Titan submersible hearing begins as Coast Guard investigates implosion

The U.S. Coast Guard began two weeks of hearings Monday into the implosion of the Titan submersible. The vehicle that visited the Titanic imploded just over two miles below sea level on June 18, 2023. The world waited anxiously for four days to learn the fate of the five people on board.

That fate was illustrated by a stark video animation that aired at the start of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Board of Inquiry public hearing in North Charleston, South Carolina. The hearing is being broadcast live on the U.S. Coast Guard Channel.

The video documents the Titan’s journey as it was taken out to sea by its support ship, the Polar Prince, as well as discussions between the Titan and the ship’s crew.

One of the Titan’s final disturbing messages, sent at 10:14 a.m. local time in Newfoundland, Canada, was: “Everything is fine here.”

At approximately 10:47 local time, all communications and tracking between the Titan and the Polar Prince were lost.

The five occupants, four passengers and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush were crushed by the enormous pressures at that depth as they sank to the bottom where they hoped to see the wreck of the Titanic.

A lawsuit filed by the family of one of the victims says all five likely experienced moments of “terror and anguish” before the ship imploded underwater.

“The crew likely heard the creaking of the carbon fiber grow louder as the weight of the water pressed down on the Titan’s hull,” the lawsuit said. “According to experts, they continued to descend, fully aware of the ship’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish before the Titan imploded.”

What does the hearing reveal so far?

The list of witnesses to be called before the Coast Guard includes 24 names, including several former employees of OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan and organized the expedition.

On Monday, former OceanGate technical director Tony Nissen told Coast Guard officials that there had been multiple problems with the design and performance of the Titan submersible in the years leading up to the ill-fated 2023 voyage.

Nissen said Stockton Rush, the company’s co-founder, was very cost- and schedule-driven and difficult to work with. Nissen described post-dive hull cracking issues he observed in the Titan’s new carbon-fiber hull in 2018 and 2019.

Other witnesses to be called during the two-week hearing include OceanGate founder Guillermo Sohnlein, as well as the company’s chief human resources and finance officer, chief operating officer, contractor, mission specialists and chief science officer.

OceanGate no longer has any employees but will be represented at the hearing by a lawyer.

Where was the Titan going and why?

The implosion occurred just hours into a dive carrying the four passengers on what was to be the journey of a lifetime 12,500 feet down to the Titanic’s final resting place.

The Titanic sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage from England after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 people lost their lives. The ill-fated voyage has been the subject of numerous books and films, including the 1997 film “Titanic.”

What happened to the Titan?

Titan’s journey, which is expected to last eight hours, began at 8 a.m. on June 18, 2023, about 435 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

An hour and 45 minutes later, the submersible’s support ship lost contact with it. By 3 p.m., the Titan had still failed to surface. The frantic search and rescue operation that followed captivated the world for four days.

On board were Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Inc., the company that built the ship; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 73, a French deep-sea explorer; Hamish Harding, 58, a British pilot and adventurer; Shahzada Dawood, 48, a Pakistani-British businessman, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.

It wasn’t until 11:48 a.m. on June 22 that the U.S. Coast Guard announced the discovery of a debris field. The ship likely suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” and OceanGate reported that all of the Titan’s occupants were missing.

What did the Titan investigation reveal?

The U.S. Coast Guard, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the French Marine Accident Investigation Authority are working with the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board to conduct “parallel safety investigations” into the incident.

French authorities are involved in the case because one of the dead was Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French Titanic expert. Canadian authorities are involved because the Titan submersible was transported to the dive site aboard the Canadian-flagged support vessel Polar Prince, which departed from Newfoundland, Canada.

The U.S. Coast Guard hearings that began Monday are examining what was known about the safety and soundness of the Titan.

Much of those discussions consisted of technical discussions with Nissen about problems that arose in 2018 and 2019 after the Titan’s dives in the Bahamas. Nissen leafed through a stack of thick binders as he and the Coast Guard group pored over various documents related to those voyages.

In 2019, a crack appeared in the hull, which Nissen deemed too dangerous to allow the ship to operate. He showed pictures of the hull, which he said meant there were problems with the hull. “It was the craziest situation I’ve ever seen in Stockton, for sure,” Nissen said.

Nissen was fired in June 2019.

“Because I wouldn’t let them go to the Titanic,” he testified.

What happened to the company that owned Titan?

Two weeks after the incident, OceanGate announced on its website that it had suspended “all exploration and commercial operations.” Its headquarters in Everett, Washington, was closed. Founded in 2008, its business license expired June 7, according to Washington State Department of Revenue records.

The company’s nonprofit research arm, called the OceanGate Foundation, was launched in 2010 but also closed in 2023, according to Washington Department of Revenue records.

OceanGate Inc. also operated a subsidiary, OceanGate Expeditions, out of the same office. It closed on March 31, 2021, according to Washington records.