'Catastrophic implosion' killed all 5 passengers on Titan submersible

The Titan submersible vessel that went missing on Sunday experienced a "catastrophic implosion," Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday, killing all five people on board.

The vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was on a mission to explore the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic when it vanished approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the voyage. The submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply, and search and rescue teams were deployed to try to quickly find the vessel.

On Thursday morning, the Coast Guard announced that debris from the Titan had been found about 1,600 feet away from the Titanic. Authorities had been hopeful that underwater sounds picked up on Tuesday and Wednesday might indicate the Titan was nearby, but Mauger said there "doesn't appear to be any connection between the noises and the [debris] location on the seafloor."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

An investigation will focus on how and when the implosion occurred, Mauger said, and crews are working on recovering the Titan and the remains of the people who died: OceanGate CEO and pilot Stockton Rush; British adventurer Hamish Harding; Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," OceanGate said in a statement. "We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."

Since 2021, OceanGate has been sending vessels down to the Titanic site to record the status of the wreckage, with at least 46 people successfully making the trek, OceanGate stated in letters filed with the Virginia court that oversees matters related to the Titanic wreck. The Titan had seven backup systems to return to the surface, and its destruction shows that "even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen," Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and marine biology lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, told The Associated Press. "With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this."