a former Harvard University physics instructor who himself had a near-death experience near the Titanic wreckage, said the ocean is a “merciless beast” and the Titanic’s wreckage is a “sacred ground” where all activities should cease.
“Certainly, we need to stop, pause all trips to the Titanic, I believe, and figure out, you know, what kind of restrictions should we place,” he said in an interview with GB News.
“This is not a joyride. This is a serious business. The ocean is a merciless beast, really. It’s ready to swallow you up.”
Mr Guillen went into the depths of the Atlantic aboard a Russian scientific research vessel in 2000 when he was a correspondent with the ABC network.
Heartbreaking final photo shows smiles of father and son moments before doomed Titanic sub trip
Wednesday 5 July 2023 16:50 , Andrea Blanco
OceanGate suspends all expeditions
Wednesday 5 July 2023 15:58 , Andrea Blanco
The company has announced on its website that all expeditions are suspended following the tragedy that killed its CEO and four other passengers aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible.
Subway shop slammed for mocking Titanic sub implosion on billboard
Wednesday 5 July 2023 15:22 , Andrea Blanco
Sandwich chain Subway has come under fire after making mocking reference to the Titan submersible disaster in its advertising.
A billboard outside one Subway restaurant in Georgia featured the slogan: “Our subs don’t implode”.
But the pun didn’t go down well with customers, with one describing the move as “distasteful” and “sad”, and another adding: “talk about poor taste”.
The Independent reports:
Subway shop slammed for mocking Titanic sub implosion on billboard
OceanGate employee feared CEO could ‘kill himself and others in quest to boost his ego’
Wednesday 5 July 2023 13:00 , Andrea Blanco
A former OceanGate employee warned safety concerns with the company’s Titanic submersible could have deadly consequences in an ominous ego calling out CEO Stockton Rush’s “ego”.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations from 2015 to 2018, was asked by Rush to conduct a quality inspection after safety issues with the Titan were raised. During this process, Mr Lochridge “identified numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns” but he was allegedly “met with hostility and denial of access” to necessary documents, according to a lawsuit he brought in 2018 after he was terminated.
Bombshell emails reported by The New Yorker show Mr Lochridge’s desperate attempts to expose safety issues with the Titan, five years before it imploded while on a 12,500-foot dive to the wreck of the Titanic with five passengers, including Rush, aboard last month.
“I don’t want to be seen as a Tattle tale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego,” Mr Lochridge wrote in an email to expedition leader and dive master Rob McCallum. “... I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen.”
“There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing,” another email by Mr Lochridge read.
