Inside the missing Titanic submersible, as rescuers continue search for 5-member crew
The 22-foot vehicle guided via text message lost contact with its support ship Sunday morning.
Five people remain missing after a submersible bound for the site of the wreckage of the Titanic failed to return as scheduled Sunday evening. Details have continued to emerge about the craft, which was attempting to reach the sunken ship, nearly 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean.
About the Titan
According to specs on the OceanGate website, the Titan is 22 feet long (equivalent to the length of a conversion van), 9 feet wide and 8 feet high. It has space for four passengers plus the pilot, and the expeditions cost up to $250,000 per person. The company states that the craft has 96 hours of air and boasts a real-time system monitoring the health of the hull. It features a large domed porthole for observation, as well as external lights and 4K cameras. The interior walls are heated to counter the frigid water temperatures, and the craft has a toilet area that can be curtained off.
While the vehicle has been called a submarine, it’s technically a submersible, because it does not have the ability to launch itself and requires support ships. OceanGate's CEO, Stockton Rush, who is among those missing, said last year that his Everett, Wash.-based tourism and research company had reached the site of the Titanic a dozen times between 2021 and 2022.
Because GPS cannot be accessed underwater, the Titan is guided via text messages from the surface ship. According to the Coast Guard, the submersible lost contact with its support vessel, the Canadian research ship Polar Prince, an hour and 45 minutes after it launched. OceanGate said the sub was sealed at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, giving those onboard up to approximately Thursday before running out of oxygen. At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick would not commit to searchers being able to perform a rescue, even if they were able to find the sub, which he said had "about 40 hours of breathable air" left.
Details on the expeditions
A 10-minute segment from CBS News Sunday Morning in November provided an in-depth look at the process and at some of the potential issues. The journalist David Pogue relays some of the paperwork in an almost humorous tone, reading, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death,” before adding, “Where do I sign?”
Another former passenger on the Titan told the BBC on Tuesday of having to sign a “death waiver” that “lists one way after another that you could die on the trip,” including “ [mentioning] death three times on page one, and so it's never far from your mind.”
In the 2022 piece, Pogue noted that while he was on the expedition, traveling on the command ship, the submersible never made it to the wreck site because of communications errors. He quoted one passenger as saying, "We were lost for two-and-a-half hours."
In a tweet Monday, Pogue said the craft was in fact lost for five hours and that adding an emergency locator beacon was discussed. Pogue added, “They could still send short texts to the sub, but did not know where it was. It was quiet and very tense, and they shut off the ship’s internet to prevent us from tweeting.” The company cited the need to keep “all channels open” as a reason for cutting off internet access, he said.
That wasn’t the only issue reported in the story. Pogue said that while poor weather stopped him from making a dive to the sunken luxury liner, the team offered him a trip to a Continental Shelf that served as shark breeding grounds. Pogue only made it 37 feet down before floats came off the launching platform, however, and the mission had to be canceled. He also reported that the Titan was sealed from the outside by 17 bolts.
The CBS News piece also showed that the submersible is piloted by a computer gaming controller, which is not uncommon. OceanGate CEO Rush noted that he got one piece of equipment used on the craft from “Camper [sic] World,” but disagreed with the assessment that his creation “has some elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness,” referring to the 1980s television action star who would craft complicated tools out of ordinary household objects. Rush did note that the vessel had just one button, saying "It should be like an elevator, you know? It shouldn't take a lot of skill."
Along with Rush, those missing include a British billionaire and explorer, Hamish Harding, a Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman and a 77-year-old French explorer, Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Authorities from the United States and Canada are continuing to conduct a rescue operation, and France has pledged to send a deep-sea robot to help with the effort.
