Following the Titanic. The tragic fate of the bathyscaphe OceanGate Expeditions
The 10 ton Titan vessel owned by
disappeared from radar on the morning of June 19, about an hour and 45 minutes after the descent off the coast
, Massachusetts. On June 22, 2023, the wreckage of a tourist submersible with five passengers was discovered en route to the wreck of the ship “
“(the wreckage of the famous ship is located at a depth of 4 km under the Atlantic Ocean, 60 km from
, Canada). After rescuers tied the wreckage to the missing ship, OceanGate announced that the passengers aboard the ship were presumed dead. The crew included the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, a British businessman, a French diver and explorer, and a Pakistani father and son.
OceanGate Expeditions is the only company that offers scuba tours for $250,000. When it became known that the ship was missing, a heated discussion of the news began on the Internet. And as always happens, with every new detail, memes began to appear: about the bathyscaphe itself, about tourists, about the curse of the Titanic. In fact, there is no curse, and the Titanic is not to blame for the disaster. The banal neglect of security measures is to blame, and in part, bad luck. After all, as it became known, the bathyscaphe did not pass proper tests and safety checks.
This story is another important reminder that safety measures should never be neglected. Especially when diving to extreme depths.
ocean gate
was the CEO of OceanGate Inc, founded in 2009. According to the company’s website, OceanGate is a private company headquartered in
e, Washington state.
is engaged in “
expanding access to the deep ocean through next-generation innovations in crewed submersibles and launch platforms
“. The company states:
Our fleet of five submersibles is capable of diving to depths of up to 4,000 meters and is a unique platform for exploring the ocean depths.
“. OceanGate planned to reach the crash site in 2018 but delayed operations due to poor weather conditions.
OceanGate has been attempting missions since at least 2017 and successfully reached the Titanic wreck for the first time in 2021 and then again in 2022. According to
company, 18 expeditions were planned for the summer of 2023. Missions take up to 10 days, eight of which are at sea, and cost passengers $250,000 each. Expeditions of five usually include three paying passengers, as well as two crew members leading the group. The only known passenger among the five missing is
, a British businessman and aviator whose family confirmed he was on the expedition on Monday. In social media posts on Sunday, Harding said the group had reached the spot above the Titanic and planned to dive at 4 a.m. Monday. “
This week’s expedition is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023 as Newfoundland endured a historically harsh winter.
,” Harding said on Instagram. A search and rescue team was sent on Monday morning after the group was reported missing.
Titan Wrecks: Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Narjolet, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood
Titanium
“
The Titan is the world’s only carbon fiber submersible capable of submerging five people to a depth of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). This is the submersible that the company uses to explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic during its annual expeditions. Titan’s unique ability to carry five people allows several mission specialists, scientists and content experts to share a unique deep ocean diving experience.
Modern vessel designed by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington, debuted underwater in 2018. Thanks to the innovative use of modern materials, Titanium has become lighter and stronger. Spacious and more comfortable than any other deep-sea submarine exploring the ocean today,” the company’s website says.
Inside the submersible is well lit and comfortable for five people. The internal pressure remains constant, so hikers do not need to go through the decompression process at the end of the dive. The air inside a submarine is processed in the same way as the air inside a spacecraft. The internal temperature is usually only a few degrees warmer than the water temperature outside, so it is recommended to wear several layers of clothing while diving.
In addition to Titan, the company also has another type of bathyscaphe –
. The Cyclops-1 submersible from OceanGate Inc. can carry up to five people to depths of up to 500 meters (1,640 ft).
The Titan, the ship that sank, is one of the manned submersibles the company boasts about. According to the company, Titan “
lighter in weight and more economical to mobilize than any other deep submersible
“. It is used for site surveys, inspection studies and data collection. With his “
innovative engineering
” And “
standard technologies
» Titan has «
unique advantage
» in front of other deep-sea submarines and is easier to operate. In addition, it also features real-time hull health monitoring (RTM), which the company says is an unrivaled safety feature that evaluates hull integrity during each dive. It also provides early warning.
The Titan, according to the company’s website, has made successful flights in 2021 and 2022. In 2022 CBS reporter David Pogue ventured into on Titan to see the Titanic. Before diving, he had to sign a document stating that the submersible was “experimental” And “has not been approved by any regulatory body“.
In the video, Rush points to the pipelines inside the ship, saying he bought them from a motorhome supplier.
and says that “
we manage it all
» using a gamepad. The ship uses construction pipes as ballast. Rush explains that a pressure vessel that maintains pressure and air quality to sustain human life for many miles under water, “with
not artisanal at all
and developed with the help of Boeing and NASA.
The company uses Starlink for its maritime communications. “The Titan is the only five-passenger submarine capable of diving to the depth of the Titanic, which is half the depth of the Atlantic Ocean.Rush told CBC last year. “There are no switches or objects to stumble upon, we only have one button to turn the machine on. It shouldn’t require a lot of skill. Everything else is done with touch screens and computers, so you really become part of the machine.“.
The unpredictable Atlantic
OceanGate is not the only company involved in underwater tourism. Bluefish also reportedly offers tours of the Titanic. Back in 2015, it was said that the company was charging $60,000 for a trip to the Titanic during the 2019-2020 period. Bluefish Director
at the time said:
The Titanic really captures the minds of a wide crowd. And more people have been in space than the Titanic has seen.
“.
The OceanGate expedition invited tourists to try themselves as different mission specialists. Roles may vary depending on the expedition:
- Sonar and laser scanning specialist
- Sonar and laser scanning of shipwrecks and sunken artifacts
- Photography and video filming
- On-board camera control
- Communication and tracking
- Observation and documentation of artifacts or marine life
- Submersible preparation
- Maintenance of the underwater vehicle after diving operations
- Diving
- Media
- Assistance in operational planning of dives
catastrophic explosion
Submarine pilot hired to evaluate the Titanic submersible
that its hull monitoring system would only detect failure “often milliseconds before detonation”.
The wreckage of the Titan was found about 500 meters from the wreck of the Titanic. Coast Guard officials said they are still investigating what happened to the craft. The US Coast Guard confirmed on Wednesday that they have picked up suspicious underwater sounds using sonar buoys, sensitive microphones tied to buoys dropped from aircraft overflying the search area.
Previously
Rolling Stone magazine reported
that the search engines on the Canadian plane found “pops” at 30-minute intervals coming from the area where the submersible went missing. A submarine search and rescue expert said the sounds could indicate the vessel is closer to the surface than initially feared. But Thursday, the Coast Guard said that “
there doesn’t seem to be any connection between the noise and the location on the seafloor
“.
If the rescue teams managed to find the ship, they would still have to come up with a strategy to get the bathyscaphe out of such depth, which no one had done before. Very few ships can dive to that depth, and certainly not divers.
Previously, experts assumed that the crew’s oxygen supplies would run out around Thursday morning. However, the US Coast Guard said on Thursday that the search would continue until at least the end of the day.
It is likely that the Titan had some kind of malfunction, due to which the hull was damaged, which led to a “catastrophic explosion”. The cause could be a leak or a power failure. There is also the possibility that a small fire due to a short circuit in the power grid could damage the ship’s electronic systems, which are used to navigate and control the ship. There is practically no chance of surviving such an explosion.
