A public hearing has begun to investigate the catastrophic failure of the Titan submarine during the Titanic wreck expedition, which claimed the lives of five people. The Titan Marine Board of Investigation is hearing testimony from 24 witnesses, including 10 former OceanGate employees. At the hearing in South Carolina, an animated recreation of the Titan’s ill-fated voyage was presented, revealing the crew’s final messages, Independent reported. A sinister 3-word message appeared on the screen, “All is well here,” sent just moments before the submarine’s catastrophic explosion.
This recreation showed the Titan crew communicating with the support vessel, Polar Prince, which requested better communications after briefly losing contact. Polar Prince then asked the Titan crew if they could still see the support vessel on their onboard displays. The crew responded with a reassuring: “Yes” and, “All is well here” – their final transmission.
During the hearing, the US Coast Guard also presented a gruesome photo of the tail cone of the OceanGate Titan submarine, lying intact but abandoned on the sea floor at an altitude of 12,500 feet.
The Marine Board presented an animation model in support of the Titan submersible hearing. The full video can be viewed on the MBI website and downloaded here: https://t.co/7lZwbu0dXZ#TitanMBI pic.twitter.com/PToLMpLFw0
— USCG MaritimeCommons (@maritimecommons) September 16, 2024
At the hearing, OceanGate’s former engineering director Tony Nissen also testified that he had raised safety concerns about the submarine during his tenure. Mr Nissen claimed he refused to approve a dive to the Titanic wreck in 2019 due to hull concerns, which led to his firing later that year. He mentioned that Titan had been struck by lightning during a test mission in 2018, and that this could have damaged its hull. When asked about the internal pressure needed to deploy Titan, his answer was “100%”.
According to investigators, the Titan submarine had encountered numerous problems during previous missions, including 70 equipment problems in 2021 and 48 more in 2022.
The Titan submarine accident on June 18, 2023 claimed the lives of five individuals, including renowned British adventurer Hamish Harding, father-son duo Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, French national Paul-Henri Nargeollet, and OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush.
According to AFP, the two-week-long hearing into the accident will hear evidence about what went wrong and whether any physical or design failures were responsible for the crash, which attracted global attention.
“We have no words to ease the loss that this tragic incident has caused to the families affected. But we hope this hearing will help shed light on the causes of the tragedy and prevent an incident like this from happening again,” said Jason Neubauer of the Coast Guard Investigations Office, who led the hearing.
