Titan submersible riders share eerie accounts of past safety issues
Category: News & Politics
Via: perrie-halpern • last year • 97 commentsBy: Marlene Lenthang and Melissa Chan
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Titan was touted as a groundbreaking submersible that could give tourists the extraordinary chance to visit the deep-sea grave of the Titanic — but past passengers have shared chilling accounts of safety issues, communication failures and design concerns.
The desperate search for the missing submersible ended Thursday with the Coast Guard announcing that debris from the vessel was found. The five passengers are presumed dead.
It brings a close to the four-day race to find the Titan after it lost contact with its mother ship during a Sunday dive to the Titanic, 12,500 feet below the surface.
The 21-foot, carbon fiber and titanium submersible fit five people, with no seats and a curtained-off area for a makeshift bathroom.
Malfunctions left passengers like 'sitting ducks'
Brian Weed, 42, a camera operator for Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown," did a test dive on the Titan in May 2021 and said, "The moment we started the test dive, things started going wrong."
The submersible descended, but not all the way to the shipwreck.
The launch was "clumsy," and less than a quarter of the dive in, "there were malfunctions with the propulsion system," leaving the passengers like "sitting ducks in the water," Weed said.
"This was supposedly two months before they were supposed to take their first dive down to the Titanic, and that was very worrying for me. We were supposed to be on one of those first dives," he said.
He was also concerned that the door was bolted from the outside, saying, "There's still a potential that there's no way out even if you're on the surface."
But it was the allure of the Titanic — the ocean liner that sank on its maiden voyage from England to New York in 1912 — that drew him to the project.
"The thought of going down and seeing the Titanic really clouds your mind. You want this to be possible. You want this to be true. Your brain is willing to overlook some really glaring problems," he said.
"The thought of going down and seeing the Titanic really clouds your mind. You want this to be possible. You want this to be true. Your brain is willing to overlook some really glaring problems."
Brian Weed
Weed declined an invitation to dive again a week later.
Weed, no stranger to risky situations, said that "something about this felt like there wasn't a plan" and that "the reward is not worth the risk."
Josh Gates, the host of "Expedition Unknown," told NBC News' Tom Costello on that dive: "We had issues with thruster control. We had issues with the computers aboard. We had issues with comms."
"I just felt as though the sub needed more time and it needed more testing, frankly," he said.
OceanGate completed successful expeditions to the wreckage in 2021 and 2022 before the Titian disappeared on the third trip.
Lost communications; wandering for hours underwater
Colin Taylor, who went on the submersible when it explored the Titanic site last July with his 22-year-old son, described the communication system as "very difficult."
A photo of Colin Taylor's voyage in July to the Titanic shipwreck with his 22-year-old son.Courtesy Colin Taylor
"There's a text-based communication system that's two-way, very slow," he said. "I mean, when you're sending signals through that amount of water, it's very, very difficult."
Mike Reiss, a writer and producer who has worked on "The Simpsons," told ABC News he went on four 10-hour dives with OceanGate, including to the Titanic. The crews lost communication with the host ship each time.
When his vessel touched the bottom of the ocean on one of his OceanGate journeys to the Hudson Canyon, "a loud squawk came on the radio," he recalled in an episode of the podcast "What Am I Doing Here?" that aired a year ago.
"The sonar, the computers, the lights all stopped working. We went back to the surface immediately," he said.
Two years later, he took another expedition to the Titanic site in the submersible, describing it as "a car that you drunkenly drove into the ocean" steered by a video game controller.
When the team touched down, they faced a myriad of issues.
"We were nowhere near the Titanic. There were underwater currents pushing us farther and farther in the wrong direction. The sonar wasn't working, and the compass kept flopping from east to west, north to south," he said. "There was also a time crunch. We started late, and there was a hurricane rolling in on the surface."
David Pogue, a CBS News correspondent, tweeted that last year the submersible got "lost on the seafloor" for about five hours when he was on an OceanGate expedition to the Titanic's resting place. A segment on the trip aired in November.
Pogue wasn't in the Titan — he was in a control room on a ship at the surface.
"They could still send short texts to the sub, but did not know where it was. It was quiet and very tense," he tweeted Monday.
Former employee warned Titan's shell wasn't tested to descend deep safely
A former OceanGate pilot, David Lochridge, who was hired to run manned tests of submersibles, claimed five years ago in court papers that he was fired after he warned that the Titan's carbon shell was not properly tested to ensure it could descend safely to 4,000 meters, the estimated depth of the Titanic.
He also claimed OceanGate refused to pay extra for a viewport that could be used safely at a depth of 4,000 meters.
What legal action could OceanGate face after loss of Titan?
When he complained that OceanGate would be endangering customers, Lochridge said in the court papers, he was given "10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk."
Lochridge's claims, which were first reported by The New Republic, were in his counterclaim to a 2018 breach of contract lawsuit OceanGate filed saying he was not an engineer. The two sides settled a few months later. The details of the settlement were unclear.
Expeditions are always a 'risk'
Aaron Newman, a former passenger on the missing Titan and an investor in OceanGate, said he felt "safe" during his journey but acknowledged that risks are involved in such expeditions.
"They were a professional crew. They did a lot of training around safety and the backup systems around dropping weights," Newman said. "We're going places that a very few people have been. This is inventing things. There are risks, right? And we know that."
Newman said the explorers on the missing submersible — OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet, and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman — are a "good set of people" who were likely doing what they could "to stay alive."
Arthur Loibl, 61, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany, went on a voyage to the Titanic site in 2021 with Rush and Nargeolet, he told The Associated Press.
He said that while he was able to get a view of the iconic ocean liner, in hindsight he felt "a bit dubious" about how the dive was carried out.
"I was a bit naive, looking back now," he said. "It was a kamikaze operation."
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Sounds like greed overpowered prudence. The CEO essentially killed himself (and others) due to greed (it would seem).
Yep. A greedy entrepreneur parleying a grandiose scheme to wealthy passengers with more money than common sense, and as you said, he paid the ultimate price and took others with him.
OceanGate. The name itself doesn't inspire trust.
After Watergate adding the word "gate" to any other word denotes corruption.
One would think they could have picked a better name.
Exactly, that’s why San Francisco changed the name of the Golden Gate Bridge.
I know I'm going to hate myself for asking (kind of like a knock-knock joke), but what did they change it to?
Please don’t hate yourself and the Orange Vermilion Bridge isn’t a bad name.
That almost sounds a little too much San Francisco.
Arvo..sounds like it was doomed from the start...and literally went down for the third time!!
I remember seeing the first pictures of Titanic on TV sitting in a Youth Hostel in the Shetland islands in 1985..my first thoughts were yes it was incredible to see it, but hoped they would now leave it alone and let Titanic rest in peace..
But no they have scavenged things off her and now running tourist trips to invade the sanctuary of her peace and tranquillity and resting place of hundreds of lost souls..
Leave Titanic alone...
Agree. People died on that thing. It's a watery graveyard. Let the dead rest in peace
meh, it won't be too much longer before we have some billionaire satellites orbiting earth...
Seems we already have billionaires buying rides into space.
Reminds me of a sci-fi novel I read once about low G geriatrics.
In reality, however, extended low G is bad for the bod.
Interesting that multiple former employees and passengers are only now bringing up the safety issues, that if the OceanGate would have listened to their engineers, implemented and fixed, this tragedy might have been avoided, but Rush's hubris and greed took precedence with terrible consequences.
More than likely it is because they are just now being asked by the media. It also sounds like there was swift retribution to any employee complaining about safety.
Well, the company fired the guy who said it needed a different system to detect issues with the hull under pressure.
I hope the families have a case for a lawsuit against the company.
I don't know. From what I understand the consent waiver form was pretty intense and even contained the word "death" three times.
shit!
Why would anyone put themselves in that kind of danger?
Too much trust I guess. And at $250K a pop, one would think the company had its shit together but alas................
For excitement. I feel worst for the teenager on board. I've read that he was terrified of going, and only did so to please his father.
I have such a fear of being on the water - in the middle of the ocean - say on a cruise ship - that I would never take a cruise. The fear of sinking - regardless of lifeboats - fear of a storm while on a ship - drowning. I love shows about the cruise ships and their journeys and shows about big ships, etc., but that's it.
Now the thought of being UNDER WATER in a submarine - shudder - that poor kid - I can't imagine the terror he went through.
Can you imagine how claustrophobic it would be for one - and the thought of being underwater, NO THANK YOU.
I love being on the water, but have no desire to be under it farther than a snorkeling trip will take me.
I get sea sick every time. I'm ok on pontoon or ski boats but can't stand being on the ocean
I've never been seasick on a cruise, even when we caught the edge of a tropical storm and the infirmary was handing out seasick patches left and right.
I did get a bit sick to my stomach on a glass-bottomed boat ride, but I managed to keep my breakfast in its intended place. I think it probably didn't help that my eyes were directed toward the bottom of the boat, to see the fish and so forth, rather than toward the horizon.
I spent over 5 years at sea in the Coast Guard. I've been in the Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean and every Great Lake. I got sea sick every time we got underway and seas got rough. I swam in most of that water, plus the Mediterranean. I wanted to get my scuba license, but I have always had serious sinus issues.
inhaling salt water thru your nose under water would have fixed that...
HAHAHAHA! Ah.... enough of that would fix it permanently...
I finally had sinus surgery last year from what I was told was the best sinus surgeon in MN. He really goes above and beyond to help the Veterans at the VA Hospital.
The ocean - the world's largest Neti pot.
Bungee cords have been known to break but I still do it.
Ack. No thanks. I couldn't jump out of a plane either.
Had an episode with a barracuda once and no longer do the ocean.
Jumping out of a plane is high on my bucket list.
Who, in their right mind, would want to jump outta a perfectly good airplane???
Every ride in a C-130 Hercules? I jumped for 20 years with the 82d Airborne.
They would have to push me out the door.
They pushed me out my 1st Jump. After that, I'm not going to say I wasn't AS scared, but it wasn't as bad as that 1st time. Now, keep in mind the 82d conducts static line jumps from 1200 feet up. Sky diving is whole different monster.
Who said I was in my right mind?
I was in choppers - jumping was totally outta the question.
did the 130's for long hauls - got there quicker than with our helos - but never to jump.
Who qualified it as a ''perfectly good airplane?
The first time is a thriller not in a good way. Agree after that not as bad but always scary.
Did you ever jump from 800 to 1000 ft? Agreed, freefall is a whole other animal.
No rappelling? Did a lot of that in Colorado.
up the canyon, west of boulder?
Cripple Creek. Was a bouncer and a Western theatre actor there.
Also lived around Boulder (Nederland/Ward) back in the day.
Was a bouncer at Tulagi and a sound dude at Caribou Ranch.
Seriously miss the old days (my youth) in Colorado.
The only time I jumped from higher than 800 feet was for the slower moving aircraft (UH-60, CH-47). We jumped from 1200 feet with those.
Were you a Master Jumper?
When I turned 65 years old we were on holiday in NZ (had visited the kids in Australia for a month before that) and I figured that I might as well do something I'd been wanting to do for a while. So off I went skydiving two tandem jumps (it had been decades since I jumped with the 101st) the first jump was from 10,000 ft and the second was from 14,000 any higher and as you know one would have to have oxygen.
Having lived through that we went hang gliding off a 3800 foot mountain and stayed up for 1/2 hour it was spectacular and to finish the trifecta bungee jumping off the Kawarau Bridge in Queenstown NZ the original bungee jumping spot if I remember correctly around 45 meters over the river.
After that we went and had a bottle of wine (I don't drink) and I woke up the next morning still alive but with a huge hangover.
Great way to live life to the fullest.
I was a Master Rated Jumpmaster. Jumpmaster School (one of the hardest schools I've attended) is, actually, what made jumping with the 82d fun. Taught me a lot of things I didn't understand.
I've wanted to go skydiving. Money and time were a problem for a short while. I'm finally going this summer. Will be my 50th birthday present to myself.
This part of NC we don't have the high cliffs / hills for hang gliding. I'd love to do it at least once. I can only imagine the view you had for that long. I'm actually jealous.
Outstanding, Jeremy.
With the number of static line jumps you've had you are going to love skydiving. It's a whole other world. It will be a great present to yourself.
If you ever get the chance to hang glide to it, you'll love it.
Our family is mostly military and the only two branches that one can consider is the Marines or Airborne. I currently have two great-nephews with the 173rd Airborne and one in Special Forces and my great-grandson is with the 1st Squadron Australian Special Air Services. My son is a 100% disabled Marine from Beruit.
My cousin was with the 101st at Normandy and was KIA at Bastogne, and my Uncle was with the 11th Airborne in the Pacific in WWII. My dad and all others were in the Marines in WWII and Korea and Vietnam and the ME.
Evening..hmmm I guess if you are going to cark it doing something may as well go out in style...
LOL, that's the way I look at it, shona.
I worked with the 173rd in Afghanistan in 2006 - 2007. They took a beating in the Korangal Valley. Much respect for them all.
So you're family is international. That has to be fun when you all get together.
My family was military as well. I had 4 cousins (one in each branch) all officers. I was the only one since my grandfather who was enlisted. Needless to say, family get togethers were interesting. My cousin in the AF was a C-130 pilot and I got to jump his plane a few times.
Have you looked into the 101st Airborne Association and 11th Airborne Association? If they work like the 82d, they have conventions every year all over the world. May be a good way to connect with some of your cousins and uncles units and you may learn things about them you never knew. I got with my Great Uncles and found a great deal of information the family never knew.
I did in Vietnam and they and the 101st took some hella beating there. At Fort Moore (Benning) there is a monument to the 173rd and with it is a plaque naming the 1/RAR (Australia) that were KIA in Vietnam as they were under the operational command of the 173rd. They celebrate ANZAC Day every year in GA.
It's interesting, to say the least, I have 1 daughter, 4 grandkids, 12 great-grand kids and 3 great great grandkids in Australia, more relatives in Canada and some in the Pacific (Samoa). And one son in CA.
My great grandson with the SAS in Australia is the only Native American in their service. Ha, he has some interesting stories to tell.
One enlisted and the rest officers, oh man, that had to lead to some interesting conservations...LOL. Damn cool jumping from your cousin's plane.
Yes, I've been involved with the 101st but not the 11th. Also with Marine Associations. When I was working it was mostly overseas and the Pacific was part of my region and I was able to follow my dad's trail through the battles he was in. Tarawa, Saipan, Pelilu and Okinawa but I toured many other WWII spots in the Pacific. It was really a sobering moment to step on the tiny spit of land called Tarawa and relive what he went through there. He received a Silver Star and a Purple Heart with 2 clusters in his time in the Marines.
Currently, my neighbor and friend was with the 1/327th 101st in Nam and is undergoing treatment for cancer from Agent Orange. He always greets me with ''Knees in the Breeze Trooper and a Soft Landing''....Luv that guy.
Here is a laugh I went through Jump School before you were born, kid. (1959)
Here's to it. Semper Fi and Airborne All The Way.
They would have a case if they can prove that there was negligence. No contract protects a company from that.
From what I've been reading there was serious ongoing negligence.
They will bring up what's left of the vessel for the investigation, but there are no bodies left to recover. They never even had time to sense what was happening to them, it was instantaneous!
That's good news I guess Greg if they didn't know what was happening.
I once had somebody tell me that in a explosive decompression situation under water, in the time it takes somebody to snap their fingers, one would be dead before they ever heard the sound. As you said, it's that instantaneous.
Wonder if their Rolex dive watches survived explosive decompression.
When I was in the Navy, I had a supervisor who was himself a former Submariner tried and tried to get me to volunteer for the Nuclear Submarine Medicine Independent Duty School for Hospital Corpsmen. I finally got tired of him asking and told him I just could not get used to the idea of being on a boat that sank on purpose. The Chief just stopped and gave me a stern look and said "Son, going down ain't the problem. It's the coming back up safely that can be a problem.". He just walked away and never asked me again.
At least he was honest.
I don't like flying so I joined the Air Force
My dad was a paratrooper, and hates to fly. He jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, but won't stay on one until it lands.
Ok, now...I don't understand jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. The aircraft are steady, relatively safe, and get you to a precise destination. Can you say that about parachuting?
Nope.
Of course, he wasn't a paratrooper by choice. He enlisted during the Vietnam war, and that's the duty he was assigned.
But I would think, after having repeatedly jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, riding one all the way to the runway would be easy-peasy.
My uncle went to jump school when he enlisted for Vietnam. He ended up as a crew chief on a helicopter (he washed out of jump school)
173rd?
Yes. He was a tunnel rat.
Do you know if he was part of Operation Junction City in 1967?
He wasn't. He graduated high school in the spring of that year. He enlisted straight out of high school, but I'm not sure when he deployed.
Thanks, sandy give him a hug for me.
holy shit.
Read about the Battle of Ho Bo Woods the 173rd and the Australian 1/RAR and the tunnels.
Yeah, he was short and skinny, like 115 pounds, so he was pretty ideal for the job.
To this day, he sits with his back to the wall in restaurants, and always knows where the exits are. And we all know not to ever sneak up behind him, or we risk getting punched. He would never do it on purpose, but old habits die hard. Especially when your life depended on them.
I wanna be an Airborne Ranger, live the life of guts and danger!
Wasn't the case for this squid!
It's air to ground one way or another.
I couldn't have done it. I still remember an episode of that old show China Beach. They had to escape underground through a tunnel that was filled with water.
Neither could I. Those guys were brave as hell.
a 45 and a flashlight, in a dirt tunnel the size of a heating duct. yikes. that's some steel balls.
my nephew is still a little bit that way from multiple tours in the middle east.
I would have panicked. No way.
Pretty much the story of my life.
Still carry a gun, knife and bright light every day.
And I wasn't even a tunnel rat.
My dad had to use a sub once to go from one carrier to another and he said it was the scariest feeling he ever had. Also, he was used to lots of space being on the air deck, and the sub was tight quarters.
Bruce who was a submariner, said that being on a sub is 99% boredom marked by 1% sheer terror. Not something I would want to do.
My Father went on a sub once and said never again. Said it was one of the worst experiences of his life.
my great uncle interrupted dental school to enlist in the navy for WWII submarine duty. his brother, my grandfather, told me some of the stories my great uncle never would, but he told my grandpa, since they both served the USN in the pacific in WWII. it was a famous boat, that made it back. gramp's said the double dolphin insignia in port was way better than a credit card in WWII.
I'm a verified sinker who would have zoomed past Titan in a race to the bottom.
If this is true, why did they wait this long?
I am guessing that it may have been the fact that the technology used was considered highly classified and had to go through multiple levels up the chain of command. The Navy said that the info was shared with all pertinent rescue participants when the implosion was heard but were probably told not to divulge it publicly.
The technology used on the Titan was decidedly NOT classified. It was lame.
I don't read that as the technology on the Titan being classified. I think Ed meant that the surveillance methods and equipment that picked up the implosion were possibly classified.
Ah...the red tape previously mentioned
That's a possibility. I can list a few other reasons notification would be postponed but none would justify it waiting this long. That the Navy technology being classified is the only one that makes sense.
I didn't really think of that. Thanks.
Bingo.
The technology used on the Titan was decidedly NOT classified. It was lame.
Which technology was lame?
Well, the off the shelf Logitech game controller used to control and steer the sub was.
They were bolted in from the outside and had no means of escape.
Even on the surface they would have suffocated when the air ran out.
The toilet was simply a bucket behind a curtain.
CO2 scrubbers and heaters were insufficient for 5 people.
The viewport was only rated for 4,000 feet. The Titanic lays at 12,500 feet.
The carbon composite hull was destined to fail over time. Wrong material.
According to James Cameron the Titan was a death trap just waiting to happen.
When I toured the WW2 submarine that is docked at the San Francisco piers I realized that I must have a touch of claustrophobia and so I would never take a trip in a submersible even if they paid ME $250,000 to do it.
More than a bit claustrophobic myself. Seriously hate having a weakness.