The moment the wife of OceanGate’s CEO heard audio from the moment of the submersible’s implosion has come to light in a new documentary.
Readers will surely remember the fate of the Titan submersible, a vessel used by deep sea tourism company OceanGate to take paying customers to the deepest depths of the Atlantic Ocean to see the wreckage of the Titanic.
Yet, just as its famous namesake, Titan was destined for a disaster that would seize the attention of people worldwide. In June 2003, five people descended in the submersible: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman, and French submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
What was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime quickly turned into a fatal nightmare, with the sub imploding 90 minutes into its journey, killing everyone onboard instantly.
The fate of Titan (and those onboard) was initially a mystery when those monitoring it from a ship at surface-level lost all contact. Word of the sub’s vanishing quickly became headline news around the globe, with a number of agencies working together in a bid to locate the Titan and perform what they believed at the time to be a dramatic rescue mission.
Tragically, however, there was nothing to rescue. Rather, the aforementioned implosion had reduced the sub to debris.
All manner of questions were asked in the aftermath, not least what had gone so wrong and what the final moments of the passengers of the Titan might have been like.
Now, two years after the incident, the BBC is releasing footage shared by the US Coast Guard that captured the moment the submersible could be heard imploding.
In the eerie clip, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Wendy, can be seen monitoring the sub from the support ship. Suddenly a loud sound comes through the radio, similar to a door slamming. After hearing the noise, Wendy promptly turns to other crew members and asks a question, unaware that her husband his four passengers are already dead.
“What was that bang?” Wendy can be heard saying.
As per the US Coast Guard, the noise preceded the surface-level team receiving a text message from the Titan informing them that it had ‘dropped two weights’. This led Wendy and the crew to believe the operation was proceeding as planned.
Sadly, the truth was that the message had taken longer to reach the ship, meaning that everybody onboard was already deceased. It would mark the final message the crew received.
Following the loss of communication, it took investigators a further four days to find the sub. Ultimately they discovered the debris field 500 meters away from the wreckage of the Titanic.
Former marine operations director David Lochridge testified during an inquest over the disaster, claiming he’d previously made attempts to raise concerns about the Titan’s safety and supposed corner-cutting of CEO Stockton Rush during his time working for the company.
“I don’t want to be seen as a tattletale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego,” Lochridge is said to have written in an email.
“You’re remembered for the rules you break,” Rush himself once said.
Speaking on the Titan vessel, he said: “I’ve broken some rules. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
According to Futurism, evidence suggests that at the very least, Titan may not have been fit for purpose.
Arnie Weissman, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, was supposed to be on the doomed expedition in 2023, but he was unable to go due a scheduling conflict. As per the Washington Post, Weissman had a conversation with Stockton the evening prior to the Titan voyage, where Stockton made a rather haunting revelation.
Weissman said that Rush claimed he had used carbon fire bought “at a big discount from Boeing,” because “it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes.”
“I responded right away, saying, ‘Don’t you have any concerns about that?’” Weissman told the Post.
“He was very dismissive and said: ‘No, it’s perfectly fine. Having all these certifications for airplanes is one thing, but the carbon fiber was perfectly sound.’”
Rest in peace to those who lost their lives aboard the Titan.
READ MORE
- Titan sub CEO made haunting claim one day before mission – and it confirms worst fears
- Mom of teenager who died on Titan sub confirms the heartbreaking rumors
